THE WAR IN THE AIR

By H. G. Wells

CONTENTS

 I. OF PROGRESS AND THE SMALLWAYS FAMILY II. HOW BERT SMALLWAYS GOT INTO DIFFICULTIES III. THE BALLOON IV. THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET V. THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC VI. HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK VII. THE "VATERLAND" IS DISABLED VIII. A WORLD AT WAR IX. ON GOAT ISLAND X. THE WORLD UNDER THE WAR XI. THE GREAT COLLAPSE THE EPILOGUE

PREFACE TO REPRINT EDITION

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 in1908 and it was published in the Fall of that year. At that time theaeroplane was, for most people, merely a rumour and the "Sausage" heldthe air. The contemporary reader has all the advantage of ten years'experience since this story was imagined. He can correct his author at adozen points and estimate the value of these warnings by the standardof a decade of realities. The book is weak on anti-aircraft guns, forexample, and still more negligent of submarines. Much, no doubt, willstrike the reader as quaint and limited but upon much the writer may notunreasonably plume himself. The interpretation of the German spiritmust have read as a caricature in 1908. Was it a caricature? PrinceKarl seemed a fantasy then. Reality has since copied Prince Carl withan astonishing faithfulness. Is it too much to hope that some democratic"Bert" may not ultimately get even with his Highness? Our author tellsus in this book, as he has told us in others, more especially in TheWorld Set Free, and as he has been telling us this year in his Warand the Future, that if mankind goes on with war, the smash-up ofcivilization is inevitable. It is chaos or the United States of theWorld for mankind. There is no other choice. Ten years have but added anenormous conviction to the message of this book. It remains essentiallyright, a pamphlet story--in support of the League to Enforce Peace. K. 

THE WAR IN THE AIR

CHAPTER I. OF PROGRESS AND THE SMALLWAYS FAMILY

1

"This here Progress, " said Mr. Tom Smallways, "it keeps on. "

"You'd hardly think it could keep on, " said Mr. Tom Smallways. 

It was along before the War in the Air began that Mr. Smallways madethis remark. He was sitting on the fence at the end of his garden andsurveying the great Bun Hill gas-works with an eye that neither praisednor blamed. Above the clustering gasometers three unfamiliar shapesappeared, thin, wallowing bladders that flapped and rolled about, andgrew bigger and bigger and rounder and rounder--balloons in courseof inflation for the South of England Aero Club's Saturday-afternoonascent. 

"They goes up every Saturday, " said his neighbour, Mr. Stringer, themilkman. "It's only yestiday, so to speak, when all London turned out tosee a balloon go over, and now every little place in the country hasits weekly-outings--uppings, rather. It's been the salvation of them gascompanies. "

"Larst Satiday I got three barrer-loads of gravel off my petaters, " saidMr. Tom Smallways. "Three barrer-loads! What they dropped as ballase. Some of the plants was broke, and some was buried. "

"Ladies, they say, goes up!"

"I suppose we got to call 'em ladies, " said Mr. Tom Smallways. 

"Still, it ain't hardly my idea of a lady--flying about in the air, andthrowing gravel at people. It ain't what I been accustomed to considerladylike, whether or no. "

Mr. Stringer nodded his head approvingly, and for a time they continuedto regard the swelling bulks with expressions that had changed fromindifference to disapproval. 

Mr. Tom Smallways was a green-grocer by trade and a gardener bydisposition; his little wife Jessica saw to the shop, and Heaven hadplanned him for a peaceful world. Unfortunately Heaven had not planneda peaceful world for him. He lived in a world of obstinate and incessantchange, and in parts where its operations were unsparingly conspicuous. Vicissitude was in the very soil he tilled; even his garden was upon ayearly tenancy, and overshadowed by a huge board that proclaimed it notso much a garden as an eligible building site. He was horticulture undernotice to quit, the last patch of country in a district flooded by newand (other) things. He did his best to console himself, to imaginematters near the turn of the tide. 

"You'd hardly think it could keep on, " he said. 

Mr. Smallways' aged father, could remember Bun Hill as an idyllicKentish village. He had driven Sir Peter Bone until he was fifty andthen he took to drink a little, and driving the station bus, whichlasted him until he was seventy-eight. Then he retired. He sat by thefireside, a shrivelled, very, very old coachman, full charged withreminiscences, and ready for any careless stranger. He could tell you ofthe 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, ofshooting and hunting, and of caches along the high road, of how "wherethe gas-works is" was a cricket-field, and of the coming of the CrystalPalace. The Crystal Palace was six miles away from Bun Hill, a greatfacade that glittered in the morning, and was a clear blue outlineagainst the sky in the afternoon, and of a night, a source of gratuitousfireworks for all the population of Bun Hill. And then had come therailway, and then villas and villas, and then the gas-works and thewater-works, and a great, ugly sea of workmen's houses, and thendrainage, and the water vanished out of the Otterbourne and left it adreadful ditch, and then a second railway station, Bun Hill South, andmore houses and more, more shops, more competition, plate-glass shops, a school-board, rates, omnibuses, tramcars--going right away intoLondon itself--bicycles, motor-cars and then more motor-cars, a Carnegielibrary. 

"You'd hardly think it could keep on, " said Mr. Tom Smallways, growingup among these marvels. 

But it kept on. Even from the first the green-grocer's shop which he hadset up in one of the smallest of the old surviving village houses inthe tail of the High Street had a submerged air, an air of hiding fromsomething that was looking for it. When they had made up the pavement ofthe High Street, they levelled that up so that one had to go down threesteps into the shop. Tom did his best to sell only his own excellentbut limited range of produce; but Progress came shoving things into hiswindow, French artichokes and aubergines, foreign apples--apples fromthe State of New York, apples from California, apples from Canada, apples from New Zealand, "pretty lookin' fruit, but not what I shouldcall English apples, " said Tom--bananas, unfamiliar nuts, grape fruits, mangoes. 

The motor-cars that went by northward and southward grew more and morepowerful and efficient, whizzed faster and smelt worse, there appearedgreat clangorous petrol trolleys delivering coal and parcels inthe place of vanishing horse-vans, motor-omnibuses ousted thehorse-omnibuses, even the Kentish strawberries going Londonward in thenight took to machinery and clattered instead of creaking, and becameaffected in flavour by progress and petrol. 

And then young Bert Smallways got a motor bicycle.... 

2

Bert, it is necessary to explain, was a progressive Smallways. 

Nothing speaks more eloquently of the pitiless insistence of progressand expansion in our time than that it should get into the Smallwaysblood. But there was something advanced and enterprising about youngSmallways before he was out of short frocks. He was lost for a wholeday before he was five, and nearly drowned in the reservoir of the newwater-works before he was seven. He had a real pistol taken away fromhim by a real policeman when he was ten. And he learnt to smoke, notwith pipes and brown paper and cane as Tom had done, but with a pennypacket of Boys of England American cigarettes. His language shockedhis father before he was twelve, and by that age, what with touting forparcels at the station and selling the Bun Hill Weekly Express, he wasmaking three shillings a week, or more, and spending it on Chips, ComicCuts, Ally Sloper's Half-holiday, cigarettes, and all the concomitantsof a life of pleasure and enlightenment. All of this without hindranceto his literary studies, which carried him up to the seventh standard atan exceptionally early age. I mention these things so that you may haveno doubt at all concerning the sort of stuff Bert had in him. 

He was six years younger than Tom, and for a time there was an attemptto utilise him in the green-grocer's shop when Tom at twenty-one marriedJessica--who was thirty, and had saved a little money in service. But itwas not Bert's forte to be utilised. He hated digging, and when hewas given a basket of stuff to deliver, a nomadic instinct aroseirresistibly, it became his pack and he did not seem to care how heavyit was nor where he took it, so long as he did not take it to itsdestination. Glamour filled the world, and he strayed after it, basketand all. So Tom took his goods out himself, and sought employers forBert who did not know of this strain of poetry in his nature. And Berttouched the fringe of a number of trades in succession--draper's porter, chemist's boy, doctor's page, junior assistant gas-fitter, envelopeaddresser, milk-cart assistant, golf caddie, and at last helper in abicycle shop. Here, apparently, he found the progressive quality hisnature had craved. His employer was a pirate-souled young man namedGrubb, with a black-smeared face by day, and a music-hall side in theevening, who dreamt of a patent lever chain; and it seemed to Bert thathe was the perfect model of a gentleman of spirit. He hired out quitethe dirtiest and unsafest bicycles in the whole south of England, andconducted the subsequent discussions with astonishing verve. Bert andhe settled down very well together. Bert lived in, became almost a trickrider--he could ride bicycles for miles that would have come to piecesinstantly under you or me--took to washing his face after business, andspent his surplus money upon remarkable ties and collars, cigarettes, and shorthand classes at the Bun Hill Institute. 

He would go round to Tom at times, and look and talk so brilliantlythat Tom and Jessie, who both had a natural tendency to be respectful toanybody or anything, looked up to him immensely. 

"He's a go-ahead chap, is Bert, " said Tom. "He knows a thing or two. "

"Let's hope he don't know too much, " said Jessica, who had a fine senseof limitations. 

"It's go-ahead Times, " said Tom. "Noo petaters, and English at that;we'll be having 'em in March if things go on as they do go. I never seesuch Times. See his tie last night?"

"It wasn't suited to him, Tom. It was a gentleman's tie. He wasn't up toit--not the rest of him, It wasn't becoming"... 

Then presently Bert got a cyclist's suit, cap, badge, and all; andto see him and Grubb going down to Brighton (and back)--headsdown, handle-bars down, backbones curved--was a revelation in thepossibilities of the Smallways blood. 

Go-ahead Times!

Old Smallways would sit over the fire mumbling of the greatness of otherdays, of old Sir Peter, who drove his coach to Brighton and back ineight-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, offoxes at Ring's Bottom, where now the County Council pauper lunaticswere enclosed, of Lady Bone's chintzes and crinolines. Nobody heededhim. The world had thrown up a new type of gentleman altogether--agentleman of most ungentlemanly energy, a gentleman in dusty oilskinsand motor goggles and a wonderful cap, a stink-making gentleman, aswift, high-class badger, who fled perpetually along high roads from thedust and stink he perpetually made. And his lady, as they were ableto see her at Bun Hill, was a weather-bitten goddess, as free fromrefinement as a gipsy--not so much dressed as packed for transit at ahigh velocity. 

So Bert grew up, filled with ideals of speed and enterprise, andbecame, so far as he became anything, a kind of bicycle engineer of thelet'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 hepined in vain at twenty miles an hour along roads that were continuallymore dusty and more crowded with mechanical traffic. But at last hissavings accumulated, and his chance came. The hire-purchase systembridged a financial gap, and one bright and memorable Sunday morning hewheeled his new possession through the shop into the road, got on to itwith the advice and assistance of Grubb, and teuf-teuffed off intothe haze of the traffic-tortured high road, to add himself as one morevoluntary public danger to the amenities of the south of England. 

"Orf to Brighton!" said old Smallways, regarding his youngest son fromthe sitting-room window over the green-grocer's shop with somethingbetween pride and reprobation. "When I was 'is age, I'd never been toLondon, never bin south of Crawley--never bin anywhere on my own whereI couldn't walk. And nobody didn't go. Not unless they was gentry. Nowevery body's orf everywhere; the whole dratted country sims flying topieces. Wonder they all get back. Orf to Brighton indeed! Anybody wantto buy 'orses?"

"You can't say _I_ bin to Brighton, father, " said Tom. 

"Nor don't want to go, " said Jessica sharply; "creering about andspendin' your money. "

3

For a time the possibilities of the motor-bicycle so occupied Bert'smind that he remained regardless of the new direction in which thestriving soul of man was finding exercise and refreshment. He failedto observe that the type of motor-car, like the type of bicycle, wassettling-down and losing its adventurous quality. Indeed, it is astrue as it is remarkable that Tom was the first to observe the newdevelopment. But his gardening made him attentive to the heavens, andthe proximity of the Bun Hill gas-works and the Crystal Palace, fromwhich ascents were continually being made, and presently the descent ofballast upon his potatoes, conspired to bear in upon his unwilling mindthe fact that the Goddess of Change was turning her disturbing attentionto the sky. The first great boom in aeronautics was beginning. 

Grubb and Bert heard of it in a music-hall, then it was driven home totheir minds by the cinematograph, then Bert's imagination was stimulatedby a sixpenny edition of that aeronautic classic, Mr. George Griffith's"Clipper of the Clouds, " and so the thing really got hold of them. 

At first the most obvious aspect was the multiplication of balloons. The sky of Bun Hill began to be infested by balloons. On Wednesday andSaturday afternoons particularly you could scarcely look skyward for aquarter of an hour without discovering a balloon somewhere. And then onebright day Bert, motoring toward Croydon, was arrested by the insurgenceof a huge, bolster-shaped monster from the Crystal Palace grounds, andobliged to dismount and watch it. It was like a bolster with a brokennose, and below it, and comparatively small, was a stiff frameworkbearing a man and an engine with a screw that whizzed round in front anda sort of canvas rudder behind. The framework had an air of dragging thereluctant gas-cylinder after it like a brisk little terrier towing ashy gas-distended elephant into society. The combined monster certainlytravelled 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 veryfast before a gentle south-west gale, returned above the Crystal Palacetowers, circled round them, chose a position for descent, and sank downout of sight. 

Bert sighed deeply, and turned to his motor-bicycle again. 

And that was only the beginning of a succession of strange phenomenain the heavens--cylinders, cones, pear-shaped monsters, even at last athing of aluminium that glittered wonderfully, and that Grubb, throughsome confusion of ideas about armour plates, was inclined to consider awar machine. 

There followed actual flight. 

This, however, was not an affair that was visible from Bun Hill; it wassomething that occurred in private grounds or other enclosed places and, under favourable conditions, and it was brought home to Grubb andBert Smallways only by means of the magazine page of the half-pennynewspapers or by cinematograph records. But it was brought home veryinsistently, and in those days if, ever one heard a man saying in apublic place in a loud, reassuring, confident tone, "It's bound tocome, " the chances were ten to one he was talking of flying. And Bertgot a box lid and wrote out in correct window-ticket style, and Grubbput in the window this inscription, "Aeroplanes made and repaired. " Itquite upset Tom--it seemed taking one's shop so lightly; but most of theneighbours, and all the sporting ones, approved of it as being very goodindeed. 

Everybody talked of flying, everybody repeated over and over again, "Bound to come, " and then you know it didn't come. There was a hitch. They flew--that was all right; they flew in machines heavier than air. But they smashed. Sometimes they smashed the engine, sometimes theysmashed the aeronaut, usually they smashed both. Machines that madeflights of three or four miles and came down safely, went up the nexttime to headlong disaster. There seemed no possible trusting to them. The breeze upset them, the eddies near the ground upset them, a passingthought in the mind of the aeronaut upset them. Also they upset--simply. 

"It's this 'stability' does 'em, " said Grubb, repeating his newspaper. "They pitch and they pitch, till they pitch themselves to pieces. "

Experiments fell away after two expectant years of this sort of success, the public and then the newspapers tired of the expensive photographicreproductions, the optimistic reports, the perpetual sequence of triumphand disaster and silence. Flying slumped, even ballooning fell away tosome extent, though it remained a fairly popular sport, and continuedto lift gravel from the wharf of the Bun Hill gas-works and drop it upondeserving people's lawns and gardens. There were half a dozen reassuringyears for Tom--at least so far as flying was concerned. But that was thegreat time of mono-rail development, and his anxiety was only divertedfrom the high heavens by the most urgent threats and symptoms of changein the lower sky. 

There had been talk of mono-rails for several years. But the realmischief began when Brennan sprang his gyroscopic mono-rail car upon theRoyal Society. It was the leading sensation of the 1907 soirees; thatcelebrated 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 ribsthe world would not willingly let break, deeming themselves fortunateif they could see "just a little bit of the rail. " Inaudible, butconvincing, the great inventor expounded his discovery, and sent hisobedient little model of the trains of the future up gradients, roundcurves, and across a sagging wire. It ran along its single rail, on itssingle wheels, simple and sufficient; it stopped, reversed stood still, balancing perfectly. It maintained its astounding equilibrium amidst athunder of applause. The audience dispersed at last, discussing howfar they would enjoy crossing an abyss on a wire cable. "Suppose thegyroscope stopped!" Few of them anticipated a tithe of what the Brennanmono-rail would do for their railway securities and the face of theworld. 

In a few, years they realised better. In a little while no onethought anything of crossing an abyss on a wire, and the mono-rail wassuperseding the tram-lines, railways: and indeed every form of trackfor mechanical locomotion. Where land was cheap the rail ran alongthe ground, where it was dear the rail lifted up on iron standards andpassed overhead; its swift, convenient cars went everywhere and dideverything that had once been done along made tracks upon the ground. 

When old Smallways died, Tom could think of nothing more striking to sayof him than that, "When he was a boy, there wasn't nothing higher thanyour chimbleys--there wasn't a wire nor a cable in the sky!"

Old Smallways went to his grave under an intricate network of wires andcables, for Bun Hill became not only a sort of minor centre of powerdistribution--the Home Counties Power Distribution Company setup transformers and a generating station close beside the oldgas-works--but, also a junction on the suburban mono-rail system. Moreover, every tradesman in the place, and indeed nearly every house, had its own telephone. 

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'shouse, which looked still more retiring and apologetic beneath itsimmensity; and another giant stood just inside the corner of his garden, which was still not built upon and unchanged, except for a couple ofadvertisement boards, one recommending a two-and-sixpenny watch, and onea nerve restorer. These, by the bye, were placed almost horizontally tocatch the eye of the passing mono-rail passengers above, and so servedadmirably to roof over a tool-shed and a mushroom-shed for Tom. All dayand all night the fast cars from Brighton and Hastings went murmuring byoverhead long, broad, comfortable-looking cars, that were brightly litafter dusk. As they flew by at night, transient flares of light and arumbling sound of passage, they kept up a perpetual summer lightning andthunderstorm in the street below. 

Presently the English Channel was bridged--a series of great iron EiffelTower pillars carrying mono-rail cables at a height of a hundred andfifty feet above the water, except near the middle, where they rosehigher to allow the passage of the London and Antwerp shipping and theHamburg-America liners. 

Then heavy motor-cars began to run about on only a couple of wheels, onebehind the other, which for some reason upset Tom dreadfully, and madehim gloomy for days after the first one passed the shop... 

All this gyroscopic and mono-rail development naturally absorbed avast amount of public attention, and there was also a huge excitementconsequent upon the amazing gold discoveries off the coast of Angleseamade by a submarine prospector, Miss Patricia Giddy. She had taken herdegree in geology and mineralogy in the University of London, and whileworking upon the auriferous rocks of North Wales, after a brief holidayspent in agitating for women's suffrage, she had been struck by thepossibility of these reefs cropping up again under the water. She hadset herself to verify this supposition by the use of the submarinecrawler invented by Doctor Alberto Cassini. By a happy mingling ofreasoning and intuition peculiar to her sex she found gold at herfirst descent, and emerged after three hours' submersion with about twohundredweight of ore containing gold in the unparalleled quantityof seventeen ounces to the ton. But the whole story of her submarinemining, intensely interesting as it is, must be told at some other time;suffice it now to remark simply that it was during the consequent greatrise of prices, confidence, and enterprise that the revival of interestin flying occurred. 

It is curious how that revival began. It was like the coming of a breezeon a quiet day; nothing started it, it came. People began to talk offlying 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 seriousmagazines. People asked in mono-rail trains, "When are we going to fly?"A new crop of inventors sprang up in a night or so like fungi. The AeroClub announced the project of a great Flying Exhibition in a largearea of ground that the removal of slums in Whitechapel had renderedavailable. 

The advancing wave soon produced a sympathetic ripple in the Bun Hillestablishment. Grubb routed out his flying-machine model again, tried itin the yard behind the shop, got a kind of flight out of it, and brokeseventeen panes of glass and nine flower-pots in the greenhouse thatoccupied the next yard but one. 

And then, springing from nowhere, sustained one knew not how, came apersistent, disturbing rumour that the problem had been solved, thatthe secret was known. Bert met it one early-closing afternoon as herefreshed himself in an inn near Nutfield, whither his motor-bicycle hadbrought him. There smoked and meditated a person in khaki, an engineer, who presently took an interest in Bert's machine. It was a sturdy pieceof apparatus, and it had acquired a kind of documentary value in thesequick-changing times; it was now nearly eight years old. Its pointsdiscussed, the soldier broke into a new topic with, "My next's goingto be an aeroplane, so far as I can see. I've had enough of roads andways. "

"They TORK, " said Bert. 

"They talk--and they do, " said the soldier. 

"The thing's coming--"

"It keeps ON coming, " said Bert; "I shall believe when I see it. "

"That won't be long, " said the soldier. 

The conversation seemed degenerating into an amiable wrangle ofcontradiction. 

"I tell you they ARE flying, " the soldier insisted. "I see it myself. "

"We've all seen it, " said Bert. 

"I don't mean flap up and smash up; I mean real, safe, steady, controlled flying, against the wind, good and right. "

"You ain't seen that!"

"I 'AVE! Aldershot. They try to keep it a secret. They got it rightenough. You bet--our War Office isn't going to be caught napping thistime. "

Bert's incredulity was shaken. He asked questions--and the soldierexpanded. 

"I tell you they got nearly a square mile fenced in--a sort of valley. Fences of barbed wire ten feet high, and inside that they do things. Chaps about the camp--now and then we get a peep. It isn't onlyus neither. There's the Japanese; you bet they got it too--and theGermans!"

The soldier stood with his legs very wide apart, and filled his pipethoughtfully. Bert sat on the low wall against which his motor-bicyclewas leaning. 

"Funny thing fighting'll be, " he said. 

"Flying's going to break out, " said the soldier. "When it DOES come, when the curtain does go up, I tell you you'll find every one on thestage--busy.... Such fighting, too!... I suppose you don't read thepapers about this sort of thing?"

"I read 'em a bit, " said Bert. 

"Well, have you noticed what one might call the remarkable case ofthe disappearing inventor--the inventor who turns up in a blaze ofpublicity, fires off a few successful experiments, and vanishes?"

"Can't say I 'ave, " said Bert. 

"Well, I 'ave, anyhow. You get anybody come along who does anythingstriking in this line, and, you bet, he vanishes. Just goes off quietlyout of sight. After a bit, you don't hear anything more of 'em at all. See? They disappear. Gone--no address. First--oh! it's an old storynow--there was those Wright Brothers out in America. They glided--theyglided miles and miles. Finally they glided off stage. Why, it must benineteen hundred and four, or five, THEY vanished! Then there was thosepeople in Ireland--no, I forget their names. Everybody said they couldfly. THEY went. They ain't dead that I've heard tell; but you can't saythey're alive. Not a feather of 'em can you see. Then that chap who flewround Paris and upset in the Seine. De Booley, was it? I forget. Thatwas a grand fly, in spite of the accident; but where's he got to? Theaccident didn't hurt him. Eh? _'E_'s gone to cover. "

The soldier prepared to light his pipe. 

"Looks like a secret society got hold of them, " said Bert. 

"Secret society! NAW!"

The soldier lit his match, and drew. "Secret society, " he repeated, withhis pipe between his teeth and the match flaring, in response to hiswords. "War Departments; that's more like it. " He threw his match aside, and walked to his machine. "I tell you, sir, " he said, "there isn't abig Power in Europe, OR Asia, OR America, OR Africa, that hasn't gotat least one or two flying machines hidden up its sleeve at the presenttime. Not one. Real, workable, flying machines. And the spying! Thespying and manoeuvring to find out what the others have got. I tell you, sir, a foreigner, or, for the matter of that, an unaccredited native, can't get within four miles of Lydd nowadays--not to mention our littlecircus at Aldershot, and the experimental camp in Galway. No!"

"Well, " said Bert, "I'd like to see one of them, anyhow. Jest to helpbelieving. I'll believe when I see, that I'll promise you. "

"You'll see 'em, fast enough, " said the soldier, and led his machine outinto the road. 

He left Bert on his wall, grave and pensive, with his cap on the back ofhis head, and a cigarette smouldering in the corner of his mouth. 

"If what he says is true, " said Bert, "me and Grubb, we been wasting ourblessed old time. Besides incurring expense with that green-'ouse. "

5

It was while this mysterious talk with the soldier still stirred in BertSmallways' imagination that the most astounding incident in the whole ofthat dramatic chapter of human history, the coming of flying, occurred. People talk glibly enough of epoch-making events; this wasan epoch-making event. It was the unanticipated and entirely successfulflight of Mr. Alfred Butteridge from the Crystal Palace to Glasgowand back in a small businesslike-looking machine heavier than air--anentirely manageable and controllable machine that could fly as well as apigeon. 

It wasn't, one felt, a fresh step forward in the matter so much as agiant stride, a leap. Mr. Butteridge remained in the air altogetherfor about nine hours, and during that time he flew with the ease andassurance of a bird. His machine was, however neither bird-like norbutterfly-like, nor had it the wide, lateral expansion of the ordinaryaeroplane. The effect upon the observer was rather something in thenature of a bee or wasp. Parts of the apparatus were spinning veryrapidly, and gave one a hazy effect of transparent wings; but parts, including two peculiarly curved "wing-cases"--if one may borrow a figurefrom the flying beetles--remained expanded stiffly. In the middle wasa long rounded body like the body of a moth, and on this Mr. Butteridgecould be seen sitting astride, much as a man bestrides a horse. Thewasp-like resemblance was increased by the fact that the apparatusflew with a deep booming hum, exactly the sound made by a wasp at awindowpane. 

Mr. Butteridge took the world by surprise. He was one of those gentlemenfrom nowhere Fate still succeeds in producing for the stimulation ofmankind. He came, it was variously said, from Australia and America andthe South of France. He was also described quite incorrectly as the sonof a man who had amassed a comfortable fortune in the manufacture ofgold nibs and the Butteridge fountain pens. But this was an entirelydifferent strain of Butteridges. For some years, in spite of a loudvoice, a large presence, an aggressive swagger, and an implacablemanner, he had been an undistinguished member of most of the existingaeronautical associations. Then one day he wrote to all the Londonpapers to announce that he had made arrangements for an ascent from theCrystal Palace of a machine that would demonstrate satisfactorily thatthe outstanding difficulties in the way of flying were finally solved. Few of the papers printed his letter, still fewer were the people whobelieved in his claim. No one was excited even when a fracas on thesteps of a leading hotel in Piccadilly, in which he tried to horse-whipa prominent German musician upon some personal account, delayed hispromised ascent. The quarrel was inadequately reported, and his namespelt variously Betteridge and Betridge. Until his flight indeed, hedid not and could not contrive to exist in the public mind. There werescarcely thirty people on the look-out for him, in spite of all hisclamour, when about six o'clock one summer morning the doors of the bigshed in which he had been putting together his apparatus opened--it wasnear the big model of a megatherium in the Crystal Palace grounds--andhis giant insect came droning out into a negligent and incredulousworld. 

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 startledtramps who sleep on the seats of Trafalgar Square were roused by hisbuzz and awoke to discover him circling the Nelson column, and by thetime he had got to Birmingham, which place he crossed about half-pastten, her deafening blast was echoing throughout the country. Thedespaired-of thing was done. 

A man was flying securely and well. 

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 hiveof industry resumed work before half-past two. The public mind was justsufficiently educated in the impossibility of flying to appreciate Mr. Butteridge at his proper value. He circled the University buildings, anddropped to within shouting distance of the crowds in West End Park andon the slope of Gilmorehill. The thing flew quite steadily at a paceof 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 providedhimself with a megaphone. He avoided churches, buildings, and mono-railcables with consummate ease as he conversed. 

"Me name's Butteridge, " he shouted; "B-U-T-T-E-R-I-D-G-E. --Got it? Memother was Scotch. "

And having assured himself that he had been understood, he rose amidstcheers and shouting and patriotic cries, and then flew up very swiftlyand easily into the south-eastern sky, rising and falling with long, easy undulations in an extraordinarily wasp-like manner. 

His return to London--he visited and hovered over Manchester andLiverpool and Oxford on his way, and spelt his name out to eachplace--was an occasion of unparalleled excitement. Every one was staringheavenward. More people were run over in the streets upon that one day, than in the previous three months, and a County Council steamboat, theIsaac Walton, collided with a pier of Westminster Bridge, and narrowlyescaped disaster by running ashore--it was low water--on the mud onthe south side. He returned to the Crystal Palace grounds, that classicstarting-point of aeronautical adventure, about sunset, re-entered hisshed without disaster, and had the doors locked immediately upon thephotographers and journalists who been waiting his return. 

"Look here, you chaps, " he said, as his assistant did so, "I'm tired todeath, and saddle sore. I can't give you a word of talk. I'm too--done. My name's Butteridge. B-U-T-T-E-R-I-D-G-E. Get that right. I'm anImperial Englishman. I'll talk to you all to-morrow. "

Foggy snapshots still survive to record that incident. His assistantstruggles in a sea of aggressive young men carrying note-books orupholding cameras and wearing bowler hats and enterprising ties. Hehimself towers up in the doorway, a big figure with a mouth--an eloquentcavity beneath a vast black moustache--distorted by his shout to theserelentless agents of publicity. He towers there, the most famous man inthe country. 

Almost symbolically he holds and gesticulates with a megaphone in hisleft hand. 

6

Tom and Bert Smallways both saw that return. They watched from the crestof Bun Hill, from which they had so often surveyed the pyrotechnics ofthe Crystal Palace. Bert was excited, Tom kept calm and lumpish, butneither of them realised how their own lives were to be invaded by thefruits of that beginning. "P'raps old Grubb'll mind the shop a bit now, "he said, "and put his blessed model in the fire. Not that that can saveus, if we don't tide over with Steinhart's account. "

Bert knew enough of things and the problem of aeronautics to realisethat this gigantic imitation of a bee would, to use his own idiom, "givethe newspapers fits. " The next day it was clear the fits had been giveneven as he said: their magazine pages were black with hasty photographs, their prose was convulsive, they foamed at the headline. The next daythey were worse. Before the week was out they were not so much publishedas carried screaming into the street. 

The dominant fact in the uproar was the exceptional personality of Mr. Butteridge, and the extraordinary terms he demanded for the secret ofhis machine. 

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 CrystalPalace sheds, with the assistance of inattentive workmen, and the daynext following his flight he took it to pieces single handed, packedcertain portions, and then secured unintelligent assistance in packingand dispersing the rest. Sealed packing-cases went north and east andwest to various pantechnicons, and the engines were boxed with peculiarcare. It became evident these precautions were not inadvisable in viewof the violent demand for any sort of photograph or impressions ofhis machine. But Mr. Butteridge, having once made his demonstration, intended to keep his secret safe from any further risk of leakage. Hefaced the British public now with the question whether they wanted hissecret or not; he was, he said perpetually, an "Imperial Englishman, "and his first wish and his last was to see his invention the privilegeand monopoly of the Empire. Only--

It was there the difficulty began. 

Mr. Butteridge, it became evident, was a man singularly free from anyfalse modesty--indeed, from any modesty of any kind--singularly willingto see interviewers, answer questions upon any topic except aeronautics, volunteer opinions, criticisms, and autobiography, supply portraits andphotographs of himself, and generally spread his personality acrossthe terrestrial sky. The published portraits insisted primarily upon animmense black moustache, and secondarily upon a fierceness behind themoustache. The general impression upon the public was that Butteridge, was a small man. No one big, it was felt, could have so virulentlyaggressive an expression, though, as a matter of fact, Butteridge had aheight of six feet two inches, and a weight altogether proportionate tothat. Moreover, he had a love affair of large and unusual dimensions andirregular circumstances and the still largely decorous British publiclearnt with reluctance and alarm that a sympathetic treatment of thisaffair was inseparable from the exclusive acquisition of the pricelesssecret of aerial stability by the British Empire. The exact particularsof the similarity never came to light, but apparently the lady had, ina fit of high-minded inadvertence, had gone through the ceremonyof marriage with, one quotes the unpublished discourse of Mr. Butteridge--"a white-livered skunk, " and this zoological aberration didin some legal and vexatious manner mar her social happiness. He wantedto talk about the business, to show the splendour of her nature in thelight of its complications. It was really most embarrassing to a pressthat has always possessed a considerable turn for reticence, that wantedthings personal indeed in the modern fashion. Yet not too personal. It was embarrassing, I say, to be inexorably confronted withMr. Butteridge's great heart, to see it laid open in relentlesssself-vivisection, and its pulsating dissepiments adorned with emphaticflag labels. 

Confronted they were, and there was no getting away from it. Hewould make this appalling viscus beat and throb before the shrinkingjournalists--no uncle with a big watch and a little baby ever harpedupon it so relentlessly; whatever evasion they attempted he set aside. He "gloried in his love, " he said, and compelled them to write it down. 

"That's of course a private affair, Mr. Butteridge, " they would object. 

"The injustice, sorr, is public. I do not care either I am up againstinstitutions or individuals. I do not care if I am up against theuniversal All. I am pleading the cause of a woman, a woman I lurve, sorr--a noble woman--misunderstood. I intend to vindicate her, sorr, tothe four winds of heaven!"

"I lurve England, " he used to say--"lurve England, but Puritanism, sorr, I abhor. It fills me with loathing. It raises my gorge. Take my owncase. "

He insisted relentlessly upon his heart, and upon seeing proofs of theinterview. If they had not done justice to his erotic bellowings andgesticulations, he stuck in, in a large inky scrawl, all and more thanthey had omitted. 

It was a strangely embarrassing thing for British journalism. Never wasthere a more obvious or uninteresting affair; never had the world heardthe story of erratic affection with less appetite or sympathy. On theother hand it was extremely curious about Mr. Butteridge's invention. But when Mr. Butteridge could be deflected for a moment from the causeof the lady he championed, then he talked chiefly, and usuallywith tears of tenderness in his voice, about his mother and hischildhood--his mother who crowned a complete encyclopedia of maternalvirtue by being "largely Scotch. " She was not quite neat, but nearly so. "I owe everything in me to me mother, " he asserted--"everything. Eh!"and--"ask any man who's done anything. You'll hear the same story. Allwe 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!"

He was always going on like that. 

What in particular he wanted from the Government for his secret did notappear, nor what beyond a money payment could be expected from a modernstate in such an affair. The general effect upon judicious observers, indeed, was not that he was treating for anything, but that he was usingan unexampled opportunity to bellow and show off to an attentive world. Rumours of his real identity spread abroad. It was said that he had beenthe landlord of an ambiguous hotel in Cape Town, and had there givenshelter to, and witnessed, the experiments and finally stolen the papersand plans of, an extremely shy and friendless young inventor namedPalliser, who had come to South Africa from England in an advanced stageof consumption, and died there. This, at any rate, was the allegationof the more outspoken American press. But the proof or disproof of thatnever reached the public. 

Mr. Butteridge also involved himself passionately in a tangle ofdisputes for the possession of a great number of valuable money prizes. Some of these had been offered so long ago as 1906 for successfulmechanical flight. By the time of Mr. Butteridge's success a reallyvery considerable number of newspapers, tempted by the impunity of thepioneers in this direction, had pledged themselves to pay in some cases, quite overwhelming sums to the first person to fly from Manchester toGlasgow, from London to Manchester, one hundred miles, two hundredmiles in England, and the like. Most had hedged a little with ambiguousconditions, and now offered resistance; one or two paid at once, andvehemently called attention to the fact; and Mr. Butteridge plunged intolitigation with the more recalcitrant, while at the same time sustaininga vigorous agitation and canvass to induce the Government to purchasehis invention. 

One fact, however, remained permanent throughout all the developments ofthis affair behind Butteridge's preposterous love interest, his politicsand 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 thesecret of the practicable aeroplane in which, for all one could tellto the contrary, the key of the future empire of the world resided. Andpresently, to the great consternation of innumerable people, includingamong others Mr. Bert Smallways, it became apparent that whatevernegotiations were in progress for the acquisition of this precioussecret by the British Government were in danger of falling through. TheLondon Daily Requiem first voiced the universal alarm, and publishedan interview under the terrific caption of, "Mr. Butteridge Speaks hisMind. "

Therein the inventor--if he was an inventor--poured out his heart. 

"I came from the end of the earth, " he said, which rather seemed toconfirm the Cape Town story, "bringing me Motherland the secret thatwould give her the empire of the world. And what do I get?" He paused. "I am sniffed at by elderly mandarins!... And the woman I love istreated like a leper!"

"I am an Imperial Englishman, " he went on in a splendid outburst, subsequently written into the interview by his own hand; "but therethere are limits to the human heart! There are younger nations--livingnations! Nations that do not snore and gurgle helplessly in paroxysmsof plethora upon beds of formality and red tape! There are nations thatwill not fling away the empire of earth in order to slight an unknownman 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 footto effete snobocracies and Degenerate Decadents. In short, mark mywords--THERE ARE OTHER NATIONS!"

This speech it was that particularly impressed Bert Smallways. "If themGermans or them Americans get hold of this, " he said impressively tohis brother, "the British Empire's done. It's U-P. The Union Jack, so tospeak, won't be worth the paper it's written on, Tom. "

"I suppose you couldn't lend us a hand this morning, " said Jessica, in his impressive pause. "Everybody in Bun Hill seems wanting earlypotatoes at once. Tom can't carry half of them. "

"We're living on a volcano, " said Bert, disregarding the suggestion. "Atany moment war may come--such a war!"

He shook his head portentously. 

"You'd better take this lot first, Tom, " said Jessica. She turnedbriskly on Bert. "Can you spare us a morning?" she asked. 

"I dessay I can, " said Bert. "The shop's very quiet s'morning. Thoughall this danger to the Empire worries me something frightful. "

"Work'll take it off your mind, " said Jessica. 

And presently he too was going out into a world of change and wonder, bowed beneath a load of potatoes and patriotic insecurity, that mergedat last into a very definite irritation at the weight and want of styleof the potatoes and a very clear conception of the entire detestablenessof Jessica. 

CHAPTER II. HOW BERT SMALLWAYS GOT INTO DIFFICULTIES

It did not occur to either Tom or Bert Smallways that this remarkableaerial performance of Mr. Butteridge was likely to affect either oftheir lives in any special manner, that it would in any way single themout from the millions about them; and when they had witnessed it fromthe crest of Bun Hill and seen the fly-like mechanism, its rotatingplanes a golden haze in the sunset, sink humming to the harbour of itsshed again, they turned back towards the sunken green-grocery beneaththe great iron standard of the London to Brighton mono-rail, and theirminds reverted to the discussion that had engaged them before Mr. Butteridge's triumph had come in sight out of the London haze. 

It was a difficult and unsuccessful discussions. They had to carry iton in shouts because of the moaning and roaring of the gyroscopicmotor-cars that traversed the High Street, and in its nature it wascontentious and private. The Grubb business was in difficulties, andGrubb in a moment of financial eloquence had given a half-share in itto Bert, whose relations with his employer had been for some timeunsalaried and pallish and informal. 

Bert was trying to impress Tom with the idea that the reconstructedGrubb & Smallways offered unprecedented and unparalleled opportunitiesto the judicious small investor. It was coming home to Bert, as thoughit were an entirely new fact, that Tom was singularly impervious toideas. In the end he put the financial issues on one side, and, makingthe thing entirely a matter of fraternal affection, succeeded inborrowing a sovereign on the security of his word of honour. 

The firm of Grubb & Smallways, formerly Grubb, had indeed beensingularly unlucky in the last year or so. For many years the businesshad struggled along with a flavour of romantic insecurity in a small, dissolute-looking shop in the High Street, adorned with brilliantlycoloured advertisements of cycles, a display of bells, trouser-clips, oil-cans, pump-clips, frame-cases, wallets, and other accessories, andthe announcement of "Bicycles on Hire, " "Repairs, " "Free inflation, ""Petrol, " and similar attractions. They were agents for several obscuremakes of bicycle, --two samples constituted the stock, --and occasionallythey effected a sale; they also repaired punctures and did theirbest--though luck was not always on their side--with any other repairingthat was brought to them. They handled a line of cheap gramophones, anddid a little with musical boxes. 

The staple of their business was, however, the letting of bicycles onhire. It was a singular trade, obeying no known commercial or economicprinciples--indeed, no principles. There was a stock of ladies' andgentlemen'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 shillingfor the first hour and sixpence per hour afterwards. But really therewere no fixed prices, and insistent boys could get bicycles and thethrill of danger for an hour for so low a sum as threepence, providedthey could convince Grubb that that was all they had. The saddle andhandle-bar were then sketchily adjusted by Grubb, a deposit exacted, except in the case of familiar boys, the machine lubricated, and theadventurer started upon his career. Usually he or she came back, but attimes, when the accident was serious, Bert or Grubb had to go out andfetch the machine home. Hire was always charged up to the hour of returnto the shop and deducted from the deposit. It was rare that a bicyclestarted out from their hands in a state of pedantic efficiency. Romanticpossibilities of accident lurked in the worn thread of the screw thatadjusted the saddle, in the precarious pedals, in the loose-knit chain, in the handle-bars, above all in the brakes and tyres. Tappings andclankings and strange rhythmic creakings awoke as the intrepid hirerpedalled out into the country. Then perhaps the bell would jam or abrake fail to act on a hill; or the seat-pillar would get loose, and thesaddle drop three or four inches with a disconcerting bump; or the looseand rattling chain would jump the cogs of the chain-wheel as the machineran downhill, and so bring the mechanism to an abrupt and disastrousstop without at the same time arresting the forward momentum of therider; or a tyre would bang, or sigh quietly, and give up the strugglefor efficiency. 

When the hirer returned, a heated pedestrian, Grubb would ignore allverbal complaints, and examine the machine gravely. 

"This ain't 'ad fair usage, " he used to begin. 

He became a mild embodiment of the spirit of reason. "You can't expect abicycle to take you up in its arms and carry you, " he used to say. "Yougot to show intelligence. After all--it's machinery. "

Sometimes the process of liquidating the consequent claims bordered onviolence. It was always a very rhetorical and often a trying affair, butin these progressive times you have to make a noise to get a living. Itwas often hard work, but nevertheless this hiring was a fairly steadysource of profit, until one day all the panes in the window and doorwere broken and the stock on sale in the window greatly damaged anddisordered by two over-critical hirers with no sense of rhetoricalirrelevance. They were big, coarse stokers from Gravesend. One wasannoyed because his left pedal had come off, and the other because histyre had become deflated, small and indeed negligible accidents by BunHill standards, due entirely to the ungentle handling of the delicatemachines entrusted to them--and they failed to see clearly how they putthemselves in the wrong by this method of argument. It is a poor way ofconvincing a man that he has let you a defective machine to throw hisfoot-pump about his shop, and take his stock of gongs outside in orderto return them through the window-panes. It carried no real convictionto the minds of either Grubb or Bert; it only irritated and vexed them. One quarrel makes many, and this unpleasantness led to a violent disputebetween Grubb and the landlord upon the moral aspects of and legalresponsibility for the consequent re-glazing. In the end Grubb andSmallways were put to the expense of a strategic nocturnal removal toanother position. 

It was a position they had long considered. It was a small, shed-likeshop with a plate-glass window and one room behind, just at the sharpbend in the road at the bottom of Bun Hill; and here they struggledalong bravely, in spite of persistent annoyance from their formerlandlord, hoping for certain eventualities the peculiar situation of theshop seemed to promise. Here, too, they were doomed to disappointment. 

The High Road from London to Brighton that ran through Bun Hill was likethe British Empire or the British Constitution--a thing that had grownto its present importance. Unlike any other roads in Europe the Britishhigh roads have never been subjected to any organised attempts tograde or straighten them out, and to that no doubt their peculiarpicturesqueness is to be ascribed. The old Bun Hill High Street drops atits end for perhaps eighty or a hundred feet of descent at an angleof one in five, turns at right angles to the left, runs in a curve forabout thirty yards to a brick bridge over the dry ditch that had oncebeen the Otterbourne, and then bends sharply to the right again rounda dense clump of trees and goes on, a simple, straightforward, peacefulhigh road. There had been one or two horse-and-van and bicycle accidentsin the place before the shop Bert and Grubb took was built, and, to befrank, it was the probability of others that attracted them to it. 

Its possibilities had come to them first with a humorous flavour. 

"Here's one of the places where a chap might get a living by keepinghens, " said Grubb. 

"You can't get a living by keeping hens, " said Bert. 

"You'd keep the hen and have it spatch-cocked, " said Grubb. "The motorchaps would pay for it. "

When they really came to take the place they remembered thisconversation. Hens, however, were out of the question; there was noplace for a run unless they had it in the shop. It would have beenobviously out of place there. The shop was much more modern than theirformer one, and had a plate-glass front. "Sooner or later, " said Bert, "we shall get a motor-car through this. "

"That's all right, " said Grubb. "Compensation. I don't mind when thatmotor-car comes along. I don't mind even if it gives me a shock to thesystem. "

"And meanwhile, " said Bert, with great artfulness, "I'm going to buymyself a dog. "

He did. He bought three in succession. He surprised the people at theDogs' Home in Battersea by demanding a deaf retriever, and rejectingevery candidate that pricked up its ears. "I want a good, deaf, slow-moving dog, " he said. "A dog that doesn't put himself out forthings. "

They displayed inconvenient curiosity; they declared a great scarcity ofdeaf dogs. 

"You see, " they said, "dogs aren't deaf. "

"Mine's got to be, " said Bert. "I've HAD dogs that aren't deaf. All Iwant. It's like this, you see--I sell gramophones. Naturally I got tomake 'em talk and tootle a bit to show 'em orf. Well, a dog that isn'tdeaf doesn't like it--gets excited, smells round, barks, growls. Thatupsets the customer. See? Then a dog that has his hearing fanciesthings. Makes burglars out of passing tramps. Wants to fight every motorthat makes a whizz. All very well if you want livening up, but our placeis lively enough. I don't want a dog of that sort. I want a quiet dog. "

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 secondwas killed in the night by a fruit motor-waggon which fled before Grubbcould get down; the third got itself entangled in the front wheel of apassing cyclist, who came through the plate glass, and proved to be anactor out of work and an undischarged bankrupt. He demanded compensationfor some fancied injury, would hear nothing of the valuable dog he hadkilled or the window he had broken, obliged Grubb by sheer physicalobduracy to straighten his buckled front wheel, and pestered thestruggling firm with a series of inhumanly worded solicitor's letters. Grubb answered them--stingingly, and put himself, Bert thought, in thewrong. 

Affairs got more and more exasperating and strained under thesepressures. The window was boarded up, and an unpleasant altercationabout their delay in repairing it with the new landlord, a Bun Hillbutcher--and a loud, bellowing, unreasonable person at that--served toremind them of their unsettled troubles with the old. Things were atthis pitch when Bert bethought himself of creating a sort of debenturecapital 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 thestocking; he bribed his brother not to keep the offer open. 

And then ill-luck made its last lunge at their crumbling business andbrought it to the ground. 

2

It is a poor heart that never rejoices, and Whitsuntide had an air ofcoming as an agreeable break in the business complications of Grubb &Smallways. Encouraged by the practical outcome of Bert's negotiationswith his brother, and by the fact that half the hiring-stock wasout from Saturday to Monday, they decided to ignore the residuum ofhiring-trade on Sunday and devote that day to much-needed relaxation andrefreshment--to have, in fact, an unstinted good time, a beano on WhitSunday and return invigorated to grapple with their difficulties andthe Bank Holiday repairs on the Monday. No good thing was ever doneby exhausted and dispirited men. It happened that they had made theacquaintance of two young ladies in employment in Clapham, Miss FlossieBright and Miss Edna Bunthorne, and it was resolved therefore to makea cheerful little cyclist party of four into the heart of Kent, and topicnic and spend an indolent afternoon and evening among the trees andbracken between Ashford and Maidstone. 

Miss Bright could ride a bicycle, and a machine was found for her, notamong the hiring stock, but specially, in the sample held for sale. MissBunthorne, whom Bert particularly affected, could not ride, and so withsome difficulty he hired a basket-work trailer from the big business ofWray's in the Clapham Road. 

To see our young men, brightly dressed and cigarettes alight, wheelingoff to the rendezvous, Grubb guiding the lady's machine beside him withone skilful hand and Bert teuf-teuffing steadily, was to realise howpluck may triumph even over insolvency. Their landlord, the butcher, said, "Gurr, " as they passed, and shouted, "Go it!" in a loud, savagetone to their receding backs. 

Much they cared!

The weather was fine, and though they were on their way southward beforenine o'clock, there was already a great multitude of holiday peopleabroad upon the roads. There were quantities of young men and women onbicycles and motor-bicycles, and a majority of gyroscopic motor-carsrunning bicycle-fashion on two wheels, mingled with old-fashionedfour-wheeled traffic. Bank Holiday times always bring out oldstored-away vehicles and odd people; one saw tricars and electricbroughams and dilapidated old racing motors with huge pneumatic tyres. Once our holiday-makers saw a horse and cart, and once a youth riding ablack horse amidst the badinage of the passersby. And there were severalnavigable gas air-ships, not to mention balloons, in the air. It wasall immensely interesting and refreshing after the dark anxieties ofthe shop. Edna wore a brown straw hat with poppies, that suited heradmirably, and sat in the trailer like a queen, and the eight-year-oldmotor-bicycle ran like a thing of yesterday. 

Little it seemed to matter to Mr. Bert Smallways that a newspaperplacard proclaimed:-- --------------------------------------- GERMANYDENOUNCES THE MONROE DOCTRINE. 

 AMBIGUOUS ATTITUDE OF JAPAN. WHAT WILL BRITAIN DO? IS IT WAR?---------------------------------------

This sort of thing was alvays going on, and on holidays one disregardedit as a matter of course. Week-davs, in the slack time after the middaymeal, then perhaps one might worry about the Empire and internationalpolitics; but not on a sunny Sunday, with a pretty girl trailing behindone, and envious cyclists trying to race you. Nor did our young peopleattach any great importance to the flitting suggestions of militaryactivity they glimpsed ever and again. Near Maidstone they came ona string of eleven motor-guns of peculiar construction halted by theroadside, with a number of businesslike engineers grouped about themwatching through field-glasses some sort of entrenchment that was goingon near the crest of the downs. It signified nothing to Bert. 

"What's up?" said Edna. 

"Oh!--manoeuvres, " said Bert. 

"Oh! I thought they did them at Easter, " said Edna, and troubled nomore. 

The last great British war, the Boer war, was over and forgotten, andthe public had lost the fashion of expert military criticism. 

Our four young people picnicked cheerfully, and were happy in the mannerof a happiness that was an ancient mode in Nineveh. Eyes were bright, Grubb was funny and almost witty, and Bert achieved epigrams; thehedges were full of honeysuckle and dog-roses; in the woods the distanttoot-toot-toot of the traffic on the dust-hazy high road might have beenno more than the horns of elf-land. They laughed and gossiped and pickedflowers and made love and talked, and the girls smoked cigarettes. Alsothey scuffled playfully. Among other things they talked aeronautics, and how thev would come for a picnic together in Bert's flying-machinebefore ten years were out. The world seemed full of amusingpossibilities that afternoon. They wondered what theirgreat-grandparents would have thought of aeronautics. In the evening, about seven, the party turned homeward, expecting no disaster, and itwas only on the crest of the downs between Wrotham and Kingsdown thatdisaster came. 

They had come up the hill in the twilight; Bert was anxious to get asfar as possible before he lit--or attempted to light, for the issuewas a doubtful one--his lamps, and they had scorched past a number ofcyclists, and by a four-wheeled motor-car of the old style lamed by adeflated tyre. Some dust had penetrated Bert's horn, and the result wasa curious, amusing, wheezing sound had got into his "honk, honk. " Forthe sake of merriment and glory he was making this sound as much aspossible, and Edna was in fits of laughter in the trailer. They made asort of rushing cheerfulness along the road that affected their fellowtravellers variously, according to their temperaments. She did notice agood lot of bluish, evil-smelling smoke coming from about thebearings between his feet, but she thought this was one of the naturalconcomitants of motor-traction, and troubled no more about it, untilabruptly it burst into a little yellow-tipped flame. 

"Bert!" she screamed. 

But Bert had put on the brakes with such suddenness that she foundherself involved with his leg as he dismounted. She got to the side ofthe road and hastily readjusted her hat, which had suffered. 

"Gaw!" said Bert. 

He stood for some fatal seconds watching the petrol drip and catch, andthe 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 notsold the machine second-hand a year ago, and that he ought to have doneso--a good idea in its way, but not immediately helpful. He turned uponEdna sharply. "Get a lot of wet sand, " he said. Then he wheeled themachine a little towards the side of the roadway, and laid it down andlooked about for a supply of wet sand. The flames received this as ahelpful attention, and made the most of it. They seemed to brighten andthe twilight to deepen about them. The road was a flinty road in thechalk country, and ill-provided with sand. 

Edna accosted a short, fat cyclist. "We want wet sand, " she said, andadded, "our motor's on fire. " The short, fat cyclist stared blankly fora moment, then with a helpful cry began to scrabble in the road-grit. Whereupon Bert and Edna also scrabbled in the road-grit. Other cyclistsarrived, dismounted and stood about, and their flame-lit faces expressedsatisfaction, interest, curiosity. "Wet sand, " said the short, fat man, scrabbling terribly--"wet sand. " One joined him. They threw hard-earnedhandfuls of road-grit upon the flames, which accepted them withenthusiasm. 

Grubb arrived, riding hard. He was shouting something. He sprang offand threw his bicycle into the hedge. "Don't throw water on it!" hesaid--"don't throw water on it!" He displayed commanding presence ofmind. He became captain of the occasion. Others were glad to repeat thethings he said and imitate his actions. 

"Don't throw water on it!" they cried. Also there was no water. 

"Beat it out, you fools!" he said. 

He seized a rug from the trailer (it was an Austrian blanket, andBert's winter coverlet) and began to beat at the burning petrol. For awonderful minute he seemed to succeed. But he scattered burning poolsof petrol on the road, and others, fired by his enthusiasm, imitated hisaction. Bert caught up a trailer-cushion and began to beat; there wasanother cushion and a table-cloth, and these also were seized. A younghero pulled off his jacket and joined the beating. For a moment therewas less talking than hard breathing, and a tremendous flapping. Flossie, arriving on the outskirts of the crowd, cried, "Oh, my God!"and burst loudly into tears. "Help!" she said, and "Fire!"

The lame motor-car arrived, and stopped in consternation. A tall, goggled, grey-haired man who was driving inquired with an Oxfordintonation and a clear, careful enunciation, "Can WE help at all?"

It became manifest that the rug, the table-cloth, the cushions, thejacket, were getting smeared with petrol and burning. The soul seemedto go out of the cushion Bert was swaying, and the air was full offeathers, like a snowstorm in the still twilight. 

Bert had got very dusty and sweaty and strenuous. It seemed to him hisweapon had been wrested from him at the moment of victory. The fire laylike a dying thing, close to the ground and wicked; it gave a leap ofanguish at every whack of the beaters. But now Grubb had gone off tostamp out the burning blanket; the others were lacking just at themoment of victory. One had dropped the cushion and was running to themotorcar. "'ERE!" cried Bert; "keep on!"

He flung the deflated burning rags of cushion aside, whipped off hisjacket and sprang at the flames with a shout. He stamped into the ruinuntil flames ran up his boots. Edna saw him, a red-lit hero, and thoughtit was good to be a man. 

A bystander was hit by a hot halfpenny flying out of the air. Then Bertthought of the papers in his pockets, and staggered back, trying toextinguish his burning jacket--checked, repulsed, dismayed. 

Edna was struck by the benevolent appearance of an elderly spectator ina silk hat and Sabbatical garments. "Oh!" she cried to him. "Help thisyoung man! How can you stand and see it?"

A cry of "The tarpaulin!" arose. 

An earnest-looking man in a very light grey cycling-suit had suddenlyappeared at the side of the lame motor-car and addressed the owner. "Have you a tarpaulin?" he said. 

"Yes, " said the gentlemanly man. "Yes. We've got a tarpaulin. "

"That's it, " said the earnest-looking man, suddenly shouting. "Let'shave it, quick!"

The gentlemanly man, with feeble and deprecatory gestures, and in themanner of a hypnotised person, produced an excellent large tarpaulin. 

"Here!" cried the earnest-looking man to Grubb. "Ketch holt!"

Then everybody realised that a new method was to be tried. A number ofwilling hands seized upon the Oxford gentleman's tarpaulin. The othersstood away with approving noises. The tarpaulin was held over theburning bicycle like a canopy, and then smothered down upon it. 

"We ought to have done this before, " panted Grubb. 

There was a moment of triumph. The flames vanished. Every one who couldcontrive to do so touched the edge of the tarpaulin. Bert held downa corner with two hands and a foot. The tarpaulin, bulged up in thecentre, seemed to be suppressing triumphant exultation. Then itsself-approval became too much for it; it burst into a bright red smilein the centre. It was exactly like the opening of a mouth. It laughedwith a gust of flames. They were reflected redly in the observantgoggles of the gentleman who owned the tarpaulin. Everybody recoiled. 

"Save the trailer!" cried some one, and that was the last round inthe battle. But the trailer could not be detached; its wicker-work hadcaught, and it was the last thing to burn. A sort of hush fell uponthe gathering. The petrol burnt low, the wicker-work trailer bangedand crackled. The crowd divided itself into an outer circle of critics, advisers, and secondary characters, who had played undistinguished partsor no parts at all in the affair, and a central group of heatedand distressed principals. A young man with an inquiring mind and aconsiderable knowledge of motor-bicycles fixed on to Grubb and wantedto argue that the thing could not have happened. Grubb wass short andinattentive with him, and the young man withdrew to the back of thecrowd, and there told the benevolent old gentleman in the silk hatthat people who went out with machines they didn't understand had onlythemselves to blame if things went wrong. 

The old gentleman let him talk for some time, and then remarked, in atone of rapturous enjoyment: "Stone deaf, " and added, "Nasty things. "

A rosy-faced man in a straw hat claimed attention. "I DID save the frontwheel, " he said; "you'd have had that tyre catch, too, if I hadn't keptturning it round. " It became manifest that this was so. The front wheelhad retained its tyre, was intact, was still rotating slowly among theblackened and twisted ruins of the rest of the machine. It had somethingof that air of conscious virtue, of unimpeachable respectability, thatdistinguishes a rent collector in a low neighbourhood. "That wheel'sworth a pound, " said the rosy-faced man, making a song of it. "I kep'turning it round. "

Newcomers kept arriving from the south with the question, "What's up?"until it got on Grubb's nerves. Londonward the crowd was constantlylosing people; they would mount their various wheels with the satisfiedmanner of spectators who have had the best. Their voices would recedeinto the twilight; one would hear a laugh at the memory of thisparticularly salient incident or that. 

"I'm afraid, " said the gentleman of the motor-car, "my tarpaulin's a bitdone for. "

Grubb admitted that the owner was the best judge of that. 

"Nothin, else I can do for you?" said the gentleman of the motor-car, itmay be with a suspicion of irony. 

Bert was roused to action. "Look here, " he said. "There's my young lady. If she ain't 'ome by ten they lock her out. See? Well, all my money wasin my jacket pocket, and it's all mixed up with the burnt stuff, andthat's too 'ot to touch. Is Clapham out of your way?"

"All in the day's work, " said the gentleman with the motor-car, andturned to Edna. "Very pleased indeed, " he said, "if you'll come with us. We're late for dinner as it is, so it won't make much difference for usto go home by way of Clapham. We've got to get to Surbiton, anyhow. I'mafraid you'll find us a little slow. "

"But what's Bert going to do?" said Edna. 

"I don't know that we can accommodate Bert, " said the motor-cargentleman, "though we're tremendously anxious to oblige. "

"You couldn't take the whole lot?" said Bert, waving his hand at thedeboshed and blackened ruins on the ground. 

"I'm awfully afraid I can't, " said the Oxford man. "Awfully sorry, youknow. "

"Then I'll have to stick 'ere for a bit, " said Bert. "I got to see thething through. You go on, Edna. "

"Don't like leavin' you, Bert. "

"You can't 'elp it, Edna. "... 

The last Edna saw of Bert was his figure, in charred and blackenedshirtsleeves, standing in the dusk. He was musing deeply by the mixedironwork 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. 

"Cheer up, old Bert!" cried Edna, with artificial cheerfulness. "Solong. "

"So long, Edna, " said Bert. 

"See you to-morrer. "

"See you to-morrer, " said Bert, though he was destined, as a matter offact, to see much of the habitable globe before he saw her again. 

Bert began to light matches from a borrowed boxful, and search for ahalf-crown that still eluded him among the charred remains. 

His face was grave and melancholy. 

"I WISH that 'adn't 'appened, " said Flossie, riding on with Grubb.... 

And at last Bert was left almost alone, a sad, blackened Prometheanfigure, cursed by the gift of fire. He had entertained vague ideas ofhiring a cart, of achieving miraculous repairs, of still snatching someresidual value from his one chief possession. Now, in the darkeningnight, he perceived the vanity of such intentions. Truth came to himbleakly, and laid her chill conviction upon him. He took hold of thehandle-bar, stood the thing up, tried to push it forward. The tyrelesshind-wheel was jammed hopelessly, even as he feared. For a minute or sohe stood upholding his machine, a motionless despair. Then with a greateffort he thrust the ruins from him into the ditch, kicked at it once, regarded it for a moment, and turned his face resolutely Londonward. 

He did not once look back. 

"That's the end of THAT game!" said Bert. "No more teuf-teuf-teuf forBert 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. "

3

The next morning found the firm of Grubb & Smallways in a stateof profound despondency. It seemed a small matter to them that thenewspaper and cigarette shop opposite displayed such placards as this:----------------------------------------- REPORTED AMERICAN ULTIMATUM. 

 BRITAIN MUST FIGHT. 

 OUR INFATUATED WAR OFFICE STILLREFUSES TO LISTEN TO MR. BUTTERIDGE. 

GREAT MONO-RAIL DISASTER ATTIMBUCTOO. ---------------------------------------

or this:-- --------------------------------------- WAR A QUESTION OFHOURS. 

 NEW YORK CALM. 

 EXCITEMENT IN BERLIN. ---------------------------------------

or again:-- --------------------------------------- WASHINGTON STILLSILENT. 

 WHAT WILL PARIS DO?

 THE PANIC ON THE BOURSE. 

THE KING'S GARDEN PARTY TO THE MASKED TWAREGS. 

MR. BUTTERIDGE TAKES AN OFFER. 

LATEST BETTING FROM TEHERAN. ---------------------------------------

or this:-- --------------------------------------- WILL AMERICA FIGHT?

 ANTI-GERMAN RIOT IN BAGDAD. 

 THE MUNICIPAL SCANDALS AT DAMASCUS. 

MR. BUTTERIDGE'S INVENTION FORAMERICA. ---------------------------------------

Bert stared at these over the card of pump-clips in the pane in thedoor with unseeing eyes. He wore a blackened flannel shirt, and thejacketless ruins of the holiday suit of yesterday. The boarded-up shopwas dark and depressing beyond words, the few scandalous hiring machineshad never looked so hopelessly disreputable. He thought of their fellowswho were "out, " and of the approaching disputations of the afternoon. Hethought of their new landlord, and of their old landlord, and of billsand claims. Life presented itself for the first time as a hopeless fightagainst fate.... 

"Grubb, o' man, " he said, distilling the quintessence, "I'm fair sick ofthis shop. "

"So'm I, " said Grubb. 

"I'm out of conceit with it. I don't seem to care ever to speak to acustomer again. "

"There's that trailer, " said Grubb, after a pause. 

"Blow the trailer!" said Bert. "Anyhow, I didn't leave a deposit on it. I didn't do that. Still--"

He turned round on his friend. "Look 'ere, " he said, "we aren't gettin'on here. We been losing money hand over fist. We got things tied up infifty knots. "

"What can we do?" said Grubb. 

"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. Jestfoolishness. "

"That's all right, " said Grubb--"that's all right; but it ain't yourcapital been sunk in it. "

"No need for us to sink after our capital, " said Bert, ignoring thepoint. 

"I'm not going to be held responsible for that trailer, anyhow. Thatain't my affair. "

"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'mO-R-P-H. See?"

"Leavin' me?"

"Leavin' you. If you must be left. "

Grubb looked round the shop. It certainly had become distasteful. Onceupon a time it had been bright with hope and new beginnings and stockand the prospect of credit. Now--now it was failure and dust. Verylikely the landlord would be round presently to go on with the row aboutthe window.... "Where d'you think of going, Bert?" Grubb asked. 

Bert turned round and regarded him. "I thought it out as I was walking'ome, and in bed. I couldn't sleep a wink. "

"What did you think out?"

"Plans. "

"What plans?"

"Oh! You're for stickin, here. "

"Not if anything better was to offer. "

"It's only an ideer, " said Bert. 

"You made the girls laugh yestiday, that song you sang. "

"Seems a long time ago now, " said Grubb. 

"And old Edna nearly cried--over that bit of mine. "

"She got a fly in her eye, " said Grubb; "I saw it. But what's this gotto do with your plan?"

"No end, " said Bert. 

"'Ow?"

"Don't you see?"

"Not singing in the streets?"

"Streets! No fear! But 'ow about the Tour of the Waterin' Places ofEngland, Grubb? Singing! Young men of family doing it for a lark? Youain't got a bad voice, you know, and mine's all right. I never see achap singing on the beach yet that I couldn't 'ave sung into a cockedhat. And we both know how to put on the toff a bit. Eh? Well, that's myideer. Me and you, Grubb, with a refined song and a breakdown. Like wewas doing for foolery yestiday. That was what put it into my 'ead. Easymake up a programme--easy. Six choice items, and one or two for encoresand patter. I'm all right for the patter anyhow. "

Grubb remained regarding his darkened and disheartening shop; he thoughtof his former landlord and his present landlord, and of the generaldisgustingness of business in an age which re-echoes to The Bitter Cryof the Middle Class; and then it seemed to him that afar off he heardthe twankle, twankle of a banjo, and the voice of a stranded sirensinging. He had a sense of hot sunshine upon sand, of the children of atleast transiently opulent holiday makers in a circle round about him, ofthe whisper, "They are really gentlemen, " and then dollop, dollop camethe coppers in the hat. Sometimes even silver. It was all income; nooutgoings, no bills. "I'm on, Bert, " he said. 

"Right O!" said Bert, and, "Now we shan't be long. "

"We needn't start without capital neither, " said Grubb. "If we take thebest of these machines up to the Bicycle Mart in Finsbury we'd raise sixor seven pounds on 'em. We could easy do that tomorrow before anybodymuch was about.... "

"Nice to think of old Suet-and-Bones coming round to make his usual rowwith us, and finding a card up 'Closed for Repairs. '"

"We'll do that, " said Grubb with zest--"we'll do that. And we'll putup another notice, and jest arst all inquirers to go round to 'im andinquire. See? Then they'll know all about us. "

Before the day was out the whole enterprise was planned. They decided atfirst 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 troupeof "Scarlet Mr. E's, " and Bert rather clung to the idea of a uniform ofbright 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 abandonedas impracticable, it would have taken too much time and money toprepare. They perceived they must wear some cheaper and more readilyprepared costume, and Grubb fell back on white dominoes. Theyentertained the notion for a time of selecting the two worst machinesfrom the hiring-stock, painting them over with crimson enamel paint, replacing the bells by the loudest sort of motor-horn, and doing a rideabout to begin and end the entertainment. They doubted the advisabilityof this step. 

"There's people in the world, " said Bert, "who wouldn't recognise us, who'd know them bicycles again like a shot, and we don't want to go onwith no old stories. We want a fresh start. "

"I do, " said Grubb, "badly. "

"We want to forget things--and cut all these rotten old worries. Theyain't doin' us good. "

Nevertheless, they decided to take the risk of these bicycles, and theydecided their costumes should be brown stockings and sandals, and cheapunbleached sheets with a hole cut in the middle, and wigs and beards oftow. The rest their normal selves! "The Desert Dervishes, " they wouldcall themselves, and their chief songs would be those popular ditties, "In my Trailer, " and "What Price Hair-pins Now?"

They decided to begin with small seaside places, and gradually, as theygained confidence, attack larger centres. To begin with they selectedLittlestone in Kent, chiefly because of its unassuming name. 

So they planned, and it seemed a small and unimportant thing to themthat as they clattered the governments of half the world and more weredrifting into war. About midday they became aware of the first ofthe evening-paper placards shouting to them across the street:-------------------------------------------------

THE WAR-CLOUD DARKENS-----------------------------------------------

Nothing else but that. 

"Always rottin' about war now, " said Bert. 

"They'll get it in the neck in real earnest one of these days, if theyain't precious careful. "

4

So you will understand the sudden apparition that surprised rather thandelighted the quiet informality of Dymchurch sands. Dymchurch was one ofthe 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, thesecret and delight of quite a limited number of people. They went thereto flee vulgarity and extravagances, and to bathe and sit and talk andplay with their children in peace, and the Desert Dervishes did notplease them at all. 

The two white figures on scarlet wheels came upon them out of theinfinite along the sands from Littlestone, grew nearer and larger andmore audible, honk-honking and emitting weird cries, and generallythreatening liveliness of the most aggressive type. "Good heavens!" saidDymchurch, "what's this?"

Then our young men, according to a preconcerted plan, wheeled round fromfile to line, dismounted and stood it attention. "Ladies and gentlemen, "they said, "we beg to present ourselves--the Desert Dervishes. " Theybowed profoundly. 

The few scattered groups upon the beach regarded them with horror forthe most part, but some of the children and young people were interestedand drew nearer. "There ain't a bob on the beach, " said Grubb in anundertone, and the Desert Dervishes plied their bicycles with comic"business, " that got a laugh from one very unsophisticated little boy. Then they took a deep breath and struck into the cheerful strain of"What Price Hair-pins Now?" Grubb sang the song, Bert did his best tomake the chorus a rousing one, and it the end of each verse they dancedcertain steps, skirts in hand, that they had carefully rehearsed. 

 "Ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-tang... What Price Hair-pins Now?"

So they chanted and danced their steps in the sunshine on Dymchurchbeach, and the children drew near these foolish young men, marvellingthat they should behave in this way, and the older people looked coldand unfriendly. 

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, flowedon its cheerful aimless way. In the cities men fussed about theirbusinesses and engagements. The newspaper placards that had cried"wolf!" so often, cried "wolf!" now in vain. 

5

Now as Bert and Grubb bawled their chorus for the third time, theybecame aware of a very big, golden-brown balloon low in the sky to thenorth-west, and coming rapidly towards them. "Jest as we're gettin' holdof 'em, " muttered Grubb, "up comes a counter-attraction. Go it, Bert!"

 "Ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-tang What Price Hair-pins Now?"

The balloon rose and fell, went out of sight--"landed, thank goodness, "said Grubb--re-appeared with a leap. "'ENG!" said Grubb. "Step it, Bert, or they'll see it!"

They finished their dance, and then stood frankly staring. 

"There's something wrong with that balloon, " said Bert. 

Everybody now was looking at the balloon, drawing rapidly nearer beforea brisk north-westerly breeze. The song and dance were a "dead frost. "Nobody thought any more about it. Even Bert and Grubb forgot it, andignored the next item on the programme altogether. The balloon wasbumping as though its occupants were trying to land; it would approach, sinking slowly, touch the ground, and instantly jump fifty feet or so inthe air and immediately begin to fall again. Its car touched a clump oftrees, and the black figure that had been struggling in the ropes fellback, or jumped back, into the car. In another moment it was quiteclose. It seemed a huge affair, as big as a house, and it floated downswiftly towards the sands; a long rope trailed behind it, and enormousshouts came from the man in the car. He seemed to be taking off hisclothes, then his head came over the side of the car. "Catch hold of therope!" they heard, quite plain. 

"Salvage, Bert!" cried Grubb, and started to head off the rope. 

Bert followed him, and collided, without upsetting, with a fishermanbent upon a similar errand. A woman carrying a baby in her arms, twosmall boys with toy spades, and a stout gentleman in flannels all got tothe trailing rope at about the same time, and began to dance over itin their attempts to secure it. Bert came up to this wriggling, elusiveserpent and got his foot on it, went down on all fours and achieved agrip. In half a dozen seconds the whole diffused population of the beachhad, as it were, crystallised on the rope, and was pulling against theballoon under the vehement and stimulating directions of the man in thecar. "Pull, I tell you!" said the man in the car--"pull!"

For a second or so the balloon obeyed its momentum and the wind andtugged its human anchor seaward. It dropped, touched the water, and madea flat, silvery splash, and recoiled as one's finger recoils when onetouches anything hot. "Pull her in, " said the man in the car. "SHE'SFAINTED!"

He occupied himself with some unseen object while the people on therope pulled him in. Bert was nearest the balloon, and much excited andinterested. He kept stumbling over the tail of the Dervish costume inhis zeal. He had never imagined before what a big, light, wallowingthing a balloon was. The car was of brown coarse wicker-work, and comparatively small. The rope he tugged at was fastened to astout-looking ring, four or five feet above the car. At each tug he drewin a yard or so of rope, and the waggling wicker-work was drawn so muchnearer. Out of the car came wrathful bellowings: "Fainted, she has!" andthen: "It's her heart--broken with all she's had to go through. "

The balloon ceased to struggle, and sank downward. Bert dropped therope, and ran forward to catch it in a new place. In another moment hehad his hand on the car. "Lay hold of it, " said the man in the car, andhis face appeared close to Bert's--a strangely familiar face, fierceeyebrows, a flattish nose, a huge black moustache. He had discarded coatand waistcoat--perhaps with some idea of presently having to swim forhis life--and his black hair was extraordinarily disordered. "Willall you people get hold round the car?" he said. "There's a lady herefainted--or got failure of the heart. Heaven alone knows which! My nameis Butteridge. Butteridge, my name is--in a balloon. Now please, allon to the edge. This is the last time I trust myself to one of thesepaleolithic contrivances. The ripping-cord failed, and the valvewouldn't act. If ever I meet the scoundrel who ought to have seen--"

He stuck his head out between the ropes abruptly, and said, in a noteof earnest expostulation: "Get some brandy!--some neat brandy!" Some onewent up the beach for it. 

In the car, sprawling upon a sort of bed-bench, in an attitude ofelaborate self-abandonment, was a large, blond lady, wearing a furcoat and a big floriferous hat. Her head lolled back against the paddedcorner of the car, and her eyes were shut and her mouth open. "Me dear!"said Mr. Butteridge, in a common, loud voice, "we're safe!"

She gave no sign. 

"Me dear!" said Mr. Butteridge, in a greatly intensified loud voice, "we're safe!"

She was still quite impassive. 

Then Mr. Butteridge showed the fiery core of his soul. "If she isdead, " he said, slowly lifting a fist towards the balloon above him, and speaking in an immense tremulous bellow--"if she is dead, I willr-r-rend the heavens like a garment! I must get her out, " he cried, hisnostrils dilated with emotion--"I must get her out. I cannot have herdie in a wicker-work basket nine feet square--she who was made forkings' palaces! Keep holt of this car! Is there a strong man among ye totake her if I hand her out?"

He swept the lady together by a powerful movement of his arms, andlifted her. "Keep the car from jumping, " he said to those who clusteredabout him. "Keep your weight on it. She is no light woman, and when sheis out of it--it will be relieved. "

Bert leapt lightly into a sitting position on the edge of the car. Theothers took a firmer grip upon the ropes and ring. 

"Are you ready?" said Mr. Butteridge. 

He stood upon the bed-bench and lifted the lady carefully. Then he satdown on the wicker edge opposite to Bert, and put one leg over to dangleoutside. A rope or so seemed to incommode him. "Will some one assistme?" he said. "If they would take this lady?"

It was just at this moment, with Mr. Butteridge and the lady balancedfinely on the basket brim, that she came-to. She came-to suddenly andviolently with a loud, heart-rending cry of "Alfred! Save me!" And shewaved her arms searchingly, and then clasped Mr. Butteridge about. 

It seemed to Bert that the car swayed for a moment and then buck-jumpedand kicked him. Also he saw the boots of the lady and the right leg ofthe gentleman describing arcs through the air, preparatory to vanishingover the side of the car. His impressions were complex, but they alsocomprehended the fact that he had lost his balance, and was going tostand on his head inside this creaking basket. He spread out clutchingarms. He did stand on his head, more or less, his tow-beard came offand got in his mouth, and his cheek slid along against padding. His noseburied itself in a bag of sand. The car gave a violent lurch, and becamestill. 

"Confound it!" he said. 

He had an impression he must be stunned because of a surging in hisears, and because all the voices of the people about him had becomesmall and remote. They were shouting like elves inside a hill. 

He found it a little difficult to get on his feet. His limbs were mixedup with the garments Mr. Butteridge had discarded when that gentlemanhad thought he must needs plunge into the sea. Bert bawled out halfangry, half rueful, "You might have said you were going to tipthe basket. " Then he stood up and clutched the ropes of the carconvulsively. 

Below him, far below him, shining blue, were the waters of the EnglishChannel. Far off, a little thing in the sunshine, and rushing down as ifsome one was bending it hollow, was the beach and the irregular clusterof houses that constitutes Dymchurch. He could see the little crowd ofpeople he had so abruptly left. Grubb, in the white wrapper of a DesertDervish, was running along the edge of the sea. Mr. Butteridge wasknee-deep in the water, bawling immensely. The lady was sitting up withher floriferous hat in her lap, shockingly neglected. The beach, eastand west, was dotted with little people--they seemed all heads andfeet--looking up. And the balloon, released from the twenty-five stoneor so of Mr. Butteridge and his lady, was rushing up into the sky at thepace of a racing motor-car. "My crikey!" said Bert; "here's a go!"

He looked down with a pinched face at the receding beach, and reflectedthat he wasn't giddy; then he made a superficial survey of the cords andropes about him with a vague idea of "doing something. " "I'm not goingto mess about with the thing, " he said at last, and sat down upon themattress. "I'm not going to touch it.... I wonder what one ought to do?"

Soon he got up again and stared for a long time it the sinking worldbelow, at white cliffs to the east and flattening marsh to the left, ata minute wide prospect of weald and downland, at dim towns and harboursand rivers and ribbon-like roads, at ships and ships, decks andforeshortened funnels upon the ever-widening sea, and at the greatmono-rail bridge that straddled the Channel from Folkestone to Boulogne, until at last, first little wisps and then a veil of filmy cloud hid theprospect from his eyes. He wasn't at all giddy nor very much frightened, only in a state of enormous consternation. 

CHAPTER III. THE BALLOON

I

Bert Smallways was a vulgar little creature, the sort of pert, limitedsoul that the old civilisation of the early twentieth century producedby the million in every country of the world. He had lived all his lifein narrow streets, and between mean houses he could not look over, andin a narrow circle of ideas from which there was no escape. He thoughtthe whole duty of man was to be smarter than his fellows, get his hands, as he put it, "on the dibs, " and have a good time. He was, in fact, thesort of man who had made England and America what they were. The luckhad been against him so far, but that was by the way. He was a mereaggressive and acquisitive individual with no sense of the State, no habitual loyalty, no devotion, no code of honour, no code even ofcourage. Now by a curious accident he found himself lifted out of hismarvellous modern world for a time, out of all the rush and confusedappeals of it, and floating like a thing dead and disembodied betweensea and sky. It was as if Heaven was experimenting with him, had pickedhim out as a sample from the English millions, to look at him morenearly, and to see what was happening to the soul of man. But whatHeaven made of him in that case I cannot profess to imagine, for I havelong since abandoned all theories about the ideals and satisfactions ofHeaven. 

To be alone in a balloon at a height of fourteen or fifteen thousandfeet--and to that height Bert Smallways presently rose is like nothingelse in human experience. It is one of the supreme things possible toman. No flying machine can ever better it. It is to pass extraordinarilyout of human things. It is to be still and alone to an unprecedenteddegree. It is solitude without the suggestion of intervention; it iscalm without a single irrelevant murmur. It is to see the sky. No soundreaches one of all the roar and jar of humanity, the air is clear andsweet beyond the thought of defilement. No bird, no insect comes sohigh. No wind blows ever in a balloon, no breeze rustles, for it moveswith the wind and is itself a part of the atmosphere. Once started, itdoes not rock nor sway; you cannot feel whether it rises or falls. Bertfelt acutely cold, but he wasn't mountain-sick; he put on the coat andovercoat and gloves Butteridge had discarded--put them over the "DesertDervish" sheet that covered his cheap best suit--and sat very still fora long, time, overawed by the new-found quiet of the world. Above himwas the light, translucent, billowing globe of shining brown oiled silkand the blazing sunlight and the great deep blue dome of the sky. 

Below, far below, was a torn floor of sunlit cloud slashed by enormousrents through which he saw the sea. 

If you had been watching him from below, you would have seen his head, amotionless little black knob, sticking out from the car first of all fora long time on one side, and then vanishing to reappear after a time atsome other point. 

He wasn't in the least degree uncomfortable nor afraid. He did thinkthat as this uncontrollable thing had thus rushed up the sky with him itmight presently rush down again, but this consideration did not troublehim very much. Essentially his state was wonder. There is no fear nortrouble in balloons--until they descend. 

"Gollys!" he said at last, feeling a need for talking; "it's better thana motor-bike. "

"It's all right!"

"I suppose they're telegraphing about, about me. "... 

The second hour found him examining the equipment of the car with greatparticularity. Above him was the throat of the balloon bunched and tiedtogether, but with an open lumen through which Bert could peer up intoa vast, empty, quiet interior, and out of which descended two fine cordsof unknown import, one white, one crimson, to pockets below the ring. The netting about the balloon-ended in cords attached to the ring, a bigsteel-bound hoop to which the car was slung by ropes. From it dependedthe trail rope and grapnel, and over the sides of the car were a numberof canvas bags that Bert decided must be ballast to "chuck down" if theballoon fell. ("Not much falling just yet, " said Bert. )

There were an aneroid and another box-shaped instrument hanging from thering. The latter had an ivory plate bearing "statoscope" and other wordsin French, and a little indicator quivered and waggled, between Monteeand Descente. "That's all right, " said Bert. "That tells if you'regoing up or down. " On the crimson padded seat of the balloon there lay acouple of rugs and a Kodak, and in opposite corners of the bottom ofthe car were an empty champagne bottle and a glass. "Refreshments, " saidBert meditatively, tilting the empty bottle. Then he had a brilliantidea. The two padded bed-like seats, each with blankets and mattress, heperceived, were boxes, and within he found Mr. Butteridge's conceptionof an adequate equipment for a balloon ascent: a hamper which includeda 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-tongsand hair-pins, a cap with ear-flaps, and so forth. 

"A 'ome from 'ome, " said Bert, surveying this provision as he tied theear-flaps under his chin. He looked over the side of the car. Far belowwere the shining clouds. They had thickened so that the whole world washidden. Southward they were piled in great snowy masses, so that he washalf disposed to think them mountains; northward and eastward they werein wavelike levels, and blindingly sunlit. 

"Wonder how long a balloon keeps up?" he said. 

He imagined he was not moving, so insensibly did the monster drift withthe air about it. "No good coming down till we shift a bit, " he said. 

He consulted the statoscope. 

"Still Monty, " he said. 

"Wonder what would happen if you pulled a cord?"

"No, " he decided. "I ain't going to mess it about. "

Afterwards he did pull both the ripping- and the valve-cords, but, asMr. Butteridge had already discovered, they had fouled a fold of silk inthe throat. Nothing happened. But for that little hitch the ripping-cordwould have torn the balloon open as though it had been slashed by asword, and hurled Mr. Smallways to eternity at the rate of some thousandfeet a second. "No go!" he said, giving it a final tug. Then he lunched. 

He opened a bottle of champagne, which, as soon as he cut the wire, blewits cork out with incredible violence, and for the most part followedit into space. Bert, however, got about a tumblerful. "Atmosphericpressure, " said Bert, finding a use at last for the elementaryphysiography of his seventh-standard days. "I'll have to be more carefulnext time. No good wastin' drink. "

Then he routed about for matches to utilise Mr. Butteridge's cigars; buthere again luck was on his side, and he couldn't find any wherewithto set light to the gas above him. Or else he would have dropped in aflare, a splendid but transitory pyrotechnic display. "'Eng old Grubb!"said Bert, slapping unproductive pockets. "'E didn't ought to 'ave kep'my box. 'E's always sneaking matches. "

He reposed for a time. Then he got up, paddled about, rearranged theballast bags on the floor, watched the clouds for a time, and turnedover the maps on the locker. Bert liked maps, and he spent some time intrying to find one of France or the Channel; but they were all Britishordnance maps of English counties. That set him thinking about languagesand trying to recall his seventh-standard French. "Je suis Anglais. C'est une meprise. Je suis arrive par accident ici, " he decided uponas convenient phrases. Then it occurred to him that he would entertainhimself by reading Mr. Butteridge's letters and examining hispocket-book, and in this manner he whiled away the afternoon. 

2

He sat upon the padded locker, wrapped about very carefully, for theair, though calm, was exhilaratingly cold and clear. He was wearingfirst a modest suit of blue serge and all the unpretending underwearof a suburban young man of fashion, with sandal-like cycling-shoes andbrown stockings drawn over his trouser ends; then the perforatedsheet proper to a Desert Dervish; then the coat and waistcoat and bigfur-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, surmountedby 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 carof the balloon was small and neat, some bags of ballast the untidiest ofits contents, and he had found a light folding-table and put it at hiselbow, and on that was a glass with champagne. And about him, above andbelow, was space--such a clear emptiness and silence of space as onlythe aeronaut can experience. 

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 theSmallways' courage, which one might reasonably have expected to be of amore degenerate and contemptible quality altogether. His impression wasthat he was bound to come down somewhere, and that then, if he wasn'tsmashed, some one, some "society" perhaps, would probably pack him andthe balloon back to England. If not, he would ask very firmly for theBritish Consul. 

"Le consuelo Britannique, " he decided this would be. "Apportez moi a leconsuelo Britannique, s'il vous plait, " he would say, for he was byno means ignorant of French. In the meanwhile, he found the intimateaspects of Mr. Butteridge an interesting study. 

There were letters of an entirely private character addressed to Mr. Butteridge, and among others several love-letters of a devouring sortin a large feminine hand. These are no business of ours, and one remarkswith regret that Bert read them. 

When he had read them he remarked, "Gollys!" in an awestricken tone, andthen, after a long interval, "I wonder if that was her?

"Lord!"

He mused for a time. 

He resumed his exploration of the Butteridge interior. It includeda number of press cuttings of interviews and also several lettersin German, then some in the same German handwriting, but in English. "Hul-LO!" said Bert. 

One of the latter, the first he took, began with an apology toButteridge for not writing to him in English before, and for theinconvenience and delay that had been caused him by that, and went onto matter that Bert found exciting in, the highest degree. "We canunderstand entirely the difficulties of your position, and that youshall possibly be watched at the present juncture. --But, sir, we do notbelieve that any serious obstacles will be put in your way if you wishedto endeavour to leave the country and come to us with your plans by thecustomary routes--either via Dover, Ostend, Boulogne, or Dieppe. Wefind it difficult to think you are right in supposing yourself to be indanger of murder for your invaluable invention. "

"Funny!" said Bert, and meditated. 

Then he went through the other letters. 

"They seem to want him to come, " said Bert, "but they don't seem hurtingthemselves to get 'im. Or else they're shamming don't care to get hisprices down. 

"They don't quite seem to be the gov'ment, " he reflected, after aninterval. "It's more like some firm's paper. All this printed stuff atthe top. Drachenflieger. Drachenballons. Ballonstoffe. Kugelballons. Greek to me. 

"But he was trying to sell his blessed secret abroad. That's all right. No Greek about that! Gollys! Here IS the secret!"

He tumbled off the seat, opened the locker, and had the portfolio openbefore him on the folding-table. It was full of drawings done in thepeculiar flat style and conventional colours engineers adopt. And, in, addition there were some rather under-exposed photographs, obviouslydone by an amateur, at close quarters, of the actual machine'smutterings had made, in its shed near the Crystal Palace. Bert found hewas trembling. "Lord" he said, "here am I and the whole blessed secretof flying--lost up here on the roof of everywhere. 

"Let's see!" He fell to studying the drawings and comparing them withthe photographs. They puzzled him. Half of them seemed to be missing. He tried to imagine how they fitted together, and found the effort toogreat for his mind. 

"It's tryin', " said Bert. "I wish I'd been brought up to theengineering. If I could only make it out!"

He went to the side of the car and remained for a time staring withunseeing eyes at a huge cluster of great clouds--a cluster of slowlydissolving Monte Rosas, sunlit below. His attention was arrested by astrange black spot that moved over them. It alarmed him. It was ablack spot moving slowly with him far below, following him down there, indefatigably, over the cloud mountains. Why should such a thing followhim? What could it be?... 

He had an inspiration. "Uv course!" he said. It was the shadow of theballoon. But he still watched it dubiously for a time. 

He returned to the plans on the table. 

He spent a long afternoon between his struggles to understand them andfits of meditation. He evolved a remarkable new sentence in French. 

"Voici, Mossoo!--Je suis un inventeur Anglais. Mon nom est Butteridge. Beh. Oo. Teh. Teh. Eh. Arr. I. Deh. Geh. Eh. J'avais ici pour vendre lesecret de le flying-machine. Comprenez? Vendre pour l'argent toutsuite, 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 devendre ceci a votre government national. Voulez vous me directer la?

"Bit rummy, I expect, from the point of view of grammar, " said Bert, "but they ought to get the hang of it all right. 

"But then, if they arst me to explain the blessed thing?"

He returned in a worried way to the plans. "I don't believe it's allhere!" he said.... 

He got more and more perplexed up there among the clouds as to what heshould do with this wonderful find of his. At any moment, so far as heknew he might descend among he knew not what foreign people. 

"It's the chance of my life!" he said. 

It became more and more manifest to him that it wasn't. "Directly I comedown they'll telegraph--put it in the papers. Butteridge'll know of itand come along--on my track. "

Butteridge would be a terrible person to be on any one's track. Bert thought of the great black moustaches, the triangular nose, thesearching bellow and the glare. His afternoon's dream of a marvellousseizure and sale of the great Butteridge secret crumpled up in his mind, dissolved, and vanished. He awoke to sanity again. 

"Wouldn't do. What's the good of thinking of it?" He proceeded slowlyand reluctantly to replace the Butteridge papers in pockets andportfolio as he had found them. He became aware of a splendid goldenlight upon the balloon above him, and of a new warmth in the blue domeof the sky. He stood up and beheld the sun, a great ball of blindinggold, setting upon a tumbled sea of gold-edged crimson and purpleclouds, strange and wonderful beyond imagining. Eastward cloud-landstretched for ever, darkling blue, and it seemed to Bert the whole roundhemisphere of the world was under his eyes. 

Then far, away over the blue he caught sight of three long, dark shapeslike hurrying fish that drove one after the other, as porpoises followone another in the water. They were very fish-like indeed--with tails. It was an unconvincing impression in that light. He blinked his eyes, stared again, and they had vanished. For a long time he scrutinisedthose remote blue levels and saw no more.... 

"Wonder if I ever saw anything, " he said, and then: "There ain't suchthings.... "

Down went the sun and down, not diving steeply, but passing northward asit sank, and then suddenly daylight and the expansive warmth of daylighthad gone altogether, and the index of the statoscope quivered over toDescente. 

3

"NOW what's going to 'appen?" said Bert. 

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 seemthe snowclad mountain-slopes they had resembled heretofore, becameunsubstantial, confessed an immense silent drift and eddy in theirsubstance. For a moment, when he was nearly among their twilight masses, his descent was checked. Then abruptly the sky was hidden, the lastvestiges of daylight gone, and he was falling rapidly in an eveningtwilight through a whirl of fine snowflakes that streamed past himtowards the zenith, that drifted in upon the things about him andmelted, that touched his face with ghostly fingers. He shivered. Hisbreath came smoking from his lips, and everything was instantly bedewedand wet. 

He had an impression of a snowstorm pouring with unexampled andincreasing fury UPWARD; then he realised that he was falling faster andfaster. 

Imperceptibly a sound grew upon his ears. The great silence of the worldwas at an end. What was this confused sound?

He craned his head over the side, concerned, perplexed. 

First he seemed to see, and then not to see. Then he saw clearly littleedges of foam pursuing each other, and a wide waste of weltering watersbelow him. Far away was a pilot boat with a big sail bearing dim blackletters, and a little pinkish-yellow light, and it was rolling andpitching, rolling and pitching in a gale, while he could feel no windat, all. Soon the sound of waters was loud and near. He was dropping, dropping--into the sea!

He became convulsively active. 

"Ballast!" he cried, and seized a little sack from the floor, and heavedit overboard. He did not wait for the effect of that, but sent anotherafter it. He looked over in time to see a minute white splash in the dimwaters below him, and then he was back in the snow and clouds again. 

He sent out quite needlessly a third sack of ballast and a fourth, andpresently had the immense satisfaction of soaring up out of the damp andchill into the clear, cold, upper air in which the day still lingered. "Thang-God!" he said, with all his heart. 

A few stars now had pierced the blue, and in the east there shonebrightly a prolate moon. 

4

That first downward plunge filled Bert with a haunting sense ofboundless waters below. It was a summer's night, but it seemed to him, nevertheless, extraordinarily long. He had a feeling of insecurity thathe fancied quite irrationally the sunrise would dispel. Also he washungry. He felt, in the dark, in the locker, put his fingers inthe Roman pie, and got some sandwiches, and he also opened rathersuccessfully a half-bottle of champagne. That warmed and restored him, he grumbled at Grubb about the matches, wrapped himself up warmly on thelocker, and dozed for a time. He got up once or twice to make sure thathe was still securely high above the sea. The first time the moonlitclouds were white and dense, and the shadow of the balloon ran athwartthem like a dog that followed; afterwards they seemed thinner. As he laystill, staring up at the huge dark balloon above, he made a discovery. His--or rather Mr. Butteridge's--waistcoat rustled as he breathed. Itwas lined with papers. But Bert could not see to get them out or examinethem, much as he wished to do so.... 

He was awakened by the crowing of cocks, the barking of dogs, and aclamour of birds. He was driving slowly at a low level over a broad landlit golden by sunrise under a clear sky. He stared out upon hedgeless, well-cultivated fields intersected by roads, each lined withcable-bearing red poles. He had just passed over a compact, whitewashed, village with a straight church tower and steep red-tiled roofs. A numberof peasants, men and women, in shiny blouses and lumpish footwear, stoodregarding him, arrested on their way to work. He was so low that the endof his rope was trailing. 

He stared out at these people. "I wonder how you land, " he thought. 

"S'pose I OUGHT to land?"

He found himself drifting down towards a mono-rail line, and hastilyflung out two or three handfuls of ballast to clear it. 

"Lemme see! One might say just 'Pre'nez'! Wish I knew the French fortake hold of the rope!... I suppose they are French?"

He surveyed the country again. "Might be Holland. Or Luxembourg. OrLorraine 's far as _I_ know. Wonder what those big affairs over thereare? Some sort of kiln. Prosperous-looking country... "

The respectability of the country's appearance awakened answering chordsin his nature. 

"Make myself a bit ship-shape first, " he said. 

He resolved to rise a little and get rid of his wig (which now felthot on his head), and so forth. He threw out a bag of ballast, and wasastonished to find himself careering up through the air very rapidly. 

"Blow!" said Mr. Smallways. "I've over-done the ballast trick.... Wonderwhen I shall get down again?... Brekfus' on board, anyhow. "

He removed his cap and wig, for the air was warm, and an improvidentimpulse made him cast the latter object overboard. The statoscoperesponded with a vigorous swing to Monte. 

"The blessed thing goes up if you only LOOK overboard, " he remarked, andassailed the locker. He found among other items several tins of liquidcocoa containing explicit directions for opening that he followed withminute care. He pierced the bottom with the key provided in the holesindicated, 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 atthe other end, and there was his cocoa smoking, without the use of matchor flame of any sort. It was an old invention, but new to Bert. Therewas also ham and marmalade and bread, so that he had a really verytolerable breakfast indeed. 

Then he took off his overcoat, for the sunshine was now inclined to behot, and that reminded him of the rustling he had heard in the night. He took off the waistcoat and examined it. "Old Butteridge won't likeme unpicking this. " He hesitated, and finally proceeded to unpick it. Hefound the missing drawings of the lateral rotating planes, on which thewhole stability of the flying machine depended. 

An observant angel would have seen Bert sitting for a long time afterthis discovery in a state of intense meditation. Then at last he rosewith an air of inspiration, took Mr. Butteridge's ripped, demolished, and ransacked waistcoat, and hurled it from the balloon whence itfluttered down slowly and eddyingly until at last it came to rest witha contented flop upon the face of German tourist sleeping peacefullybeside the Hohenweg near Wildbad. Also this sent the balloon higher, and so into a position still more convenient for observation by ourimaginary angel who would next have seen Mr. Smallways tear open his ownjacket and waistcoat, remove his collar, open his shirt, thrust his handinto his bosom, and tear his heart out--or at least, if not his heart, some large bright scarlet object. If the observer, overcoming a thrillof 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 ofthose large quasi-hygienic objects that with pills and medicines takethe place of beneficial relics and images among the Protestant peoplesof Christendom. Always Bert wore this thing; it was his cherisheddelusion, based on the advice of a shilling fortune-teller at Margate, that he was weak in the lungs. 

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 imitationSaxony flannel of which it was made. Then with the help of Mr. Butteridge's small shaving mirror and his folding canvas basin hereadjusted his costume with the gravity of a man who has taken anirrevocable step in life, buttoned up his jacket, cast the white sheetof the Desert Dervish on one side, washed temperately, shaved, resumed the big cap and the fur overcoat, and, much refreshed by theseexercises, surveyed the country below him. 

It was indeed a spectacle of incredible magnificence. If perhaps it wasnot so strange and magnificent as the sunlit cloudland of the previousday, it was at any rate infinitely more interesting. 

The air was at its utmost clearness and except to the south andsouth-west there was not a cloud in the sky. The country was hilly, with occasional fir plantations and bleak upland spaces, but also withnumerous farms, and the hills were deeply intersected by the gorges ofseveral winding rivers interrupted at intervals by the banked-upponds and weirs of electric generating wheels. It was dotted withbright-looking, steep-roofed, villages, and each showed a distinctiveand interesting church beside its wireless telegraph steeple; here andthere were large chateaux and parks and white roads, and paths linedwith red and white cable posts were extremely conspicuous in thelandscape. There were walled enclosures like gardens and rickyards andgreat roofs of barns and many electric dairy centres. The uplands weremottled with cattle. At places he would see the track of one of theold railroads (converted now to mono-rails) dodging through tunnelsand crossing embankments, and a rushing hum would mark the passing of atrain. Everything was extraordinarily clear as well as minute. Once ortwice he saw guns and soldiers, and was reminded of the stir of militarypreparations he had witnessed on the Bank Holiday in England; but therewas nothing to tell him that these military preparations were abnormalor to explain an occasional faint irregular firing Of guns that driftedup to him.... 

"Wish I knew how to get down, " said Bert, ten thousand feet or so aboveit all, and gave himself to much futile tugging at the red and whitecords. Afterwards he made a sort of inventory of the provisions. Life inthe high air was giving him an appalling appetite, and it seemed to himdiscreet at this stage to portion out his supply into rations. So far ashe could see he might pass a week in the air. 

At first all the vast panorama below had been as silent as a paintedpicture. But as the day wore on and the gas diffused slowly from theballoon, it sank earthward again, details increased, men became morevisible, and he began to hear the whistle and moan of trains and cars, sounds of cattle, bugles and kettle drums, and presently even men'svoices. And at last his guide-rope was trailing again, and he found itpossible to attempt a landing. Once or twice as the rope dragged overcables he found his hair erect with electricity, and once he had aslight shock, and sparks snapped about the car. He took these thingsamong the chances of the voyage. He had one idea now very clear in hismind, and that was to drop the iron grapnel that hung from the ring. 

From the first this attempt was unfortunate, perhaps because the placefor descent was ill-chosen. A balloon should come down in an empty openspace, and he chose a crowd. He made his decision suddenly, and withoutproper reflection. As he trailed, Bert saw ahead of him one of themost attractive little towns in the world--a cluster of steep gablessurmounted 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 likeguests to entertainment. It had a most home-like and comfortablequality, and it was made gayer by abundant flags. Along the road aquantity of peasant folk, in big pair-wheeled carts and afoot, werecoming and going, besides an occasional mono-rail car; and at thecar-junction, under the trees outside the town, was a busy littlefair of booths. It seemed a warm, human, well-rooted, and altogetherdelightful place to Bert. He came low over the tree-tops, with hisgrapnel ready to throw and so anchor him--a curious, interested, andinteresting guest, so his imagination figured it, in the very middle ofit all. 

He thought of himself performing feats with the sign language and chancelinguistics amidst a circle of admiring rustics.... 

And then the chapter of adverse accidents began. 

The rope made itself unpopular long before the crowd had fully realisedhis advent over the trees. An elderly and apparently intoxicated peasantin a shiny black hat, and carrying a large crimson umbrella, caughtsight of it first as it trailed past him, and was seized with adiscreditable ambition to kill it. He pursued it, briskly withunpleasant cries. It crossed the road obliquely, splashed into a pail ofmilk upon a stall, and slapped its milky tail athwart a motor-car loadof factory girls halted outside the town gates. They screamed loudly. People looked up and saw Bert making what he meant to be genialsalutations, but what they considered, in view of the feminine outcry, to be insulting gestures. Then the car hit the roof of the gatehousesmartly, 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 accumulatingunpopularity. Bert, by clutching convulsively, just escaped beingpitched headlong. Two young soldiers and several peasants shouted thingsiup to him and shook fists at him and began to run in pursuit as hedisappeared over the wall into the town. 

Admiring rustics, indeed!

The balloon leapt at once, in the manner of balloons when part of theirweight is released by touching down, with a sort of flippancy, andin another moment Bert was over a street crowded with peasantsand soldiers, that opened into a busy market-square. The wave ofunfriendliness pursued him. 

"Grapnel, " said Bert, and then with an afterthought shouted, "TETESthere, you! I say! I say! TETES. 'Eng it!"

The grapnel smashed down a steeply sloping roof, followed by anavalanche of broken tiles, jumped the street amidst shrieks and cries, and smashed into a plate-glass window with an immense and sickeningimpact. The balloon rolled nauseatingly, and the car pitched. But thegrapnel had not held. It emerged at once bearing on one fluke, witha ridiculous air of fastidious selection, a small child's chair, andpursued by a maddened shopman. It lifted its catch, swung about with anappearance of painful indecision amidst a roar of wrath, and droppedit at last neatly, and as if by inspiration, over the head of a peasantwoman in charge of an assortment of cabbages in the market-place. 

Everybody now was aware of the balloon. Everybody was either trying tododge the grapnel or catch the trail rope. With a pendulum-like swoopthrough the crowd, that sent people flying right and left the grapnelcame to earth again, tried for and missed a stout gentleman in a bluesuit and a straw hat, smacked away a trestle from under a stall ofhaberdashery, made a cyclist soldier in knickerbockers leap likea chamois, and secured itself uncertainly among the hind-legs of asheep--which made convulsive, ungenerous efforts to free itself, and wasdragged into a position of rest against a stone cross in the middle ofthe place. The balloon pulled up with a jerk. In another moment a scoreof willing hands were tugging it earthward. At the same instant Bertbecame aware for the first time of a fresh breeze blowing about him. 

For some seconds he stood staggering in the car, which now swayedsickeningly, surveying the exasperated crowd below him and trying tocollect his mind. He was extraordinarily astonished at this run ofmishaps. Were the people really so annoyed? Everybody seemed angrywith him. No one seemed interested or amused by his arrival. A disproportionate amount of the outcry had the flavour ofimprecation--had, indeed a strong flavour of riot. Several greatlyuniformed officials in cocked hats struggled in vain to control thecrowd. Fists and sticks were shaken. And when Bert saw a man on theoutskirts of the crowd run to a haycart and get a brightly prongedpitch-fork, and a blue-clad soldier unbuckle his belt, his rising doubtwhether this little town was after all such a good place for a landingbecame a certainty. 

He had clung to the fancy that they would make something of a hero ofhim. Now he knew that he was mistaken. 

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 offalling headlong, released the grapnel-rope from the toggle that heldit, sprang on to the trail rope and disengaged that also. A hoarse shoutof disgust greeted the descent of the grapnel-rope and the swift leapof the balloon, and something--he fancied afterwards it was aturnip--whizzed by his head. The trail-rope followed its fellow. Thecrowd seemed to jump away from him. With an immense and horrifyingrustle the balloon brushed against a telephone pole, and for a tenseinstant he anticipated either an electric explosion or a bursting of theoiled silk, or both. But fortune was with him. 

In another second he was cowering in the bottom of the car, and releasedfrom the weight of the grapnel and the two ropes, rushing up once morethrough the air. For a time he remained crouching, and when at last helooked out again the little town was very small and travelling, with therest of lower Germany, in a circular orbit round and round the car--orat least it appeared to be doing that. When he got used to it, he foundthis rotation of the balloon rather convenient; it saved moving about inthe car. 

5

Late in the afternoon of a pleasant summer day in the year 191-, if onemay borrow a mode of phrasing that once found favour with the readers ofthe late G. P. R. James, a solitary balloonist--replacing the solitaryhorseman of the classic romances--might have been observed wending hisway across Franconia in a north-easterly direction, and at a height ofabout eleven thousand feet above the sea and still spindling slowly. Hishead was craned over the side of the car, and he surveyed the countrybelow with an expression of profound perplexity; ever and again his lipsshaped inaudible words. "Shootin' at a chap, " for example, and "I'llcome down right enough soon as I find out 'ow. " Over the side ofthe basket the robe of the Desert Dervish was hanging, an appeal forconsideration, an ineffectual white flag. 

He was now very distinctly aware that the world below him, so far frombeing the naive countryside of his earlier imaginings that day, sleepilyunconscious of him and capable of being amazed and nearly reverentialat his descent, was acutely irritated by his career, and extremelyimpatient with the course he was taking. --But indeed it was not hewho took that course, but his masters, the winds of heaven. Mysteriousvoices spoke to him in his ear, jerking the words up to him by meansof megaphones, in a weird and startling manner, in a great variety oflanguages. Official-looking persons had signalled to him by means offlag flapping and arm waving. On the whole a guttural variant of Englishprevailed in the sentences that alighted upon the balloon; chiefly hewas told to "gome down or you will be shot. "

"All very well, " said Bert, "but 'ow?"

Then they shot a little wide of the car. Latterly he had been shot atsix or seven times, and once the bullet had gone by with a sound sopersuasively like the tearing of silk that he had resigned himself tothe prospect of a headlong fall. But either they were aiming near him orthey had missed, and as yet nothing was torn but the air about him--andhis anxious soul. 

He was now enjoying a respite from these attentions, but he felt it wasat best an interlude, and he was doing what he could to appreciatehis position. Incidentally he was having some hot coffee and pie in anuntidy inadvertent manner, with an eye fluttering nervously over theside of the car. At first he had ascribed the growing interest in hiscareer to his ill-conceived attempt to land in the bright little uplandtown, but now he was beginning to realise that the military rather thanthe civil arm was concerned about him. 

He was quite involuntarily playing that weird mysterious part--the partof 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 hadblundered into the hot focus of Welt-Politik, he was drifting helplesslytowards the great Imperial secret, the immense aeronautic park that hadbeen established at a headlong pace in Franconia to develop silently, swiftly, and on an immense scale the great discoveries of Hunstedt andStossel, and so to give Germany before all other nations a fleet ofairships, the air power and the Empire of the world. 

Later, just before they shot him down altogether, Bert saw that greatarea of passionate work, warm lit in the evening light, a great areaof upland on which the airships lay like a herd of grazing monsters attheir feed. It was a vast busy space stretching away northward as far ashe could see, methodically cut up into numbered sheds, gasometers, squadencampments, storage areas, interlaced with the omnipresent mono-raillines, and altogether free from overhead wires or cables. Everywhere wasthe white, black and yellow of Imperial Germany, everywhere the blackeagles spread their wings. Even without these indications, the largevigorous neatness of everything would have marked it German. Vastmultitudes of men went to and fro, many in white and drab fatigueuniforms busy about the balloons, others drilling in sensible drab. Hereand there a full uniform glittered. The airships chiefly engaged hisattention, and he knew at once it was three of these he had seen onthe previous night, taking advantage of the cloud welkin to manoeuvreunobserved. They were altogether fish-like. For the great airships withwhich Germany attacked New York in her last gigantic effort forworld supremacy--before humanity realized that world supremacy was adream--were the lineal descendants of the Zeppelin airship that flewover Lake Constance in 1906, and of the Lebaudy navigables that madetheir memorable excursions over Paris in 1907 and 1908. 

These German airships were held together by rib-like skeletons of steeland aluminium and a stout inelastic canvas outer-skin, within which wasan impervious rubber gas-bag, cut up by transverse dissepiments intofrom fifty to a hundred compartments. These were all absolutely gastight and filled with hydrogen, and the entire aerostat was kept at anylevel by means of a long internal balloonette of oiled and toughenedsilk canvas, into which air could be forced and from which it could bepumped. So the airship could be made either heavier or lighter than air, and losses of weight through the consumption of fuel, the castingof bombs and so forth, could also be compensated by admitting air tosections of the general gas-bag. Ultimately that made a highly explosivemixture; but in all these matters risks must be taken and guardedagainst. There was a steel axis to the whole affair, a central backbonewhich terminated in the engine and propeller, and the men and magazineswere 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 thisforepart, which was indeed the only really habitable part of the ship. If anything went wrong, the engineers went aft along a rope ladderbeneath the frame. The tendency of the whole affair to roll was partlycorrected by a horizontal lateral fin on either side, and steering waschiefly effected by two vertical fins, which normally lay back likegill-flaps on either side of the head. It was indeed a most completeadaptation of the fish form to aerial conditions, the position ofswimming bladder, eyes, and brain being, however, below instead ofabove. A striking, and unfish-like feature was the apparatus forwireless telegraphy that dangled from the forward cabin--that is to say, under the chin of the fish. 

These monsters were capable of ninety miles an hour in a calm, so thatthey could face and make headway against nearly everything exceptthe fiercest tornado. They varied in length from eight hundred to twothousand feet, and they had a carrying power of from seventy to twohundred tons. How many Germany possessed history does not record, butBert counted nearly eighty great bulks receding in perspective duringhis brief inspection. Such were the instruments on which she chieflyrelied to sustain her in her repudiation of the Monroe Doctrine and herbold bid for a share in the empire of the New World. But notaltogether did she rely on these; she had also a one-man bomb-throwingDrachenflieger of unknown value among the resources. 

But the Drachenflieger were away in the second great aeronauticpark east of Hamburg, and Bert Smallways saw nothing of them in thebird's-eye view he took of the Franconian establishment before they shothim down very neatly. The bullet tore past him and made a sort of pop asit pierced his balloon--a pop that was followed by a rustling sigh anda steady downward movement. And when in the confusion of the moment hedropped a bag of ballast, the Germans, very politely but firmly overcamehis scruples by shooting his balloon again twice. 

CHAPTER IV. THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET

1

Of all the productions of the human imagination that make the world inwhich Mr. Bert Smallways lived confusingly wonderful, there was nonequite so strange, so headlong and disturbing, so noisy and persuasiveand dangerous, as the modernisations of patriotism produced by imperialand 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 speechand one's familiar land. Before the coming of the Scientific Agethis group of gentle and noble emotions had been a fine factor in theequipment of every worthy human being, a fine factor that had its lessamiable aspect in a usually harmless hostility to strange people, and ausually harmless detraction of strange lands. But with the wild rush ofchange in the pace, scope, materials, scale, and possibilities of humanlife that then occurred, the old boundaries, the old seclusions andseparations were violently broken down. All the old settled mentalhabits and traditions of men found themselves not simply confronted bynew conditions, but by constantly renewed and changing new conditions. They had no chance of adapting themselves. They were annihilated orperverted or inflamed beyond recognition. 

Bert Smallways' grandfather, in the days when Bun Hill was a villageunder the sway of Sir Peter Bone's parent, had "known his place" tothe uttermost farthing, touched his hat to his betters, despised andcondescended to his inferiors, and hadn't changed an idea from thecradle to the grave. He was Kentish and English, and that meant hops, beer, dog-rose's, and the sort of sunshine that was best in the world. Newspapers and politics and visits to "Lunnon" weren't for the likes ofhim. Then came the change. These earlier chapters have given an idea ofwhat happened to Bun Hill, and how the flood of novel things had pouredover its devoted rusticity. Bert Smallways was only one of countlessmillions in Europe and America and Asia who, instead of being bornrooted in the soil, were born struggling in a torrent they never clearlyunderstood. All the faiths of their fathers had been taken by surprise, and startled into the strangest forms and reactions. Particularly didthe fine old tradition of patriotism get perverted and distorted in therush of the new times. Instead of the sturdy establishment in prejudiceof Bert's grandfather, to whom the word "Frenchified" was the ultimateterm of contempt, there flowed through Bert's brain a squitteringsuccession of thinly violent ideas about German competition, aboutthe Yellow Danger, about the Black Peril, about the White Man'sBurthen--that is to say, Bert's preposterous right to muddle further thenaturally very muddled politics of the entirely similar little cads tohimself (except for a smear of brown) who smoked cigarettes and rodebicycles in Buluwayo, Kingston (Jamaica), or Bombay. These were Bert's"Subject Races, " and he was ready to die--by proxy in the person of anyone who cared to enlist--to maintain his hold upon that right. It kepthim awake at nights to think that he might lose it. 

The essential fact of the politics of the age in which Bert Smallwayslived--the age that blundered at last into the catastrophe of the War inthe Air--was a very simple one, if only people had had the intelligenceto be simple about it. The development of Science had altered the scaleof human affairs. By means of rapid mechanical traction, it had broughtmen nearer together, so much nearer socially, economically, physically, that the old separations into nations and kingdoms were no longerpossible, a newer, wider synthesis was not only needed, but imperativelydemanded. Just as the once independent dukedoms of France had to fuseinto a nation, so now the nations had to adapt themselves to a widercoalescence, they had to keep what was precious and possible, andconcede what was obsolete and dangerous. A saner world would haveperceived this patent need for a reasonable synthesis, would havediscussed it temperately, achieved and gone on to organise the greatcivilisation that was manifestly possible to mankind. The world ofBert Smallways did nothing of the sort. Its national governments, itsnational interests, would not hear of anything so obvious; they weretoo suspicious of each other, too wanting in generous imaginations. Theybegan to behave like ill-bred people in a crowded public car, to squeezeagainst one another, elbow, thrust, dispute and quarrel. Vain topoint out to them that they had only to rearrange themselves to becomfortable. Everywhere, all over the world, the historian of the earlytwentieth century finds the same thing, the flow and rearrangementof human affairs inextricably entangled by the old areas, the oldprejudices and a sort of heated irascible stupidity, and everywherecongested nations in inconvenient areas, slopping population and produceinto each other, annoying each other with tariffs, and every possiblecommercial vexation, and threatening each other with navies and armiesthat grew every year more portentous. 

It is impossible now to estimate how much of the intellectual andphysical energy of the world was wasted in military preparation andequipment, but it was an enormous proportion. Great Britain spent uponarmy and navy money and capacity, that directed into the channelsof physical culture and education would have made the British thearistocracy of the world. Her rulers could have kept the wholepopulation learning and exercising up to the age of eighteen and madea broad-chested and intelligent man of every Bert Smallways in theislands, had they given the resources they spent in war material to themaking of men. Instead of which they waggled flags at him until he wasfourteen, incited him to cheer, and then turned him out of school tobegin 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 towardsbankruptcy and decay. All Europe was producing big guns and countlessswarms of little Smallways. The Asiatic peoples had been forced inself-defence into a like diversion of the new powers science had broughtthem. On the eve of the outbreak of the war there were six great powersin the world and a cluster of smaller ones, each armed to the teethand straining every nerve to get ahead of the others in deadlinessof equipment and military efficiency. The great powers were first theUnited States, a nation addicted to commerce, but roused to militarynecessities by the efforts of Germany to expand into South America, andby the natural consequences of her own unwary annexations of land in thevery teeth of Japan. She maintained two immense fleets east and west, and internally she was in violent conflict between Federal and Stategovernments upon the question of universal service in a defensivemilitia. Next came the great alliance of Eastern Asia, a close-knitcoalescence of China and Japan, advancing with rapid strides year byyear to predominance in the world's affairs. Then the German alliancestill struggled to achieve its dream of imperial expansion, and itsimposition of the German language upon a forcibly united Europe. Thesewere the three most spirited and aggressive powers in the world. Farmore pacific was the British Empire, perilously scattered over theglobe, and distracted now by insurrectionary movements in Irelandand among all its Subject Races. It had given these subject racescigarettes, boots, bowler hats, cricket, race meetings, cheap revolvers, petroleum, the factory system of industry, halfpenny newspapers inboth English and the vernacular, inexpensive university degrees, motor-bicycles and electric trams; it had produced a considerableliterature expressing contempt for the Subject Races, and renderedit freely accessible to them, and it had been content to believe thatnothing would result from these stimulants because somebody once wrote"the immemorial east"; and also, in the inspired words of Kipling--

 East is east and west is west, And never the twain shall meet. 

Instead of which, Egypt, India, and the subject countries generally hadproduced new generations in a state of passionate indignation and theutmost energy, activity and modernity. The governing class in GreatBritain was slowly adapting itself to a new conception, of the SubjectRaces as waking peoples, and finding its efforts to keep the Empiretogether under these, strains and changing ideas greatly impeded bythe entirely sporting spirit with which Bert Smallways at home (by themillion) cast his vote, and by the tendency of his more highlycoloured equivalents to be disrespectful to irascible officials. Theirimpertinence was excessive; it was no mere stone-throwing and shouting. They would quote Burns at them and Mill and Darwin and confute them inarguments. 

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 betweenrevolutionaries and reactionaries who were equally incapable of socialreconstruction, and so sinking towards a tragic disorder of chronicpolitical vendetta. Wedged in among these portentous larger bulks, swayed and threatened by them, the smaller states of the worldmaintained a precarious independence, each keeping itself armed asdangerously as its utmost ability could contrive. 

So it came about that in every country a great and growing body ofenergetic and inventive men was busied either for offensive or defensiveends, in elaborating the apparatus of war, until the accumulatingtensions should reach the breaking-point. Each power sought to keep itspreparations secret, to hold new weapons in reserve, to anticipate andlearn the preparations of its rivals. The feeling of danger from freshdiscoveries affected the patriotic imagination of every people in theworld. Now it was rumoured the British had an overwhelming gun, now theFrench an invincible rifle, now the Japanese a new explosive, now theAmericans a submarine that would drive every ironclad from the seas. Each time there would be a war panic. 

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 heedlessof and unfitted for fighting, mentally, morally, physically, as anypopulation has ever been--or, one ventures to add, could ever be. Thatwas the paradox of the time. It was a period altogether unique inthe world's history. The apparatus of warfare, the art and method offighting, changed absolutely every dozen years in a stupendous progresstowards perfection, and people grew less and less warlike, and there wasno war. 

And then at last it came. It came as a surprise to all the world becauseits real causes were hidden. Relations were strained between Germanyand the United States because of the intense exasperation of a tariffconflict and the ambiguous attitude of the former power towards theMonroe Doctrine, and they were strained between the United States andJapan because of the perennial citizenship question. But in both casesthese were standing causes of offence. The real deciding cause, it isnow known, was the perfecting of the Pforzheim engine by Germany and theconsequent 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 theresources of modern science, and with her official and administrativeclasses at a higher level of education and training. These things sheknew, and she exaggerated that knowledge to the pitch of contempt forthe secret counsels of her neighbours. It may be that with the habit ofself-confidence her spying upon them had grown less thorough. Moreover, she had a tradition of unsentimental and unscrupulous action thatvitiated her international outlook profoundly. With the coming of thesenew weapons her collective intelligence thrilled with the sense that nowher moment had come. Once again in the history of progress it seemed sheheld the decisive weapon. Now she might strike and conquer--before theothers had anything but experiments in the air. 

Particularly she must strike America, swiftly, because there, ifanywhere, lay the chance of an aerial rival. It was known that Americapossessed a flying-machine of considerable practical value, developedout of the Wright model; but it was not supposed that the Washington WarOffice had made any wholesale attempts to create an aerial navy. It wasnecessary to strike before they could do so. France had a fleet ofslow navigables, several dating from 1908, that could make nopossible headway against the new type. They had been built solely forreconnoitring purposes on the eastern frontier, they were mostlytoo small to carry more than a couple of dozen men without arms orprovisions, and not one could do forty miles an hour. Great Britain, it seemed, in an access of meanness, temporised and wrangled with theimperial spirited Butteridge and his extraordinary invention. That alsowas not in play--and could not be for some months at the earliest. From Asia there, came no sign. The Germans explained this by saying theyellow peoples were without invention. No other competitor was worthconsidering. "Now or never, " said the Germans--"now or never we mayseize the air--as once the British seized the seas! While all the otherpowers are still experimenting. "

Swift and systematic and secret were their preparations, and their planmost excellent. So far as their knowledge went, America was the onlydangerous possibility; America, which was also now the leadingtrade rival of Germany and one of the chief barriers to her Imperialexpansion. So at once they would strike at America. They would fling agreat force across the Atlantic heavens and bear America down unwarnedand unprepared. 

Altogether it was a well-imagined and most hopeful and spiritedenterprise, having regard to the information in the possession of theGerman government. The chances of it being a successful surprise werevery great. The airship and the flying-machine were very differentthings from ironclads, which take a couple of years to build. Givenhands, given plant, they could be made innumerably in a few weeks. Once the needful parks and foundries were organised, air-ships andDracheinflieger could be poured into the sky. Indeed, when the timecame, they did pour into the sky like, as a bitter French writer put it, flies roused from filth. 

The attack upon America was to be the first move in this tremendousgame. But no sooner had it started than instantly the aeronautic parkswere to proceed to put together and inflate the second fleet which wasto dominate Europe and manoeuvre significantly over London, Paris, Rome, St. Petersburg, or wherever else its moral effect was required. A WorldSurprise it was to be--no less a World Conquest; and it is wonderful hownear the calmly adventurous minds that planned it came to succeeding intheir colossal design. 

Von Sternberg was the Moltke of this War in the Air, but it was thecurious hard romanticism of Prince Karl Albert that won over thehesitating Emperor to the scheme. Prince Karl Albert was indeed thecentral figure of the world drama. He was the darling of the Imperialistspirit in German, and the ideal of the new aristocratic feeling--thenew Chivalry, as it was called--that followed the overthrow ofSocialism through its internal divisions and lack of discipline, andthe concentration of wealth in the hands of a few great families. He wascompared by obsequious flatterers to the Black Prince, to Alcibiades, tothe young Caesar. To many he seemed Nietzsche's Overman revealed. He wasbig and blond and virile, and splendidly non-moral. The first great featthat startled Europe, and almost brought about a new Trojan war, washis abduction of the Princess Helena of Norway and his blank refusal tomarry her. Then followed his marriage with Gretchen Krass, a Swiss girlof peerless beauty. Then came the gallant rescue, which almost cost himhis life, of three drowning sailors whose boat had upset in the sea nearHeligoland. For that and his victory over the American yacht Defender, C. C. I. , the Emperor forgave him and placed him in control of the newaeronautic arm of the German forces. This he developed with marvellousenergy and ability, being resolved, as he said, to give to Germany landand sea and sky. The national passion for aggression found in him itssupreme exponent, and achieved through him its realisation in thisastounding war. But his fascination was more than national; all over theworld his ruthless strength dominated minds as the Napoleonic legend haddominated 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 inAmerican. 

He made the war. 

Quite equally with the rest of the world, the general German populationwas taken by surprise by the swift vigour of the Imperial government. A considerable literature of military forecasts, beginning as early as1906 with Rudolf Martin, the author not merely of a brilliant book ofanticipations, but of a proverb, "The future of Germany lies in theair, " had, however, partially prepared the German imagination for somesuch enterprise. 

2

Of all these world-forces and gigantic designs Bert Smallways knewnothing until he found himself in the very focus of it all and gapeddown amazed on the spectacle of that giant herd of air-ships. Each oneseemed as long as the Strand, and as big about as Trafalgar Square. Somemust have been a third of a mile in length. He had never before seenanything so vast and disciplined as this tremendous park. For the firsttime in his life he really had an intimation of the extraordinary andquite important things of which a contemporary may go in ignorance. Hehad always clung to the illusion that Germans were fat, absurd men, whosmoked china pipes, and were addicted to knowledge and horseflesh andsauerkraut and indigestible things generally. 

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 howhe might explain himself, and whether he should pretend to be Butteridgeor not. "O Lord!" he groaned, in an agony of indecision. Then his eyecaught his sandals, and he felt a spasm of self-disgust. "They'll thinkI'm a bloomin' idiot, " he said, and then it was he rose up desperatelyand threw over the sand-bag and provoked the second and third shots. 

It flashed into his head, as he cowered in the bottom of the car, thathe might avoid all sorts of disagreeable and complicated explanations bypretending to be mad. 

That was his last idea before the airships seemed to rush up about himas if to look at him, and his car hit the ground and bounded and pitchedhim out on his head.... 

He awoke to find himself famous, and to hear a voice crying, "Booteraidge! Ja! Jai Herr Booteraidge! Selbst!"

He was lying on a little patch of grass beside one of the main avenuesof the aeronautic park. The airships receded down a great vista, animmense perspective, and the blunt prow of each was adorned with a blackeagle of a hundred feet or so spread. Down the other side of the avenueran a series of gas generators, and big hose-pipes trailed everywhereacross the intervening space. Close at hand was his now nearly deflatedballoon and the car on its side looking minutely small, a mere brokentoy, a shrivelled bubble, in contrast with the gigantic bulk of thenearer airship. This he saw almost end-on, rising like a cliff andsloping forward towards its fellow on the other side so as to overshadowthe alley between them. There was a crowd of excited people about him, big men mostly in tight uniforms. Everybody was talking, and severalwere shouting, in German; he knew that because they splashed andaspirated sounds like startled kittens. 

Only one phrase, repeated again and again could he recognize--the nameof "Herr Booteraidge. "

"Gollys!" said Bert. "They've spotted it. "

"Besser, " said some one, and some rapid German followed. 

He perceived that close at hand was a field telephone, and that a tallofficer in blue was talking thereat about him. Another stood closebeside him with the portfolio of drawings and photographs in his hand. They looked round at him. 

"Do you spik Cherman, Herr Booteraidge?"

Bert decided that he had better be dazed. He did his best to seemthoroughly dazed. "Where AM I?" he asked. 

Volubility prevailed. "Der Prinz, " was mentioned. A bugle sounded faraway, and its call was taken up by one nearer, and then by one close athand. This seemed to increase the excitement greatly. A mono-rail carbumbled past. The telephone bell rang passionately, and the tall officerseemed to engage in a heated altercation. Then he approached the groupabout Bert, calling out something about "mitbringen. "

An earnest-faced, emaciated man with a white moustache appealed to Bert. "Herr Booteraidge, sir, we are chust to start!"

"Where am I?" Bert repeated. 

Some one shook him by the other shoulder. "Are you Herr Booteraidge?" heasked. 

"Herr Booteraidge, we are chust to start!" repeated the white moustache, and then helplessly, "What is de goot? What can we do?"

The officer from the telephone repeated his sentence about "Der Prinz"and "mitbringen. " The man with the moustache stared for a moment, grasped an idea and became violently energetic, stood up and bawleddirections at unseen people. Questions were asked, and the doctor atBert's side answered, "Ja! Ja!" several times, also something about"Kopf. " With a certain urgency he got Bert rather unwillingly to hisfeet. Two huge soldiers in grey advanced upon Bert and seized hold ofhim. "'Ullo!" said Bert, startled. "What's up?"

"It is all right, " the doctor explained; "they are to carry you. "

"Where?" asked Bert, unanswered. 

"Put your arms roundt their--hals--round them!"

"Yes! but where?"

"Hold tight!"

Before Bert could decide to say anything more he was whisked up by thetwo soldiers. They joined hands to seat him, and his arms were put abouttheir necks. "Vorwarts!" Some one ran before him with the portfolio, andhe was borne rapidly along the broad avenue between the gas generatorsand the airships, rapidly and on the whole smoothly except that once ortwice his bearers stumbled over hose-pipes and nearly let him down. 

He was wearing Mr. Butteridge's Alpine cap, and his little shoulderswere in Mr. Butteridge's fur-lined overcoat, and he had responded to Mr. Butteridge's name. The sandals dangled helplessly. Gaw! Everybody seemedin a devil of a hurry. Why? He was carried joggling and gaping throughthe twilight, marvelling beyond measure. 

The systematic arrangement of wide convenient spaces, the quantitiesof business-like soldiers everywhere, the occasional neat piles ofmaterial, the ubiquitous mono-rail lines, and the towering ship-likehulls about him, reminded him a little of impressions he had got asa boy on a visit to Woolwich Dockyard. The whole camp reflected thecolossal power of modern science that had created it. A peculiarstrangeness was produced by the lowness of the electric light, whichlay upon the ground, casting all shadows upwards and making a grotesqueshadow figure of himself and his bearers on the airship sides, fusingall three of them into a monstrous animal with attenuated legs and animmense fan-like humped body. The lights were on the ground becauseas far as possible all poles and standards had been dispensed with toprevent complications when the airships rose. 

It was deep twilight now, a tranquil blue-skyed evening; everything roseout from the splashes of light upon the ground into dim translucenttall masses; within the cavities of the airships small inspectinglamps glowed like cloud-veiled stars, and made them seem marvellouslyunsubstantial. Each airship had its name in black letters on white oneither flank, and forward the Imperial eagle sprawled, an overwhelmingbird in the dimness. 

Bugles sounded, mono-rail cars of quiet soldiers slithered burblingby. The cabins under the heads of the airships were being lit up; doorsopened in them, and revealed padded passages. 

Now and then a voice gave directions to workers indistinctly seen. 

There was a matter of sentinels, gangways and a long narrow passage, ascramble over a disorder of baggage, and then Bert found himself loweredto the ground and standing in the doorway of a spacious cabin--it wasperhaps ten feet square and eight high, furnished with crimson paddingand aluminium. A tall, bird-like young man with a small head, along nose, and very pale hair, with his hands full of things likeshaving-strops, boot-trees, hair-brushes, and toilet tidies, was sayingthings about Gott and thunder and Dummer Booteraidge as Bert entered. Hewas apparently an evicted occupant. Then he vanished, and Bert was lyingback on a couch in the corner with a pillow under his head and the doorof the cabin shut upon him. He was alone. Everybody had hurried outagain astonishingly. 

"Gollys!" said Bert. "What next?"

He stared about him at the room. 

"Butteridge! Shall I try to keep it up, or shan't I?"

The room he was in puzzled him. "'Tisn't a prison and 'tisn't a norfis?"Then the old trouble came uppermost. "I wish to 'eaven I 'adn't thesesilly sandals on, " he cried querulously to the universe. "They give thewhole blessed show away. "

3

His door was flung open, and a compact young man in uniform appeared, carrying Mr. Butteridge's portfolio, rucksac, and shaving-glass. 

"I say!" he said in faultless English as he entered. He had a beamingface, and a sort of pinkish blond hair. "Fancy you being Butteridge. " Heslapped Bert's meagre luggage down. 

"We'd have started, " he said, "in another half-hour! You didn't giveyourself much time!"

He surveyed Bert curiously. His gaze rested for a fraction of a momenton the sandals. "You ought to have come on your flying-machine, Mr. Butteridge. "

He didn't wait for an answer. "The Prince says I've got to look afteryou. Naturally he can't see you now, but he thinks your coming'sprovidential. Last grace of Heaven. Like a sign. Hullo!"

He stood still and listened. 

Outside there was a going to and fro of feet, a sound of distant buglessuddenly taken up and echoed close at hand, men called out in loud tonesshort, sharp, seemingly vital things, and were answered distantly. Abell jangled, and feet went down the corridor. Then came a stillnessmore distracting than sound, and then a great gurgling and rushing andsplashing of water. The young man's eyebrows lifted. He hesitated, anddashed out of the room. Presently came a stupendous bang to vary thenoises without, then a distant cheering. The young man re-appeared. 

"They're running the water out of the ballonette already. "

"What water?" asked Bert. 

"The water that anchored us. Artful dodge. Eh?"

Bert tried to take it in. 

"Of course!" said the compact young man. "You don't understand. "

A gentle quivering crept upon Bert's senses. "That's the engine, " saidthe compact young man approvingly. "Now we shan't be long. "

Another long listening interval. 

The cabin swayed. "By Jove! we're starting already;" he cried. "We'restarting!"

"Starting!" cried Bert, sitting up. "Where?"

But the young man was out of the room again. There were noises of Germanin the passage, and other nerve-shaking sounds. 

The swaying increased. The young man reappeared. "We're off, rightenough!"

"I say!" said Bert, "where are we starting? I wish you'd explain. What'sthis place? I don't understand. "

"What!" cried the young man, "you don't understand?"

"No. I'm all dazed-like from that crack on the nob I got. Where ARE we?WHERE are we starting?"

"Don't you know where you are--what this is?"

"Not a bit of it! What's all the swaying and the row?"

"What a lark!" cried the young man. "I say! What a thundering lark!Don't you know? We're off to America, and you haven't realised. You'vejust caught us by a neck. You're on the blessed old flagship with thePrince. You won't miss anything. Whatever's on, you bet the Vaterlandwill be there. "

"Us!--off to America?"

"Ra--ther!"

"In an airship?"

"What do YOU think?"

"Me! going to America on an airship! After that balloon! 'Ere! I say--Idon't want to go! I want to walk about on my legs. Let me get out! Ididn't understand. "

He made a dive for the door. 

The young man arrested Bert with a gesture, took hold of a strap, liftedup a panel in the padded wall, and a window appeared. "Look!" he said. Side by side they looked out. 

"Gaw!" said Bert. "We're going up!"

"We are!" said the young man, cheerfully; "fast!"

They were rising in the air smoothly and quietly, and moving slowlyto the throb of the engine athwart the aeronautic park. Down below itstretched, dimly geometrical in the darkness, picked out at regularintervals by glow-worm spangles of light. One black gap in the longline of grey, round-backed airships marked the position from which theVaterland had come. Beside it a second monster now rose softly, releasedfrom its bonds and cables into the air. Then, taking a beautifully exactdistance, a third ascended, and then a fourth. 

"Too late, Mr. Butteridge!" the young man remarked. "We're off! Idaresay it is a bit of a shock to you, but there you are! The Princesaid you'd have to come. "

"Look 'ere, " said Bert. "I really am dazed. What's this thing? Where arewe going?"

"This, Mr. Butteridge, " said the young man, taking pains to be explicit, "is an airship. It's the flagship of Prince Karl Albert. This is theGerman air-fleet, and it is going over to America, to give that spiritedpeople 'what for. ' The only thing we were at all uneasy about was yourinvention. And here you are!"

"But!--you a German?" asked Bert. 

"Lieutenant Kurt. Luft-lieutenant Kurt, at your service. "

"But you speak English!"

"Mother was English--went to school in England. Afterwards, Rhodesscholar. German none the less for that. Detailed for the present, Mr. Butteridge, to look after you. You're shaken by your fall. It's allright, really. They're going to buy your machine and everything. Yousit down, and take it quite calmly. You'll soon get the hang of theposition. "

4

Bert sat down on the locker, collecting his mind, and the young mantalked to him about the airship. 

He was really a very tactful young man indeed, in a natural sort of way. "Daresay all this is new to you, " he said; "not your sort of machine. These cabins aren't half bad. "

He got up and walked round the little apartment, showing its points. 

"Here is the bed, " he said, whipping down a couch from the wall andthrowing it back again with a click. "Here are toilet things, " and heopened a neatly arranged cupboard. "Not much washing. No water we'vegot; no water at all except for drinking. No baths or anything untilwe get to America and land. Rub over with loofah. One pint of hot forshaving. That's all. In the locker below you are rugs and blankets; youwill need them presently. They say it gets cold. I don't know. Neverbeen up before. Except a little work with gliders--which is mostlygoing down. Three-quarters of the chaps in the fleet haven't. Here's afolding-chair and table behind the door. Compact, eh?"

He took the chair and balanced it on his little finger. "Pretty light, eh? Aluminium and magnesium alloy and a vacuum inside. All thesecushions stuffed with hydrogen. Foxy! The whole ship's like that. Andnot a man in the fleet, except the Prince and one or two others, overeleven stone. Couldn't sweat the Prince, you know. We'll go all over thething to-morrow. I'm frightfully keen on it. "

He beamed at Bert. "You DO look young, " he remarked. "I always thoughtyou'd be an old man with a beard--a sort of philosopher. I don't knowwhy one should expect clever people always to be old. I do. "

Bert parried that compliment a little awkwardly, and then the lieutenantwas struck with the riddle why Herr Butteridge had not come in his ownflying machine. 

"It's a long story, " said Bert. "Look here!" he said abruptly, "I wishyou'd lend me a pair of slippers, or something. I'm regular sick ofthese sandals. They're rotten things. I've been trying them for afriend. "

"Right O!"

The ex-Rhodes scholar whisked out of the room and reappeared with aconsiderable choice of footwear--pumps, cloth bath-slippers, and apurple pair adorned with golden sun-flowers. 

But these he repented of at the last moment. 

"I don't even wear them myself, " he said. "Only brought 'em in the zealof the moment. " He laughed confidentially. "Had 'em worked for me--inOxford. By a friend. Take 'em everywhere. "

So Bert chose the pumps. 

The lieutenant broke into a cheerful snigger. "Here we are trying onslippers, " he said, "and the world going by like a panorama below. Rather a lark, eh? Look!"

Bert peeped with him out of the window, looking from the brightpettiness of the red-and-silver cabin into a dark immensity. The landbelow, except for a lake, was black and featureless, and the otherairships were hidden. "See more outside, " said the lieutenant. "Let'sgo! There's a sort of little gallery. "

He led the way into the long passage, which was lit by one smallelectric light, past some notices in German, to an open balcony and alight ladder and gallery of metal lattice overhanging, empty space. Bertfollowed his leader down to the gallery slowly and cautiously. Fromit he was able to watch the wonderful spectacle of the first air-fleetflying through the night. They flew in a wedge-shaped formation, theVaterland highest and leading, the tail receding into the corners ofthe sky. They flew in long, regular undulations, great dark fish-likeshapes, showing hardly any light at all, the engines making athrob-throb-throbbing sound that was very audible out on the gallery. They were going at a level of five or six thousand feet, and risingsteadily. Below, the country lay silent, a clear darkness dotted andlined out with clusters of furnaces, and the lit streets of a group ofbig towns. The world seemed to lie in a bowl; the overhanging bulk ofthe airship above hid all but the lowest levels of the sky. 

They watched the landscape for a space. 

"Jolly it must be to invent things, " said the lieutenant suddenly. "Howdid you come to think of your machine first?"

"Worked it out, " said Bert, after a pause. "Jest ground away at it. "

"Our people are frightfully keen on you. They thought the British hadgot you. Weren't the British keen?"

"In a way, " said Bert. "Still--it's a long story. "

"I think it's an immense thing--to invent. I couldn't invent a thing tosave my life. "

They both fell silent, watching the darkened world and following theirthoughts until a bugle summoned them to a belated dinner. Bert wassuddenly alarmed. "Don't you 'ave to dress and things?" he said. "I'vealways been too hard at Science and things to go into Society and allthat. "

"No fear, " said Kurt. "Nobody's got more than the clothes they wear. We're travelling light. You might perhaps take your overcoat off. They've an electric radiator each end of the room. "

And so presently Bert found himself sitting to eat in the presence ofthe "German Alexander"--that great and puissant Prince, Prince KarlAlbert, the War Lord, the hero of two hemispheres. He was a handsome, blond man, with deep-set eyes, a snub nose, upturned moustache, and longwhite hands, a strange-looking man. He sat higher than the others, undera black eagle with widespread wings and the German Imperial flags; hewas, as it were, enthroned, and it struck Bert greatly that as he ate hedid not look at people, but over their heads like one who sees visions. Twenty officers of various ranks stood about the table--and Bert. Theyall seemed extremely curious to see the famous Butteridge, and theirastonishment at his appearance was ill-controlled. The Prince gave hima dignified salutation, to which, by an inspiration, he bowed. Standingnext the Prince was a brown-faced, wrinkled man with silver spectaclesand fluffy, dingy-grey side-whiskers, who regarded Bert with a peculiarand disconcerting attention. The company sat after ceremonies Bert couldnot understand. At the other end of the table was the bird-faced officerBert had dispossessed, still looking hostile and whispering about Bertto his neighbour. Two soldiers waited. The dinner was a plain one--asoup, some fresh mutton, and cheese--and there was very little talk. 

A curious solemnity indeed brooded over every one. Partly this wasreaction after the intense toil and restrained excitement of starting;partly it was the overwhelming sense of strange new experiences, ofportentous adventure. The Prince was lost in thought. He roused himselfto drink to the Emperor in champagne, and the company cried "Hoch!" likemen repeating responses in church. 

No smoking was permitted, but some of the officers went down to thelittle open gallery to chew tobacco. No lights whatever were safeamidst that bundle of inflammable things. Bert suddenly fell yawningand shivering. He was overwhelmed by a sense of his own insignificanceamidst these great rushing monsters of the air. He felt life was too bigfor him--too much for him altogether. 

He said something to Kurt about his head, went up the steep ladder fromthe swaying little gallery into the airship again, and so, as if it werea refuge, to bed. 

5

Bert slept for a time, and then his sleep was broken by dreams. Mostlyhe was fleeing from formless terrors down an interminable passage inan airship--a passage paved at first with ravenous trap-doors, and thenwith openwork canvas of the most careless description. 

"Gaw!" said Bert, turning over after his seventh fall through infinitespace that night. 

He sat up in the darkness and nursed his knees. The progress of theairship was not nearly so smooth as a balloon; he could feel a regularswaying up, up, up and then down, down, down, and the throbbing andtremulous quiver of the engines. 

His mind began to teem with memories--more memories and more. 

Through them, like a struggling swimmer in broken water, came theperplexing question, what am I to do to-morrow? To-morrow, Kurt had toldhim, the Prince's secretary, the Graf Von Winterfeld, would come to himand discuss his flying-machine, and then he would see the Prince. Hewould have to stick it out now that he was Butteridge, and sellhis invention. And then, if they found him out! He had a vision ofinfuriated Butteridges.... Suppose after all he owned up? Pretended itwas their misunderstanding? He began to scheme devices for selling thesecret and circumventing Butteridge. 

What should he ask for the thing? Somehow twenty thousand pounds struckhim as about the sum indicated. 

He fell into that despondency that lies in wait in the small hours. Hehad got too big a job on--too big a job.... 

Memories swamped his scheming. 

"Where was I this time last night?"

He recapitulated his evenings tediously and lengthily. Last night hehad been up above the clouds in Butteridge's balloon. He thought of themoment when he dropped through them and saw the cold twilight sea closebelow. He still remembered that disagreeable incident with a nightmarevividness. And the night before he and Grubb had been looking for cheaplodgings at Littlestone in Kent. How remote that seemed now. It might beyears ago. For the first time he thought of his fellow Desert Dervish, left with the two red-painted bicycles on Dymchurch sands. "'E won'tmake much of a show of it, not without me. Any'ow 'e did 'ave thetreasury--such as it was--in his pocket!"... The night before thatwas Bank Holiday night and they had sat discussing their minstrelenterprise, drawing up a programme and rehearsing steps. And thenight before was Whit Sunday. "Lord!" cried Bert, "what a doingthat motor-bicycle give me!" He recalled the empty flapping of theeviscerated cushion, the feeling of impotence as the flames rose again. From among the confused memories of that tragic flare one little figureemerged very bright and poignantly sweet, Edna, crying back reluctantlyfrom the departing motor-car, "See you to-morrer, Bert?"

Other memories of Edna clustered round that impression. They led Bert'smind step by step to an agreeable state that found expression in "I'llmarry 'ER if she don't look out. " And then in a flash it followed in hismind that if he sold the Butteridge secret he could! Suppose after allhe did get twenty thousand pounds; such sums have been paid! With thathe could buy house and garden, buy new clothes beyond dreaming, buy amotor, travel, have every delight of the civilised life as he knew it, for himself and Edna. Of course, risks were involved. "I'll 'ave oldButteridge on my track, I expect!"

He meditated upon that. He declined again to despondency. As yet hewas only in the beginning of the adventure. He had still to deliver thegoods and draw the cash. And before that--Just now he was by no meanson his way home. He was flying off to America to fight there. "Notmuch fighting, " he considered; "all our own way. " Still, if a shell didhappen to hit the Vaterland on the underside!... 

"S'pose I ought to make my will. "

He lay back for some time composing wills--chiefly in favour of Edna. Hehad settled now it was to be twenty thousand pounds. He left a numberof minor legacies. The wills became more and more meandering andextravagant.... 

He woke from the eighth repetition of his nightmare fall through space. "This flying gets on one's nerves, " he said. 

He could feel the airship diving down, down, down, then slowly swingingto up, up, up. Throb, throb, throb, throb, quivered the engine. 

He got up presently and wrapped himself about with Mr. Butteridge'sovercoat and all the blankets, for the air was very keen. Then he peepedout of the window to see a grey dawn breaking over clouds, then turnedup his light and bolted his door, sat down to the table, and producedhis chest-protector. 

He smoothed the crumpled plans with his hand, and contemplated them. Then he referred to the other drawings in the portfolio. Twenty thousandpounds. If he worked it right! It was worth trying, anyhow. 

Presently he opened the drawer in which Kurt had put paper andwriting-materials. 

Bert Smallways was by no means a stupid person, and up to a certainlimit he had not been badly educated. His board school had taught himto draw up to certain limits, taught him to calculate and understand aspecification. If at that point his country had tired of its efforts, and handed him over unfinished to scramble for a living in an atmosphereof advertisments and individual enterprise, that was really not hisfault. He was as his State had made him, and the reader must not imaginebecause he was a little Cockney cad, that he was absolutely incapableof grasping the idea of the Butteridge flying-machine. But he found itstiff and perplexing. His motor-bicycle and Grubb's experiments and the"mechanical drawing" he had done in standard seven all helped him out;and, moreover, the maker of these drawings, whoever he was, had beenanxious to make his intentions plain. Bert copied sketches, he madenotes, he made a quite tolerable and intelligent copy of the essentialdrawings and sketches of the others. Then he fell into a meditation uponthem. 

At last he rose with a sigh, folded up the originals that had formerlybeen in his chest-protector and put them into the breast-pocket of hisjacket, and then very carefully deposited the copies he had made in theplace of the originals. He had no very clear plan in his mind in doingthis, except that he hated the idea of altogether parting with thesecret. For a long time he meditated profoundly--nodding. Then he turnedout his light and went to bed again and schemed himself to sleep. 

6

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 chessproblems in their heads to while away the time--and that night he had aparticularly difficult problem to solve. 

He came in upon Bert while he was still in bed in the glow of thesunlight reflected from the North Sea below, consuming the rolls andcoffee 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 spokeEnglish fluently, but with a strong German flavour. He was particularlybad with his "b's, " and his "th's" softened towards weak "z'ds. " Hecalled Bert explosively, "Pooterage. " He began with some indistinctcivilities, bowed, took a folding-table and chair from behind the door, put the former between himself and Bert, sat down on the latter, cougheddrily, and opened his portfolio. Then he put his elbows on the table, pinched his lower lip with his two fore-fingers, and regarded Bertdisconcertingly with magnified eyes. "You came to us, Herr Pooterage, against your will, " he said at last. 

"'Ow d'you make that out?" asked Bert, after a pause of astonishment. 

"I chuge by ze maps in your car. They were all English. And yourprovisions. They were all picnic. Also your cords were entangled. Youhaf' been tugging--but no good. You could not manage ze balloon, andanuzzer power than yours prought you to us. Is it not so?"

Bert thought. 

"Also--where is ze laty?"

"'Ere!--what lady?"

"You started with a laty. That is evident. You shtarted for an afternoonexcursion--a picnic. A man of your temperament--he would take a laty. She was not wiz you in your balloon when you came down at Dornhof. No!Only her chacket! It is your affair. Still, I am curious. "

Bert reflected. "'Ow d'you know that?"

"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 whyyou should wear nature-sandals, nor why you should wear such cheap plueclothes. These are outside my instructions. Trifles, perhaps. Officiallythey are to be ignored. Laties come and go--I am a man of ze worldt. Ihaf known wise men wear sandals and efen practice vegetarian habits. I haf known men--or at any rate, I haf known chemists--who did notschmoke. You haf, no doubt, put ze laty down somewhere. Well. Let us getto--business. A higher power"--his voice changed its emotional quality, his magnified eyes seemed to dilate--"has prought you and your secretstraight to us. So!"--he bowed his head--"so pe it. It is ze Destiny ofChermany and my Prince. I can undershtandt you always carry zat secret. You are afraidt of roppers and spies. So it comes wiz you--to us. Mr. Pooterage, Chermany will puy it. "

"Will she?"

"She will, " said the secretary, looking hard at Bert's abandoned sandalsin the corner of the locker. He roused himself, consulted a paper ofnotes for a moment, and Bert eyed his brown and wrinkled face withexpectation and terror. "Chermany, I am instructed to say, " said thesecretary, with his eyes on the table and his notes spread out, "hasalways been willing to puy your secret. We haf indeed peen eager toacquire it fery eager; and it was only ze fear that you might be, onpatriotic groundts, acting in collusion with your Pritish War Office zathas made us discreet in offering for your marvellous invention throughintermediaries. We haf no hesitation whatefer now, I am instructed, inagreeing to your proposal of a hundert tousand poundts. "

"Crikey!" said Bert, overwhelmed. 

"I peg your pardon?"

"Jest a twinge, " said Bert, raising his hand to his bandaged head. 

"Ah! Also I am instructed to say that as for that noble, unrightlyaccused laty you haf championed so brafely against Pritish hypocrisy andcoldness, all ze chivalry of Chermany is on her site. "

"Lady?" said Bert faintly, and then recalled the great Butteridge lovestory. Had the old chap also read the letters? He must think him ascorcher if he had. "Oh! that's aw-right, " he said, "about 'er. I 'adn'tany doubts about that. I--"

He stopped. The secretary certainly had a most appalling stare. Itseemed ages before he looked down again. "Well, ze laty as you please. She is your affair. I haf performt my instructions. And ze title ofParon, zat also can pe done. It can all pe done, Herr Pooterage. "

He drummed on the table for a second or so, and resumed. "I haf to tellyou, sir, zat you come to us at a crisis in--Welt-Politik. There can beno harm now for me to put our plans before you. Pefore you leafe thisship again they will be manifest to all ze worldt. War is perhapsalready declared. We go--to America. Our fleet will descend out of zeair upon ze United States--it is a country quite unprepared for wareferywhere--eferywhere. Zey have always relied on ze Atlantic. And theirnavy. We have selected a certain point--it is at present ze secretof our commanders--which we shall seize, and zen we shall establisha depot--a sort of inland Gibraltar. It will be--what will it be?--aneagle's nest. Zere our airships will gazzer and repair, and thencethey will fly to and fro ofer ze United States, terrorising cities, dominating Washington, levying what is necessary, until ze terms wedictate are accepted. You follow me?"

"Go on!" said Bert. 

"We could haf done all zis wiz such Luftschiffe and Drachenflieger as wepossess, but ze accession of your machine renders our project complete. It not only gifs us a better Drachenflieger, but it remofes our lastuneasiness as to Great Pritain. Wizout you, sir, Great Pritain, ze landyou lofed so well and zat has requited you so ill, zat land of Phariseesand reptiles, can do nozzing!--nozzing! You see, I am perfectly frankwiz you. Well, I am instructed that Chermany recognises all this. Wewant you to place yourself at our disposal. We want you to become ourChief Head Flight Engineer. We want you to manufacture, we want to equipa swarm of hornets under your direction. We want you to direct thisforce. And it is at our depot in America we want you. So we offer yousimply, and without haggling, ze full terms you demanded weeks ago--onehundert tousand poundts in cash, a salary of three tousand poundts ayear, a pension of one tousand poundts a year, and ze title of Paron asyou desired. These are my instructions. "

He resumed his scrutiny of Bert's face. 

"That's all right, of course, " said Bert, a little short of breath, butotherwise resolute and calm; and it seemed to him that now was the timeto bring his nocturnal scheming to the issue. 

The secretary contemplated Bert's collar with sustained attention. Onlyfor one moment did his gaze move to the sandals and back. 

"Jes' lemme think a bit, " said Bert, finding the stare debilitating. "Look 'ere!" he said at last, with an air of great explicitness, "I GOTthe secret. "

"Yes. "

"But I don't want the name of Butteridge to appear--see? I been thinkingthat over. "

"A little delicacy?"

"Exactly. You buy the secret--leastways, I give it you--fromBearer--see?"

His voice failed him a little, and the stare continued. "I want to dothe thing Enonymously. See?"

Still staring. Bert drifted on like a swimmer caught by a current. "Factis, I'm going to edop' the name of Smallways. I don't want no title ofBaron; I've altered my mind. And I want the money quiet-like. I want thehundred thousand pounds paid into benks--thirty thousand into the Londonand County Benk Branch at Bun Hill in Kent directly I 'and over theplans; twenty thousand into the Benk of England; 'arf the rest into agood French bank, the other 'arf the German National Bank, see? I wantit 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'mgoing to edop'. That's condition one. "

"Go on!" said the secretary. 

"The nex condition, " said Bert, "is that you don't make any inquiriesas to title. I mean what English gentlemen do when they sell or let youland. You don't arst 'ow I got it. See? 'Ere I am--I deliver you thegoods--that's all right. Some people 'ave the cheek to say this isn't myinvention, see? It is, you know--THAT'S all right; but I don't want thatgone into. I want a fair and square agreement saying that's all right. See?"

His "See?" faded into a profound silence. 

The secretary sighed at last, leant back in his chair and produced atooth-pick, and used it, to assist his meditation on Bert's case. "Whatwas that name?" he asked at last, putting away the tooth-pick; "I mustwrite it down. "

"Albert Peter Smallways, " said Bert, in a mild tone. 

The secretary wrote it down, after a little difficulty about thespelling because of the different names of the letters of the alphabetin the two languages. 

"And now, Mr. Schmallvays, " he said at last, leaning back and resumingthe stare, "tell me: how did you ket hold of Mister Pooterage'sballoon?"

7

When at last the Graf von Winterfold left Bert Smallways, he left him inan extremely deflated condition, with all his little story told. 

He had, as people say, made a clean breast of it. He had been pursuedinto details. He had had to explain the blue suit, the sandals, theDesert Dervishes--everything. For a time scientific zeal consumed thesecretary, and the question of the plans remained in suspense. He evenwent into speculation about the previous occupants of the balloon. "Isuppose, " he said, "the laty WAS the laty. Bot that is not our affair. 

"It is fery curious and amusing, yes: but I am afraid the Prince may beannoyt. He acted wiz his usual decision--always he acts wiz wonterfuldecision. Like Napoleon. Directly he was tolt of your descent into thecamp at Dornhof, he said, 'Pring him!--pring him! It is my schtar!' Hisschtar of Destiny! You see? He will be dthwarted. He directed you tocome as Herr Pooterage, and you haf not done so. You haf triet, ofcourse; but it has peen a poor try. His chugments of men are fery justand right, and it is better for men to act up to them--gompletely. Especially now. Particularly now. "

He resumed that attitude of his, with his underlip pinched between hisforefingers. He spoke almost confidentially. "It will be awkward. Itriet to suggest some doubt, but I was over-ruled. The Prince doesnot listen. He is impatient in the high air. Perhaps he will think hisschtar has been making a fool of him. Perhaps he will think _I_ haf beenmaking a fool of him. "

He wrinkled his forehead, and drew in the corners of his mouth. 

"I got the plans, " said Bert. 

"Yes. There is that! Yes. But you see the Prince was interested inHerr Pooterage because of his romantic seit. Herr Pooterage was so muchmore--ah!--in the picture. I am afraid you are not equal to controllingthe flying machine department of our aerial park as he wished you to do. He hadt promised himself that.... 

"And der was also the prestige--the worldt prestige of Pooterage withus.... Well, we must see what we can do. " He held out his hand. "Gif methe plans. "

A terrible chill ran through the being of Mr. Smallways. To this day heis not clear in his mind whether he wept or no, but certainly therewas weeping in his voice. "'Ere, I say!" he protested. "Ain't I to'ave--nothin' for 'em?"

The secretary regarded him with benevolent eyes. "You do not deserveanyzing!" he said. 

"I might 'ave tore 'em up. "

"Zey are not yours!"

"They weren't Butteridge's!"

"No need to pay anyzing. "

Bert's being seemed to tighten towards desperate deeds. "Gaw!" he said, clutching his coat, "AIN'T there?"

"Pe galm, " said the secretary. "Listen! You shall haf five hundertpoundts. You shall haf it on my promise. I will do that for you, andthat is all I can do. Take it from me. Gif me the name of that bank. Write it down. So! I tell you the Prince--is no choke. I do not think heapproffed of your appearance last night. No! I can't answer for him. Hewanted Pooterage, and you haf spoilt it. The Prince--I do not understandquite, he is in a strange state. It is the excitement of the startingand this great soaring in the air. I cannot account for what he does. But if all goes well I will see to it--you shall haf five hundertpoundts. Will that do? Then gif me the plans. "

"Old beggar!" said Bert, as the door clicked. "Gaw!--what an olebeggar!--SHARP!"

He sat down in the folding-chair, and whistled noiselessly for a time. 

"Nice 'old swindle for 'im if I tore 'em up! I could 'ave. "

He rubbed the bridge of his nose thoughtfully. "I gave the whole blessedshow away. If I'd j'es' kep quiet about being Enonymous.... Gaw!... Toosoon, Bert, my boy--too soon and too rushy. I'd like to kick my sillyself. 

"I couldn't 'ave kep' it up. 

"After all, it ain't so very bad, " he said. 

"After all, five 'undred pounds.... It isn't MY secret, anyhow. It'sjes' a pickup on the road. Five 'undred. 

"Wonder what the fare is from America back home?"

8

And later in the day an extremely shattered and disorganised BertSmallways stood in the presence of the Prince Karl Albert. 

The proceedings were in German. The Prince was in his own cabin, the endroom of the airship, a charming apartment furnished in wicker-work witha long window across its entire breadth, looking forward. He was sittingat a folding-table of green baize, with Von Winterfeld and two officerssitting beside him, and littered before them was a number of Americanmaps and Mr. Butteridge's letters and his portfolio and a number ofloose papers. Bert was not asked to sit down, and remained standingthroughout the interview. Von Winterfeld told his story, and everynow and then the words Ballon and Pooterage struck on Bert's ears. ThePrince's face remained stern and ominous and the two officers watched itcautiously or glanced at Bert. There was something a little strangein their scrutiny of the Prince--a curiosity, an apprehension. Thenpresently he was struck by an idea, and they fell discussing the plans. The Prince asked Bert abruptly in English. "Did you ever see this thinggo op?"

Bert jumped. "Saw it from Bun 'Ill, your Royal Highness. "

Von Winterfeld made some explanation. 

"How fast did it go?"

"Couldn't say, your Royal Highness. The papers, leastways the DailyCourier, said eighty miles an hour. "

They talked German over that for a time. 

"Couldt it standt still? Op in the air? That is what I want to know. "

"It could 'ovver, your Royal Highness, like a wasp, " said Bert. 

"Viel besser, nicht wahr?" said the Prince to Von Winterfeld, and thenwent on in German for a time. 

Presently they came to an end, and the two officers looked at Bert. Onerang a bell, and the portfolio was handed to an attendant, who took itaway. 

Then they reverted to the case of Bert, and it was evident the Princewas inclined to be hard with him. Von Winterfeld protested. Apparentlytheological considerations came in, for there were several mentionsof "Gott!" Some conclusions emerged, and it was apparent that VonWinterfeld was instructed to convey them to Bert. 

"Mr. Schmallvays, you haf obtained a footing in this airship, " he said, "by disgraceful and systematic lying. "

"'Ardly systematic, " said Bert. "I--"

The Prince silenced him by a gesture. 

"And it is within the power of his Highness to dispose of you as a spy. "

"'Ere!--I came to sell--"

"Ssh!" said one of the officers. 

"However, in consideration of the happy chance that mate you theinstrument unter Gott of this Pooterage flying-machine reaching hisHighness's hand, you haf been spared. Yes, --you were the pearer ofgoot tidings. You will be allowed to remain on this ship until it isconvenient to dispose of you. Do you understandt?"

"We will bring him, " said the Prince, and added terribly with a terribleglare, "als Ballast. "

"You are to come with us, " said Winterfeld, "as pallast. Do youunderstandt?"

Bert opened his mouth to ask about the five hundred pounds, and then asaving gleam of wisdom silenced him. He met Von Winterfeld's eye, and itseemed to him the secretary nodded slightly. 

"Go!" said the Prince, with a sweep of the great arm and hand towardsthe door. Bert went out like a leaf before a gale. 

9

But in between the time when the Graf von Winterfeld had talked to himand this alarming conference with the Prince, Bert had explored theVaterland from end to end. He had found it interesting in spite of gravepreoccupations. Kurt, like the greater number of the men upon theGerman air-fleet, had known hardly anything of aeronautics before hisappointment to the new flag-ship. But he was extremely keen upon thiswonderful new weapon Germany had assumed so suddenly and dramatically. He showed things to Bert with a boyish eagerness and appreciation. Itwas as if he showed them over again to himself, like a child showing anew toy. "Let's go all over the ship, " he said with zest. He pointed outparticularly the lightness of everything, the use of exhausted aluminiumtubing, of springy cushions inflated with compressed hydrogen; thepartitions were hydrogen bags covered with light imitation leather, thevery crockery was a light biscuit glazed in a vacuum, and weighed nextto nothing. Where strength was needed there was the new Charlottenburgalloy, German steel as it was called, the toughest and most resistantmetal in the world. 

There was no lack of space. Space did not matter, so long as load didnot grow. The habitable part of the ship was two hundred and fiftyfeet long, and the rooms in two tiers; above these one could go up intoremarkable little white-metal turrets with big windows and airtightdouble doors that enabled one to inspect the vast cavity of thegas-chambers. This inside view impressed Bert very much. He had neverrealised before that an airship was not one simple continuous gas-bagcontaining nothing but gas. Now he saw far above him the backbone of theapparatus and its big ribs, "like the neural and haemal canals, " saidKurt, who had dabbled in biology. 

"Rather!" said Bert appreciatively, though he had not the ghost of anidea what these phrases meant. 

Little electric lights could be switched on up there if anything wentwrong in the night. There were even ladders across the space. "But youcan't go into the gas, " protested Bert. "You can't breve it. "

The lieutenant opened a cupboard door and displayed a diver's suit, onlythat it was made of oiled silk, and both its compressed-air knapsack andits helmet were of an alloy of aluminium and some light metal. "We cango all over the inside netting and stick up bullet holes or leaks, " heexplained. "There's netting inside and out. The whole outer-case is ropeladder, so to speak. "

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 varioustypes mostly in glass--none of the German airships carried any guns atall except one small pom-pom (to use the old English nickname datingfrom the Boer war), which was forward in the gallery upon the shield atthe heart of the eagle. 

From the magazine amidships a covered canvas gallery with aluminiumtreads on its floor and a hand-rope, ran back underneath the gas-chamberto the engine-room at the tail; but along this Bert did not go, and fromfirst to last he never saw the engines. But he went up a ladder againsta gale of ventilation--a ladder that was encased in a kind of gas-tightfire escape--and ran right athwart the great forward air-chamber to thelittle look-out gallery with a telephone, that gallery that bore thelight pom-pom of German steel and its locker of shells. This gallerywas all of aluminium magnesium alloy, the tight front of the air-shipswelled cliff-like above and below, and the black eagle sprawledoverwhelmingly gigantic, its extremities all hidden by the bulge ofthe gas-bag. And far down, under the soaring eagles, was England, fourthousand feet below perhaps, and looking very small and defencelessindeed in the morning sunlight. 

The realisation that there was England gave Bert sudden and unexpectedqualms of patriotic compunction. He was struck by a quite novel idea. After all, he might have torn up those plans and thrown them away. Thesepeople 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 thathad hitherto been rather smothered up by the cares of a competitivecivilisation. He became violently depressed. He ought, he perceived, tohave seen it in that light before. Why hadn't he seen it in that lightbefore?

Indeed, wasn't he a sort of traitor?... He wondered how the aerial fleetmust look from down there. Tremendous, no doubt, and dwarfing all thebuildings. 

He was passing between Manchester and Liverpool, Kurt told him; agleaming band across the prospect was the Ship Canal, and a welteringditch of shipping far away ahead, the Mersey estuary. Bert was aSoutherner; he had never been north of the Midland counties, and themultitude of factories and chimneys--the latter for the most partobsolete and smokeless now, superseded by huge electric generatingstations that consumed their own reek--old railway viaducts, mono-railnet-works and goods yards, and the vast areas of dingy homes and narrowstreets, spreading aimlessly, struck him as though Camberwell andRotherhithe had run to seed. Here and there, as if caught in a net, werefields and agricultural fragments. It was a sprawl of undistinguishedpopulation. There were, no doubt, museums and town halls and evencathedrals of a sort to mark theoretical centres of municipal andreligious organisation in this confusion; but Bert could not seethem, they did not stand out at all in that wide disorderly visionof congested workers' houses and places to work, and shops and meanlyconceived chapels and churches. And across this landscape of anindustrial civilisation swept the shadows of the German airships like ahurrying shoal of fishes.... 

Kurt and he fell talking of aerial tactics, and presently went down tothe undergallery in order that Bert might see the Drachenflieger thatthe airships of the right wing had picked up overnight and were towingbehind them; each airship towing three or four. They looked, like bigbox-kites of an exaggerated form, soaring at the ends of invisiblecords. They had long, square heads and flattened tails, with lateralpropellers. 

"Much skill is required for those!--much skill!"

"Rather!"

Pause. 

"Your machine is different from that, Mr. Butteridge?"

"Quite different, " said Bert. "More like an insect, and less like abird. And it buzzes, and don't drive about so. What can those thingsdo?"

Kurt was not very clear upon that himself, and was still explaining whenBert was called to the conference we have recorded with the Prince. 

And after that was over, the last traces of Butteridge fell from Bertlike a garment, and he became Smallways to all on board. The soldiersceased to salute him, and the officers ceased to seem aware of hisexistence, 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, stillswearing slightly, and carrying strops and aluminium boot-trees andweightless hair-brushes and hand-mirrors and pomade in his hands, resumed possession. Bert was put in with Kurt because there was nowhereelse for him to lay his bandaged head in that close-packed vessel. Hewas to mess, he was told, with the men. 

Kurt came and stood with his legs wide apart and surveyed, him for amoment as he sat despondent in his new quarters. 

"What's your real name, then?" said Kurt, who was only imperfectlyinformed of the new state of affairs. 

"Smallways. "

"I thought you were a bit of a fraud--even when I thought you wereButteridge. You're jolly lucky the Prince took it calmly. He's a prettytidy blazer when he's roused. He wouldn't stick a moment at pitching achap of your sort overboard if he thought fit. No!... They've shoved youon to me, but it's my cabin, you know. "

"I won't forget, " said Bert. 

Kurt left him, and when he came to look about him the first thing he sawpasted on the padded wall was a reproduction, of the great picture bySiegfried Schmalz of the War God, that terrible, trampling figure withthe viking helmet and the scarlet cloak, wading through destruction, sword in hand, which had so strong a resemblance to Karl Albert, theprince it was painted to please. 

CHAPTER V. THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC

1

The Prince Karl Albert had made a profound impression upon Bert. He wasquite the most terrifying person Bert had ever encountered. He filledthe Smallways soul with passionate dread and antipathy. For a long timeBert sat alone in Kurt's cabin, doing nothing and not venturing evento open the door lest he should be by that much nearer that appallingpresence. 

So it came about that he was probably the last person on board to hearthe news that wireless telegraphy was bringing to the airship in throbsand fragments of a great naval battle in progress in mid-Atlantic. 

He learnt it at last from Kurt. 

Kurt came in with a general air of ignoring Bert, but muttering tohimself in English nevertheless. "Stupendous!" Bert heard him say. "Here!" he said, "get off this locker. " And he proceeded to rout out twobooks and a case of maps. He spread them on the folding-table, and stoodregarding them. For a time his Germanic discipline struggled with hisEnglish informality and his natural kindliness and talkativeness, and atlast lost. 

"They're at it, Smallways, " he said. 

"At what, sir?" said Bert, broken and respectful. 

"Fighting! The American North Atlantic squadron and pretty nearlythe whole of our fleet. Our Eiserne Kreuz has had a gruelling and issinking, and their Miles Standish--she's one of their biggest--has sunkwith all hands. Torpedoes, I suppose. She was a bigger ship than theKarl der Grosse, but five or six years older. Gods! I wish we could seeit, Smallways; a square fight in blue water, guns or nothing, and all of'em steaming ahead!"

He spread his maps, he had to talk, and so he delivered a lecture on thenaval situation to Bert. 

"Here it is, " he said, "latitude 30 degrees 50 minutes N. Longitude 30degrees 50 minutes W. It's a good day off us, anyhow, and they're allgoing south-west by south at full pelt as hard as they can go. We shan'tsee a bit of it, worse luck! Not a sniff we shan't get!"

2

The naval situation in the North Atlantic at that time was a peculiarone. The United States was by far the stronger of the two powers uponthe 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 thesituation between Asiatic and white had become unusually violentand dangerous, and the Japanese government had shown itself quiteunprecedentedly difficult. The German attack therefore found half theAmerican strength at Manila, and what was called the Second Fleet strungout across the Pacific in wireless contact between the Asiatic stationand San Francisco. The North Atlantic squadron was the sole Americanforce on her eastern shore, it was returning from a friendly visitto France and Spain, and was pumping oil-fuel from tenders inmid-Atlantic--for most of its ships were steamships--when theinternational situation became acute. It was made up of four battleshipsand five armoured cruisers ranking almost with battleships, not one ofwhich was of a later date than 1913. The Americans had indeed grown soaccustomed to the idea that Great Britain could be trusted to keep thepeace of the Atlantic that a naval attack on the eastern seaboardfound them unprepared even in their imaginations. But long before thedeclaration of war--indeed, on Whit Monday--the whole German fleet ofeighteen battleships, with a flotilla of fuel tenders and convertedliners containing stores to be used in support of the air-fleet, hadpassed through the straits of Dover and headed boldly for New York. Notonly did these German battleships outnumber the Americans two to one, but they were more heavily armed and more modern in construction--sevenof them having high explosive engines built of Charlottenburg steel, andall carrying Charlottenburg steel guns. 

The fleets came into contact on Wednesday before any actual declarationof war. The Americans had strung out in the modern fashion at distancesof thirty miles or so, and were steaming to keep themselves between theGermans and either the eastern states or Panama; because, vital as itwas to defend the seaboard cities and particularly New York, it wasstill more vital to save the canal from any attack that might preventthe return of the main fleet from the Pacific. No doubt, said Kurt, thiswas now making records across that ocean, "unless the Japanese have hadthe same idea as the Germans. " It was obviously beyond human possibilitythat the American North Atlantic fleet could hope to meet and defeatthe German; but, on the other hand, with luck it might fight a delayingaction and inflict such damage as to greatly weaken the attack uponthe coast defences. Its duty, indeed, was not victory but devotion, the severest task in the world. Meanwhile the submarine defences of NewYork, Panama, and the other more vital points could be put in some sortof order. 

This was the naval situation, and until Wednesday in Whit week it wasthe only situation the American people had realised. It was then theyheard for the first time of the real scale of the Dornhof aeronauticpark and the possibility of an attack coming upon them not only bysea, but by the air. But it is curious that so discredited were thenewspapers of that period that a large majority of New Yorkers, forexample, did not believe the most copious and circumstantial accounts ofthe German air-fleet until it was actually in sight of New York. 

Kurt's talk was half soliloquy. He stood with a map on Mercator'sprojection before him, swaying to the swinging of the ship and talkingof guns and tonnage, of ships and their build and powers and speed, ofstrategic points, and bases of operation. A certain shyness thatreduced him to the status of a listener at the officers' table no longersilenced him. 

Bert stood by, saying very little, but watching Kurt's finger on themap. "They've been saying things like this in the papers for a longtime, " he remarked. "Fancy it coming real!"

Kurt had a detailed knowledge of the Miles Standish. "She used to bea crack ship for gunnery--held the record. I wonder if we beat hershooting, or how? I wish I was in it. I wonder which of our ships beather. Maybe she got a shell in her engines. It's a running fight! Iwonder what the Barbarossa is doing, " he went on, "She's my old ship. Not a first-rater, but good stuff. I bet she's got a shot or two homeby now if old Schneider's up to form. Just think of it! There theyare whacking away at each other, great guns going, shells exploding, magazines bursting, ironwork flying about like straw in a gale, allwe've been dreaming of for years! I suppose we shall fly right away toNew York--just as though it wasn't anything at all. I suppose we shallreckon we aren't wanted down there. It's no more than a covering fighton our side. All those tenders and store-ships of ours are going onsouthwest by west to New York to make a floating depot for us. See?" Hedabbed his forefinger on the map. "Here we are. Our train of stores goesthere, our battleships elbow the Americans out of our way there. "

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 foran instant. Every one was talking of the battle, suggesting, contradicting--at times, until the petty officers hushed them, it roseto a great uproar. There was a new bulletin, but what it said he did notgather except that it concerned the Barbarossa. Some of the men staredat him, and he heard the name of "Booteraidge" several times; but no onemolested him, and there was no difficulty about his soup and bread whenhis turn at the end of the queue came. He had feared there might be noration for him, and if so he did not know what he would have done. 

Afterwards he ventured out upon the little hanging gallery with thesolitary sentinel. The weather was still fine, but the wind was risingand the rolling swing of the airship increasing. He clutched the railtightly and felt rather giddy. They were now out of sight of land, and over blue water rising and falling in great masses. A dingy oldbrigantine under the British flag rose and plunged amid the broad bluewaves--the only ship in sight. 

3

In the evening it began to blow and the air-ship to roll like a porpoiseas it swung through the air. Kurt said that several of the men weresea-sick, but the motion did not inconvenience Bert, whose luck it wasto be of that mysterious gastric disposition which constitutes a goodsailor. He slept well, but in the small hours the light awoke him, andhe found Kurt staggering about in search of something. He found it atlast in the locker, and held it in his hand unsteadily--a compass. Thenhe compared his map. 

"We've changed our direction, " he said, "and come into the wind. I can'tmake it out. We've turned away from New York to the south. Almost as ifwe were going to take a hand--"

He continued talking to himself for some time. 

Day came, wet and windy. The window was bedewed externally, and theycould see nothing through it. It was also very cold, and Bert decidedto keep rolled up in his blankets on the locker until the bugle summonedhim to his morning ration. That consumed, he went out on the littlegallery; but he could see nothing but eddying clouds driving headlongby, and the dim outlines of the nearer airships. Only at rare intervalscould he get a glimpse of grey sea through the pouring cloud-drift. 

Later in the morning the Vaterland changed altitude, and soared upsuddenly in a high, clear sky, going, Kurt said, to a height of nearlythirteen thousand feet. 

Bert was in his cabin, and chanced to see the dew vanish from the windowand caught the gleam of sunlight outside. He looked out, and saw oncemore that sunlit cloud floor he had seen first from the balloon, and theships of the German air-fleet rising one by one from the white, as fishmight rise and become visible from deep water. He stared for a momentand then ran out to the little gallery to see this wonder better. Belowwas cloudland and storm, a great drift of tumbled weather going hardaway to the north-east, and the air about him was clear and coldand serene save for the faintest chill breeze and a rare, driftingsnow-flake. Throb, throb, throb, throb, went the engines in thestillness. That huge herd of airships rising one after another hadan effect of strange, portentous monsters breaking into an altogetherunfamiliar world. 

Either there was no news of the naval battle that morning, or the Princekept to himself whatever came until past midday. Then the bulletins camewith a rush, bulletins that made the lieutenant wild with excitement. 

"Barbarossa disabled and sinking, " he cried. "Gott im Himmel! Der alteBarbarossa! Aber welch ein braver krieger!"

He walked about the swinging cabin, and for a time he was wholly German. 

Then he became English again. "Think of it, Smallways! The old ship wekept so clean and tidy! All smashed about, and the iron flying aboutin fragments, and the chaps one knew--Gott!--flying about too! Scaldingwater squirting, fire, and the smash, smash of the guns! They smashwhen you're near! Like everything bursting to pieces! Wool won't stopit--nothing! And me up here--so near and so far! Der alte Barbarossa!"

"Any other ships?" asked Smallways, presently. 

"Gott! Yes! We've lost the Karl der Grosse, our best and biggest. Rundown in the night by a British liner that blundered into the fightingin trying to blunder out. They're fighting in a gale. The liner'safloat with her nose broken, sagging about! There never was such abattle!--never before! Good ships and good men on both sides, --and astorm and the night and the dawn and all in the open ocean full steamahead! No stabbing! No submarines! Guns and shooting! Half our ships wedon't hear of any more, because their masts are shot away. Latitude, 30 degrees 40 minutes N. --longitude, 40 degrees 30 minutes W. --where'sthat?"

He routed out his map again, and stared at it with eyes that did notsee. 

"Der alte Barbarossa! I can't get it out of my head--with shells in herengine-room, and the fires flying out of her furnaces, and the stokersand engineers scalded and dead. Men I've messed with, Smallways--menI've talked to close! And they've had their day at last! And it wasn'tall luck for them!

"Disabled and sinking! I suppose everybody can't have all the luck in abattle. Poor old Schneider! I bet he gave 'em something back!"

So it was the news of the battle came filtering through to them all thatmorning. The Americans had lost a second ship, name unknown; the Hermannhad been damaged in covering the Barbarossa.... Kurt fretted like animprisoned animal about the airship, now going up to the forward galleryunder the eagle, now down into the swinging gallery, now poring over hismaps. He infected Smallways with a sense of the immediacy of this battlethat was going on just over the curve of the earth. But when Bert wentdown to the gallery the world was empty and still, a clear inky-bluesky above and a rippled veil of still, thin sunlit cirrus below, throughwhich one saw a racing drift of rain-cloud, and never a glimpse of sea. Throb, throb, throb, throb, went the engines, and the long, undulatingwedge of airships hurried after the flagship like a flight of swansafter their leader. Save for the quiver of the engines it was asnoiseless 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. 

4

As the afternoon wore on the lower weather abated, and the sea becameintermittently visible again. The air-fleet dropped slowly to the middleair, and towards sunset they had a glimpse of the disabled Barbarossafar away to the east. Smallways heard men hurrying along the passage, and was drawn out to the gallery, where he found nearly a dozen officerscollected and scrutinising the helpless ruins of the battleship throughfield-glasses. Two other vessels stood by her, one an exhausted petroltank, very high out of the water, and the other a converted liner. Kurtwas at the end of the gallery, a little apart from the others. 

"Gott!" he said at last, lowering his binocular, "it is like seeingan old friend with his nose cut off--waiting to be finished. DerBarbarossa!"

With a sudden impulse he handed his glass to Bert, who had peeredbeneath his hands, ignored by every one, seeing the three ships merelyas three brown-black lines upon the sea. 

Never had Bert seen the like of that magnified slightly hazy imagebefore. It was not simply a battered ironclad that wallowed helpless, it was a mangled ironclad. It seemed wonderful she still floated. Herpowerful engines had been her ruin. In the long chase of the nightshe had got out of line with her consorts, and nipped in between theSusquehanna and the Kansas City. They discovered her proximity, droppedback until she was nearly broadside on to the former battleship, andsignalled up the Theodore Roosevelt and the little Monitor. As dawnbroke she had found herself hostess of a circle. The fight had notlasted five minutes before the appearance of the Hermann to the east, and immediately after of the Furst Bismarck in the west, forced theAmericans to leave her, but in that time they had smashed her ironto rags. They had vented the accumulated tensions of their hard day'sretreat upon her. As Bert saw her, she seemed a mere metal-worker'sfantasy of frozen metal writhings. He could not tell part from part ofher, except by its position. 

"Gott!" murmured Kurt, taking the glasses Bert restored to him--"Gott!Da waren Albrecht--der gute Albrecht und der alte Zimmermann--und vonRosen!"

Long after the Barbarosa had been swallowed up in the twilight anddistance he remained on the gallery peering through his glasses, andwhen he came back to his cabin he was unusually silent and thoughtful. 

"This is a rough game, Smallways, " he said at last--"this war is a roughgame. Somehow one sees it different after a thing like that. Many menthere were worked to make that Barbarossa, and there were men in it--onedoes not meet the like of them every day. Albrecht--there was a mannamed Albrecht--played the zither and improvised; I keep on wonderingwhat has happened to him. He and I--we were very close friends, afterthe German fashion. "

Smallways woke--the next night to discover the cabin in darkness, adraught blowing through it, and Kurt talking to himself in German. Hecould see him dimly by the window, which he had unscrewed and opened, peering down. That cold, clear, attenuated light which is not so muchlight as a going of darkness, which casts inky shadows and so oftenheralds the dawn in the high air, was on his face. 

"What's the row?" said Bert. 

"Shut up!" said the lieutenant. "Can't you hear?"

Into the stillness came the repeated heavy thud of guns, one, two, apause, then three in quick succession. 

"Gaw!" said Bert--"guns!" and was instantly at the lieutenant's side. The airship was still very high and the sea below was masked by a thinveil of clouds. The wind had fallen, and Bert, following Kurt's pointingfinger, saw dimly through the colourless veil first a red glow, thena quick red flash, and then at a little distance from it another. Theywere, it seemed for a while, silent flashes, and seconds after, whenone had ceased to expect them, came the belated thuds--thud, thud. Kurtspoke in German, very quickly. 

A bugle call rang through the airship. 

Kurt sprang to his feet, saying something in an excited tone, stillusing German, and went to the door. 

"I say! What's up?" cried Bert. "What's that?"

The lieutenant stopped for an instant in the doorway, dark against thelight passage. "You stay where you are, Smallways. You keep there and donothing. We're going into action, " he explained, and vanished. 

Bert's heart began to beat rapidly. He felt himself poised over thefighting vessels far below. In a moment, were they to drop like a hawkstriking a bird? "Gaw!" he whispered at last, in awestricken tones. 

Thud!... Thud! He discovered far away a second ruddy flare flashing gunsback at the first. He perceived some difference on the Vaterland forwhich he could not account, and then he realised that the engineshad slowed to an almost inaudible beat. He stuck his head out of thewindow--it was a tight fit--and saw in the bleak air the other airshipsslowed down to a scarcely perceptible motion. 

A second bugle sounded, was taken up faintly from ship to ship. Out wentthe lights; the fleet became dim, dark bulks against an intense blue skythat still retained an occasional star. For a long time they hung, foran interminable time it seemed to him, and then began the sound of airbeing pumped into the balloonette, and slowly, slowly the Vaterland sankdown towards the clouds. 

He craned his neck, but he could not see if the rest of the fleet wasfollowing them; the overhang of the gas-chambers intervened. Therewas something that stirred his imagination deeply in that stealthy, noiseless descent. The obscurity deepened for a time, the last fadingstar 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 wouldseem unobserved, just beneath a drifting stratum of cloud, a thousandfeet, perhaps, over the battle below. 

In the night the struggling naval battle and retreat had entered upon anew phase. The Americans had drawn together the ends of the flying lineskilfully and dexterously, until at last it was a column and well to thesouth of the lax sweeping pursuit of the Germans. Then in the darknessbefore the dawn they had come about and steamed northward in close orderwith the idea of passing through the German battle-line and fallingupon the flotilla that was making for New York in support of the Germanair-fleet. Much had altered since the first contact of the fleets. Bythis time the American admiral, O'Connor, was fully informed of theexistence of the airships, and he was no longer vitally concerned forPanama, since the submarine flotilla was reported arrived there from KeyWest, and the Delaware and Abraham Lincoln, two powerful and entirelymodern ships, were already at Rio Grande, on the Pacific side of thecanal. His manoeuvre was, however, delayed by a boiler explosion onboard the Susquehanna, and dawn found this ship in sight of and indeedso close to the Bremen and Weimar that they instantly engaged. There wasno alternative to her abandonment but a fleet engagement. O'Connor chosethe latter course. It was by no means a hopeless fight. The Germans, though much more numerous and powerful than the Americans, were in adispersed line measuring nearly forty-five miles from end to end, andthere were many chances that before they could gather in for the fightthe column of seven Americans would have ripped them from end to end. 

The day broke dim and overcast, and neither the Bremen nor the Weimarrealised they had to deal with more than the Susquehanna until the wholecolumn drew out from behind her at a distance of a mile or less andbore down on them. This was the position of affairs when the Vaterlandappeared in the sky. The red glow Bert had seen through the column ofclouds came from the luckless Susquehanna; she lay almost immediatelybelow, burning fore and aft, but still fighting two of her guns andsteaming slowly southward. The Bremen and the Weimar, both hit inseveral places, were going west by south and away from her. The Americanfleet, headed by the Theodore Roosevelt, was crossing behind them, pounding them in succession, steaming in between them and the big modernFurst Bismarck, which was coming up from the west. To Bert, however, the names of all these ships were unknown, and for a considerable timeindeed, misled by the direction in which the combatants were moving, heimagined the Germans to be Americans and the Americans Germans. He sawwhat appeared to him to be a column of six battleships pursuing threeothers who were supported by a newcomer, until the fact that the Bremenand 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 anticipationof the instant impact. He saw these ironclads, too, not in profile, as he was accustomed to see ironclads in pictures, but in plan andcuriously 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 transparentflashes and the broadside activity of the quick-firers, were the chieffacts 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 thewater, having explosive engines, which now for some reason made anunwonted muttering roar. Because of their steam propulsion, the Americanships were larger and with a more graceful outline. He saw all theseforeshortened ships rolling considerably and fighting their guns overa sea of huge low waves and under the cold, explicit light of dawn. Thewhole spectacle waved slowly with the long rhythmic rising and beat ofthe airship. 

At first only the Vaterland of all the flying fleet appeared upon thescene below. She hovered high, over the Theodore Roosevelt, keepingpace with the full speed of that ship. From that ship she must havebeen intermittently visible through the drifting clouds. The rest of theGerman fleet remained above the cloud canopy at a height of six or seventhousand feet, communicating with the flagship by wireless telegraphy, but risking no exposure to the artillery below. 

It is doubtful at what particular time the unlucky Americans realisedthe presence of this new factor in the fight. No account now survives oftheir experience. We have to imagine as well as we can what it must havebeen to a battled-strained sailor suddenly glancing upward to discoverthat huge long silent shape overhead, vaster than any battleship, andtrailing now from its hinder quarter a big German flag. Presently, asthe sky cleared, more of such ships appeared in the blue through thedissolving clouds, and more, all disdainfully free of guns or armour, all flying fast to keep pace with the running fight below. 

From first to last no gun whatever was fired at the Vaterland, and onlya few rifle shots. It was a mere adverse stroke of chance that she hada man killed aboard her. Nor did she take any direct share in the fightuntil the end. She flew above the doomed American fleet while the Princeby wireless telegraphy directed the movements of her consorts. Meanwhilethe Vogel-stern and Preussen, each with half a dozen drachenflieger intow, went full speed ahead and then dropped through the clouds, perhapsfive miles ahead of the Americans. The Theodore Roosevelt let fly atonce with the big guns in her forward barbette, but the shells burst farbelow the Vogel-stern, and forthwith a dozen single-man drachenfliegerwere swooping down to make their attack. 

Bert, craning his neck through the cabin port-hole, saw the whole ofthat incident, that first encounter of aeroplane and ironclad. He sawthe queer German drachenflieger, with their wide flat wings and squarebox-shaped heads, their wheeled bodies, and their single-man riders, soar down the air like a flight of birds. "Gaw!" he said. One to theright pitched extravagantly, shot steeply up into the air, burst with aloud report, and flamed down into the sea; another plunged nose forwardinto the water and seemed to fly to pieces as it hit the waves. Hesaw little men on the deck of the Theodore Roosevelt below, menforeshortened in plan into mere heads and feet, running out preparingto shoot at the others. Then the foremost flying-machine was rushingbetween Bert and the American's deck, and then bang! came the thunderof its bomb flung neatly at the forward barbette, and a thin littlecrackling of rifle shots in reply. Whack, whack, whack, went thequick-firing guns of the Americans' battery, and smash came an answeringshell from the Furst Bismarck. Then a second and third flying-machinepassed between Bert and the American ironclad, dropping bombs also, anda fourth, its rider hit by a bullet, reeled down and dashed itself topieces and exploded between the shot-torn funnels, blowing them apart. Bert had a momentary glimpse of a little black creature jumping from thecrumpling frame of the flying-machine, hitting the funnel, and fallinglimply, to be instantly caught and driven to nothingness by the blazeand rush of the explosion. 

Smash! came a vast explosion in the forward part of the flagship, and ahuge piece of metalwork seemed to lift out of her and dump itselfinto the sea, dropping men and leaving a gap into which a promptdrachenflieger planted a flaring bomb. And then for an instant Bertperceived only too clearly in the growing, pitiless light a number ofminute, convulsively active animalcula scorched and struggling in theTheodore Roosevelt's foaming wake. What were they? Not men--surely notmen? Those drowning, mangled little creatures tore with their clutchingfingers at Bert's soul. "Oh, Gord!" he cried, "Oh, Gord!" almostwhimpering. He looked again and they had gone, and the black stem of theAndrew Jackson, a little disfigured by the sinking Bremen's lastshot, was parting the water that had swallowed them into two neatlysymmetrical waves. For some moments sheer blank horror blinded Bert tothe destruction below. 

Then, with an immense rushing sound, bearing as it were a stragglingvolley of crashing minor explosions on its back, the Susquehanna, threemiles and more now to the east, blew up and vanished abruptly in aboiling, steaming welter. For a moment nothing was to be seen buttumbled water, and--then there came belching up from below, with immensegulping noises, eructations of steam and air and petrol and fragments ofcanvas and woodwork and men. 

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 ofone was floating abeam of the Monitor, the rest had passed, droppingbombs down the American column; several were in the water and apparentlyuninjured, and three or four were still in the air and coming roundnow in a wide circle to return to their mother airships. The Americanironclads 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 betweenher and the still fresh and vigorous Furst Bismarck to intercept andmeet the latter's fire. Away to the west the Hermann and the Germanicushad appeared and were coming into action. 

In the pause, after the Susquehanna's disaster Bert became aware of atrivial sound like the noise of an ill-greased, ill-hung door that fallsajar--the sound of the men in the Furst Bismarck cheering. 

And in that pause in the uproar too, the sun rose, the dark watersbecame luminously blue, and a torrent of golden light irradiated theworld. It came like a sudden smile in a scene of hate and terror. Thecloud veil had vanished as if by magic, and the whole immensity of theGerman air-fleet was revealed in the sky; the air-fleet stooping nowupon its prey. 

"Whack-bang, whack-bang, " the guns resumed, but ironclads were not builtto fight the zenith, and the only hits the Americans scored were a fewlucky chances in a generally ineffectual rifle fire. Their column wasnow badly broken, the Susquehanna had gone, the Theodore Roosevelt hadfallen astern out of the line, with her forward guns disabled, in a heapof wreckage, and the Monitor was in some grave trouble. These two hadceased fire altogether, and so had the Bremen and Weimar, all four shipslying within shot of each other in an involuntary truce and with theirrespective flags still displayed. Only four American ships now, with theAndrew Jackson readings kept to the south-easterly course. And the FurstBismarck, the Hermann, and the Germanicus steamed parallel to them anddrew ahead of them, fighting heavily. The Vaterland rose slowly in theair in preparation for the concluding act of the drama. 

Then, falling into place one behind the other, a string of a dozenairships dropped with unhurrying swiftness down the air in pursuit ofthe American fleet. They kept at a height of two thousand feet or moreuntil they were over and a little in advance of the rearmost ironclad, and then stooped swiftly down into a fountain of bullets, and going justa little faster than the ship below, pelted her thinly protected deckswith bombs until they became sheets of detonating flame. So the airshipspassed one after the other along the American column as it soughtto keep up its fight with the Furst Bismarck, the Hermann, and theGermanicus, and each airship added to the destruction and confusionits predecessor had made. The American gunfire ceased, except for a fewheroic shots, but they still steamed on, obstinately unsubdued, bloody, battered, and wrathfully resistant, spitting bullets at the airshipsand unmercifully pounded by the German ironclads. But now Bert had butintermittent glimpses of them between the nearer bulks of the airshipsthat assailed them.... 

It struck Bert suddenly that the whole battle was receding and growingsmall and less thunderously noisy. The Vaterland was rising in the air, steadily and silently, until the impact of the guns no longer smoteupon the heart but came to the ear dulled by distance, until the foursilenced ships to the eastward were little distant things: but werethere four? Bert now could see only three of those floating, blackened, and smoking rafts of ruin against the sun. But the Bremen had two boatsout; the Theodore Roosevelt was also dropping boats to where the driftof minute objects struggled, rising and falling on the big, broadAtlantic waves.... The Vaterland was no longer following the fight. Thewhole of that hurrying tumult drove away to the south-eastward, growingsmaller and less audible as it passed. One of the airships lay onthe water burning, a remote monstrous fount of flames, and far in thesouth-west appeared first one and then three other German ironcladshurrying in support of their consorts.... 

5

Steadily the Vaterland soared, and the air-fleet soared with her andcame round to head for New York, and the battle became a little thingfar away, an incident before the breakfast. It dwindled to a string ofdark shapes and one smoking yellow flare that presently became a mereindistinct smear upon the vast horizon and the bright new day, that wasat last altogether lost to sight... 

So it was that Bert Smallways saw the first fight of the airship and thelast fight of those strangest things in the whole history of war:the ironclad battleships, which began their career with the floatingbatteries of the Emperor Napoleon III in the Crimean war and lasted, with an enormous expenditure of human energy and resources, for seventyyears. In that space of time the world produced over twelve thousandfive hundred of these strange monsters, in schools, in types, in series, each larger and heavier and more deadly than its predecessors. Each inits turn was hailed as the last birth of time, most in their turn weresold for old iron. Only about five per cent of them ever fought in abattle. Some foundered, some went ashore, and broke up, several rammedone another by accident and sank. The lives of countless men were spentin their service, the splendid genius, and patience of thousands ofengineers and inventors, wealth and material beyond estimating; to theiraccount we must put, stunted and starved lives on land, millions ofchildren sent to toil unduly, innumerable opportunities of fine livingundeveloped and lost. Money had to be found for them at any cost--thatwas the law of a nation's existence during that strange time. Surelythey were the weirdest, most destructive and wasteful megatheria in thewhole history of mechanical invention. 

And then cheap things of gas and basket-work made an end of themaltogether, smiting out of the sky!... 

Never before had Bert Smallways seen pure destruction, never had herealised the mischief and waste of war. His startled mind rose to theconception; this also is in life. Out of all this fierce torrent ofsensation one impression rose and became cardinal--the impression of themen of the Theodore Roosevelt who had struggled in the water after theexplosion of the first bomb. "Gaw!" he said at the memory; "it might'ave been me and Grubb!... I suppose you kick about and get the water inyour mouf. I don't suppose it lasts long. "

He became anxious to see how Kurt was affected by these things. Also heperceived he was hungry. He hesitated towards the door of the cabin andpeeped out into the passage. Down forward, near the gangway to the men'smess, stood a little group of air sailors looking at something thatwas hidden from him in a recess. One of them was in the light diver'scostume Bert had already seen in the gas chamber turret, and he wasmoved to walk along and look at this person more closely and examine thehelmet he carried under his arm. But he forgot about the helmet when hegot to the recess, because there he found lying on the floor the deadbody of the boy who had been killed by a bullet from the TheodoreRoosevelt. 

Bert had not observed that any bullets at all had reached the Vaterlandor, indeed, imagined himself under fire. He could not understand for atime what had killed the lad, and no one explained to him. 

The boy lay just as he had fallen and died, with his jacket torn andscorched, his shoulder-blade smashed and burst away from his body andall the left side of his body ripped and rent. There was much blood. The sailors stood listening to the man with the helmet, who madeexplanations and pointed to the round bullet hole in the floor and thesmash in the panel of the passage upon which the still vicious missilehad spent the residue of its energy. All the faces were grave andearnest: they were the faces of sober, blond, blue-eyed men accustomedto obedience and an orderly life, to whom this waste, wet, painful thingthat had been a comrade came almost as strangely as it did to Bert. 

A peal of wild laughter sounded down the passage in the direction of thelittle gallery and something spoke--almost shouted--in German, in tonesof exultation. 

Other voices at a lower, more respectful pitch replied. 

"Der Prinz, " said a voice, and all the men became stiffer and lessnatural. Down the passage appeared a group of figures, Lieutenant Kurtwalking in front carrying a packet of papers. 

He stopped point blank when he saw the thing in the recess, and hisruddy face went white. 

"So!" said he in surprise. 

The Prince was following him, talking over his shoulder to VonWinterfeld and the Kapitan. 

"Eh?" he said to Kurt, stopping in mid-sentence, and followed thegesture of Kurt's hand. He glared at the crumpled object in the recessand seemed to think for a moment. 

He made a slight, careless gesture towards the boy's body and turned tothe Kapitan. 

"Dispose of that, " he said in German, and passed on, finishing hissentence to Von Winterfeld in the same cheerful tone in which it hadbegun. 

6

The deep impression of helplessly drowning men that Bert had broughtfrom the actual fight in the Atlantic mixed itself up inextricably withthat of the lordly figure of Prince Karl Albert gesturing aside the deadbody of the Vaterland sailor. Hitherto he had rather liked the idea ofwar as being a jolly, smashing, exciting affair, something like aBank Holiday rag on a large scale, and on the whole agreeable andexhilarating. Now he knew it a little better. 

The next day there was added to his growing disillusionment a thirdugly impression, trivial indeed to describe, a mere necessary everydayincident of a state of war, but very distressing to his urbanisedimagination. One writes "urbanised" to express the distinctivegentleness of the period. It was quite peculiar to the crowded townsmenof that time, and different altogether from the normal experience of anypreceding age, that they never saw anything killed, never encountered, save through the mitigating media of book or picture, the fact of lethalviolence that underlies all life. Three times in his existence, andthree times only, had Bert seen a dead human being, and he had neverassisted at the killing of anything bigger than a new-born kitten. 

The incident that gave him his third shock was the execution of oneof the men on the Adler for carrying a box of matches. The case wasa flagrant one. The man had forgotten he had it upon him when comingaboard. Ample notice had been given to every one of the gravity of thisoffence, and notices appeared at numerous points all over the airships. The man's defence was that he had grown so used to the notices andhad been so preoccupied with his work that he hadn't applied them tohimself; he pleaded, in his defence, what is indeed in military affairsanother serious crime, inadvertency. He was tried by his captain, andthe sentence confirmed by wireless telegraphy by the Prince, and it wasdecided to make his death an example to the whole fleet. "The Germans, "the Prince declared, "hadn't crossed the Atlantic to go wool gathering. "And in order that this lesson in discipline and obedience might bevisible to every one, it was determined not to electrocute or drown buthang the offender. 

Accordingly the air-fleet came clustering round the flagship like carpin a pond at feeding time. The Adler hung at the zenith immediatelyalongside the flagship. The whole crew of the Vaterland assembledupon the hanging gallery; the crews of the other airships manned theair-chambers, that is to say, clambered up the outer netting to theupper sides. The officers appeared upon the machine-gun platforms. Bertthought it an altogether stupendous sight, looking down, as he was, uponthe entire fleet. Far off below two steamers on the rippled blue water, one British and the other flying the American flag, seemed the minutestobjects, and marked the scale. They were immensely distant. Bert stoodon the gallery, curious to see the execution, but uncomfortable, becausethat terrible blond Prince was within a dozen feet of him, glaringterribly, with his arms folded, and his heels together in militaryfashion. 

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 mightbe hiding matches or contemplating any kindred disobedience. Bertsaw the man standing, a living, reluctant man, no doubt scared andrebellious enough in his heart, but outwardly erect and obedient, onthe lower gallery of the Adler about a hundred yards away. Then they hadthrust him overboard. 

Down he fell, hands and feet extending, until with a jerk he was at theend of the rope. Then he ought to have died and swung edifyingly, butinstead a more terrible thing happened; his head came right off, anddown the body went spinning to the sea, feeble, grotesque, fantastic, with the head racing it in its fall. 

"Ugh!" said Bert, clutching the rail before him, and a sympathetic gruntcame from several of the men beside him. 

"So!" said the Prince, stiffer and sterner, glared for some seconds, then turned to the gang way up into the airship. 

For a long time Bert remained clinging to the railing of the gallery. Hewas almost physically sick with the horror of this trifling incident. He found it far more dreadful than the battle. He was indeed a verydegenerate, latter-day, civilised person. 

Late that afternoon Kurt came into the cabin and found him curled upon his locker, and looking very white and miserable. Kurt had also lostsomething of his pristine freshness. 

"Sea-sick?" he asked. 

"No!"

"We ought to reach New York this evening. There's a good breeze comingup under our tails. Then we shall see things. "

Bert did not answer. 

Kurt opened out folding chair and table, and rustled for a time withhis maps. Then he fell thinking darkly. He roused himself presently, andlooked at his companion. "What's the matter?" he said. 

"Nothing!"

Kurt stared threateningly. "What's the matter?"

"I saw them kill that chap. I saw that flying-machine man hit thefunnels of the big ironclad. I saw that dead chap in the passage. I seentoo much smashing and killing lately. That's the matter. I don't likeit. I didn't know war was this sort of thing. I'm a civilian. I don'tlike it. "

"_I_ don't like it, " said Kurt. "By Jove, no!"

"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 upin that balloon at first, but all this looking down and floating overthings and smashing up people, it's getting on my nerves. See?"

"It'll have to get off again.... "

Kurt thought. "You're not the only one. The men are all getting strungup. The flying--that's just flying. Naturally it makes one a littleswimmy in the head at first. As for the killing, we've got to beblooded; that's all. We're tame, civilised men. And we've got to getblooded. I suppose there's not a dozen men on the ship who've reallyseen bloodshed. Nice, quiet, law-abiding Germans they've been so far.... Here they are--in for it. They're a bit squeamy now, but you wait tillthey've got their hands in. "

He reflected. "Everybody's getting a bit strung up, " he said. 

He turned again to his maps. Bert sat crumpled up in the corner, apparently heedless of him. For some time both kept silence. 

"What did the Prince want to go and 'ang that chap for?" asked Bert, suddenly. 

"That was all right, " said Kurt, "that was all right. QUITE right. Herewere the orders, plain as the nose on your face, and here was that foolgoing about with matches--"

"Gaw! I shan't forget that bit in a 'urry, " said Bert irrelevantly. 

Kurt did not answer him. He was measuring their distance from New Yorkand speculating. "Wonder what the American aeroplanes are like?" hesaid. "Something like our drachenflieger.... We shall know by this timeto-morrow.... I wonder what we shall know? I wonder. Suppose, after all, they put up a fight.... Rum sort of fight!"

He whistled softly and mused. Presently he fretted out of the cabin, andlater Bert found him in the twilight upon the swinging platform, staringahead, and speculating about the things that might happen on the morrow. Clouds veiled the sea again, and the long straggling wedge of air-shipsrising and falling as they flew seemed like a flock of strange newbirths in a Chaos that had neither earth nor water but only mist andsky. 

CHAPTER VI. HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK

1

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 wickedestcity the world had ever seen. She was the supreme type of the City ofthe Scientific Commercial Age; she displayed its greatness, its power, its ruthless anarchic enterprise, and its social disorganisation moststrikingly and completely. She had long ousted London from her pride ofplace 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 tothe apocalyptic cities of the ancient prophets. She sat drinking up thewealth of a continent as Rome once drank the wealth of the Mediterraneanand Babylon the wealth of the east. In her streets one found theextremes of magnificence and misery, of civilisation and disorder. Inone quarter, palaces of marble, laced and, crowned with light and flameand flowers, towered up into her marvellous twilights beautiful, beyonddescription; in another, a black and sinister polyglot populationsweltered in indescribable congestion in warrens, and excavations beyondthe power and knowledge of government. Her vice, her crime, her lawalike were inspired by a fierce and terrible energy, and like the greatcities of mediaeval Italy, her ways were dark and adventurous withprivate war. 

It was the peculiar shape of Manhattan Island, pressed in by arms of thesea on either side, and incapable of comfortable expansion, except alonga narrow northward belt, that first gave the New York architects theirbias for extreme vertical dimensions. Every need was lavishly suppliedthem--money, material, labour; only space was restricted. To begin, therefore, they built high perforce. But to do so was to discover awhole new world of architectural beauty, of exquisite ascendant lines, and long after the central congestion had been relieved by tunnelsunder the sea, four colossal bridges over the east river, and a dozenmono-rail cables east and west, the upward growth went on. In many waysNew York and her gorgeous plutocracy repeated Venice in the magnificenceof her architecture, painting, metal-work and sculpture, for example, in the grim intensity of her political method, in her maritime andcommercial ascendancy. But she repeated no previous state at all in thelax disorder of her internal administration, a laxity that made vastsections of her area lawless beyond precedent, so that it was possiblefor whole districts to be impassable, while civil war raged betweenstreet and street, and for Alsatias to exist in her midst in which theofficial police never set foot. She was an ethnic whirlpool. The flagsof all nations flew in her harbour, and at the climax, the yearlycoming and going overseas numbered together upwards of two million humanbeings. To Europe she was America, to America she was the gateway ofthe world. But to tell the story of New York would be to write a socialhistory of the world; saints and martyrs, dreamers and scoundrels, thetraditions of a thousand races and a thousand religions, went to hermaking and throbbed and jostled in her streets. And over all thattorrential 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 onthe other the base jealousy the individual self-seeker feels towards thecommon purpose of the State. 

For many generations New York had taken no heed of war, save as a thingthat happened far away, that affected prices and supplied the newspaperswith exciting headlines and pictures. The New Yorkers felt perhaps evenmore certainly than the English had done that war in their own landwas an impossible thing. In that they shared the delusion of all NorthAmerica. They felt as secure as spectators at a bullfight; they riskedtheir money perhaps on the result, but that was all. And such ideas ofwar as the common Americans possessed were derived from the limited, picturesque, adventurous war of the past. They saw war as they sawhistory, through an iridescent mist, deodorised, scented indeed, withall its essential cruelties tactfully hidden away. They were inclined toregret it as something ennobling, to sigh that it could no longer comeinto their own private experience. They read with interest, if not withavidity, of their new guns, of their immense and still more immenseironclads, of their incredible and still more incredible explosives, butjust what these tremendous engines of destruction might mean for theirpersonal lives never entered their heads. They did not, so far as onecan judge from their contemporary literature, think that they meantanything to their personal lives at all. They thought America was safeamidst all this piling up of explosives. They cheered the flag by habitand tradition, they despised other nations, and whenever there was aninternational difficulty they were intensely patriotic, that is tosay, they were ardently against any native politician who did not say, threaten, and do harsh and uncompromising things to the antagonistpeople. They were spirited to Asia, spirited to Germany, so spirited toGreat Britain that the international attitude of the mother country toher great daughter was constantly compared in contemporary caricature tothat between a hen-pecked husband and a vicious young wife. And for therest, they all went about their business and pleasure as if war had diedout with the megatherium.... 

And then suddenly, into a world peacefully busied for the most part uponarmaments and the perfection of explosives, war came; came the shock ofrealising that the guns were going off, that the masses of inflammablematerial all over the world were at last ablaze. 

2

The immediate effect upon New York of the sudden onset of war was merelyto intensify her normal vehemence. 

The newspapers and magazines that fed the American mind--for books uponthis impatient continent had become simply material for the energyof collectors--were instantly a coruscation of war pictures and ofheadlines that rose like rockets and burst like shells. To the normalhigh-strung energy of New York streets was added a touch of war-fever. Great crowds assembled, more especially in the dinner hour, in MadisonSquare about the Farragut monument, to listen to and cheer patrioticspeeches, and a veritable epidemic of little flags and buttons sweptthrough these great torrents of swiftly moving young people, who pouredinto 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 wasdangerous not to wear a war button. The splendid music-halls of the timesank every topic in patriotism and evolved scenes of wild enthusiasm, strong men wept at the sight of the national banner sustained by thewhole strength of the ballet, and special searchlights and illuminationsamazed the watching angels. The churches re-echoed the nationalenthusiasm in graver key and slower measure, and the aerial and navalpreparations on the East River were greatly incommoded by the multitudeof excursion steamers which thronged, helpfully cheering, about them. The trade in small-arms was enormously stimulated, and many overwroughtcitizens found an immediate relief for their emotions in letting offfireworks of a more or less heroic, dangerous, and national characterin the public streets. Small children's air-balloons of the latest modelattached to string became a serious check to the pedestrian in CentralPark. And amidst scenes of indescribable emotion the Albany legislaturein permanent session, and with a generous suspension of rules andprecedents, passed through both Houses the long-disputed Bill foruniversal military service in New York State. 

Critics of the American character are disposed to consider--that upto the actual impact of the German attack the people of New York dealtaltogether too much with the war as if it was a political demonstration. Little or no damage, they urge, was done to either the German orJapanese forces by the wearing of buttons, the waving of small flags, the fireworks, or the songs. They forgot that, under the conditions ofwarfare a century of science had brought about, the non-military sectionof the population could do no serious damage in any form to theirenemies, and that there was no reason, therefore, why they should not doas they did. The balance of military efficiency was shifting back fromthe many to the few, from the common to the specialised. 

The days when the emotional infantryman decided battles had passed byfor ever. War had become a matter of apparatus of special trainingand skill of the most intricate kind. It had become undemocratic. Andwhatever the value of the popular excitement, there can be no denyingthat the small regular establishment of the United States Government, confronted by this totally unexpected emergency of an armed invasionfrom Europe, acted with vigour, science, and imagination. They weretaken by surprise so far as the diplomatic situation was concerned, and their equipment for building either navigables or aeroplanes wascontemptible in comparison with the huge German parks. Still they set towork at once to prove to the world that the spirit that had created theMonitor and the Southern submarines of 1864 was not dead. The chief ofthe aeronautic establishment near West Point was Cabot Sinclair, andhe allowed himself but one single moment of the posturing that was souniversal in that democratic time. "We have chosen our epitaphs, "he said to a reporter, "and we are going to have, 'They did all theycould. ' Now run away!"

The curious thing is that they did all do all they could; there is noexception known. Their only defect indeed was a defect of style. One ofthe most striking facts historically about this war, and the one thatmakes the complete separation that had arisen between the methodsof warfare and the necessity of democratic support, is the effectualsecrecy of the Washington authorities about their airships. They didnot bother to confide a single fact of their preparations to the public. They did not even condescend to talk to Congress. They burked andsuppressed every inquiry. The war was fought by the President and theSecretaries of State in an entirely autocratic manner. Such publicity asthey sought was merely to anticipate and prevent inconvenient agitationto defend particular points. They realised that the chief danger inaerial warfare from an excitable and intelligent public would be aclamour for local airships and aeroplanes to defend local interests. This, with such resources as they possessed, might lead to a fataldivision and distribution of the national forces. Particularly theyfeared that they might be forced into a premature action to defendNew York. They realised with prophetic insight that this would be theparticular advantage the Germans would seek. So they took great painsto direct the popular mind towards defensive artillery, and to divert itfrom any thought of aerial battle. Their real preparations they maskedbeneath ostensible ones. There was at Washington a large reserve ofnaval guns, and these were distributed rapidly, conspicuously, and withmuch press attention, among the Eastern cities. They were mounted forthe most part upon hills and prominent crests around the threatenedcentres of population. They were mounted upon rough adaptations of theDoan swivel, which at that time gave the maximum vertical range to aheavy gun. Much of this artillery was still unmounted, and nearly all ofit was unprotected when the German air-fleet reached New York. And downin the crowded streets, when that occurred, the readers of the NewYork papers were regaling themselves with wonderful and wonderfullyillustrated accounts of such matters as:--

THE SECRET OF THE THUNDERBOLT

AGED SCIENTIST PERFECTS ELECTRIC GUN

TO ELECTROCUTE AIRSHIP CREWS BY UPWARD LIGHTNING

WASHINGTON ORDERS FIVE HUNDRED

WAR SECRETARY LODGE DELIGHTED

SAYS THEY WILL SUIT THE GERMANS DOWN TO THE GROUND

PRESIDENT PUBLICLY APPLAUDS THIS MERRY QUIP

3

The German fleet reached New York in advance of the news of the Americannaval disaster. It reached New York in the late afternoon and was firstseen by watchers at Ocean Grove and Long Branch coming swiftly out ofthe southward sea and going away to the northwest. The flagship passedalmost vertically over the Sandy Hook observation station, risingrapidly as it did so, and in a few minutes all New York was vibrating tothe Staten Island guns. 

Several of these guns, and especially that at Giffords and the one onBeacon Hill above Matawan, were remarkably well handled. The former, ata 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 thePrince's forward window was smashed by a fragment. This sudden explosionmade Bert tuck in his head with the celerity of a startled tortoise. Thewhole air-fleet immediately went up steeply to a height of about twelvethousand feet and at that level passed unscathed over the ineffectualguns. The airships lined out as they moved forward into the form of aflattened V, with its apex towards the city, and with the flagship goinghighest at the apex. The two ends of the V passed over Plumfield andJamaica Bay, respectively, and the Prince directed his course a littleto the east of the Narrows, soared over Upper Bay, and came to restover Jersey City in a position that dominated lower New York. Therethe monsters hung, large and wonderful in the evening light, serenelyregardless of the occasional rocket explosions and flashing shell-burstsin the lower air. 

It was a pause of mutual inspection. For a time naive humanity swampedthe conventions of warfare altogether; the interest of the millionsbelow and of the thousands above alike was spectacular. The evening wasunexpectedly fine--only a few thin level bands of clouds at seven oreight thousand feet broke its luminous clarity. The wind had dropped; itwas an evening infinitely peaceful and still. The heavy concussions ofthe distant guns and those incidental harmless pyrotechnics at the levelof the clouds seemed to have as little to do with killing and force, terror and submission, as a salute at a naval review. Below, everypoint of vantage bristled with spectators, the roofs of the toweringbuildings, the public squares, the active ferry boats, and everyfavourable street intersection had its crowds: all the river pierswere dense with people, the Battery Park was solid black with east-sidepopulation, and every position of advantage in Central Park and alongRiverside Drive had its peculiar and characteristic assembly from theadjacent streets. The footways of the great bridges over the East Riverwere also closely packed and blocked. Everywhere shopkeepers had lefttheir shops, men their work, and women and children their homes, to comeout and see the marvel. 

"It beat, " they declared, "the newspapers. "

And from above, many of the occupants of the airships stared with anequal curiosity. No city in the world was ever so finely placed as NewYork, so magnificently cut up by sea and bluff and river, so admirablydisposed to display the tall effects of buildings, the compleximmensities of bridges and mono-railways and feats of engineering. London, Paris, Berlin, were shapeless, low agglomerations beside it. Itsport reached to its heart like Venice, and, like Venice, it was obvious, dramatic, and proud. Seen from above it was alive with crawlingtrains and cars, and at a thousand points it was already breaking intoquivering light. New York was altogether at its best that evening, itssplendid best. 

"Gaw! What a place!" said Bert. 

It was so great, and in its collective effect so pacificallymagnificent, that to make war upon it seemed incongruous beyond measure, like laying siege to the National Gallery or attacking respectablepeople in an hotel dining-room with battle-axe and mail. It was in itsentirety so large, so complex, so delicately immense, that to bring itto the issue of warfare was like driving a crowbar into the mechanismof a clock. And the fish-like shoal of great airships hovering lightand sunlit above, filling the sky, seemed equally remote from the uglyforcefulness of war. To Kurt, to Smallways, to I know not how many moreof the people in the air-fleet came the distinctest apprehension ofthese incompatibilities. But in the head of the Prince Karl Albert werethe vapours of romance: he was a conqueror, and this was the enemy'scity. The greater the city, the greater the triumph. No doubt he had atime of tremendous exultation and sensed beyond all precedent the senseof power that night. 

There came an end at last to that pause. Some wireless communicationshad failed of a satisfactory ending, and fleet and city remembered theywere hostile powers. "Look!" cried the multitude; "look!"

"What are they doing?"

"What?"... Down through the twilight sank five attacking airships, oneto the Navy Yard on East River, one to City Hall, two over the greatbusiness buildings of Wall Street and Lower Broadway, one to theBrooklyn Bridge, dropping from among their fellows through the dangerzone from the distant guns smoothly and rapidly to a safe proximity tothe city masses. At that descent all the cars in the streets stoppedwith dramatic suddenness, and all the lights that had been coming on inthe streets and houses went out again. For the City Hall had awakenedand was conferring by telephone with the Federal command and takingmeasures for defence. The City Hall was asking for airships, refusing tosurrender as Washington advised, and developing into a centre of intenseemotion, of hectic activity. Everywhere and hastily the police began toclear the assembled crowds. "Go to your homes, " they said; and the wordwas passed from mouth to mouth, "There's going to be trouble. " A chillof apprehension ran through the city, and men hurrying in the unwonteddarkness across City Hall Park and Union Square came upon the dim formsof soldiers and guns, and were challenged and sent back. In half anhour New York had passed from serene sunset and gaping admiration to atroubled and threatening twilight. 

The first loss of life occurred in the panic rush from Brooklyn Bridgeas the airship approached it. With the cessation of the traffic anunusual stillness came upon New York, and the disturbing concussions ofthe 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 breakingdown of the Brooklyn Bridge, the rifle fire from the Navy Yard, and thebursting of bombs in Wall Street and the City Hall. New York as a wholecould do nothing, could understand nothing. New York in the darknesspeered and listened to these distant sounds until presently they diedaway as suddenly as they had begun. "What could be happening?" Theyasked it in vain. 

A long, vague period intervened, and people looking out of the windowsof upper rooms discovered the dark hulls of German airships, glidingslowly and noiselessly, quite close at hand. Then quietly the electriclights came on again, and an uproar of nocturnal newsvendors began inthe streets. 

The units of that vast and varied population bought and learnt whathad happened; there had been a fight and New York had hoisted the whiteflag. 

4

The lamentable incidents that followed the surrender of New York seemnow in the retrospect to be but the necessary and inevitable consequenceof the clash of modern appliances and social conditions produced bythe scientific century on the one hand, and the tradition of a crude, romantic patriotism on the other. At first people received the factwith an irresponsible detachment, much as they would have received theslowing down of the train in which they were travelling or the erectionof a public monument by the city to which they belonged. 

"We have surrendered. Dear me! HAVE we?" was rather the manner in whichthe first news was met. They took it in the same spectacular spirit theyhad displayed at the first apparition of the air-fleet. Only slowly wasthis realisation of a capitulation suffused with the flush of passion, only with reflection did they make any personal application. "WE havesurrendered!" came later; "in us America is defeated. " Then they beganto burn and tingle. 

The newspapers, which were issued about one in the morning contained noparticulars of the terms upon which New York had yielded--nor didthey give any intimation of the quality of the brief conflict that hadpreceded the capitulation. The later issues remedied these deficiencies. There came the explicit statement of the agreement to victual theGerman airships, to supply the complement of explosives to replacethose employed in the fight and in the destruction of the North Atlanticfleet, to pay the enormous ransom of forty million dollars, and tosurrender the in the East River. There came, too, longer and longerdescriptions of the smashing up of the City Hall and the Navy Yard, andpeople began to realise faintly what those brief minutes of uproar hadmeant. They read the tale of men blown to bits, of futile soldiersin that localised battle fightingagainst hope amidst an indescribablewreckage, of flags hauled down by weeping men. And these strangenocturnal editions contained also the first brief cables from Europeof the fleet disaster, the North Atlantic fleet for which New York hadalways felt an especial pride and solicitude. Slowly, hour by hour, thecollective consciousness woke up, the tide of patriotic astonishment andhumiliation came floating in. America had come upon disaster; suddenlyNew York discovered herself with amazement giving place to wrathunspeakable, a conquered city under the hand of her conqueror. 

As that fact shaped itself in the public mind, there sprang up, asflames spring up, an angry repudiation. "No!" cried New York, waking inthe dawn. "No! I am not defeated. This is a dream. " Before day brokethe swift American anger was running through all the city, through everysoul in those contagious millions. Before it took action, before it tookshape, the men in the airships could feel the gigantic insurgence ofemotion, as cattle and natural creatures feel, it is said, the comingof an earthquake. The newspapers of the Knype group first gave the thingwords and a formula. "We do not agree, " they said simply. "We have beenbetrayed!" Men took that up everywhere, it passed from mouth to mouth, at every street corner under the paling lights of dawn orators stoodunchecked, calling upon the spirit of America to arise, making theshame a personal reality to every one who heard. To Bert, listening fivehundred feet above, it seemed that the city, which had at first producedonly confused noises, was now humming like a hive of bees--of very angrybees. 

After the smashing of the City Hall and Post-Office, the white flag hadbeen hoisted from a tower of the old Park Row building, and thither hadgone Mayor O'Hagen, urged thither indeed by the terror-stricken propertyowners of lower New York, to negotiate the capitulation with VonWinterfeld. The Vaterland, having dropped the secretary by a ropeladder, remained hovering, circling very slowly above the greatbuildings, old and new, that clustered round City Hall Park, while theHelmholz, which had done the fighting there, rose overhead to a heightof perhaps two thousand feet. So Bert had a near view of all thatoccurred in that central place. The City Hall and Court House, thePost-Office and a mass of buildings on the west side of Broadway, hadbeen 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, hadbeen caught in the destruction of the Post-Office, and a little army ofvolunteers with white badges entered behind the firemen, bringing outthe often still living bodies, for the most part frightfully charred, and carrying them into the big Monson building close at hand. Everywherethe busy firemen were directing their bright streams of water upon thesmouldering masses: their hose lay about the square, and long cordons ofpolice held back the gathering black masses of people, chiefly from theeast side, from these central activities. 

In violent and extraordinary contrast with this scene of destruction, close at hand were the huge newspaper establishments of Park Row. Theywere all alight and working; they had not been abandoned even whilethe actual bomb throwing was going on, and now staff and presses werevehemently active, getting out the story, the immense and dreadful storyof the night, developing comment and, in most cases, spreading the ideaof resistance under the very noses of the airships. For a long time Bertcould not imagine what these callously active offices could be, then hedetected the noise of the presses and emitted his "Gaw!"

Beyond these newspaper buildings again, and partially hidden by thearches of the old Elevated Railway of New York (long since convertedinto a mono-rail), there was another cordon of police and a sort ofencampment of ambulances and doctors, busy with the dead and wounded whohad 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 thingshappening in a big, irregular-shaped pit below him, between cliffs ofhigh building. Northward he looked along the steep canon of Broadway, down whose length at intervals crowds were assembling about excitedspeakers; and when he lifted his eyes he saw the chimneys andcable-stacks and roof spaces of New York, and everywhere now over thesethe watching, debating people clustered, except where the fires ragedand the jets of water flew. Everywhere, too, were flagstaffs devoid offlags; one white sheet drooped and flapped and drooped again over thePark Row buildings. And upon the lurid lights, the festering movementand intense shadows of this strange scene, there was breaking now thecold, impartial dawn. 

For Bert Smallways all this was framed in the frame of the openporthole. It was a pale, dim world outside that dark and tangiblerim. All night he had clutched at that rim, jumped and quivered atexplosions, and watched phantom events. Now he had been high and nowlow; now almost beyond hearing, now flying close to crashings and shoutsand outcries. He had seen airships flying low and swift over darkenedand groaning streets; watched great buildings, suddenly red-lit amidstthe shadows, crumple at the smashing impact of bombs; witnessed forthe first time in his life the grotesque, swift onset of insatiableconflagrations. From it all he felt detached, disembodied. The Vaterlanddid not even fling a bomb; she watched and ruled. Then down they hadcome at last to hover over City Hall Park, and it had crept in upon hismind, chillingly, terrifyingly, that these illuminated black masseswere great offices afire, and that the going to and fro of minute, dimspectres of lantern-lit grey and white was a harvesting of the woundedand the dead. As the light grew clearer he began to understand more andmore what these crumpled black things signified.... 

He had watched hour after hour since first New York had risen out of theblue indistinctness of the landfall. With the daylight he experienced anintolerable fatigue. 

He lifted weary eyes to the pink flush in the sky, yawned immensely, andcrawled back whispering to himself across the cabin to the locker. Hedid not so much lie down upon that as fall upon it and instantly becomeasleep. 

There, hours after, sprawling undignified and sleeping profoundly, Kurt found him, a very image of the democratic mind confronted with theproblems of a time too complex for its apprehension. His face waspale and indifferent, his mouth wide open, and he snored. He snoreddisagreeably. 

Kurt regarded him for a moment with a mild distaste. Then he kicked hisankle. 

"Wake up, " he said to Smallways' stare, "and lie down decent. "

Bert sat up and rubbed his eyes. 

"Any more fightin' yet?" he asked. 

"No, " said Kurt, and sat down, a tired man. 

"Gott!" he cried presently, rubbing his hands over his face, "butI'd like a cold bath! I've been looking for stray bullet holes in theair-chambers all night until now. " He yawned. "I must sleep. You'dbetter clear out, Smallways. I can't stand you here this morning. You'reso infernally ugly and useless. Have you had your rations? No! Well, goin and get 'em, and don't come back. Stick in the gallery.... "

5

So Bert, slightly refreshed by coffee and sleep, resumed his helplessco-operation in the War in the Air. He went down into the little galleryas the lieutenant had directed, and clung to the rail at the extreme endbeyond the look-out man, trying to seem as inconspicuous and harmless afragment of life as possible. 

A wind was rising rather strongly from the south-east. It obliged theVaterland to come about in that direction, and made her roll agreat deal as she went to and fro over Manhattan Island. Away in thenorth-west clouds gathered. The throb-throb of her slow screw workingagainst the breeze was much more perceptible than when she was goingfull speed ahead; and the friction of the wind against the underside ofthe gas-chamber drove a series of shallow ripples along it and madea faint flapping sound like, but fainter than, the beating of ripplesunder the stem of a boat. She was stationed over the temporary City Hallin the Park Row building, and every now and then she would descendto resume communication with the mayor and with Washington. But therestlessness of the Prince would not suffer him to remain for long inany one place. Now he would circle over the Hudson and East River; nowhe would go up high, as if to peer away into the blue distances; once heascended so swiftly and so far that mountain sickness overtook him andthe crew and forced him down again; and Bert shared the dizziness andnausea. 

The swaying view varied with these changes of altitude. Now they wouldbe low and close, and he would distinguish in that steep, unusualperspective, windows, doors, street and sky signs, people and theminutest details, and watch the enigmatical behaviour of crowds andclusters upon the roofs and in the streets; then as they soared thedetails would shrink, the sides of streets draw together, the viewwiden, the people cease to be significant. At the highest the effectwas that of a concave relief map; Bert saw the dark and crowded landeverywhere intersected by shining waters, saw the Hudson River like aspear of silver, and Lower Island Sound like a shield. Even to Bert'sunphilosophical mind the contrast of city below and fleet above pointedan opposition, the opposition of the adventurous American's traditionand character with German order and discipline. Below, the immensebuildings, tremendous and fine as they were, seemed like the giant treesof a jungle fighting for life; their picturesque magnificence was asplanless as the chances of crag and gorge, their casualty enhanced bythe 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 thehorizon, uniform in build and appearance, moving accurately with onepurpose as a pack of wolves will move, distributed with the most preciseand effectual co-operation. 

It dawned upon Bert that hardly a third of the fleet was visible. Theothers had gone upon errands he could not imagine, beyond the compass ofthat great circle of earth and sky. He wondered, but there was no one toask. As the day wore on, about a dozen reappeared in the east withtheir stores replenished from the flotilla and towing a number ofdrachenffieger. Towards afternoon the weather thickened, driving cloudsappeared in the south-west and ran together and seemed to engender moreclouds, and the wind came round into that quarter and blew stronger. Towards the evening the wind became a gale into which the now tossingairships had to beat. 

All that day the Prince was negotiating with Washington, while hisdetached scouts sought far and wide over the Eastern States looking foranything resembling an aeronautic park. A squadron of twenty airshipsdetached overnight had dropped out of the air upon Niagara and washolding the town and power works. 

Meanwhile the insurrectionary movement in the giant city grewuncontrollable. In spite of five great fires already involving manyacres, and spreading steadily, New York was still not satisfied that shewas beaten. 

At first the rebellious spirit below found vent only in isolated shouts, street-crowd speeches, and newspaper suggestions; then it found muchmore definite expression in the appearance in the morning sunlight ofAmerican flags at point after point above the architectural cliffs ofthe city. It is quite possible that in many cases this spirited displayof bunting by a city already surrendered was the outcome of the innocentinformality of the American mind, but it is also undeniable that in manyit was a deliberate indication that the people "felt wicked. "

The German sense of correctitude was deeply shocked by this outbreak. The Graf von Winterfeld immediately communicated with the mayor, andpointed out the irregularity, and the fire look-out stations wereinstructed in the matter. The New York police was speedily hard atwork, and a foolish contest in full swing between impassioned citizensresolved to keep the flag flying, and irritated and worried officersinstructed to pull it down. 

The trouble became acute at last in the streets above ColumbiaUniversity. The captain of the airship watching this quarter seems tohave stooped to lasso and drag from its staff a flag hoisted upon MorganHall. As he did so a volley of rifle and revolver shots was fired fromthe upper windows of the huge apartment building that stands between theUniversity and Riverside Drive. 

Most of these were ineffectual, but two or three perforatedgas-chambers, and one smashed the hand and arm of a man upon the forwardplatform; The sentinel on the lower gallery immediately replied, and themachine gun on the shield of the eagle let fly and promptly stoppedany further shots. The airship rose and signalled the flagship and CityHall, police and militiamen were directed at once to the spot, and thisparticular incident closed. 

But hard upon that came the desperate attempt of a party of youngclubmen from New York, who, inspired by patriotic and adventurousimaginations, slipped off in half a dozen motor-cars to Beacon Hill, andset to work with remarkable vigour to improvise a fort about the Doanswivel gun that had been placed there. They found it still in the handsof the disgusted gunners, who had been ordered to cease fire at thecapitulation, 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 toshow what it could do. Directed by the newcomers, they made a trenchand bank about the mounting of the piece, and constructed flimsyshelter-pits of corrugated iron. 

They were actually loading the gun when they were observed by theairship Preussen and the shell they succeeded in firing before the bombsof the latter smashed them and their crude defences to fragments, burstover the middle gas-chambers of the Bingen, and brought her to earth, disabled, upon Staten Island. She was badly deflated, and dropped amongtrees, over which her empty central gas-bags spread in canopies andfestoons. Nothing, however, had caught fire, and her men were speedilyat work upon her repair. They behaved with a confidence that verged uponindiscretion. While most of them commenced patching the tears of themembrane, half a dozen of them started off for the nearest road insearch of a gas main, and presently found themselves prisoners inthe hands of a hostile crowd. Close at hand was a number of villaresidences, whose occupants speedily developed from an unfriendlycuriosity to aggression. At that time the police control of the largepolyglot population of Staten Island had become very lax, and scarcelya household but had its rifle or pistols and ammunition. These werepresently produced, and after two or three misses, one of the men atwork was hit in the foot. Thereupon the Germans left their sewing andmending, took cover among the trees, and replied. 

The crackling of shots speedily brought the Preussen and Kiel on thescene, and with a few hand grenades they made short work of everyvilla within a mile. A number of non-combatant American men, women, andchildren were killed and the actual assailants driven off. For a timethe repairs went on in peace under the immediate protection of thesetwo airships. Then when they returned to their quarters, an intermittentsniping and fighting round the stranded Bingen was resumed, and wenton all the afternoon, and merged at last in the general combat of theevening.... 

About eight the Bingen was rushed by an armed mob, and all its defenderskilled after a fierce, disorderly struggle. 

The difficulty of the Germans in both these cases came from theimpossibility of landing any efficient force or, indeed, any force atall from the air-fleet. The airships were quite unequal to the transportof any adequate landing parties; their complement of men was justsufficient to manoeuvre and fight them in the air. From above they couldinflict immense damage; they could reduce any organised Government to acapitulation in the briefest space, but they could not disarm, much lesscould they occupy, the surrendered areas below. They had to trust tothe pressure upon the authorities below of a threat to renew thebombardment. It was their sole resource. No doubt, with ahighly organised and undamaged Government and a homogeneous andwell-disciplined people that would have sufficed to keep the peace. Butthis was not the American case. Not only was the New York Government aweak one and insufficiently provided with police, but the destruction ofthe City Hall--and Post-Offide and other central ganglia had hopelesslydisorganised the co-operation of part with part. The street cars andrailways had ceased; the telephone service was out of gear and onlyworked intermittently. The Germans had struck at the head, and the headwas conquered and stunned--only to release the body from its rule. NewYork had become a headless monster, no longer capable of collectivesubmission. Everywhere it lifted itself rebelliously; everywhereauthorities and officials left to their own imitative were joining inthe arming and flag-hoisting and excitement of that afternoon. 

6

The disintegrating truce gave place to a definite general breach withthe assassination of the Wetterhorn--for that is the only possible wordfor the act--above Union Square, and not a mile away from the exemplaryruins of City Hall. This occurred late in the afternoon, between fiveand six. By that time the weather had changed very much for the worse, and the operations of the airships were embarrassed by the necessitythey were under of keeping head on to the gusts. A series of squalls, with hail and thunder, followed one another from the south bysouth-east, and in order to avoid these as much as possible, theair-fleet came low over the houses, diminishing its range of observationand exposing itself to a rifle attack. 

Overnight there had been a gun placed in Union Square. It had never beenmounted, much less fired, and in the darkness after the surrender it wastaken with its supplies and put out of the way under the arches of thegreat Dexter building. Here late in the morning it was remarked by anumber of patriotic spirits. They set to work to hoist and mount itinside the upper floors of the place. They made, in fact, a maskedbattery behind the decorous office blinds, and there lay in wait assimply excited as children until at last the stem of the lucklessWetterhorn appeared, beating and rolling at quarter speed over therecently reconstructed pinnacles of Tiffany's. Promptly that one-gunbattery unmasked. The airship's look-out man must have seen the wholeof the tenth story of the Dexter building crumble out and smash in thestreet below to discover the black muzzle looking out from the shadowsbehind. Then perhaps the shell hit him. 

The gun fired two shells before the frame of the Dexter buildingcollapsed, and each shell raked the Wetterhorn from stem to stern. They smashed her exhaustively. She crumpled up like a can that has beenkicked by a heavy boot, her forepart came down in the square, and therest of her length, with a great snapping and twisting of shafts andstays, descended, collapsing athwart Tammany Hall and the streetstowards Second Avenue. Her gas escaped to mix with air, and the air ofher rent balloonette poured into her deflating gas-chambers. Then withan immense impact she exploded.... 

The Vaterland at that time was beating up to the south of City Hallfrom over the ruins of the Brooklyn Bridge, and the reports of the gun, followed by the first crashes of the collapsing Dexter building, broughtKurt and, Smallways to the cabin porthole. They were in time to see theflash of the exploding gun, and then they were first flattened againstthe window and then rolled head over heels across the floor of the cabinby the air wave of the explosion. The Vaterland bounded like a footballsome one has kicked and when they looked out again, Union Square wassmall and remote and shattered, as though some cosmically vast giant hadrolled over it. The buildings to the east of it were ablaze at a dozenpoints, under the flaming tatters and warping skeleton of the airship, and all the roofs and walls were ridiculously askew and crumbling as onelooked. "Gaw!" said Bert. "What's happened? Look at the people!"

But before Kurt could produce an explanation, the shrill bells of theairship were ringing to quarters, and he had to go. Bert hesitated andstepped thoughtfully into the passage, looking back at the window ashe did so. He was knocked off his feet at once by the Prince, who wasrushing headlong from his cabin to the central magazine. 

Bert had a momentary impression of the great figure of the Prince, whitewith rage, bristling with gigantic anger, his huge fist swinging. "Blutund Eisen!" cried the Prince, as one who swears. "Oh! Blut und Eisen!"

Some one fell over Bert--something in the manner of falling suggestedVon Winterfeld--and some one else paused and kicked him spitefully andhard. Then he was sitting up in the passage, rubbing a freshly bruisedcheek and readjusting the bandage he still wore on his head. "Dem thatPrince, " said Bert, indignant beyond measure. "'E 'asn't the menners ofa 'og!"

He stood up, collected his wits for a minute, and then went slowlytowards the gangway of the little gallery. As he did so he heard noisessuggestive of the return of the Prince. The lot of them were coming backagain. He shot into his cabin like a rabbit into its burrow, just intime to escape that shouting terror. 

He shut the door, waited until the passage was still, then went acrossto the window and looked out. A drift of cloud made the prospect ofthe streets and squares hazy, and the rolling of the airship swung thepicture up and down. A few people were running to and fro, but for themost part the aspect of the district was desertion. The streets seemedto broaden out, they became clearer, and the little dots that werepeople larger as the Vaterland came down again. Presently she wasswaying along above the lower end of Broadway. The dots below, Bert saw, were not running now, but standing and looking up. Then suddenly theywere all running again. 

Something had dropped from the aeroplane, something that looked smalland 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 seetheir legs going. Foreshortened, humanity has no dignity. The little manon the pavement jumped comically--no doubt with terror, as the bomb fellbeside him. 

Then blinding flames squirted out in all directions from the point ofimpact, and the little man who had jumped became, for an instant, aflash of fire and vanished--vanished absolutely. The people running outinto the road took preposterous clumsy leaps, then flopped down and laystill, with their torn clothes smouldering into flame. Then pieces ofthe archway began to drop, and the lower masonry of the building to fallin with the rumbling sound of coals being shot into a cellar. A faintscreaming reached Bert, and then a crowd of people ran out into thestreet, one man limping and gesticulating awkwardly. He halted, and wentback towards the building. A falling mass of brick-work hit him and senthim sprawling to lie still and crumpled where he fell. Dust and blacksmoke came pouring into the street, and were presently shot with redflame.... 

In this manner the massacre of New York began. She was the first of thegreat cities of the Scientific Age to suffer by the enormous powersand grotesque limitations of aerial warfare. She was wrecked as in theprevious century endless barbaric cities had been bombarded, because shewas at once too strong to be occupied and too undisciplined and proud tosurrender in order to escape destruction. Given the circumstances, thething had to be done. It was impossible for the Prince to desist, andown himself defeated, and it was impossible to subdue the city exceptby largely destroying it. The catastrophe was the logical outcome ofthe situation, created by the application of science to warfare. Itwas unavoidable that great cities should be destroyed. In spite of hisintense exasperation with his dilemma, the Prince sought to be moderateeven in massacre. He tried to give a memorable lesson with the minimumwaste of life and the minimum expenditure of explosives. For that nighthe proposed only the wrecking of Broadway. He directed the air-fleet tomove in column over the route of this thoroughfare, dropping bombs, theVaterland leading. And so our Bert Smallways became a participant in oneof the most cold-blooded slaughters in the world's history, in whichmen who were neither excited nor, except for the remotest chance ofa bullet, in any danger, poured death and destruction upon homes andcrowds below. 

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 sailedalong they smashed up the city as a child will shatter its cities ofbrick and card. Below, they left ruins and blazing conflagrations andheaped and scattered dead; men, women, and children mixed together asthough they had been no more than Moors, or Zulus, or Chinese. LowerNew York was soon a furnace of crimson flames, from which there was noescape. Cars, railways, ferries, all had ceased, and never a light litthe way of the distracted fugitives in that dusky confusion but thelight of burning. He had glimpses of what it must mean to be downthere--glimpses. And it came to him suddenly as an incredible discovery, that such disasters were not only possible now in this strange, gigantic, foreign New York, but also in London--in Bun Hill! that thelittle island in the silver seas was at the end of its immunity, thatnowhere in the world any more was there a place left where a Smallwaysmight lift his head proudly and vote for war and a spirited foreignpolicy, and go secure from such horrible things. 

CHAPTER VII. THE "VATERLAND" IS DISABLED

1

And then above the flames of Manhattan Island came a battle, the firstbattle in the air. The Americans had realised the price their waitinggame must cost, and struck with all the strength they had, if haply theymight still save New York from this mad Prince of Blood and Iron, andfrom fire and death. 

They came down upon the Germans on the wings of a great gale inthe twilight, amidst thunder and rain. They came from the yards ofWashington and Philadelphia, full tilt in two squadrons, and but for onesentinel airship hard by Trenton, the surprise would have been complete. 

The Germans, sick and weary with destruction, and half empty ofammunition, were facing up into the weather when the news of this onsetreached them. New York they had left behind to the south-eastward, adarkened city with one hideous red scar of flames. All the airshipsrolled and staggered, bursts of hailstorm bore them down and forcedthem to fight their way up again; the air had become bitterly cold. ThePrince was on the point of issuing orders to drop earthward and trailcopper lightning chains when the news of the aeroplane attack came tohim. He faced his fleet in line abreast south, had the drachenfliegermanned and held ready to cast loose, and ordered a general ascent intothe freezing clearness above the wet and darkness. 

The news of what was imminent came slowly to Bert's perceptions. He wasstanding in the messroom at the time and the evening rations were beingserved out. He had resumed Butteridge's coat and gloves, and in additionhe had wrapped his blanket about him. He was dipping his bread into hissoup and was biting off big mouthfuls. His legs were wide apart, andhe leant against the partition in order to steady himself amidst thepitching and oscillation of the airship. The men about him looked tiredand depressed; a few talked, but most were sullen and thoughtful, and one or two were air-sick. They all seemed to share the peculiarlyoutcast feeling that had followed the murders of the evening, a senseof a land beneath them, and an outraged humanity grown more hostile thanthe Sea. 

Then the news hit them. A red-faced sturdy man, a man with lighteyelashes and a scar, appeared in the doorway and shouted something inGerman that manifestly startled every one. Bert felt the shock of thealtered tone, though he could not understand a word that was said. The announcement was followed by a pause, and then a great outcry ofquestions and suggestions. Even the air-sick men flushed and spoke. For some minutes the mess-room was Bedlam, and then, as if it were aconfirmation of the news, came the shrill ringing of the bells thatcalled the men to their posts. 

Bert with pantomime suddenness found himself alone. 

"What's up?" he said, though he partly guessed. 

He stayed only to gulp down the remainder of his soup, and then ranalong the swaying passage and, clutching tightly, down the ladder tothe little gallery. The weather hit him like cold water squirted from ahose. The airship engaged in some new feat of atmospheric Jiu-Jitsu. Hedrew his blanket closer about him, clutching with one straining hand. He found himself tossing in a wet twilight, with nothing to be seen butmist pouring past him. Above him the airship was warm with lights andbusy with the movements of men going to their quarters. Then abruptlythe lights went out, and the Vaterland with bounds and twists andstrange writhings was fighting her way up the air. 

He had a glimpse, as the Vaterland rolled over, of some large buildingsburning close below them, a quivering acanthus of flames, and then hesaw indistinctly through the driving weather another airship wallowingalong like a porpoise, and also working up. Presently the cloudsswallowed her again for a time, and then she came back to sight as adark and whale-like monster, amidst streaming weather. The air was fullof flappings and pipings, of void, gusty shouts and noises; it buffetedhim and confused him; ever and again his attention became rigid--a blindand deaf balancing and clutching. 

"Wow!"

Something fell past him out of the vast darknesses above and vanishedinto the tumults below, going obliquely downward. It was a Germandrachenflieger. The thing was going so fast he had but an instantapprehension of the dark figure of the aeronaut crouched togetherclutching at his wheel. It might be a manoeuvre, but it looked like acatastrophe. 

"Gaw!" said Bert. 

"Pup-pup-pup" went a gun somewhere in the mirk ahead and suddenly andquite horribly the Vaterland lurched, and Bert and the sentinel wereclinging to the rail for dear life. "Bang!" came a vast impact out ofthe zenith, followed by another huge roll, and all about him the tumbledclouds flashed red and lurid in response to flashes unseen, revealingimmense gulfs. The rail went right overhead, and he was hanging loose inthe air holding on to it. 

For a time Bert's whole mind and being was given to clutching. "I'mgoing into the cabin, " he said, as the airship righted again and broughtback the gallery floor to his feet. He began to make his way cautiouslytowards the ladder. "Whee-wow!" he cried as the whole gallery reareditself up forward, and then plunged down like a desperate horse. 

Crack! Bang! Bang! Bang! And then hard upon this little rattle of shotsand bombs came, all about him, enveloping him, engulfing him, immense and overwhelming, a quivering white blaze of lightning and athunder-clap that was like the bursting of a world. 

Just for the instant before that explosion the universe seemed to bestanding still in a shadowless glare. 

It was then he saw the American aeroplane. He saw it in the light of theflash 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 menupon it quite distinctly. ) Its stern was tilting down, and the wholemachine was heeling over. It was of the Colt-Coburn-Langley pattern, with double up-tilted wings and the screw ahead, and the men were ina boat-like body netted over. From this very light long body, magazineguns projected on either side. One thing that was strikingly odd andwonderful in that moment of revelation was that the left upper wing wasburning downward with a reddish, smoky flame. But this was not the mostwonderful thing about this apparition. The most wonderful thing was thatit and a German airship five hundred yards below were threaded as itwere on the lightning flash, which turned out of its path as if to takethem, and, that out from the corners and projecting points of itshuge wings everywhere, little branching thorn-trees of lightning werestreaming. 

Like a picture Bert saw these things, a picture a little blurred by athin veil of wind-torn mist. 

The crash of the thunder-clap followed the flash and seemed a part ofit, so that it is hard to say whether Bert was the rather deafened orblinded in that instant. 

And then darkness, utter darkness, and a heavy report and a thin smallsound of voices that went wailing downward into the abyss below. 

2

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 drenchedand cold and terrified beyond measure, and now more than a littleair-sick. It seemed to him that the strength had gone out of his kneesand hands, and that his feet had become icily slippery over the metalthey trod upon. But that was because a thin film of ice had frozen uponthe gallery. 

He never knew how long his ascent of the ladder back into the airshiptook him, but in his dreams afterwards, when he recalled it, thatexperience seemed to last for hours. Below, above, around him weregulfs, monstrous gulfs of howling wind and eddies of dark, whirlingsnowflakes, and he was protected from it all by a little metal gratingand a rail, a grating and rail that seemed madly infuriated with him, passionately eager to wrench him off and throw him into the tumult ofspace. 

Once he had a fancy that a bullet tore by his ear, and that the cloudsand snowflakes were lit by a flash, but he never even turned his head tosee what new assailant whirled past them in the void. He wanted to getinto the passage! He wanted to get into the passage! He wanted to getinto the passage! Would the arm by which he was clinging hold out, orwould 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. 

He found himself, with an enormous sense of relief and warmth, in thepassage. The passage was behaving like a dice-box, its disposition wasevidently to rattle him about and then throw him out again. He hung onwith the convulsive clutch of instinct until the passage lurched downahead. Then he would make a short run cabin-ward, and clutch again asthe fore-end rose. 

Behold! He was in the cabin!

He snapped-to the door, and for a time he was not a human being, he wasa 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 theloose articles, and sprawled there helplessly, with his head sometimesbumping one side and sometimes the other. The lid shut upon him with aclick. He did not care then what was happening any more. He did not carewho fought who, or what bullets were fired or explosions occurred. Hedid not care if presently he was shot or smashed to pieces. He was fullof feeble, inarticulate rage and despair. "Foolery!" he said, his oneexhaustive comment on human enterprise, adventure, war, and the chapterof accidents that had entangled him. "Foolery! Ugh!" He included theorder of the universe in that comprehensive condemnation. He wished hewas dead. 

He saw nothing of the stars, as presently the Vaterland cleared the rushand confusion of the lower weather, nor of the duel she fought with twocircling aeroplanes, how they shot her rear-most chambers through, andhow she fought them off with explosive bullets and turned to run as shedid so. 

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 forsome moments she hung on the verge of destruction, and sinking swiftly, with the American aeroplane entangled with her smashed propeller, andthe Americans trying to scramble aboard. It signified nothing to Bert. To him it conveyed itself simply as vehement swaying. Foolery! Whenthe American airship dropped off at last, with most of its crew shot orfallen, Bert in his locker appreciated nothing but that the Vaterlandhad taken a hideous upward leap. 

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 explodedengines throbbed no more; she was disabled and driving before the windas smoothly as a balloon, a huge, windspread, tattered cloud of aerialwreckage. 

To Bert it was no more than the end of a series of disagreeablesensations. 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 waitingapprehensively for the pitching and tossing and his qualms to return, and so, lying, boxed up in the locker, he presently fell asleep. 

3

He awoke tranquil but very stuffy, and at the same time very cold, andquite unable to recollect where he could be. His head ached, and hisbreath was suffocated. He had been dreaming confusedly of Edna, andDesert Dervishes, and of riding bicycles in an extremely perilous mannerthrough the upper air amidst a pyrotechnic display of crackers andBengal lights--to the great annoyance of a sort of composite person madeup of the Prince and Mr. Butteridge. Then for some reason Edna andhe had begun to cry pitifully for each other, and he woke up with weteye-lashes into this ill-ventilated darkness of the locker. He wouldnever see Edna any more, never see Edna any more. 

He thought he must be back in the bedroom behind the cycle shop atthe bottom of Bun Hill, and he was sure the vision he had had of thedestruction of a magnificent city, a city quite incredibly great andsplendid, by means of bombs, was no more than a particularly vividdream. 

"Grubb!" he called, anxious to tell him. 

The answering silence, and the dull resonance of the locker to hisvoice, supplementing the stifling quality of the air, set going a newtrain of ideas. He lifted up his hands and feet, and met an inflexibleresistance. He was in a coffin, he thought! He had been buried alive! Hegave way at once to wild panic. "'Elp!" he screamed. "'Elp!" and drummedwith his feet, and kicked and struggled. "Let me out! Let me out!"

For some seconds he struggled with this intolerable horror, and thenthe side of his imagined coffin gave way, and he was flying out intodaylight. Then he was rolling about on what seemed to be a padded floorwith Kurt, and being punched and sworn at lustily. 

He sat up. His head bandage had become loose and got over one eye, andhe whipped the whole thing off. Kurt was also sitting up, a yard awayfrom him, pink as ever, wrapped in blankets, and with an aluminiumdiver's helmet over his knee, staring at him with a severe expression, and rubbing his downy unshaven chin. They were both on a slanting floorof crimson padding, and above them was an opening like a long, lowcellar flap that Bert by an effort perceived to be the cabin door in ahalf-inverted condition. The whole cabin had in fact turned on its side. 

"What the deuce do you mean by it, Smallways?" said Kurt, "jumping outof that locker when I was certain you had gone overboard with the restof them? Where have you been?"

"What's up?" asked Bert. 

"This end of the airship is up. Most other things are down. "

"Was there a battle?"

"There was. "

"Who won?"

"I haven't seen the papers, Smallways. We left before the finish. We gotdisabled and unmanageable, and our colleagues--consorts I mean--weretoo busy most of them to trouble about us, and the wind blew us--Heavenknows where the wind IS blowing us. It blew us right out of action atthe rate of eighty miles an hour or so. Gott! what a wind that was! Whata fight! And here we are!"

"Where?"

"In the air, Smallways--in the air! When we get down on the earth againwe shan't know what to do with our legs. "

"But what's below us?"

"Canada, to the best of my knowledge--and a jolly bleak, empty, inhospitable country it looks. "

"But why ain't we right ways up?"

Kurt made no answer for a space. 

"Last I remember was seeing a sort of flying-machine in a lightningflash, " said Bert. "Gaw! that was 'orrible. Guns going off! Thingsexplodin'! Clouds and 'ail. Pitching and tossing. I got so scared anddesperate--and sick. You don't know how the fight came off?"

"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'tsee a thing outside except the lightning flashes. I never saw oneof those American aeroplanes. Just saw the shots flicker through thechambers and sent off men for the tears. We caught fire a bit--not much, you know. We were too wet, so the fires spluttered out before we banged. And then one of their infernal things dropped out of the air on us andrammed. Didn't you feel it?"

"I felt everything, " said Bert. "I didn't notice any particular smash--"

"They must have been pretty desperate if they meant it. They slasheddown on us like a knife; simply ripped the after gas-chambers likegutting herrings, crumpled up the engines and screw. Most of the enginesdropped off as they fell off us--or we'd have grounded--but the rest issort of dangling. We just turned up our nose to the heavens and stayedthere. Eleven men rolled off us from various points, and poor oldWinterfeld fell through the door of the Prince's cabin into thechart-room and broke his ankle. Also we got our electric gear shot orcarried away--no one knows how. That's the position, Smallways. We'redriving through the air like a common aerostat, at the mercy of theelements, almost due north--probably to the North Pole. We don't knowwhat aeroplanes the Americans have, or anything at all about it. Very likely we have finished 'em up. One fouled us, one was struck bylightning, some of the men saw a third upset, apparently just forfun. They were going cheap anyhow. Also we've lost most of ourdrachenflieger. 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 ifwe're at war with the British Empire yet or at peace. Consequently, wedaren't get down. We don't know what we are up to or what we are goingto do. Our Napoleon is alone, forward, and I suppose he's rearranginghis 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 andnot on slippery partitions. I'm a civilised man. I keep thinking of oldAlbrecht and the Barbarossa.... I feel I want a wash and kind wordsand a quiet home. When I look at you, I KNOW I want a wash. Gott!"--hestifled a vehement yawn--"What a Cockney tadpole of a ruffian you look!"

"Can we get any grub?" asked Bert. 

"Heaven knows!" said Kurt. 

He meditated upon Bert for a time. "So far as I can judge, Smallways, "he said, "the Prince will probably want to throw you overboard--nexttime 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 shipextensively pretty soon. Unless I'm mistaken, the Prince will wake uppresently and start doing things with tremendous vigour.... I've taken afancy to you. It's the English strain in me. You're a rum little chap. Ishan't like seeing you whizz down the air.... You'd better make yourselfuseful, Smallways. I think I shall requisition you for my squad. You'llhave to work, you know, and be infernally intelligent and all that. Andyou'll have to hang about upside down a bit. Still, it's the best chanceyou have. We shan't carry passengers much farther this trip, I fancy. Ballast goes over-board--if we don't want to ground precious soon and betaken prisoners of war. The Prince won't do that anyhow. He'll be gameto the last. "

4

By means of a folding chair, which was still in its place behind thedoor, they got to the window and looked out in turn and contemplateda sparsely wooded country below, with no railways nor roads, andonly occasional signs of habitation. Then a bugle sounded, and Kurtinterpreted it as a summons to food. They got through the door andclambered with some difficulty up the nearly vertical passage, holding on desperately with toes and finger-tips, to the ventilatingperforations in its floor. The mess stewards had found their firelessheating arrangements intact, and there was hot cocoa for the officersand hot soup for the men. 

Bert's sense of the queerness of this experience was so keen thatit blotted out any fear he might have felt. Indeed, he was far moreinterested now than afraid. He seemed to have touched down to the bottomof fear and abandonment overnight. He was growing accustomed to the ideathat he would probably be killed presently, that this strange voyagein the air was in all probability his death journey. No human being cankeep permanently afraid: fear goes at last to the back of one's mind, accepted, and shelved, and done with. He squatted over his soup, soppingit up with his bread, and contemplated his comrades. They were allrather yellow and dirty, with four-day beards, and they groupedthemselves in the tired, unpremeditated manner of men on a wreck. Theytalked little. The situation perplexed them beyond any suggestion ofideas. Three had been hurt in the pitching up of the ship during thefight, and one had a bandaged bullet wound. It was incredible that thislittle band of men had committed murder and massacre on a scalebeyond precedent. None of them who squatted on the sloping gas-paddedpartition, soup mug in hand, seemed really guilty of anything of thesort, seemed really capable of hurting a dog wantonly. They were allso manifestly built for homely chalets on the solid earth and carefullytilled fields and blond wives and cheery merrymaking. The red-faced, sturdy man with light eyelashes who had brought the first news ofthe air battle to the men's mess had finished his soup, and with anexpression of maternal solicitude was readjusting the bandages of ayoungster whose arm had been sprained. 

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 thatevery one was looking at a pair of feet that were dangling across thedownturned open doorway. Kurt appeared and squatted across the hinge. Insome mysterious way he had shaved his face and smoothed down his lightgolden hair. He looked extraordinarily cherubic. "Der Prinz, " he said. 

A second pair of boots followed, making wide and magnificent gestures intheir attempts to feel the door frame. Kurt guided them to a foothold, and the Prince, shaved and brushed and beeswaxed and clean and big andterrible, slid down into position astride of the door. All the men andBert also stood up and saluted. 

The Prince surveyed them with the gesture of a man who site a steed. Thehead of the Kapitan appeared beside him. 

Then Bert had a terrible moment. The blue blaze of the Prince's eyefell upon him, the great finger pointed, a question was asked. Kurtintervened with explanations. 

"So, " said the Prince, and Bert was disposed of. 

Then the Prince addressed the men in short, heroic sentences, steadyinghimself on the hinge with one hand and waving the other in a finevariety of gesture. What he said Bert could not tell, but he perceivedthat their demeanor changed, their backs stiffened. They began topunctuate the Prince's discourse with cries of approval. At the endtheir leader burst into song and all the men with him. "Ein feste Burgist unser Gott, " they chanted in deep, strong tones, with an immensemoral uplifting. It was glaringly inappropriate in a damaged, half-overturned, and sinking airship, which had been disabled and blownout of action after inflicting the cruellest bombardment in the world'shistory; but it was immensely stirring nevertheless. Bert was deeplymoved. He could not sing any of the words of Luther's great hymn, buthe opened his mouth and emitted loud, deep, and partially harmoniousnotes.... 

Far below, this deep chanting struck on the ears of a little camp ofChristianised 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 thegale, amazed beyond words. In so many respects it was like their ideaof the Second Advent, and then again in so many respects it wasn't. Theystared at its passage, awe-stricken and perplexed beyond their power ofwords. The hymn ceased. Then after a long interval a voice came out ofheaven. "Vat id diss blace here galled itself; vat?"

They made no answer. Indeed they did not understand, though the questionrepeated itself. 

And at last the monster drove away northward over a crest of pine woodsand was no more seen. They fell into a hot and long disputation.... 

The hymn ended. The Prince's legs dangled up the passage again, andevery one was briskly prepared for heroic exertion and triumphant acts. "Smallways!" cried Kurt, "come here!"

5

Then Bert, under Kurt's direction, had his first experience of the workof an air-sailor. 

The immediate task before the captain of the Vaterland was a very simpleone. He had to keep afloat. The wind, though it had fallen from itsearlier violence, was still blowing strongly enough to render thegrounding of so clumsy a mass extremely dangerous, even if it had beendesirable for the Prince to land in inhabited country, and so riskcapture. It was necessary to keep the airship up until the wind fell andthen, if possible, to descend in some lonely district of the Territorywhere there would be a chance of repair or rescue by some searchingconsort. In order to do this weight had to be dropped, and Kurt wasdetailed with a dozen men to climb down among the wreckage of thedeflated air-chambers and cut the stuff clear, portion by portion, asthe airship sank. So Bert, armed with a sharp cutlass, found himselfclambering about upon netting four thousand feet up in the air, tryingto understand Kurt when he spoke in English and to divine him when heused German. 

It was giddy work, but not nearly so giddy as a rather overnourishedreader sitting in a warm room might imagine. Bert found it quitepossible to look down and contemplate the wild sub-arctic landscapebelow, now devoid of any sign of habitation, a land of rocky cliffs andcascades and broad swirling desolate rivers, and of trees and thicketsthat grew more stunted and scrubby as the day wore on. Here and there onthe hills were patches and pockets of snow. And over all this he worked, hacking away at the tough and slippery oiled silk and clinging stoutlyto the netting. Presently they cleared and dropped a tangle of bentsteel 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 hamperparted. It seemed almost as though they were dropping all Canada. Thestuff spread out in the air and floated down and hit and twisted up in anasty fashion on the lip of a gorge. Bert clung like a frozen monkey tohis ropes and did not move a muscle for five minutes. 

But there was something very exhilarating, he found, in this dangerouswork, and above every thing else, there was the sense of fellowship. Hewas no longer an isolated and distrustful stranger among these others, he had now a common object with them, he worked with a friendly rivalryto get through with his share before them. And he developed a greatrespect and affection for Kurt, which had hitherto been only latentin him. Kurt with a job to direct was altogether admirable; he wasresourceful, helpful, considerate, swift. He seemed to be everywhere. One forgot his pinkness, his light cheerfulness of manner. Directly onehad trouble he was at hand with sound and confident advice. He was likean elder brother to his men. 

All together they cleared three considerable chunks of wreckage, andthen Bert was glad to clamber up into the cabins again and give place toa 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 drinkingit and regarding each other with satisfaction. One man spoke to Bertamiably in German, and Bert nodded and smiled. Through Kurt, Bert, whoseankles were almost frozen, succeeded in getting a pair of top-boots fromone of the disabled men. 

In the afternoon the wind abated greatly, and small, infrequentsnowflakes came drifting by. Snow also spread more abundantly below, andthe only trees were clumps of pine and spruce in the lower valleys. Kurt went with three men into the still intact gas-chambers, let outa certain quantity of gas from them, and prepared a series of rippingpanels for the descent. Also the residue of the bombs and explosives inthe magazine were thrown overboard and fell, detonating loudly, in thewilderness below. And about four o'clock in the afternoon upon a wideand rocky plain within sight of snow-crested cliffs, the Vaterlandripped and grounded. 

It was necessarily a difficult and violent affair, for the Vaterland hadnot been planned for the necessities of a balloon. The captain gotone panel ripped too soon and the others not soon enough. She droppedheavily, bounced clumsily, and smashed the hanging gallery into thefore-part, mortally injuring Von Winterfeld, and then came down in acollapsing heap after dragging for some moments. The forward shieldand its machine gun tumbled in upon the things below. Two men were hurtbadly--one got a broken leg and one was internally injured--by flyingrods and wires, and Bert was pinned for a time under the side. Whenat last he got clear and could take a view of the situation, the greatblack eagle that had started so splendidly from Franconia sixevenings ago, sprawled deflated over the cabins of the airship and thefrost-bitten rocks of this desolate place and looked a most unfortunatebird--as though some one had caught it and wrung its neck and castit aside. Several of the crew of the airship were standing about insilence, contemplating the wreckage and the empty wilderness into whichthey had fallen. Others were busy under the imromptu tent made bythe empty gas-chambers. The Prince had gone a little way off and wasscrutinising the distant heights through his field-glass. They hadthe appearance of old sea cliffs; here and there were small clumps ofconifers, and in two places tall cascades. The nearer ground was strewnwith glaciated boulders and supported nothing but a stunted Alpinevegetation of compact clustering stems and stalkless flowers. No riverwas visible, but the air was full of the rush and babble of a torrentclose at hand. A bleak and biting wind was blowing. Ever and again asnowflake drifted past. The springless frozen earth under Bert's feetfelt strangely dead and heavy after the buoyant airship. 

6

So it came about that that great and powerful Prince Karl Albert wasfor a time thrust out of the stupendous conflict he chiefly had beeninstrumental in provoking. The chances of battle and the weatherconspired to maroon him in Labrador, and there he raged for six longdays, while war and wonder swept the world. Nation rose againstnation and air-fleet grappled air-fleet, cities blazed and men died inmultitudes; but in Labrador one might have dreamt that, except for alittle noise of hammering, the world was at peace. 

There the encampment lay; from a distance the cabins, covered over withthe silk of the balloon part, looked like a gipsy's tent on a ratherexceptional scale, and all the available hands were busy in buildingout of the steel of the framework a mast from which the Vaterland'selectricians might hang the long conductors of the apparatus forwireless telegraphy that was to link the Prince to the world again. There were times when it seemed they would never rig that mast. Fromthe outset the party suffered hardship. They were not too abundantlyprovisioned, and they were put on short rations, and for all the thickgarments they had, they were but ill-equipped against the piercing windand inhospitable violence of this wilderness. The first night was spentin darkness and without fires. The engines that had supplied power weresmashed and dropped far away to the south, and there was never amatch among the company. It had been death to carry matches. All theexplosives had been thrown out of the magazine, and it was only towardsmorning that the bird-faced man whose cabin Bert had taken in thebeginning confessed to a brace of duelling pistols and cartridges, withwhich a fire could be started. Afterwards the lockers of the machine gunwere found to contain a supply of unused ammunition. 

The night was a distressing one and seemed almost interminable. Hardlyany one slept. There were seven wounded men aboard, and Von Winterfeld'shead had been injured, and he was shivering and in delirium, strugglingwith his attendant and shouting strange things about the burning of NewYork. The men crept together in the mess-room in the darkling, wrappedin what they could find and drank cocoa from the fireless heaters andlistened to his cries. In the morning the Prince made them a speechabout Destiny, and the God of his Fathers and the pleasure and gloryof giving one's life for his dynasty, and a number of similarconsiderations that might otherwise have been neglected in that bleakwilderness. The men cheered without enthusiasm, and far away a wolfhowled. 

Then they set to work, and for a week they toiled to put up a mast ofsteel, and hang from it a gridiron of copper wires two hundred feet bytwelve. The theme of all that time was work, work continually, strainingand toilsome work, and all the rest was grim hardship and evil chances, save for a certain wild splendour in the sunset and sunrise in thetorrents and drifting weather, in the wilderness about them. They builtand tended a ring of perpetual fires, gangs roamed for brushwood and metwith wolves, and the wounded men and their beds were brought out fromthe airship cabins, and put in shelters about the fires. There old VonWinterfeld raved and became quiet and presently died, and three ofthe other wounded sickened for want of good food, while their fellowsmended. These things happened, as it were, in the wings; the centralfacts before Bert's consciousness were always firstly the perpetualtoil, the holding and lifting, and lugging at heavy and clumsy masses, the tedious filing and winding of wires, and secondly, the Prince, urgent and threatening whenever a man relaxed. He would stand over them, and point over their heads, southward into the empty sky. "The worldthere, " he said in German, "is waiting for us! Fifty Centuries come totheir Consummation. " Bert did not understand the words, but he read thegesture. Several times the Prince grew angry; once with a man who wasworking slowly, once with a man who stole a comrade's ration. The firsthe scolded and set to a more tedious task; the second he struck in theface and ill-used. He did no work himself. There was a clear space nearthe fires in which he would walk up and down, sometimes for two hourstogether, with arms folded, muttering to himself of Patience and hisdestiny. At times these mutterings broke out into rhetoric, into shoutsand gestures that would arrest the workers; they would stare at himuntil they perceived that his blue eyes glared and his waving handaddressed itself always to the southward hills. On Sunday the workceased for half an hour, and the Prince preached on faith and God'sfriendship for David, and afterwards they all sang: "Ein feste Burg istunser Gott. "

In an improvised hovel lay Von Winterfeld, and all one morning he ravedof the greatness of Germany. "Blut und Eisen!" he shouted, and then, as if in derision, "Welt-Politik--ha, ha!" Then he would explaincomplicated questions of polity to imaginary hearers, in low, wilytones. The other sick men kept still, listening to him. Bert'sdistracted attention would be recalled by Kurt. "Smallways, take thatend. So!"

Slowly, tediously, the great mast was rigged and hoisted foot by footinto place. The electricians had contrived a catchment pool and a wheelin the torrent close at hand--for the little Mulhausen dynamo with itsturbinal volute used by the telegraphists was quite adaptable to waterdriving, and on the sixth day in the evening the apparatus wasin working order and the Prince was calling--weakly, indeed, butcalling--to his air-fleet across the empty spaces of the world. For atime he called unheeded. 

The effect of that evening was to linger long in Bert's memory. A redfire spluttered and blazed close by the electricians at their work, andred gleams xan up the vertical steel mast and threads of copper wiretowards the zenith. The Prince sat on a rock close by, with his chinon his hand, waiting. Beyond and to the northward was the cairn thatcovered Von Winterfeld, surmounted by a cross of steel, and from amongthe 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 menbivouacked 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 wouldbe clicking, and snapping, and waking into responsive vibration. Perhapsthey were not. Perhaps those throbs upon the ethers wasted themselvesupon 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 thesethings were set in the immense cold spaciousness of the wild. 

7

Bert got the news last, and chiefly in broken English, from a linguistamong his mates. It was only far on in the night that the wearytelegraphist got an answer to his calls, but then the messages cameclear and strong. And such news it was!

"I say, " said Bert at his breakfast, amidst a great clamour, "tell us abit. "

"All de vorlt is at vor!" said the linguist, waving his cocoa in anillustrative manner, "all de vorlt is at vor!"

Bert stared southward into the dawn. It did not seem so. 

"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 hafmate a camp at Niagara. Dat is whad they are telling us. China has cotdrachenflieger and luftschiffe beyont counting. All de vorlt is at vor!"

"Gaw!" said Bert. 

"Yess, " said the linguist, drinking his cocoa. 

"Burnt up London, 'ave they? Like we did New York?"

"It wass a bombardment. "

"They don't say anything about a place called Clapham, or Bun Hill, dothey?"

"I haf heard noding, " said the linguist. 

That was all Bert could get for a time. But the excitement of all themen about him was contagious, and presently he saw Kurt standing alone, hands behind him, and looking at one of the distant waterfalls verysteadfastly. He went up and saluted, soldier-fashion. "Beg pardon, lieutenant, " he said. 

Kurt turned his face. It was unusually grave that morning. "I wasjust thinking I would like to see that waterfall closer, " he said. "Itreminds me--what do you want?"

"I can't make 'ead or tail of what they're saying, sir. Would you mindtelling me the news?"

"Damn the news, " said Kurt. "You'll get news enough before the day'sout. It's the end of the world. They're sending the Graf Zeppelin forus. She'll be here by the morning, and we ought to be at Niagara--oreternal smash--within eight and forty hours.... I want to look at thatwaterfall. You'd better come with me. Have you had your rations?"

"Yessir. "

"Very well. Come. "

And musing profoundly, Kurt led the way across the rocks towards thedistant waterfall. 

For a time Bert walked behind him in the character of an escort; then asthey passed out of the atmosphere of the encampment, Kurt lagged for himto come alongside. 

"We shall be back in it all in two days' time, " he said. "And it's adevil of a war to go back to. That's the news. The world's gone mad. Our fleet beat the Americans the night we got disabled, that's clear. We lost eleven--eleven airships certain, and all their aeroplanes gotsmashed. God knows how much we smashed or how many we killed. But thatwas only the beginning. Our start's been like firing a magazine. Everycountry was hiding flying-machines. They're fighting in the air all overEurope--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 ourlittle quarrels.... The Yellow Peril was a peril after all! They've gotthousands of airships. They're all over the world. We bombarded Londonand Paris, and now the French and English have smashed up Berlin. Andnow Asia is at us all, and on the top of us all.... It's mania. Chinaon the top. And they don't know where to stop. It's limitless. It's thelast confusion. They're bombarding capitals, smashing up dockyards andfactories, mines and fleets. "

"Did they do much to London, sir?" asked Bert. 

"Heaven knows.... "

He said no more for a time. 

"This Labrador seems a quiet place, " he resumed at last. "I'm half amind to stay here. Can't do that. No! I've got to see it through. I'vegot to see it through. You've got to, too. Every one.... But why?... Itell you--our world's gone to pieces. There's no way out of it, no wayback. Here we are! We're like mice caught in a house on fire, we're likecattle overtaken by a flood. Presently we shall be picked up, and backwe shall go into the fighting. We shall kill and smash again--perhaps. It's a Chino-Japanese air-fleet this time, and the odds are againstus. Our turns will come. What will happen to you I don't know, but formyself, I know quite well; I shall be killed. "

"You'll be all right, " said Bert, after a queer pause. 

"No!" said Kurt, "I'm going to be killed. I didn't know it before, butthis morning, at dawn, I knew it--as though I'd been told. "

"'Ow?"

"I tell you I know. "

"But 'ow COULD you know?"

"I know. "

"Like being told?"

"Like being certain. 

"I know, " he repeated, and for a time they walked in silence towards thewaterfall. 

Kurt, wrapped in his thoughts, walked heedlessly, and at last broke outagain. "I've always felt young before, Smallways, but this morningI feel old--old. So old! Nearer to death than old men feel. And I'vealways thought life was a lark. It isn't.... This sort of thing hasalways been happening, I suppose--these things, wars and earthquakes, that sweep across all the decency of life. It's just as though I hadwoke up to it all for the first time. Every night since we were at NewYork I've dreamt of it.... And it's always been so--it's the way oflife. People are torn away from the people they care for; homes aresmashed, creatures full of life, and memories, and little peculiar giftsare scalded and smashed, and torn to pieces, and starved, and spoilt. London! Berlin! San Francisco! Think of all the human histories we endedin New York!... And the others go on again as though such things weren'tpossible. As I went on! Like animals! Just like animals. "

He said nothing for a long time, and then he dropped out, "The Prince isa lunatic!"

They came to a place where they had to climb, and then to a long peatlevel beside a rivulet. There a quantity of delicate little pink flowerscaught Bert's eye. "Gaw!" he said, and stooped to pick one. "In a placelike this. "

Kurt stopped and half turned. His face winced. 

"I never see such a flower, " said Bert. "It's so delicate. "

"Pick some more if you want to, " said Kurt. 

Bert did so, while Kurt stood and watched him. 

"Funny 'ow one always wants to pick flowers, " said Bert. 

Kurt had nothing to add to that. 

They went on again, without talking, for a long time. 

At last they came to a rocky hummock, from which the view of thewaterfall opened out. There Kurt stopped and seated himself on a rock. 

"That's as much as I wanted to see, " he explained. "It isn't very like, but it's like enough. "

"Like what?"

"Another waterfall I knew. "

He asked a question abruptly. "Got a girl, Smallways?"

"Funny thing, " said Bert, "those flowers, I suppose. --I was jes'thinking of 'er. "

"So was I. "

"WHAT! Edna?"

"No. I was thinking of MY Edna. We've all got Ednas, I suppose, for ourimaginations to play about. This was a girl. But all that's past forever. It's hard to think I can't see her just for a minute--just let herknow I'm thinking of her. "

"Very likely, " said Bert, "you'll see 'er all right. "

"No, " said Kurt with decision, "I KNOW. "

"I met her, " he went on, "in a place like this--in the Alps--EngstlenAlp. There's a waterfall rather like this one--a broad waterfall downtowards Innertkirchen. That's why I came here this morning. We slippedaway and had half a day together beside it. And we picked flowers. Justsuch flowers as you picked. The same for all I know. And gentian. "

"I know" said Bert, "me and Edna--we done things like that. Flowers. Andall that. Seems years off now. "

"She was beautiful and daring and shy, Mein Gott! I can hardly holdmyself for the desire to see her and hear her voice again before Idie. Where is she?... Look here, Smallways, I shall write a sort ofletter--And there's her portrait. " He touched his breast pocket. 

"You'll see 'er again all right, " said Bert. 

"No! I shall never see her again.... I don't understand why peopleshould meet just to be torn apart. But I know she and I will never meetagain. That I know as surely as that the sun will rise, and that cascadecome shining over the rocks after I am dead and done.... Oh! It'sall foolishness and haste and violence and cruel folly, stupidity andblundering hate and selfish ambition--all the things that men havedone--all the things they will ever do. Gott! Smallways, what a muddleand confusion life has always been--the battles and massacres anddisasters, the hates and harsh acts, the murders and sweatings, thelynchings and cheatings. This morning I am tired of it all, as thoughI'd just found it out for the first time. I HAVE found it out. When aman is tired of life, I suppose it is time for him to die. I've lostheart, and death is over me. Death is close to me, and I know I havegot 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 nobeginnings.... We're just ants in ant-hill cities, in a world thatdoesn't matter; that goes on and rambles into nothingness. New York--NewYork doesn't even strike me as horrible. New York was nothing but anant-hill kicked to pieces by a fool!

"Think of it, Smallways: there's war everywhere! They're smashing uptheir civilisation before they have made it. The sort of thing theEnglish did at Alexandria, the Japanese at Port Arthur, the French atCasablanca, is going on everywhere. Everywhere! Down in South Americaeven they are fighting among themselves! No place is safe--no place isat peace. There is no place where a woman and her daughter can hide andbe at peace. The war comes through the air, bombs drop in the night. Quiet people go out in the morning, and see air-fleets passingoverhead--dripping death--dripping death!"

CHAPTER VIII. A WORLD AT WAR

1

It was only very slowly that Bert got hold of this idea that thewhole world was at war, that he formed any image at all of the crowdedcountries south of these Arctic solitudes stricken with terror anddismay as these new-born aerial navies swept across their skies. Hewas not used to thinking of the world as a whole, but as a limitlesshinterland of happenings beyond the range of his immediate vision. Warin his imagination was something, a source of news and emotion, thathappened in a restricted area, called the Seat of War. But now the wholeatmosphere was the Seat of War, and every land a cockpit. So closely hadthe nations raced along the path of research and invention, so secretand yet so parallel had been their plans and acquisitions, that it waswithin a few hours of the launching of the first fleet in Franconiathat an Asiatic Armada beat its west-ward way across, high above themarvelling millions in the plain of the Ganges. But the preparationsof the Confederation of Eastern Asia had been on an altogether morecolossal scale than the German. "With this step, " said Tan Ting-siang, "we overtake and pass the West. We recover the peace of the world thatthese barbarians have destroyed. "

Their secrecy and swiftness and inventions had far surpassed those ofthe Germans, and where the Germans had had a hundred men at work theAsiatics had ten thousand. There came to their great aeronautic parksat Chinsi-fu and Tsingyen by the mono-rails that now laced the wholesurface of China a limitless supply of skilled and able workmen, workmenfar above the average European in industrial efficiency. The news of theGerman World Surprise simply quickened their efforts. At the time of thebombardment of New York it is doubtful if the Germans had three hundredairships all together in the world; the score of Asiatic fleets flyingeast and west and south must have numbered several thousand. Moreoverthe Asiatics had a real fighting flying-machine, the Niais as they werecalled, a light but quite efficient weapon, infinitely superior to theGerman drachenflieger. Like that, it was a one-man machine, but itwas built very lightly of steel and cane and chemical silk, with atransverse engine, and a flapping sidewing. The aeronaut carried a gunfiring explosive bullets loaded with oxygen, and in addition, and trueto the best tradition of Japan, a sword. Mostly they were Japanese, andit is characteristic that from the first it was contemplated that theaeronaut should be a swordsman. The wings of these flyers had bat-likehooks forward, by which they were to cling to their antagonist'sgas-chambers while boarding him. These light flying-machines werecarried with the fleets, and also sent overland or by sea to the frontwith the men. They were capable of flights of from two to five hundredmiles according to the wind. 

So, hard upon the uprush of the first German air-fleet, these Asiaticswarms took to the atmosphere. Instantly every organised Government inthe world was frantically and vehemently building airships and whateverapproach to a flying machine its inventors' had discovered. There was notime 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 atwar in the most complicated way. For Britain and France and Italy haddeclared war upon Germany and outraged Swiss neutrality; India, at thesight of Asiatic airships, had broken into a Hindoo insurrectionin Bengal and a Mohametan revolt hostile to this in the North-westProvinces--the latter spreading like wildfire from Gobi to the GoldCoast--and the Confederation of Eastern Asia had seized the oil wells ofBurmha and was impartially attacking America and Germany. In a week theywere building airships in Damascus and Cairo and Johannesburg; Australiaand New Zealand were frantically equipping themselves. One unique andterrifying aspect of this development was the swiftness with which thesemonsters could be produced. To build an ironclad took from two to fouryears; an airship could be put together in as many weeks. Moreover, compared with even a torpedo boat, the airship was remarkably simple toconstruct, given the air-chamber material, the engines, the gas plant, and the design, it was really not more complicated and far easier thanan ordinary wooden boat had been a hundred years before. And now fromCape Horn to Nova Zembla, and from Canton round to Canton again, therewere factories and workshops and industrial resources. 

And the German airships were barely in sight of the Atlantic waters, thefirst Asiatic fleet was scarcely reported from Upper Burmah, before thefantastic fabric of credit and finance that had held the world togethereconomically for a hundred years strained and snapped. A tornado ofrealisation swept through every stock exchange in the world; banksstopped payment, business shrank and ceased, factories ran on for aday or so by a sort of inertia, completing the orders of bankrupt andextinguished customers, then stopped. The New York Bert Smallways saw, for all its glare of light and traffic, was in the pit of an economicand financial collapse unparalleled in history. The flow of the foodsupply was already a little checked. And before the world-war had lastedtwo weeks--by the time, that is, that mast was rigged in Labrador--therewas not a city or town in the world outside China, however far fromthe actual centres of destruction, where police and government were notadopting special emergency methods to deal with a want of food and aglut of unemployed people. 

The special peculiarities of aerial warfare were of such a nature asto trend, once it had begun, almost inevitably towards socialdisorganisation. The first of these peculiarities was brought hometo the Germans in their attack upon New York; the immense power ofdestruction an airship has over the thing below, and its relativeinability to occupy or police or guard or garrison a surrenderedposition. Necessarily, in the face of urban populations in a stateof economic disorganisation and infuriated and starving, this led toviolent and destructive collisions, and even where the air-fleet floatedinactive above, there would be civil conflict and passionate disorderbelow. Nothing comparable to this state of affairs had been known inthe previous history of warfare, unless we take such a case as that ofa nineteenth century warship attacking some large savage or barbaricsettlement, or one of those naval bombardments that disfigure thehistory of Great Britain in the late eighteenth century. Then, indeed, there had been cruelties and destruction that faintly foreshadowed thehorrors of the aerial war. Moreover, before the twentieth century theworld had had but one experience, and that a comparatively light one, in the Communist insurrection of Paris, 1871, of the possibilities of amodern urban population under warlike stresses. 

A second peculiarity of airship war as it first came to the world thatalso made for social collapse, was the ineffectiveness of the earlyair-ships against each other. Upon anything below they could rainexplosives in the most deadly fashion, forts and ships and cities lay attheir mercy, but unless they were prepared for a suicidal grapple theycould do remarkably little mischief to each other. The armament of thehuge German airships, big as the biggest mammoth liners afloat, was onemachine 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, theair-sailors were provided with rifles with explosive bullets of oxygenor inflammable substance, but no airship at any time ever carried asmuch in the way of guns and armour as the smallest gunboat on the navylist had been accustomed to do. Consequently, when these monsters met inbattle, they manoeuvred for the upper place, or grappled and fought likejunks, throwing grenades fighting hand to hand in an entirely medievalfashion. The risks of a collapse and fall on either side came near tobalancing in every case the chances of victory. As a consequence, andafter their first experiences of battle, one finds a growing tendency onthe part of the air-fleet admirals to evade joining battle, and to seekrather the moral advantage of a destructive counter attack. 

And if the airships were too ineffective, the early drachenflieger wereeither too unstable, like the German, or too light, like the Japanese, to produce immediately decisive results. Later, it is true, theBrazilians launched a flying-machine of a type and scale that wascapable of dealing with an airship, but they built only three or four, they operated only in South America, and they vanished from historyuntraceably in the time when world-bankruptcy put a stop to all furtherengineering production on any considerable scale. 

The third peculiarity of aerial warfare was that it was at onceenormously destructive and entirely indecisive. It had this uniquefeature, that both sides lay open to punitive attack. In all previousforms of war, both by land and sea, the losing side was speedily unableto raid its antagonist's territory and the communications. One foughton a "front, " and behind that front the winner's supplies and resources, his towns and factories and capital, the peace of his country, weresecure. If the war was a naval one, you destroyed your enemy's battlefleet and then blockaded his ports, secured his coaling stations, andhunted down any stray cruisers that threatened your ports of commerce. But to blockade and watch a coastline is one thing, to blockade andwatch the whole surface of a country is another, and cruisers andprivateers are things that take long to make, that cannot be packed upand hidden and carried unostentatiously from point to point. In aerialwar the stronger side, even supposing it destroyed the main battle fleetof the weaker, had then either to patrol and watch or destroy everypossible point at which he might produce another and perhaps a novel andmore deadly form of flyer. It meant darkening his air with airships. Itmeant building them by the thousand and making aeronauts by the hundredthousand. A small uninitated airship could be hidden in a railwayshed, in a village street, in a wood; a flying machine is even lessconspicuous. 

And in the air are no streets, no channels, no point where one cansay of an antagonist, "If he wants to reach my capital he must come byhere. " In the air all directions lead everywhere. 

Consequently it was impossible to end a war by any of the establishedmethods. A, having outnumbered and overwhelmed B, hovers, a thousandairships strong, over his capital, threatening to bombard it unless Bsubmits. B replies by wireless telegraphy that he is now in the act ofbombarding the chief manufacturing city of A by means of three raiderairships. A denounces B's raiders as pirates and so forth, bombards B'scapital, and sets off to hunt down B's airships, while B, in a state ofpassionate emotion and heroic unconquerableness, sets to work amidst hisruins, making fresh airships and explosives for the benefit of A. The war became perforce a universal guerilla war, a war inextricablyinvolving civilians and homes and all the apparatus of social life. 

These aspects of aerial fighting took the world by surprise. There hadbeen no foresight to deduce these consequences. If there had been, theworld would have arranged for a Universal Peace Conference in 1900. But mechanical invention had gone faster than intellectual and socialorganisation, and the world, with its silly old flags, its sillyunmeaning tradition of nationality, its cheap newspapers and cheaperpassions and imperialisms, its base commercial motives and habitualinsincerities and vulgarities, its race lies and conflicts, was taken bysurprise. Once the war began there was no stopping it. The flimsy fabricof credit that had grown with no man foreseeing, and that had held thosehundreds of millions in an economic interdependence that no man clearlyunderstood, dissolved in panic. Everywhere went the airships droppingbombs, destroying any hope of a rally, and everywhere below wereeconomic catastrophe, starving workless people, rioting, and socialdisorder. Whatever constructive guiding intelligence there had beenamong the nations vanished in the passionate stresses of the time. Suchnewspapers and documents and histories as survive from this periodall tell one universal story of towns and cities with the food supplyinterrupted and their streets congested with starving unemployed; ofcrises in administration and states of siege, of provisional Governmentsand Councils of Defence, and, in the cases of India and Egypt, insurrectionary committees taking charge of the re-arming of thepopulation, of the making of batteries and gun-pits, of the vehementmanufacture of airships and flying-machines. 

One sees these things in glimpses, in illuminated moments, as if througha driving reek of clouds, going on all over the world. It was thedissolution of an age; it was the collapse of the civilisation thathad trusted to machinery, and the instruments of its destruction weremachines. But while the collapse of the previous great civilisation, that of Rome, had been a matter of centuries, had been a thing of phaseand phase, like the ageing and dying of a man, this, like his killing byrailway or motor car, was one swift, conclusive smashing and an end. 

2

The early battles of the aerial war were no doubt determined by attemptsto realise the old naval maxim, to ascertain the position of the enemy'sfleet and to destroy it. There was first the battle of the BerneseOberland, in which the Italian and French navigables in their flankraid upon the Franconian Park were assailed by the Swiss experimentalsquadron, supported as the day wore on by German airships, and thenthe encounter of the British Winterhouse-Dunn aeroplanes with threeunfortunate Germans. 

Then came the Battle of North India, in which the entire Anglo-Indianaeronautic settlement establishment fought for three days againstoverwhelming odds, and was dispersed and destroyed in detail. 

And simultaneously with the beginning of that, commenced the momentousstruggle of the Germans and Asiatics that is usually known as the Battleof Niagara because of the objective of the Asiatic attack. But it passedgradually into a sporadic conflict over half a continent. Such Germanairships as escaped destruction in battle descended and surrendered tothe Americans, and were re-manned, and in the end it became a series ofpitiless and heroic encounters between the Americans, savagely resolvedto exterminate their enemies, and a continually reinforced army ofinvasion from Asia quartered upon the Pacific slope and supported byan immense fleet. From the first the war in America was fought withimplacable bitterness; no quarter was asked, no prisoners were taken. With ferocious and magnificent energy the Americans constructed andlaunched ship after ship to battle and perish against the Asiaticmultitudes. All other affairs were subordinate to this war, the wholepopulation was presently living or dying for it. Presently, as I shalltell, the white men found in the Butteridge machine a weapon that couldmeet and fight the flying-machines of the Asiatic swordsman. 

The Asiatic invasion of America completely effaced the German-Americanconflict. It vanishes from history. At first it had seemed to promisequite sufficient tragedy in itself--beginning as it did in unforgettablemassacre. After the destruction of central New York all America hadrisen like one man, resolved to die a thousand deaths rather than submitto Germany. The Germans grimly resolved upon beating the Americans intosubmission and, following out the plans developed by the Prince, hadseized Niagara--in order to avail themselves of its enormous powerworks;expelled all its inhabitants and made a desert of its environs as far asBuffalo. 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 eastcoast, stringing out to and fro like bees getting honey. It was thenthat the Asiatic forces appeared, and it was in their attack upon thisGerman base at Niagara that the air-fleets of East and West first metand the greater issue became clear. 

One conspicuous peculiarity of the early aerial fighting arose from theprofound secrecy with which the airships had been prepared. Each powerhad had but the dimmest inkling of the schemes of its rivals, and evenexperiments with its own devices were limited by the needs of secrecy. None of the designers of airships and aeroplanes had known clearly whattheir inventions might have to fight; many had not imagined they wouldhave to fight anything whatever in the air; and had planned them onlyfor the dropping of explosives. Such had been the German idea. The onlyweapon for fighting another airship with which the Franconian fleet hadbeen provided was the machine gun forward. Only after the fight overNew 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 wassupposed to swoop close to his antagonist and cast his bombs as hewhirled past. But indeed these contrivances were hopelessly unstable;not one-third in any engagement succeeded in getting back to the motherairship. The rest were either smashed up or grounded. 

The allied Chino-Japanese fleet made the same distinction as the Germansbetween airships and fighting machines heavier than air, but the type inboth cases was entirely different from the occidental models, and--itis eloquent of the vigour with which these great peoples took up andbettered the European methods of scientific research in almost everyparticular the invention of Asiatic engineers. Chief among these, itis worth remarking, was Mohini K. Chatterjee, a political exile who hadformerly served in the British-Indian aeronautic park at Lahore. 

The German airship was fish-shaped, with a blunted head; the Asiaticairship was also fish-shaped, but not so much on the lines of a cod orgoby as of a ray or sole. It had a wide, flat underside, unbroken bywindows or any opening except along the middle line. Its cabins occupiedits axis, with a sort of bridge deck above, and the gas-chambers gavethe whole affair the shape of a gipsy's hooped tent, except that it wasmuch flatter. The German airship was essentially a navigable balloonvery much lighter than air; the Asiatic airship was very little lighterthan air and skimmed through it with much greater velocity if withconsiderably less stability. They carried fore and aft guns, the lattermuch the larger, throwing inflammatory shells, and in addition they hadnests for riflemen on both the upper and the under side. Light as thisarmament was in comparison with the smallest gunboat that ever sailed, it was sufficient for them to outfight as well as outfly the Germanmonster airships. In action they flew to get behind or over the Germans:they even dashed underneath, avoiding only passing immediately beneaththe magazine, and then as soon as they had crossed let fly with theirrear gun, and sent flares or oxygen shells into the antagonist'sgas-chambers. 

It was not in their airships, but, as I have said, in theirflying-machines proper, that the strength of the Asiatics lay. Nextonly to the Butteridge machine, these were certainly the most efficientheavier-than-air fliers that had ever appeared. They were the inventionof a Japanese artist, and they differed in type extremely from thebox-kite quality of the German drachenflieger. They had curiouslycurved, flexible side wings, more like BENT butterfly's wings thananything else, and made of a substance like celluloid and of brightlypainted silk, and they had a long humming-bird tail. At the forwardcorner of the wings were hooks, rather like the claws of a bat, by whichthe machine could catch and hang and tear at the walls of an airship'sgas-chamber. The solitary rider sat between the wings above a transverseexplosive engine, an explosive engine that differed in no essentialparticular 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 inthe Butteridge machine, and he carried a large double-edged two-handedsword, in addition to his explosive-bullet firing rifle. 

3

One sets down these particulars and compares the points of the Americanand German pattern of aeroplane and navigable, but none of these factswere clearly known to any of those who fought in this monstrouslyconfused battle above the American great lakes. 

Each side went into action against it knew not what, under novelconditions and with apparatus that even without hostile attacks wascapable of producing the most disconcerting surprises. Schemes ofaction, attempts at collective manoeuvring necessarily went to piecesdirectly the fight began, just as they did in almost all the earlyironclad battles of the previous century. Each captain then had to fallback upon individual action and his own devices; one would see triumphin what another read as a cue for flight and despair. It is as true ofthe Battle of Niagara as of the Battle of Lissa that it was not a battlebut a bundle of "battlettes"!

To such a spectator as Bert it presented itself as a series ofincidents, some immense, some trivial, but collectively incoherent. Henever had a sense of any plain issue joined, of any point struggledfor and won or lost. He saw tremendous things happen and in the end hisworld darkened to disaster and ruin. 

He saw the battle from the ground, from Prospect Park and from GoatIsland, whither he fled. 

But the manner in which he came to be on the ground needs explaining. 

The Prince had resumed command of his fleet through wireless telegraphylong before the Zeppelin had located his encampment in Labrador. By hisdirection the German air-fleet, whose advance scouts had been in contactwith the Japanese over the Rocky Mountains, had concentrated uponNiagara and awaited his arrival. He had rejoined his command early inthe morning of the twelfth, and Bert had his first prospect of the Gorgeof Niagara while he was doing net drill outside the middle gas-chamberat sunrise. The Zeppelin was flying very high at the time, and far belowhe saw the water in the gorge marbled with froth and then away to thewest the great crescent of the Canadian Fall shining, flickering andfoaming in the level sunlight and sending up a deep, incessant thuddingrumble to the sky. The air-fleet was keeping station in an enormouscrescent, with its horns pointing south-westward, a long array ofshining monsters with tails rotating slowly and German ensigns nowtrailing from their bellies aft of their Marconi pendants. 

Niagara city was still largely standing then, albeit its streets wereempty of all life. Its bridges were intact; its hotels and restaurantsstill flying flags and inviting sky signs; its power-stations running. But about it the country on both sides of the gorge might have beenswept by a colossal broom. Everything that could possibly give coverto an attack upon the German position at Niagara had been levelled asruthlessly as machinery and explosives could contrive; houses blown upand burnt, woods burnt, fences and crops destroyed. The mono-rails hadbeen torn up, and the roads in particular cleared of all possibility ofconcealment or shelter. Seen from above, the effect of this wreckage wasgrotesque. Young woods had been destroyed whole-sale by dragging wires, and the spoilt saplings, smashed or uprooted, lay in swathes like cornafter the sickle. Houses had an appearance of being flattened down bythe pressure of a gigantic finger. Much burning was still going on, andlarge areas had been reduced to patches of smouldering and sometimesstill glowing blackness. 

Here and there lay the debris of belated fugitives, carts, and deadbodies of horses and men; and where houses had had water-supplies therewere pools of water and running springs from the ruptured pipes. Inunscorched fields horses and cattle still fed peacefully. Beyond thisdesolated area the countryside was still standing, but almost all thepeople had fled. Buffalo was on fire to an enormous extent, and therewere no signs of any efforts to grapple with the flames. Niagara cityitself was being rapidly converted to the needs of a military depot. A large number of skilled engineers had already been brought from thefleet and were busily at work adapting the exterior industrial apparatusof the place to the purposes of an aeronautic park. They had made agas recharging station at the corner of the American Fall above thefunicular railway, and they were, opening up a much larger area tothe south for the same purpose. Over the power-houses and hotels andsuchlike prominent or important points the German flag was flying. 

The Zeppelin circled slowly over this scene twice while the Princesurveyed it from the swinging gallery; it then rose towards the centreof the crescent and transferred the Prince and his suite, Kurt included, to the Hohenzollern, which had been chosen as the flagship during theimpending battle. They were swung up on a small cable from the forwardgallery, and the men of the Zeppelin manned the outer netting as thePrince and his staff left them. The Zeppelin then came about, circleddown and grounded in Prospect Park, in order to land the wounded andtake aboard explosives; for she had come to Labrador with her magazinesempty, it being uncertain what weight she might need to carry. Shealso replenished the hydrogen in one of her forward chambers which hadleaked. 

Bert was detailed as a bearer and helped carry the wounded one by oneinto the nearest of the large hotels that faced the Canadian shore. Thehotel was quite empty except that there were two trained American nursesand a negro porter, and three or four Germans awaiting them. Bert wentwith the Zeppelin's doctor into the main street of the place, and theybroke into a drug shop and obtained various things of which they stoodin need. As they returned they found an officer and two men making arough inventory of the available material in the various stores. Exceptfor them the wide, main street of the town was quite deserted, thepeople had been given three hours to clear out, and everybody, it seemed, had done so. At one corner a dead man lay against thewall--shot. Two or three dogs were visible up the empty vista, buttowards its river end the passage of a string of mono-rail cars brokethe stillness and the silence. They were loaded with hose, and werepassing to the trainful of workers who were converting Prospect Parkinto an airship dock. 

Bert pushed a case of medicine balanced on a bicycle taken from anadjacent shop, to the hotel, and then he was sent to load bombs into theZeppelin magazine, a duty that called for elaborate care. From this jobhe was presently called off by the captain of the Zeppelin, who senthim with a note to the officer in charge of the Anglo-American PowerCompany, for the field telephone had still to be adjusted. Bert receivedhis instructions in German, whose meaning he guessed, and saluted andtook the note, not caring to betray his ignorance of the language. Hestarted off with a bright air of knowing his way and turned a corner orso, and was only beginning to suspect that he did not know where he wasgoing when his attention was recalled to the sky by the report of a gunfrom the Hohenzollern and celestial cheering. 

He looked up and found the view obstructed by the houses on either sideof the street. He hesitated, and then curiosity took him back towardsthe bank of the river. Here his view was inconvenienced by trees, andit was with a start that he discovered the Zeppelin, which he knew hadstill a quarter of her magazines to fill, was rising over Goat Island. She had not waited for her complement of ammunition. It occurred to himthat he was left behind. He ducked back among the trees and bushes untilhe felt secure from any after-thought on the part of the Zeppelin'scaptain. Then his curiosity to see what the German air-fleet facedovercame him, and drew him at last halfway across the bridge to GoatIsland. 

From that point he had nearly a hemisphere of sky and got his firstglimpse of the Asiatic airships low in the sky above the glitteringtumults of the Upper Rapids. 

They were far less impressive than the German ships. He could notjudge the distance, and they flew edgeways to him, so as to conceal thebroader aspect of their bulk. 

Bert stood there in the middle of the bridge, in a place that mostpeople who knew it remembered as a place populous with sightseers andexcursionists, and he was the only human being in sight there. Abovehim, very high in the heavens, the contending air-fleets manoeuvred;below him the river seethed like a sluice towards the American Fall. Hewas curiously dressed. His cheap blue serge trousers were thrust intoGerman airship rubber boots, and on his head he wore an aeronaut's whitecap that was a trifle too large for him. He thrust that back to revealhis staring little Cockney face, still scarred upon the brow. "Gaw!" hewhispered. 

He stared. He gesticulated. Once or twice he shouted and applauded. 

Then at a certain point terror seized him and he took to his heels inthe direction of Goat Island. 

4

For a time after they were in sight of each other, neither fleetattempted to engage. The Germans numbered sixty-seven great airshipsand they maintained the crescent formation at a height of nearly fourthousand feet. They kept a distance of about one and a half lengths, sothat the horns of the crescent were nearly thirty miles apart. Closelyin tow of the airships of the extreme squadrons on either wing wereabout thirty drachenflieger ready manned, but these were too small anddistant for Bert to distinguish. 

At first, only what was called the Southern fleet of the Asiatics wasvisible to him. It consisted of forty airships, carrying all togethernearly four hundred one-man flying-machines upon their flanks, and forsome time it flew slowly and at a minimum distance of perhaps a dozenmiles from the Germans, eastward across their front. At first Bertcould distinguish only the greater bulks, then he perceived the one-manmachines as a multitude of very small objects drifting like motes in thesunshine about and beneath the larger shapes. 

Bert saw nothing then of the second fleet of the Asiatics, thoughprobably that was coming into sight of the Germans at the time, in thenorth-west. 

The air was very still, the sky almost without a cloud, and the Germanfleet had risen to an immense height, so that the airships seemed nolonger of any considerable size. Both ends of their crescent showedplainly. As they beat southward they passed slowly between Bert and thesunlight, and became black outlines of themselves. The drachenfliegerappeared as little flecks of black on either wing of this aerial Armada. 

The two fleets seemed in no hurry to engage. The Asiatics went far awayinto the east, quickening their pace and rising as they did so, and thentailed out into a long column and came flying back, rising towards theGerman left. The squadrons of the latter came about, facing this obliqueadvance, and suddenly little flickerings and a faint crepitating soundtold that they had opened fire. For a time no effect was visible tothe watcher on the bridge. Then, like a handful of snowflakes, thedrachenflieger swooped to the attack, and a multitude of red speckswhirled up to meet them. It was to Bert's sense not only enormouslyremote but singularly inhuman. Not four hours since he had been on oneof those very airships, and yet they seemed to him now not gas-bagscarrying men, but strange sentient creatures that moved about and didthings with a purpose of their own. The flight of the Asiatic and Germanflying-machines joined and dropped earthward, became like a handfulof 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 thedirection of Buffalo. For a time they all were hidden, then two or threewhite and a number of red ones rose again into the sky, like a swarm ofbig butterflies, and circled fighting and drove away out of sight againtowards the east. 

A heavy report recalled Bert's eyes to the zenith, and behold, the greatcrescent had lost its dressing and burst into a disorderly long cloud ofairships! One had dropped halfway down the sky. It was flaming fore andaft, and even as Bert looked it turned over and fell, spinning over andover itself and vanished into the smoke of Buffalo. 

Bert's mouth opened and shut, and he clutched tighter on the rail ofthe bridge. For some moments--they seemed long moments--the two fleetsremained without any further change flying obliquely towards each other, and making what came to Bert's ears as a midget uproar. Then suddenlyfrom either side airships began dropping out of alignment, smitten bymissiles he could neither see nor trace. The string of Asiatic shipsswung round and either charged into or over (it was difficult to sayfrom below) the shattered line of the Germans, who seemed to open outto give way to them. Some sort of manoeuvring began, but Bert couldnot grasp its import. The left of the battle became a confused danceof airships. For some minutes up there the two crossing lines of shipslooked so close it seemed like a hand-to-hand scuffle in the sky. Thenthey broke up into groups and duels. The descent of German air-shipstowards the lower sky increased. One of them flared down and vanishedfar away in the north; two dropped with something twisted and crippledin their movements; then a group of antagonists came down from thezenith in an eddying conflict, two Asiatics against one German, and werepresently joined by another, and drove away eastward all together withothers 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 squadronof Asiatics came into the battle unnoted by Bert, except that themultitude of ships above seemed presently increased. In a little whilethe fight was utter confusion, drifting on the whole to the southwestagainst the wind. It became more and more a series of group encounters. Here a huge German airship flamed earthward with a dozen flat Asiaticcraft about her, crushing her every attempt to recover. Here anotherhung with its screw fighting off the swordsman from a swarm offlying-machines. Here, again, an Asiatic aflame at either end swoopedout of the battle. His attention went from incident to incident in thevast clearness overhead; these conspicuous cases of destruction caughtand held his mind; it was only very slowly that any sort of schememanifested itself between those nearer, more striking episodes. 

The mass of the airships that eddied remotely above was, however, neither destroying nor destroyed. The majority of them seemed tobe going at full speed and circling upward for position, exchangingineffectual shots as they did so. Very little ramming was essayed afterthe first tragic downfall of rammer and rammed, and what ever attemptsat boarding were made were invisible to Bert. There seemed, however, a steady attempt to isolate antagonists, to cut them off from theirfellows and bear them down, causing a perpetual sailing back andinterlacing of these shoaling bulks. The greater numbers of the Asiaticsand their swifter heeling movements gave them the effect of persistentlyattacking the Germans. Overhead, and evidently endeavouring to keepitself in touch with the works of Niagara, a body of German airshipsdrew itself together into a compact phalanx, and the Asiatics becamemore and more intent upon breaking this up. He was grotesquely remindedof fish in a fish-pond struggling for crumbs. He could see puny puffs ofsmoke and the flash of bombs, but never a sound came down to him.... 

A flapping shadow passed for a moment between Bert and the sun and wasfollowed by another. A whirring of engines, click, clock, clitter clock, smote upon his ears. Instantly he forgot the zenith. 

Perhaps a hundred yards above the water, out of the south, riding likeValkyries swiftly through the air on the strange steeds the engineeringof Europe had begotten upon the artistic inspiration of Japan, camea long string of Asiatic swordsman. The wings flapped jerkily, click, block, clitter clock, and the machines drove up; they spread and ceased, and the apparatus came soaring through the air. So they rose and felland rose again. They passed so closely overhead that Bert could heartheir voices calling to one another. They swooped towards Niagara cityand landed one after another in a long line in a clear space beforethe hotel. But he did not stay to watch them land. One yellow face hadcraned over and looked at him, and for one enigmatical instant met hiseyes.... 

It was then the idea came to Bert that he was altogether too conspicuousin the middle of the bridge, and that he took to his heels towards GoatIsland. Thence, dodging about among the trees, with perhaps an excessiveself-consciousness, he watched the rest of the struggle. 

5

When Bert's sense of security was sufficiently restored for him to watchthe battle again, he perceived that a brisk little fight was inprogress between the Asiatic aeronauts and the German engineers for thepossession of Niagara city. It was the first time in the whole course ofthe war that he had seen anything resembling fighting as he had studiedit in the illustrated papers of his youth. It seemed to him almost asthough things were coming right. He saw men carrying rifles and takingcover and running briskly from point to point in a loose attackingformation. The first batch of aeronauts had probably been under theimpression that the city was deserted. They had grounded in the opennear Prospect Park and approached the houses towards the power-worksbefore they were disillusioned by a sudden fire. They had scattered backto the cover of a bank near the water--it was too far for them to reachtheir machines again; they were lying and firing at the men in thehotels and frame-houses about the power-works. 

Then to their support came a second string of red flying-machinesdriving up from the east. They rose up out of the haze above the housesand came round in a long curve as if surveying the position below. Thefire of the Germans rose to a roar, and one of those soaring shapes gavean abrupt jerk backward and fell among the houses. The others swoopeddown exactly like great birds upon the roof of the power-house. Theycaught upon it, and from each sprang a nimble little figure and rantowards the parapet. 

Other flapping bird-shapes came into this affair, but Bert had not seentheir coming. A staccato of shots came over to him, reminding him ofarmy manoeuvres, of newspaper descriptions of fights, of all that wasentirely correct in his conception of warfare. He saw quite a number ofGermans running from the outlying houses towards the power-house. Twofell. 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 carrythe wounded men from the Zeppelin earlier in the day, suddenly ran upthe Geneva flag. The town that had seemed so quiet had evidentlybeen concealing a considerable number of Germans, and they werenow concentrating to hold the central power-house. He wondered whatammunition they might have. More and more of the Asiatic flying-machinescame into the conflict. They had disposed of the unfortunate Germandrachenflieger and were now aiming at the incipient aeronauticpark, --the electric gas generators and repair stations which formedthe German base. Some landed, and their aeronauts took cover and becameenergetic infantry soldiers. Others hovered above the fight, their menever and again firing shots down at some chance exposure below. Thefiring came in paroxysms; now there would be a watchful lull and now arapid tattoo of shots, rising to a roar. Once or twice flying machines, as they circled warily, came right overhead, and for a time Bert gavehimself body and soul to cowering. 

Ever and again a larger thunder mingled with the rattle and remindedhim of the grapple of airships far above, but the nearer fight held hisattention. 

Abruptly something dropped from the zenith; something like a barrel or ahuge football. 

CRASH! It smashed with an immense report. It had fallen among thegrounded Asiatic aeroplanes that lay among the turf and flower-beds nearthe river. They flew in scraps and fragments, turf, trees, and gravelleapt and fell; the aeronauts still lying along the canal bank werethrown about like sacks, catspaws flew across the foaming water. All thewindows of the hotel hospital that had been shiningly reflecting bluesky and airships the moment before became vast black stars. Bang!--asecond followed. Bert looked up and was filled with a sense of a numberof monstrous bodies swooping down, coming down on the whole affair likea flight of bellying blankets, like a string of vast dish-covers. Thecentral tangle of the battle above was circling down as if to comeinto touch with the power-house fight. He got a new effect of airshipsaltogether, as vast things coming down upon him, growing swiftly largerand larger and more overwhelming, until the houses over the way seemedsmall, the American rapids narrow, the bridge flimsy, the combatantsinfinitesimal. As they came down they became audible as a complex ofshootings and vast creakings and groanings and beatings and throbbingsand shouts and shots. The fore-shortened black eagles at the fore-endsof the Germans had an effect of actual combat of flying feathers. 

Some of these fighting airships came within five hundred feet of theground. Bert could see men on the lower galleries of the Germans, firing rifles; could see Asiatics clinging to the ropes; saw one manin aluminium diver's gear fall flashing head-long into the waters aboveGoat Island. For the first time he saw the Asiatic airships closely. From this aspect they reminded him more than anything else of colossalsnowshoes; they had a curious patterning in black and white, in formsthat reminded him of the engine-turned cover of a watch. They had nohanging galleries, but from little openings on the middle line peepedout men and the muzzles of guns. So, driving in long, descending andascending curves, these monsters wrestled and fought. It was like cloudsfighting, like puddings trying to assassinate each other. They whirledand circled about each other, and for a time threw Goat Island andNiagara into a smoky twilight, through which the sunlight smote inshafts and beams. They spread and closed and spread and grappled anddrove 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 crowdbroke away from her flare and rose about her dispersing, leaving her todrop towards Canada and blow up as she dropped. Then with renewed uproarthe others closed again. Once from the men in Niagara city came a soundlike an ant-hill cheering. Another German burnt, and one badly deflatedby the prow of an antagonist, flopped out of action southward. 

It became more and more evident that the Germans were getting theworst of the unequal fight. More and more obviously were they beingpersecuted. Less and less did they seem to fight with any object otherthan escape. The Asiatics swept by them and above them, ripped theirbladders, set them alight, picked off their dimly seen men in divingclothes, who struggled against fire and tear with fire extinguishers andsilk ribbons in the inner netting. They answered only with ineffectualshots. Thence the battle circled back over Niagara, and then suddenlythe Germans, as if at a preconcerted signal, broke and dispersed, goingeast, west, north, and south, in open and confused flight. The Asiatics, as they realised this, rose to fly above them and after them. Onlyone little knot of four Germans and perhaps a dozen Asiatics remainedfighting about the Hohenzollern and the Prince as he circled in a lastattempt to save Niagara. 

Round they swooped once again over the Canadian Fall, over the waste ofwaters eastward, until they were distant and small, and then round andback, hurrying, bounding, swooping towards the one gaping spectator. 

The whole struggling mass approached very swiftly, growing rapidlylarger, and coming out black and featureless against the afternoon sunand above the blinding welter of the Upper Rapids. It grew like a stormcloud until once more it darkened the sky. The flat Asiatic airshipskept high above the Germans and behind them, and fired unansweredbullets into their gas-chambers and upon their flanks--the one-manflying-machines hovered and alighted like a swarm of attacking bees. Nearer they came, and nearer, filling the lower heaven. Two of theGermans swooped and rose again, but the Hohenzollern had suffered toomuch for that. She lifted weakly, turned sharply as if to get out ofthe battle, burst into flames fore and aft, swept down to the water, splashed into it obliquely, and rolled over and over and came downstream rolling and smashing and writhing like a thing alive, halting andthen coming on again, with her torn and bent propeller still beating theair. The bursting flames spluttered out again in clouds of steam. It wasa disaster gigantic in its dimensions. She lay across the rapids likean island, like tall cliffs, tall cliffs that came rolling, smoking, andcrumpling, and collapsing, advancing with a sort of fluctuating rapidityupon Bert. One Asiatic airship--it looked to Bert from below like threehundred yards of pavement--whirled back and circled two or three timesover that great overthrow, and half a dozen crimson flying-machinesdanced for a moment like great midges in the sunlight before they swepton after their fellows. The rest of the fight had already gone over theisland, a wild crescendo of shots and yells and smashing uproar. It washidden from Bert now by the trees of the island, and forgotten by him inthe nearer spectacle of the huge advance of the defeated German airship. Something fell with a mighty smashing and splintering of boughs unheededbehind him. 

It seemed for a time that the Hohenzollern must needs break her backupon the Parting of the Waters, and then for a time her propellerflopped and frothed in the river and thrust the mass of buckling, crumpled wreckage towards the American shore. Then the sweep of thetorrent that foamed down to the American Fall caught her, and in anotherminute the immense mass of deflating wreckage, with flames spurting outin three new places, had crashed against the bridge that joined GoatIsland and Niagara city, and forced a long arm, as it were, in a heavingtangle under the central span. Then the middle chambers blew up with aloud report, and in another moment the bridge had given way and the mainbulk of the airship, like some grotesque cripple in rags, staggered, flapping and waving flambeaux to the crest of the Fall and hesitatedthere and vanished in a desperate suicidal leap. 

Its detached fore-end remained jammed against that little island, GreenIsland it used to be called, which forms the stepping-stone between themainland and Goat Island's patch of trees. 

Bert followed this disaster from the Parting of the Waters to the bridgehead. Then, regardless of cover, regardless of the Asiatic airshiphovering like a huge house roof without walls above the SuspensionBridge, he sprinted along towards the north and came out for the firsttime upon that rocky point by Luna Island that looks sheer down uponthe American Fall. There he stood breathless amidst that eternal rush ofsound, breathless and staring. 

Far below, and travelling rapidly down the gorge, whirled something likea huge empty sack. For him it meant--what did it not mean?--the Germanair-fleet, Kurt, the Prince, Europe, all things stable and familiar, the forces that had brought him, the forces that had seemed indisputablyvictorious. And it went down the rapids like an empty sack and left thevisible world to Asia, to yellow people beyond Christendom, to all thatwas terrible and strange!

Remote over Canada receded the rest of that conflict and vanished beyondthe range of his vision.... 

CHAPTER IX. ON GOAT ISLAND

1

The whack of a bullet on the rocks beside him reminded him that he wasa visible object and wearing at least portions of a German uniform. Itdrove him into the trees again, and for a time he dodged and dropped andsought cover like a chick hiding among reeds from imaginary hawks. 

"Beaten, " he whispered. "Beaten and done for... Chinese! Yellow chapschasing 'em!"

At last he came to rest in a clump of bushes near a locked-up anddeserted refreshment shed within view of the American side. They madea sort of hole and harbour for him; they met completely overhead. Helooked across the rapids, but the firing had ceased now altogether andeverything seemed quiet. The Asiatic aeroplane had moved from its formerposition above the Suspension Bridge, was motionless now above Niagaracity, shadowing all that district about the power-house which had beenthe scene of the land fight. The monster had an air of quiet and assuredpredominance, and from its stern it trailed, serene and ornamental, along 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, wriggledout and craned his neck to find another still airship against the sunsetin the south. 

"Gaw!" he said. "Beaten and chased! My Gawd!"

The fighting, it seemed at first, was quite over in Niagara city, thougha German flag was still flying from one shattered house. A white sheetwas hoisted above the power-house, and this remained flying all throughthe events that followed. But presently came a sound of shots and thenGerman soldiers running. They disappeared among the houses, and thencame two engineers in blue shirts and trousers hotly pursued by threeJapanese swordsman. The foremost of the two fugitives was a shapely man, and ran lightly and well; the second was a sturdy little man, and ratherfat. He ran comically in leaps and bounds, with his plump arms bent upby his side and his head thrown back. The pursuers ran with uniforms anddark thin metal and leather head-dresses. The little man stumbled, andBert gasped, realising a new horror in war. 

The foremost swordsman won three strides on him and was near enough toslash at him and miss as he spurted. 

A dozen yards they ran, and then the swordsman slashed again, and Bertcould hear across the waters a little sound like the moo of an elfin cowas the fat little man fell forward. Slash went the swordsman and slashat something on the ground that tried to save itself with ineffectualhands. "Oh, I carn't!" cried Bert, near blubbering, and staring withstarting eyes. 

The swordsman slashed a fourth time and went on as his fellows came upafter the better runner. The hindmost swordsman stopped and turned back. He had perceived some movement perhaps; but at any rate he stood, andever and again slashed at the fallen body. 

"Oo-oo!" groaned Bert at every slash, and shrank closer into the bushesand became very still. Presently came a sound of shots from the town, and then everything was quiet, everything, even the hospital. 

He saw presently little figures sheathing swords come out from thehouses and walk to the debris of the flying-machines the bomb haddestroyed. Others appeared wheeling undamaged aeroplanes upon theirwheels as men might wheel bicycles, and sprang into the saddles andflapped into the air. A string of three airships appeared far awayin the east and flew towards the zenith. The one that hung low aboveNiagara city came still lower and dropped a rope ladder to pick up menfrom the power-house. 

For a long time he watched the further happenings in Niagara city as arabbit 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 seriesof dull detonations from the wheel pit of the power-house. Some similarbusiness went on among the works on the Canadian side. Meanwhile moreand more airships appeared, and many more flying-machines, until at lastit seemed to him nearly a third of the Asiatic fleet had re-assembled. He watched them from his bush, cramped but immovable, watched themgather and range themselves and signal and pick up men, until at lastthey sailed away towards the glowing sunset, going to the great Asiaticrendez-vous, above the oil wells of Cleveland. They dwindled and passedaway, leaving him alone, so far as he could tell, the only living manin a world of ruin and strange loneliness almost beyond describing. Hewatched them recede and vanish. He stood gaping after them. 

"Gaw!" he said at last, like one who rouses himself from a trance. 

It was far more than any personal desolation extremity that flooded hissoul. It seemed to him indeed that this must be the sunset of his race. 

2

He did not at first envisage his own plight in definite andcomprehensible terms. Things happened to him so much of late, hisown efforts had counted for so little, that he had become passive andplanless. His last scheme had been to go round the coast of England asa Desert Dervish giving refined entertainment to his fellow-creatures. Fate had quashed that. Fate had seen fit to direct him to otherdestinies, had hurried him from point to point, and dropped him atlast upon this little wedge of rock between the cataracts. It didnot instantly occur to him that now it was his turn to play. He hada singular feeling that all must end as a dream ends, that presentlysurely he would be back in the world of Grubb and Edna and Bun Hill, that this roar, this glittering presence of incessant water, would bedrawn aside as a curtain is drawn aside after a holiday lantern show, and old familiar, customary things re-assume their sway. It would beinteresting to tell people how he had seen Niagara. And then Kurt'swords came into his head: "People torn away from the people they carefor; homes smashed, creatures full of life and memories and peculiarlittle gifts--torn to pieces, starved, and spoilt. "... 

He wondered, half incredulous, if that was in deed true. It was so hardto realise it. Out beyond there was it possible that Tom and Jessicawere also in some dire extremity? that the little green-grocer's shopwas no longer standing open, with Jessica serving respectfully, warmingTom's ear in sharp asides, or punctually sending out the goods?

He tried to think what day of the week it was, and found he had lost hisreckoning. Perhaps it was Sunday. If so, were they going to church or, were they hiding, perhaps in bushes? What had happened to the landlord, the butcher, and to Butteridge and all those people on Dymchurch beach?Something, he knew, had happened to London--a bombardment. But who hadbombarded? Were Tom and Jessica too being chased by strange brown menwith long bare swords and evil eyes? He thought of various possibleaspects of affliction, but presently one phase ousted all the others. Were they getting much to eat? The question haunted him, obsessed him. 

If one was very hungry would one eat rats?

It dawned upon him that a peculiar misery that oppressed him was not somuch anxiety and patriotic sorrow as hunger. Of course he was hungry!

He reflected and turned his steps towards the little refreshment shedthat stood near the end of the ruined bridge. "Ought to be somethin'--"

He strolled round it once or twice, and then attacked the shutterswith his pocket-knife, reinforced presently by a wooden stake he foundconveniently near. At last he got a shutter to give, and tore it backand stuck in his head. 

"Grub, " he remarked, "anyhow. Leastways--"

He got at the inside fastening of the shutter and had presently thisestablishment open for his exploration. He found several sealed bottlesof sterilized milk, much mineral water, two tins of biscuits and a crockof very stale cakes, cigarettes in great quantity but very dry, somerather dry oranges, nuts, some tins of canned meat and fruit, and platesand knives and forks and glasses sufficient for several score of people. There was also a zinc locker, but he was unable to negotiate the padlockof this. 

"Shan't starve, " said Bert, "for a bit, anyhow. " He sat on the vendor'sseat and regaled himself with biscuits and milk, and felt for a momentquite contented. 

"Quite restful, " he muttered, munching and glancing about himrestlessly, "after what I been through. 

"Crikey! WOT a day! Oh! WOT a day!"

Wonder took possession of him. "Gaw!" he cried: "Wot a fight it's been!Smashing up the poor fellers! 'Eadlong! The airships--the fliers andall. I wonder what happened to the Zeppelin?... And that chap Kurt--Iwonder what happened to 'im? 'E was a good sort of chap, was Kurt. "

Some phantom of imperial solicitude floated through his mind. "Injia, "he said.... 

A more practical interest arose. 

"I wonder if there's anything to open one of these tins of corned beef?"

3

After he had feasted, Bert lit a cigarette and sat meditative for atime. "Wonder where Grubb is?" he said; "I do wonder that! Wonder if anyof 'em wonder about me?"

He reverted to his own circumstances. "Dessay I shall 'ave to stop onthis island for some time. "

He tried to feel at his ease and secure, but presently the indefinablerestlessness of the social animal in solitude distressed him. He beganto want to look over his shoulder, and, as a corrective, roused himselfto explore the rest of the island. 

It was only very slowly that he began to realise the peculiarities ofhis position, to perceive that the breaking down of the arch betweenGreen Island and the mainland had cut him off completely from theworld. Indeed it was only when he came back to where the fore-end ofthe Hohenzollern lay like a stranded ship, and was contemplating theshattered bridge, that this dawned upon him. Even then it came with nosort of shock to his mind, a fact among a number of other extraordinaryand unmanageable facts. He stared at the shattered cabins of theHohenzollern and its widow's garment of dishevelled silk for a time, but without any idea of its containing any living thing; it was all sotwisted and smashed and entirely upside down. Then for a while he gazedat the evening sky. A cloud haze was now appearing and not an airshipwas in sight. A swallow flew by and snapped some invisible victim. "Likea dream, " he repeated. 

Then for a time the rapids held his mind. "Roaring. It keeps on roaringand splashin' always and always. Keeps on.... "

At last his interests became personal. "Wonder what I ought to do now?"

He reflected. "Not an idee, " he said. 

He was chiefly conscious that a fortnight ago he had been in Bun Hillwith no idea of travel in his mind, and that now he was between theFalls of Niagara amidst the devastation and ruins of the greatest airfight 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 ofno great practical utility. "Wonder 'ow I can get orf this?" he said. "Wonder if there is a way out? If not... Rummy!"

Further reflection decided, "I believe I got myself in a bit of a 'olecoming over that bridge.... 

"Any'ow--got me out of the way of them Japanesy chaps. Wouldn't 'avetaken 'em long to cut MY froat. No. Still--"

He resolved to return to the point of Luna Island. For a long time hestood without stirring, scrutinising the Canadian shore and the wreckageof hotels and houses and the fallen trees of the Victoria Park, pink nowin the light of sundown. Not a human being was perceptible in that sceneof headlong destruction. Then he came back to the American side ofthe island, crossed close to the crumpled aluminium wreckage of theHohenzollern to Green Islet, and scrutinised the hopeless breach in thefurther bridge and the water that boiled beneath it. Towards Buffalothere was still much smoke, and near the position of the Niagara railwaystation the houses were burning vigorously. Everything was deserted now, everything was still. One little abandoned thing lay on a transversepath between town and road, a crumpled heap of clothes with sprawlinglimbs.... 

"'Ave a look round, " said Bert, and taking a path that ran through themiddle of the island he presently discovered the wreckage of the twoAsiatic aeroplanes that had fallen out of the struggle that ended theHohenzollern. 

With the first he found the wreckage of an aeronaut too. 

The machine had evidently dropped vertically and was badly knockedabout amidst a lot of smashed branches in a clump of trees. Its bent andbroken wings and shattered stays sprawled amidst new splintered wood, and its forepeak stuck into the ground. The aeronaut dangled weirdlyhead downward among the leaves and branches some yards away, and Bertonly discovered him as he turned from the aeroplane. In the duskyevening light and stillness--for the sun had gone now and the windhad altogether fallen-this inverted yellow face was anything but atranquilising object to discover suddenly a couple of yards away. Abroken branch had run clean through the man's thorax, and he hung, sostabbed, looking limp and absurd. In his hand he still clutched, withthe grip of death, a short light rifle. 

For some time Bert stood very still, inspecting this thing. 

Then he began to walk away from it, looking constantly back at it. 

Presently in an open glade he came to a stop. 

"Gaw!" he whispered, "I don' like dead bodies some'ow! I'd almost ratherthat chap was alive. "

He would not go along the path athwart which the Chinaman hung. He felthe would rather not have trees round him any more, and that it would bemore comfortable to be quite close to the sociable splash and uproar ofthe rapids. 

He came upon the second aeroplane in a clear grassy space by the side ofthe streaming water, and it seemed scarcely damaged at all. It looked asthough it had floated down into a position of rest. It lay on its sidewith 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. 

Bert remained a little aloof from it for a long time, looking intothe gathering shadows among the trees, in the expectation of anotherChinaman alive or dead. Then very cautiously he approached the machineand stood regarding its widespread vans, its big steering wheel andempty saddle. He did not venture to touch it. 

"I wish that other chap wasn't there, " he said. "I do wish 'e wasn'tthere!"

He saw a few yards away, something bobbing about in an eddy that spunwithin a projecting head of rock. As it went round it seemed to draw himunwillingly towards it.... 

What could it be?

"Blow!" said Bert. "It's another of 'em. "

It held him. He told himself that it was the other aeronaut that hadbeen shot in the fight and fallen out of the saddle as he strove toland. He tried to go away, and then it occurred to him that he might geta 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 hemight get along with one. He hesitated and then with a certain emotionforced himself to do this. He went towards the bushes and cut himself awand and returned to the rocks and clambered out to a corner between theeddy and the stream, By that time the sunset was over and the bats wereabroad--and he was wet with perspiration. 

He prodded the floating blue-clad thing with his wand, failed, triedagain successfully as it came round, and as it went out into the streamit turned over, the light gleamed on golden hair and--it was Kurt!

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 heseemed to compose himself in its swift grip as one who stretches himselfto rest. White-faced he was now, and all the colour gone out of him. 

A feeling of infinite distress swept over Bert as the body swept out ofsight towards the fall. "Kurt!" he cried, "Kurt! I didn't mean to! Kurt!don' leave me 'ere! Don' leave me!"

Loneliness and desolation overwhelmed him. He gave way. He stood onthe rock in the evening light, weeping and wailing passionately like achild. It was as though some link that had held him to all these thingshad broken and gone. He was afraid like a child in a lonely room, shamelessly afraid. 

The twilight was closing about him. The trees were full now of strangeshadows. All the things about him became strange and unfamiliar withthat subtle queerness one feels oftenest in dreams. "O God! I carn'stand this, " he said, and crept back from the rocks to the grass andcrouched down, and suddenly wild sorrow for the death of Kurt, Kurt thebrave, Kurt the kindly, came to his help and he broke from whimpering toweeping. He ceased to crouch; he sprawled upon the grass and clenched animpotent fist. 

"This war, " he cried, "this blarsted foolery of a war. 

"O Kurt! Lieutenant Kurt!

"I done, " he said, "I done. I've 'ad all I want, and more than Iwant. The world's all rot, and there ain't no sense in it. The night'scoming.... If 'E comes after me--'E can't come after me--'E can't!... 

"If 'E comes after me, I'll fro' myself into the water. "... 

Presently he was talking again in a low undertone. 

"There ain't nothing to be afraid of reely. It's jest imagination. Poorold Kurt--he thought it would happen. Prevision like. 'E never gave methat letter or tole me who the lady was. It's like what 'e said--peopletore away from everything they belonged to--everywhere. Exactly likewhat 'e said.... 'Ere I am cast away--thousands of miles from Edna orGrubb or any of my lot--like a plant tore up by the roots.... And everywar'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 thesense to understand, 'adn't the sense to feel it and stop it. Thoughtwar was fine. My Gawd!... 

"Dear old Edna. She was a fair bit of all right--she was. That time we'ad a boat at Kingston.... 

"I bet--I'll see 'er again yet. Won't be my fault if I don't. "... 

4

Suddenly, on the very verge of this heroic resolution, Bert becamerigid with terror. Something was creeping towards him through thegrass. Something was creeping and halting and creeping again towards himthrough the dim dark grass. The night was electrical with horror. For atime everything was still. Bert ceased to breathe. It could not be. No, it was too small!

It advanced suddenly upon him with a rush, with a little meawling cryand tail erect. It rubbed its head against him and purred. It was atiny, skinny little kitten. 

"Gaw, Pussy! 'ow you frightened me!" said Bert, with drops ofperspiration on his brow. 

5

He sat with his back to a tree stump all that night, holding the kittenin his arms. His mind was tired, and he talked or thought coherently nolonger. Towards dawn he dozed. 

When he awoke, he was stiff but in better heart, and the kitten sleptwarmly and reassuringly inside his jacket. And fear, he found, had gonefrom amidst the trees. 

He stroked the kitten, and the little creature woke up to excessivefondness and purring. "You want some milk, " said Bert. "That's what youwant. And I could do with a bit of brekker too. "

He yawned and stood up, with the kitten on his shoulder, and staredabout him, recalling the circumstances of the previous day, the grey, immense happenings. 

"Mus' do something, " he said. 

He turned towards the trees, and was presently contemplating the deadaeronaut again. The kitten he held companionably against his neck. The body was horrible, but not nearly so horrible as it had been attwilight, and now the limbs were limper and the gun had slipped to theground and lay half hidden in the grass. 

"I suppose we ought to bury 'im, Kitty, " said Bert, and lookedhelplessly at the rocky soil about him. "We got to stay on the islandwith 'im. "

It was some time before he could turn away and go on towards thatprovision shed. "Brekker first, " he said, "anyhow, " stroking the kittenon his shoulder. She rubbed his cheek affectionately with her furrylittle face and presently nibbled at his ear. "Wan' some milk, eh?" hesaid, and turned his back on the dead man as though he mattered nothing. 

He was puzzled to find the door of the shed open, though he had closedand latched it very carefully overnight, and he found also some dirtyplates he had not noticed before on the bench. He discovered that thehinges of the tin locker were unscrewed and that it could be opened. Hehad not observed this overnight. 

"Silly of me!" said Bert. "'Ere I was puzzlin' and whackin' away at thepadlock, never noticing. " It had been used apparently as an ice-chest, but it contained nothing now but the remains of half-dozen boiledchickens, some ambiguous substance that might once have been butter, anda singularly unappetising smell. He closed the lid again carefully. 

He gave the kitten some milk in a dirty plate and sat watching its busylittle tongue for a time. Then he was moved to make an inventory ofthe provisions. There were six bottles of milk unopened and one opened, sixty bottles of mineral water and a large stock of syrups, about twothousand cigarettes and upwards of a hundred cigars, nine oranges, two unopened tins of corned beef and one opened, and five large tinsCalifornia peaches. He jotted it down on a piece of paper. "'Ain't muchsolid food, " he said. "Still--A fortnight, say!

"Anything might happen in a fortnight. "

He gave the kitten a small second helping and a scrap of beef and thenwent down with the little creature running after him, tail erect and inhigh spirits, to look at the remains of the Hohenzollern. 

It had shifted in the night and seemed on the whole more firmly groundedon Green Island than before. From it his eye went to the shatteredbridge and then across to the still desolation of Niagara city. Nothingmoved over there but a number of crows. They were busy with the engineerhe had seen cut down on the previous day. He saw no dogs, but he heardone howling. 

"We got to get out of this some'ow, Kitty, " he said. "That milk won'tlast forever--not at the rate you lap it. "

He regarded the sluice-like flood before him. 

"Plenty of water, " he said. "Won't be drink we shall want. "

He decided to make a careful exploration of the island. Presently hecame to a locked gate labelled "Biddle Stairs, " and clambered over todiscover a steep old wooden staircase leading down the face of the cliffamidst a vast and increasing uproar of waters. He left the kitten aboveand descended these, and discovered with a thrill of hope a path leadingamong the rocks at the foot of the roaring downrush of the Centre Fall. Perhaps this was a sort of way!

It led him only to the choking and deafening experience of the Cave ofthe Winds, and after he had spent a quarter of an hour in a partiallystupefied condition flattened between solid rock and nearly as solidwaterfall, he decided that this was after all no practicable route toCanada and retraced his steps. As he reascended the Biddle Stairs, heheard what he decided at last must be a sort of echo, a sound of someone walking about on the gravel paths above. When he got to the top, theplace was as solitary as before. 

Thence he made his way, with the kitten skirmishing along beside himin the grass, to a staircase that led to a lump of projecting rock thatenfiladed the huge green majesty of the Horseshoe Fall. He stood therefor some time in silence. 

"You wouldn't think, " he said at last, "there was so much water.... Thisroarin' and splashin', it gets on one's nerves at last.... Soundslike people talking.... Sounds like people going about.... Sounds likeanything you fancy. "

He retired up the staircase again. "I s'pose I shall keep on goin' roundthis blessed island, " he said drearily. "Round and round and round. "

He found himself presently beside the less damaged Asiatic aeroplaneagain. He stared at it and the kitten smelt it. "Broke!" he said. 

He looked up with a convulsive start. 

Advancing slowly towards him out from among the trees were two tallgaunt figures. They were blackened and tattered and bandaged; thehind-most one limped and had his head swathed in white, but the foremostone still carried himself as a Prince should do, for all that his leftarm was in a sling and one side of his face scalded a livid crimson. Hewas the Prince Karl Albert, the War Lord, the "German Alexander, " andthe man behind him was the bird-faced man whose cabin had once beentaken from him and given to Bert. 

6

With that apparition began a new phase of Goat Island in Bert'sexperience. He ceased to be a solitary representative of humanity in avast and violent and incomprehensible universe, and became once more asocial creature, a man in a world of other men. For an instant these twowere terrible, then they seemed sweet and desirable as brothers. Theytoo were in this scrape with him, marooned and puzzled. He wantedextremely to hear exactly what had happened to them. What mattered it ifone was a Prince and both were foreign soldiers, if neither perhaps hadadequate English? His native Cockney freedom flowed too generously forhim to think of that, and surely the Asiatic fleets had purged all suchtrivial differences. "Ul-LO!" he said; "'ow did you get 'ere?"

"It is the Englishman who brought us the Butteridge machine, " said thebird-faced officer in German, and then in a tone of horror, as Bertadvanced, "Salute!" and again louder, "SALUTE!"

"Gaw!" said Bert, and stopped with a second comment under his breath. Hestared and saluted awkwardly and became at once a masked defensive thingwith whom co-operation was impossible. 

For a time these two perfected modern aristocrats stood regarding thedifficult problem of the Anglo-Saxon citizen, that ambiguous citizenwho, obeying some mysterious law in his blood, would neither drill norbe a democrat. Bert was by no means a beautiful object, but in someinexplicable way he looked resistant. He wore his cheap suit of serge, now showing many signs of wear, and its loose fit made him seem sturdierthan he was; above his disengaging face was a white German cap that wasaltogether too big for him, and his trousers were crumpled up his legsand their ends tucked into the rubber highlows of a deceased Germanaeronaut. He looked an inferior, though by no means an easy inferior, and instinctively they hated him. 

The Prince pointed to the flying-machine and said something in brokenEnglish that Bert took for German and failed to understand. He intimatedas much. 

"Dummer Kerl!" said the bird-faced officer from among his bandages. 

The Prince pointed again with his undamaged hand. "You verstehen disdrachenflieger?"

Bert began to comprehend the situation. He regarded the Asiatic machine. The habits of Bun Hill returned to him. "It's a foreign make, " he saidambiguously. 

The two Germans consulted. "You are an expert?" said the Prince. 

"We reckon to repair, " said Bert, in the exact manner of Grubb. 

The Prince sought in his vocabulary. "Is dat, " he said, "goot to fly?"

Bert reflected and scratched his cheek slowly. "I got to look at it, " hereplied.... "It's 'ad rough usage!"

He made a sound with his teeth he had also acquired from Grubb, puthis hands in his trouser pockets, and strolled back to themachine. Typically Grubb chewed something, but Bert could chew onlyimaginatively. "Three days' work in this, " he said, teething. Forthe first time it dawned on him that there were possibilities in thismachine. It was evident that the wing that lay on the ground was badlydamaged. The three stays that held it rigid had snapped across a ridgeof rock and there was also a strong possibility of the engine beingbadly damaged. The wing hook on that side was also askew, but probablythat would not affect the flight. Beyond that there probably wasn't muchthe matter. Bert scratched his cheek again and contemplated the broadsunlit waste of the Upper Rapids. "We might make a job of this.... Youleave it to me. "

He surveyed it intently again, and the Prince and his officer watchedhim. In Bun Hill Bert and Grubb had developed to a very high pitch amongthe hiring stock a method of repair by substituting; they substitutedbits of other machines. A machine that was too utterly and obviouslydone for even to proffer for hire, had nevertheless still capital value. It became a sort of quarry for nuts and screws and wheels, bars andspokes, chain-links and the like; a mine of ill-fitting "parts" toreplace the defects of machines still current. And back among the treeswas a second Asiatic aeroplane.... 

The kitten caressed Bert's airship boots unheeded. 

"Mend dat drachenflieger, " said the Prince. 

"If I do mend it, " said Bert, struck by a new thought, "none of us ain'tto be trusted to fly it. "

"_I_ vill fly it, " said the Prince. 

"Very likely break your neck, " said Bert, after a pause. 

The Prince did not understand him and disregarded what he said. Hepointed his gloved finger to the machine and turned to the bird-facedofficer with some remark in German. The officer answered and the Princeresponded with a sweeping gesture towards the sky. Then he spoke--itseemed eloquently. Bert watched him and guessed his meaning. "Much morelikely to break your neck, " he said. "'Owever. 'Ere goes. "

He began to pry about the saddle and engine of the drachenflieger insearch for tools. Also he wanted some black oily stuff for his hands andface. For the first rule in the art of repairing, as it was known to thefirm of Grubb and Smallways, was to get your hands and face thoroughlyand conclusively blackened. Also he took off his jacket and waistcoatand put his cap carefully to the back of his head in order to facilitatescratching. 

The Prince and the officer seemed disposed to watch him, but hesucceeded in making it clear to them that this would inconvenience himand that he had to "puzzle out a bit" before he could get to work. Theythought him over, but his shop experience had given him something of theauthoritative way of the expert with common men. And at last theywent away. Thereupon he went straight to the second aeroplane, got theaeronaut's gun and ammunition and hid them in a clump of nettles closeat hand. "That's all right, " said Bert, and then proceeded to a carefulinspection of the debris of the wings in the trees. Then he went backto the first aeroplane to compare the two. The Bun Hill method was quitepossibly practicable if there was nothing hopeless or incomprehensiblein the engine. 

The Germans returned presently to find him already generously smutty andtouching and testing knobs and screws and levers with an expression ofprofound sagacity. When the bird-faced officer addressed a remark tohim, he waved him aside with, "Nong comprong. Shut it! It's no good. "

Then he had an idea. "Dead chap back there wants burying, " he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. 

7

With the appearance of these two men Bert's whole universe had changedagain. A curtain fell before the immense and terrible desolation thathad overwhelmed him. He was in a world of three people, a minute humanworld that nevertheless filled his brain with eager speculations andschemes and cunning ideas. What were they thinking of? What didthey think of him? What did they mean to do? A hundred busy threadsinterlaced in his mind as he pottered studiously over the Asiaticaeroplane. New ideas came up like bubbles in soda water. 

"Gaw!" he said suddenly. He had just appreciated as a special aspect ofthis irrational injustice of fate that these two men were alive and thatKurt was dead. All the crew of the Hohenzollern were shot or burnt orsmashed or drowned, and these two lurking in the padded forward cabinhad escaped. 

"I suppose 'e thinks it's 'is bloomin' Star, " he muttered, and foundhimself uncontrollably exasperated. 

He stood up, facing round to the two men. They were standing side byside regarding him. 

"'It's no good, " he said, "starin' at me. You only put me out. " Andthen seeing they did not understand, he advanced towards them, wrench inhand. It occurred to him as he did so that the Prince was really a verybig and powerful and serene-looking person. But he said, nevertheless, pointing through the trees, "dead man!"

The bird-faced man intervened with a reply in German. 

"Dead man!" said Bert to him. "There. "

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 theyproposed that he, as a common person below the rank of officer shouldhave the sole and undivided privilege of disposing of the body bydragging it to the water's edge. There was some heated gesticulation, and at last the bird-faced officer abased himself to help. Together theydragged the limp and now swollen Asiatic through the trees, and aftera rest or so--for he trailed very heavily--dumped him into the westwardrapid. Bert returned to his expert investigation of the flying-machineat last with aching arms and in a state of gloomy rebellion. "Brastedcheek!" he said. "One'd think I was one of 'is beastly German slaves!

"Prancing beggar!"

And then he fell speculating what would happen when the flying-machine, was repaired--if it could be repaired. 

The two Germans went away again, and after some reflection Bert removedseveral nuts, resumed his jacket and vest, pocketed those nuts and histools and hid the set of tools from the second aeroplane in the fork ofa tree. "Right O, " he said, as he jumped down after the last of theseprecautions. The Prince and his companion reappeared as he returned tothe machine by the water's edge. The Prince surveyed his progress fora time, and then went towards the Parting of the Waters and stood withfolded arms gazing upstream in profound thought. The bird-faced officercame up to Bert, heavy with a sentence in English. 

"Go, " he said with a helping gesture, "und eat. "

When Bert got to the refreshment shed, he found all the food hadvanished except one measured ration of corned beef and three biscuits. 

He regarded this with open eyes and mouth. 

The kitten appeared from under the vendor's seat with an ingratiatingpurr. "Of course!" said Bert. "Why! where's your milk?"

He accumulated wrath for a moment or so, then seized the plate in onehand, and the biscuits in another, and went in search of the Prince, breathing vile words anent "grub" and his intimate interior. Heapproached without saluting. 

"'Ere!" he said fiercely. "Whad the devil's this?"

An entirely unsatisfactory altercation followed. Bert expounded theBun Hill theory of the relations of grub to efficiency in English, the bird-faced man replied with points about nations and disciplinein German. The Prince, having made an estimate of Bert's quality andphysique, suddenly hectored. He gripped Bert by the shoulder and shookhim, making his pockets rattle, shouted something to him, and flung himstruggling back. He hit him as though he was a German private. Bert wentback, white and scared, but resolved by all his Cockney standards uponone thing. He was bound in honour to "go for" the Prince. "Gaw!" hegasped, buttoning his jacket. 

"Now, " cried the Prince, "Vil you go?" and then catching the heroicgleam in Bert's eye, drew his sword. 

The bird-faced officer intervened, saying something in German andpointing skyward. 

Far away in the southwest appeared a Japanese airship coming fast towardthem. Their conflict ended at that. The Prince was first to grasp thesituation and lead the retreat. All three scuttled like rabbits for thetrees, and ran to and for cover until they found a hollow in whichthe grass grew rank. There they all squatted within six yards of oneanother. They sat in this place for a long time, up to their necks inthe grass and watching through the branches for the airship. Bert haddropped some of his corned beef, but he found the biscuits in his handand ate them quietly. The monster came nearly overhead and then wentaway to Niagara and dropped beyond the power-works. When it was near, they all kept silence, and then presently they fell into an argumentthat was robbed perhaps of immediate explosive effect only by theirfailure to understand one another. 

It was Bert began the talking and he talked on regardless of what theyunderstood or failed to understand. But his voice must have conveyed hiscantankerous intentions. 

"You want that machine done, " he said first, "you better keep your 'andsoff me!"

They disregarded that and he repeated it. 

Then he expanded his idea and the spirit of speech took hold of him. "You think you got 'old of a chap you can kick and 'it like you do yourprivate soldiers--you're jolly well mistaken. See? I've 'ad about enoughof you and your antics. I been thinking you over, you and your war andyour Empire and all the rot of it. Rot it is! It's you Germans made allthe trouble in Europe first and last. And all for nothin'. Jest sillyprancing! Jest because you've got the uniforms and flags! 'Ere I was--Ididn't want to 'ave anything to do with you. I jest didn't care a 'engat all about you. Then you get 'old of me--steal me practically--and'ere I am, thousands of miles away from 'ome and everything, and allyour silly fleet smashed up to rags. And you want to go on prancin' NOW!Not if 'I know it!

"Look at the mischief you done! Look at the way you smashed up NewYork--the people you killed, the stuff you wasted. Can't you learn?"

"Dummer Kerl!" said the bird-faced man suddenly in a tone ofconcentrated malignancy, glaring under his bandages. "Esel!"

"That's German for silly ass!--I know. But who's the silly ass--'imor me? When I was a kid, I used to read penny dreadfuls about 'avinadventures and bein' a great c'mander and all that rot. I stowed it. Butwhat's 'e got in 'is head? Rot about Napoleon, rot about Alexander, rotabout 'is blessed family and 'im and Gord and David and all that. Anyone who wasn't a dressed-up silly fool of a Prince could 'ave told allthis was goin' to 'appen. There was us in Europe all at sixes and sevenswith our silly flags and our silly newspapers raggin' us up against eachother and keepin' us apart, and there was China, solid as a cheese, withmillions and millions of men only wantin' a bit of science and a bit ofenterprise to be as good as all of us. You thought they couldn't get atyou. And then they got flying-machines. And bif!--'ere we are. Why, whenthey didn't go on making guns and armies in China, we went and poked 'emup until they did. They 'AD to give us this lickin' they've give us. Wewouldn't be happy until they did, and as I say, 'ere we are!"

The bird-faced officer shouted to him to be quiet, and then began aconversation with the Prince. 

"British citizen, " said Bert. "You ain't obliged to listen, but I ain'tobliged to shut up. "

And for some time he continued his dissertation upon Imperialism, militarism, and international politics. But their talking put himout, and for a time he was certainly merely repeating abusive terms, "prancin' nincompoops" and the like, old terms and new. Then suddenlyhe remembered his essential grievance. "'Owever, look 'ere--'ere!--thething I started this talk about is where's that food there was in thatshed? That's what I want to know. Where you put it?"

He paused. They went on talking in German. He repeated his question. They disregarded him. He asked a third time in a manner insupportablyaggressive. 

There fell a tense silence. For some seconds the three regarded oneanother. The Prince eyed Bert steadfastly, and Bert quailed under hiseye. Slowly the Prince rose to his feet and the bird-faced officerjerked up beside him. Bert remained squatting. 

"Be quaiat, " said the Prince. 

Bert perceived this was no moment for eloquence. 

The two Germans regarded him as he crouched there. Death for a momentseemed near. 

Then the Prince turned away and the two of them went towards theflying-machine. 

"Gaw!" whispered Bert, and then uttered under his breath one single wordof abuse. He sat crouched together for perhaps three minutes, thenhe sprang to his feet and went off towards the Chinese aeronaut's gunhidden among the weeds. 

8

There was no pretence after that moment that Bert was under theorders of the Prince or that he was going on with the repairing of theflying-machine. The two Germans took possession of that and set to workupon it. Bert, with his new weapon went off to the neighbourhood ofTerrapin Rock, and there sat down to examine it. It was a short riflewith a big cartridge, and a nearly full magazine. He took out thecartridges carefully and then tried the trigger and fittings untilhe felt sure he had the use of it. He reloaded carefully. Then heremembered he was hungry and went off, gun under his arm, to hunt in andabout the refreshment shed. He had the sense to perceive that he mustnot show himself with the gun to the Prince and his companion. So longas they thought him unarmed they would leave him alone, but there wasno 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 boileda reservoir of rage and fear that he wanted to shoot these two men. Hewanted to shoot them, and he thought that to shoot them would be a quitehorrible thing to do. The two sides of his inconsistent civilisationwarred within him. 

Near the shed the kitten turned up again, obviously keen for milk. Thisgreatly enhanced his own angry sense of hunger. He began to talk as hehunted about, and presently stood still, shouting insults. He talked ofwar and pride and Imperialism. "Any other Prince but you would have diedwith his men and his ship!" he cried. 

The two Germans at the machine heard his voice going ever and againamidst the clamour of the waters. Their eyes met and they smiledslightly. 

He was disposed for a time to sit in the refreshment shed waiting forthem, but then it occurred to him that so he might get them both atclose quarters. He strolled off presently to the point of Luna Island tothink the situation out. 

It had seemed a comparatively simple one at first, but as he turned itover in his mind its possibilities increased and multiplied. Both thesemen had swords, --had either a revolver?

Also, if he shot them both, he might never find the food!

So far he had been going about with this gun under his arm, and a senseof lordly security in his mind, but what if they saw the gun and decidedto ambush him? Goat Island is nearly all cover, trees, rocks, thickets, and irregularities. 

Why not go and murder them both now?

"I carn't, " said Bert, dismissing that. "I got to be worked up. "

But it was a mistake to get right away from them. That suddenly becameclear. He ought to keep them under observation, ought to "scout" them. Then he would be able to see what they were doing, whether either ofthem had a revolver, where they had hidden the food. He would be betterable to determine what they meant to do to him. If he didn't "scout"them, presently they would begin to "scout" him. This seemed soeminently reasonable that he acted upon it forthwith. He thought overhis costume and threw his collar and the tell-tale aeronaut's white capinto the water far below. He turned his coat collar up to hide any gleamof his dirty shirt. The tools and nuts in his pockets were disposedto clank, but he rearranged them and wrapped some letters and hispocket-handkerchief about them. He started off circumspectly andnoiselessly, listening and peering at every step. As he drew nearhis antagonists, much grunting and creaking served to locate them. Hediscovered them engaged in what looked like a wrestling match with theAsiatic flying-machine. Their coats were off, their swords laid aside, they were working magnificently. Apparently they were turning it roundand were having a good deal of difficulty with the long tail among thetrees. He dropped flat at the sight of them and wriggled into a littlehollow, and so lay watching their exertions. Ever and again, to pass thetime, he would cover one or other of them with his gun. 

He found them quite interesting to watch, so interesting that at timeshe came near shouting to advise them. He perceived that when they hadthe machine turned round, they would then be in immediate want of thenuts and tools he carried. Then they would come after him. They wouldcertainly conclude he had them or had hidden them. Should he hide hisgun and do a deal for food with these tools? He felt he would not beable to part with the gun again now he had once felt its reassuringcompany. The kitten turned up again and made a great fuss with him andlicked and bit his ear. 

The sun clambered to midday, and once that morning he saw, though theGermans did not, an Asiatic airship very far to the south, going swiftlyeastward. 

At last the flying-machine was turned and stood poised on its wheel, with its hooks pointing up the Rapids. The two officers wiped theirfaces, resumed jackets and swords, spoke and bore themselves like menwho congratulated themselves on a good laborious morning. Then theywent off briskly towards the refreshment shed, the Prince leading. Bert became active in pursuit; but he found it impossible to stalk themquickly enough and silently enough to discover the hiding-place of thefood. He found them, when he came into sight of them again, seated withtheir backs against the shed, plates on knee, and a tin of corned beefand a plateful of biscuits between them. They seemed in fairly goodspirits, and once the Prince laughed. At this vision of eating Bert'splans gave way. Fierce hunger carried him. He appeared before themsuddenly at a distance of perhaps twenty yards, gun in hand. 

"'Ands up!" he said in a hard, ferocious voice. 

The Prince hesitated, and then up went two pairs of hands. The gun hadsurprised them both completely. 

"Stand up, " said Bert.... "Drop that fork!"

They obeyed again. 

"What nex'?" said Bert to himself. "'Orf stage, I suppose. That way, " hesaid. "Go!"

The Prince obeyed with remarkable alacrity. When he reached the head ofthe clearing, he said something quickly to the bird-faced man and theyboth, with an entire lack of dignity, RAN!

Bert was struck with an exasperating afterthought. 

"Gord!" he cried with infinite vexation. "Why! I ought to 'ave tooktheir swords! 'Ere!"

But the Germans were already out of sight, and no doubt taking coveramong the trees. Bert fell back upon imprecations, then he went up tothe shed, cursorily examined the possibility of a flank attack, put hisgun handy, and set to work, with a convulsive listening pause beforeeach mouthful on the Prince's plate of corned beef. He had finished thatup and handed its gleanings to the kitten and he was falling-to on thesecond plateful, when the plate broke in his hand! He stared, with thefact slowly creeping upon him that an instant before he had heard acrack among the thickets. Then he sprang to his feet, snatched up hisgun in one hand and the tin of corned beef in the other, and fled roundthe shed to the other side of the clearing. As he did so came a secondcrack from the thickets, and something went phwit! by his ear. 

He didn't stop running until he was in what seemed to him a stronglydefensible position near Luna Island. Then he took cover, panting, andcrouched expectant. 

"They got a revolver after all!" he panted.... 

"Wonder if they got two? If they 'ave--Gord! I'm done!

"Where's the kitten? Finishin' up that corned beef, I suppose. Littlebeggar!"

9

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 lieclose and listen and watch. Also he had to scheme what he should do. Itwas clear now that he had to kill these two men if he could, and that ifthey could, they would kill him. The prize was first food and then theflying-machine and the doubtful privilege of trying' to ride it. If onefailed, one would certainly be killed; if one succeeded, one would getaway somewhere over there. For a time Bert tried to imagine what itwas like over there. His mind ran over possibilities, deserts, angryAmericans, Japanese, Chinese--perhaps Red Indians! (Were there still RedIndians?)

"Got to take what comes, " said Bert. "No way out of it that I can see!"

Was that voices? He realised that his attention was wandering. For atime all his senses were very alert. The uproar of the Falls was veryconfusing, and it mixed in all sorts of sounds, like feet walking, likevoices talking, like shouts and cries. 

"Silly great catarac', " said Bert. "There ain't no sense in it, fallin'and fallin'. "

Never mind that, now! What were the Germans doing?

Would they go back to the flying-machine? They couldn't do anything withit, because he had those nuts and screws and the wrench and other tools. But suppose they found the second set of tools he had hidden in a tree!He had hidden the things well, of course, but they MIGHT find them. One wasn't sure, of course--one wasn't sure. He tried to remember justexactly how he had hidden those tools. He tried to persuade himself theywere certainly and surely hidden, but his memory began to play antics. Had he really left the handle of the wrench sticking out, shining out atthe fork of the branch?

Ssh! What was that? Some one stirring in those bushes? Up went anexpectant muzzle. No! Where was the kitten? No! It was just imagination, not even the kitten. 

The Germans would certainly miss and hunt about for the tools and nutsand screws he carried in his pockets; that was clear. Then they woulddecide he had them and come for him. He had only to remain still undercover, therefore, and he would get them. Was there any flaw in that?Would they take off more removable parts of the flying-machine and thenlie up for him? No, they wouldn't do that, because they were two toone; they would have no apprehension of his getting off in theflying-machine, and no sound reason for supposing he would approach it, and so they would do nothing to damage or disable it. That he decidedwas clear. But suppose they lay up for him by the food. Well, that theywouldn't do, because they would know he had this corned beef; there wasenough in this can to last, with moderation, several days. Of coursethey might try to tire him out instead of attacking him--

He roused himself with a start. He had just grasped the real weakness ofhis position. He might go to sleep!

It needed but ten minutes under the suggestion of that idea, before herealised that he was going to sleep!

He rubbed his eyes and handled his gun. He had never before realised theintensely soporific effect of the American sun, of the American air, thedrowsy, sleep-compelling uproar of Niagara. Hitherto these things had onthe whole seemed stimulating.... 

If he had not eaten so much and eaten it so fast, he would not be soheavy. Are vegetarians always bright?... 

He roused himself with a jerk again. 

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 wasbetter, 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 inthe 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 doanything 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 adecoy. 

That set him thinking of decoys. What a fool he had been to throw hiscap away. It would have been invaluable on a stick--especially at night. 

He found himself wishing for a drink. He settled that for a time byputting a pebble in his mouth. And then the sleep craving returned. 

It became clear to him he must attack. Like many great generals beforehim, he found his baggage, that is to say his tin of corned beef, aserious impediment to mobility. At last he decided to put the beefloose in his pocket and abandon the tin. It was not perhaps an idealarrangement, but one must make sacrifices when one is campaigning. Hecrawled perhaps ten yards, and then for a time the possibilities of thesituation paralysed him. 

The afternoon was still. The roar of the cataract simply threw up thatimmense stillness in relief. He was doing his best to contrive thedeath of two better men than himself. Also they were doing their best tocontrive his. What, behind this silence, were they doing. 

Suppose he came upon them suddenly and fired, and missed?

10

He crawled, and halted listening, and crawled again until nightfall, andno doubt the German Alexander and his lieutenant did the same. A largescale map of Goat Island marked with red and blue lines to show thesestrategic movements would no doubt have displayed much interlacing, butas a matter of fact neither side saw anything of the other throughoutthat age-long day of tedious alertness. Bert never knew how near he gotto 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 ideathat his antagonists might be in the wreckage of the Hohenzollern cabinsthat was jammed against Green Island. He became enterprising, broke fromany attempt to conceal himself, and went across the little bridge at thedouble. He found nobody. It was his first visit to these huge fragmentsof airships, and for a time he explored them curiously in the dimlight. He discovered the forward cabin was nearly intact, with its doorslanting downward and a corner under water. He crept in, drank, and thenwas struck by the brilliant idea of shutting the door and sleeping onit. 

But now he could not sleep at all. 

He nodded towards morning and woke up to find it fully day. Hebreakfasted on corned beef and water, and sat for a long timeappreciative of the security of his position. At last he becameenterprising and bold. He would, he decided, settle this businessforthwith, one way or the other. He was tired of all this crawling. Heset out in the morning sunshine, gun in hand, scarcely troubling to walksoftly. He went round the refreshment shed without finding any one, and then through the trees towards the flying-machine. He came upon thebird-faced man sitting on the ground with his back against a tree, bentup over his folded arms, sleeping, his bandage very much over one eye. 

Bert stopped abruptly and stood perhaps fifteen yards away, gun in handready. Where was the Prince? Then, sticking out at the side of the treebeyond, he saw a shoulder. Bert took five deliberate paces to the left. The great man became visible, leaning up against the trunk, pistol inone hand and sword in the other, and yawning--yawning. You can't shoota yawning man Bert found. He advanced upon his antagonist with hisgun levelled, some foolish fancy of "hands up" in his mind. The Princebecame aware of him, the yawning mouth shut like a trap and he stoodstiffly up. Bert stopped, silent. For a moment the two regarded oneanother. 

Had the Prince been a wise man he would, I suppose, have dodged behindthe tree. Instead, he gave vent to a shout, and raised pistol and sword. At that, like an automaton, Bert pulled his trigger. 

It was his first experience of an oxygen-containing bullet. A greatflame spurted from the middle of the Prince, a blinding flare, andthere came a thud like the firing of a gun. Something hot and wet struckBert's face. Then through a whirl of blinding smoke and steam he sawlimbs and a collapsing, burst body fling themselves to earth. 

Bert was so astonished that he stood agape, and the bird-faced officermight have cut him to the earth without a struggle. But instead thebird-faced officer was running away through the undergrowth, dodging ashe went. Bert roused himself to a brief ineffectual pursuit, but he hadno stomach for further killing. He returned to the mangled, scatteredthing that had so recently been the great Prince Karl Albert. Hesurveyed the scorched and splashed vegetation about it. He made somespeculative identifications. He advanced gingerly and picked up the hotrevolver, to find all its chambers strained and burst. He became awareof a cheerful and friendly presence. He was greatly shocked that one soyoung should see so frightful a scene. 

"'Ere, Kitty, " he said, "this ain't no place for you. "

He made three strides across the devastated area, captured the kittenneatly, and went his way towards the shed, with her purring loudly onhis shoulder. 

"YOU don't seem to mind, " he said. 

For a time he fussed about the shed, and at last discovered the restof the provisions hidden in the roof. "Seems 'ard, " he said, as headministered a saucerful of milk, "when you get three men in a 'ole likethis, they can't work together. But 'im and 'is princing was jest a bittoo thick!"

"Gaw!" he reflected, sitting on the counter and eating, "what a thinglife is! 'Ere am I; I seen 'is picture, 'eard 'is name since I was a kidin frocks. Prince Karl Albert! And if any one 'ad tole me I was going toblow 'im to smithereens--there! I shouldn't 'ave believed it, Kitty. 

"That chap at Margit ought to 'ave tole me about it. All 'e tole me wasthat I got a weak chess. 

"That other chap, 'e ain't going to do much. Wonder what I ought to doabout 'im?"

He surveyed the trees with a keen blue eye and fingered the gun on hisknee. "I don't like this killing, Kitty, " he said. "It's like Kurt saidabout being blooded. Seems to me you got to be blooded young.... Ifthat 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 wassmart and set up--'ands full of 'air-brushes and things, and swearin' atme. A regular gentleman! Now 'e's 'arfway to a wild man. What am I to dowith 'im? What the 'ell am I to do with 'im? I can't leave 'im 'ave thatflying-machine; that's a bit too good, and if I don't kill 'im, 'e'lljest 'ang about this island and starve.... 

"'E's got a sword, of course".... 

He resumed his philosophising after he had lit a cigarette. 

"War's a silly gaim, Kitty. It's a silly gaim! We common people--we werefools. We thought those big people knew what they were up to--and theydidn'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! PrinceKarl Albert! And all the men 'e led and the ships 'e 'ad, the airships, and the dragon-fliers--all scattered like a paper-chase between this'ole and Germany. And fightin' going on and burnin' and killin' that 'estarted, war without end all over the world!

"I suppose I shall 'ave to kill that other chap. I suppose I must. Butit ain't at all the sort of job I fancy, Kitty!"

For a time he hunted about the island amidst the uproar of thewaterfall, looking for the wounded officer, and at last he started himout of some bushes near the head of Biddle Stairs. But as he saw thebent and bandaged figure in limping flight before him, he found hisCockney softness too much for him again; he could neither shoot norpursue. "I carn't, " he said, "that's flat. I 'aven't the guts for it!'E'll 'ave to go. "

He turned his steps towards the flying-machine.... 

He never saw the bird-faced officer again, nor any further evidence ofhis presence. Towards evening he grew fearful of ambushes and huntedvigorously for an hour or so, but in vain. He slept in a good defensibleposition at the extremity of the rocky point that runs out to theCanadian Fall, and in the night he woke in panic terror and fired hisgun. But it was nothing. He slept no more that night. In the morning hebecame curiously concerned for the vanished man, and hunted for him asone might for an erring brother. 

"If I knew some German, " he said, "I'd 'oller. It's jest not knowingGerman does it. You can't explain'"

He discovered, later, traces of an attempt to cross the gap in thebroken bridge. A rope with a bolt attached had been flung across and hadcaught in a fenestration of a projecting fragment of railing. The end ofthe rope trailed in the seething water towards the fall. 

But the bird-faced officer was already rubbing shoulders with certaininert matter that had once been Lieutenant Kurt and the Chinese aeronautand a dead cow, and much other uncongenial company, in the huge circleof the Whirlpool two and a quarter miles away. Never had that greatgathering place, that incessant, aimless, unprogressive hurry ofwaste and battered things, been so crowded with strange and melancholyderelicts. Round they went and round, and every day brought itsnew contributions, luckless brutes, shattered fragments of boat andflying-machine, endless citizens from the cities upon the shores of thegreat lakes above. Much came from Cleveland. It all gathered here, andwhirled about indefinitely, and over it all gathered daily a greaterabundance of birds. 

CHAPTER X. THE WORLD UNDER THE WAR

1

Bert spent two more days upon Goat Island, and finished all hisprovisions except the cigarettes and mineral water, before he broughthimself to try the Asiatic flying-machine. 

Even at last he did not so much go off upon it as get carried off. Ithad taken only an hour or so to substitute wing stays from the secondflying-machine and to replace the nuts he had himself removed. Theengine was in working order, and differed only very simply and obviouslyfrom that of a contemporary motor-bicycle. The rest of the time wastaken up by a vast musing and delaying and hesitation. Chiefly he sawhimself splashing into the rapids and whirling down them to the Fall, clutching and drowning, but also he had a vision of being hopelessly inthe air, going fast and unable to ground. His mind was too concentratedupon the business of flying for him to think very much of what mighthappen to an indefinite-spirited Cockney without credential who arrivedon an Asiatic flying-machine amidst the war-infuriated populationbeyond. 

He still had a lingering solicitude for the bird-faced officer. He hada haunting fancy he might be lying disabled or badly smashed in someway in some nook or cranny of the Island; and it was only after a mostexhaustive search that he abandoned that distressing idea. "If I found'im, " he reasoned the while, "what could I do wiv 'im? You can't blowa chap's brains out when 'e's down. And I don' see 'ow else I can 'elp'im. "

Then the kitten bothered his highly developed sense of socialresponsibility. "If I leave 'er, she'll starve.... Ought to catch micefor 'erself.... ARE there mice?... Birds?... She's too young.... She'slike me; she's a bit too civilised. "

Finally he stuck her in his side pocket and she became greatlyinterested in the memories of corned beef she found there. With her inhis pocket, he seated himself in the saddle of the flying-machine. Big, clumsy thing it was--and not a bit like a bicycle. Still the working ofit was fairly plain. You set the engine going--SO; kicked yourselfup until the wheel was vertical, SO; engaged the gyroscope, SO, andthen--then--you just pulled up this lever. 

Rather stiff it was, but suddenly it came over--

The big curved wings on either side flapped disconcertingly, flappedagain' click, clock, click, clock, clitter-clock!

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 itsfirst position. Click, clock, clitter-clock, he was rising! The machinewas 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 momentBert, clutching and convulsive and rigid, with staring eyes and a facepale as death, was flapping up above the Rapids, jerking to every jerkof the wings, and rising, rising. 

There was no comparison in dignity and comfort between a flying-machineand a balloon. Except in its moments of descent, the balloon was avehicle of faultless urbanity; this was a buck-jumping mule, a mule thatjumped up and never came down again. Click, clock, click, clock; witheach beat of the strangely shaped wings it jumped Bert upward andcaught him neatly again half a second later on the saddle. And while inballooning 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 wasa wind that above all things sought to blind him, to force him to closehis eyes. It occurred to him presently to twist his knees and legsinward and grip with them, or surely he would have been bumped into twoclumsy halves. And he was going up, a hundred yards high, two hundred, three hundred, over the streaming, frothing wilderness of waterbelow--up, up, up. That was all right, but how presently would one gohorizontally? He tried to think if these things did go horizontally. No!They flapped up and then they soared down. For a time he would keepon flapping up. Tears streamed from his eyes. He wiped them with onetemerariously disengaged hand. 

Was it better to risk a fall over land or over water--such water?

He was flapping up above the Upper Rapids towards Buffalo. It was at anyrate a comfort that the Falls and the wild swirl of waters below themwere behind him. He was flying up straight. That he could see. How didone turn?

He was presently almost cool, and his eyes got more used to the rushof air, but he was getting very high, very high. He tilted his headforwards and surveyed the country, blinking. He could see all overBuffalo, a place with three great blackened scars of ruin, and hills andstretches beyond. He wondered if he was half a mile high, or more. There were some people among some houses near a railway station betweenNiagara and Buffalo, and then more people. They went like ants busilyin and out of the houses. He saw two motor cars gliding along the roadtowards Niagara city. Then far away in the south he saw a great Asiaticairship going eastward. "Oh, Gord!" he said, and became earnest in hisineffectual attempts to alter his direction. But that airship took nonotice of him, and he continued to ascend convulsively. The world gotmore and more extensive and maplike. Click, clock, clitter-clock. Abovehim and very near to him now was a hazy stratum of cloud. 

He determined to disengage the wing clutch. He did so. The leverresisted his strength for a time, then over it came, and instantlythe tail of the machine cocked up and the wings became rigidly spread. Instantly everything was swift and smooth and silent. He wasgliding rapidly down the air against a wild gale of wind, his eyesthree-quarters shut. 

A little lever that had hitherto been obdurate now confessed itselfmobile. He turned it over gently to the right, and whiroo!--the leftwing had in some mysterious way given at its edge and he was sweepinground and downward in an immense right-handed spiral. For some momentshe experienced all the helpless sensations of catastrophe. He restoredthe lever to its middle position with some difficulty, and the wingswere equalised again. 

He turned it to the left and had a sensation of being spun roundbackwards. "Too much!" he gasped. 

He discovered that he was rushing down at a headlong pace towards arailway line and some factory buildings. They appeared to be tearing upto him to devour him. He must have dropped all that height. For a momenthe had the ineffectual sensations of one whose bicycle bolts downhill. The ground had almost taken him by surprise. "'Ere!" he cried; and thenwith a violent effort of all his being he got the beating engine at workagain and set the wings flapping. He swooped down and up and resumed hisquivering and pulsating ascent of the air. 

He went high again, until he had a wide view of the pleasant uplandcountry of western New York State, and then made a long coast down, andso up again, and then a coast. Then as he came swooping a quarter ofa mile above a village he saw people running about, runningaway--evidently in relation to his hawk-like passage. He got an ideathat he had been shot at. 

"Up!" he said, and attacked that lever again. It came over withremarkable docility, and suddenly the wings seemed to give way in themiddle. But the engine was still! It had stopped. He flung the leverback rather by instinct than design. What to do?

Much happened in a few seconds, but also his mind was quick, he thoughtvery quickly. He couldn't get up again, he was gliding down the air; hewould have to hit something. 

He was travelling at the rate of perhaps thirty miles an hour down, down. 

That plantation of larches looked the softest thing--mossy almost!

Could he get it? He gave himself to the steering. Round to theright--left!

Swirroo! Crackle! He was gliding over the tops of the trees, ploughingthrough them, tumbling into a cloud of green sharp leaves and blacktwigs. 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 theface.... 

He was between a tree-stem and the saddle, with his leg over thesteering lever and, so far as he could realise, not hurt. He tried toalter his position and free his leg, and found himself slipping anddropping through branches with everything giving way beneath him. Heclutched and found himself in the lower branches of a tree beneath theflying-machine. The air was full of a pleasant resinous smell. He staredfor a moment motionless, and then very carefully clambered down branchby branch to the soft needle-covered ground below. 

"Good business, " he said, looking up at the bent and tilted kite-wingsabove. 

"I dropped soft!"

He rubbed his chin with his hand and meditated. "Blowed if I don'tthink I'm a rather lucky fellow!" he said, surveying the pleasantsun-bespattered ground under the trees. Then he became aware ofa violent tumult at his side. "Lord!" he said, "You must be 'arfsmothered, " and extracted the kitten from his pocket-handkerchief andpocket. She was twisted and crumpled and extremely glad to see the lightagain. Her little tongue peeped between her teeth. He put her down, andshe ran a dozen paces and shook herself and stretched and sat up andbegan to wash. 

"Nex'?" he said, looking about him, and then with a gesture of vexation, "Desh it! I ought to 'ave brought that gun!"

He had rested it against a tree when he had seated himself in theflying-machine saddle. 

He was puzzled for a time by the immense peacefulness in the quality ofthe world, and then he perceived that the roar of the cataract was nolonger in his ears. 

2

He had no very clear idea of what sort of people he might come uponin this country. It was, he knew, America. Americans he had alwaysunderstood were the citizens of a great and powerful nation, dry andhumorous in their manner, addicted to the use of the bowie-knifeand revolver, and in the habit of talking through the nose likeNorfolkshire, and saying "allow" and "reckon" and "calculate, " after themanner of the people who live on the New Forest side of Hampshire. Alsothey were very rich, had rocking-chairs, and put their feet at unusualaltitudes, and they chewed tobacco, gum, and other substances, withuntiring industry. Commingled with them were cowboys, Red Indians, andcomic, respectful niggers. This he had learnt from the fiction inhis public library. Beyond that he had learnt very little. He was notsurprised therefore when he met armed men. 

He decided to abandon the shattered flying-machine. He wandered throughthe trees for some time, and then struck a road that seemed to his urbanEnglish eyes to be remarkably wide but not properly "made. " Neitherhedge nor ditch nor curbed distinctive footpath separated it from thewoods, and it went in that long easy curve which distinguishes thetracks of an open continent. Ahead he saw a man carrying a gun under hisarm, 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 personregarded him askance and heard him speak with a start. 

"Can you tell me whereabouts I am at all?" asked Bert. 

The man regarded him, and more particularly his rubber boots, withsinister suspicion. Then he replied in a strange outlandish tonguethat was, as a matter of fact, Czech. He ended suddenly at the sight ofBert's blank face with "Don't spik English. "

"Oh!" said Bert. He reflected gravely for a moment, and then went hisway. 

"Thenks, " he, said as an afterthought. The man regarded his back for amoment, was struck with an idea, began an abortive gesture, sighed, gaveit up, and went on also with a depressed countenance. 

Presently Bert came to a big wooden house standing casually among thetrees. It looked a bleak, bare box of a house to him, no creeper grew onit, 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 thirtyyards away. The place seemed deserted. He would have gone up to thedoor and rapped, but suddenly a big black dog appeared at the side andregarded 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, deepcough. 

Bert hesitated and went on. 

He stopped thirty paces away and stood peering about him among thetrees. "If I 'aven't been and lef' that kitten, " he said. 

Acute sorrow wrenched him for a time. The black dog came through thetrees to get a better look at him and coughed that well-bred coughagain. Bert resumed the road. 

"She'll do all right, " he said.... "She'll catch things. 

"She'll do all right, " he said presently, without conviction. But if ithad not been for the black dog, he would have gone back. 

When he was out of sight of the house and the black dog, he went intothe woods on the other side of the way and emerged after an intervaltrimming a very tolerable cudgel with his pocket-knife. Presently he sawan attractive-looking rock by the track and picked it up and put it inhis 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) andall standing in the same casual way upon the ground. Behind, throughthe woods, he saw pig-stys and a rooting black sow leading a brisk, adventurous family. A wild-looking woman with sloe-black eyes anddishevelled black hair sat upon the steps of one of the houses nursing ababy, but at the sight of Bert she got up and went inside, and he heardher bolting the door. Then a boy appeared among the pig-stys, but hewould not understand Bert's hail. 

"I suppose it is America!" said Bert. 

The houses became more frequent down the road, and he passed two otherextremely wild and dirty-looking men without addressing them. Onecarried a gun and the other a hatchet, and they scrutinised him and hiscudgel scornfully. Then he struck a cross-road with a mono-rail at itsside, and there was a notice board at the corner with "Wait here for thecars. " "That's all right, any'ow, " said Bert. "Wonder 'ow long I should'ave to wait?" It occurred to him that in the present disturbed state ofthe country the service might be interrupted, and as there seemed morehouses to the right than the left he turned to the right. He passed anold negro. "'Ullo!" said Bert. "Goo' morning!"

"Good day, sah!" said the old negro, in a voice of almost incrediblerichness. 

"What's the name of this place?" asked Bert. 

"Tanooda, sah!" said the negro. 

"Thenks!" said Bert. 

"Thank YOU, sah!" said the negro, overwhelmingly. 

Bert came to houses of the same detached, unwalled, wooden type, butadorned now with enamelled advertisements partly in English and partlyin Esperanto. Then he came to what he concluded was a grocer's shop. Itwas the first house that professed the hospitality of an open door, andfrom within came a strangely familiar sound. "Gaw!" he said searchingin his pockets. "Why! I 'aven't wanted money for free weeks! I wonderif I--Grubb 'ad most of it. Ah!" He produced a handful of coins andregarded it; three pennies, sixpence, and a shilling. "That's allright, " he said, forgetting a very obvious consideration. 

He approached the door, and as he did so a compactly built, grey-facedman in shirt sleeves appeared in it and scrutinised him and his cudgel. "Mornin', " said Bert. "Can I get anything to eat 'r drink in this shop?"

The man in the door replied, thank Heaven, in clear, good American. "This, sir, is not A shop, it is A store. "

"Oh!" said Bert, and then, "Well, can I get anything to eat?"

"You can, " said the American in a tone of confident encouragement, andled the way inside. 

The shop seemed to him by his Bun Hill standards extremely roomy, welllit, and unencumbered. There was a long counter to the left of him, with drawers and miscellaneous commodities ranged behind it, a number ofchairs, several tables, and two spittoons to the right, various barrels, cheeses, and bacon up the vista, and beyond, a large archway leading tomore 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 thecounter. All the men were armed with rifles, and the barrel of a gunpeeped above the counter. They were all listening idly, inattentively, to a cheap, metallic-toned gramophone that occupied a table near athand. From its brazen throat came words that gave Bert a qualm ofhomesickness, that brought back in his memory a sunlit beach, a group ofchildren, red-painted bicycles, Grubb, and an approaching balloon:--

"Ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-ting-a ling-a-tang... What Price Hair-pinsNow?"

A heavy-necked man in a straw hat, who was chewing something, stoppedthe machine with a touch, and they all turned their eyes on Bert. Andall their eyes were tired eyes. 

"Can we give this gentleman anything to eat, mother, or can we not?"said the proprietor. 

"He kin have what he likes?" said the woman at the counter, withoutmoving, "right up from a cracker to a square meal. " She struggled with ayawn, after the manner of one who has been up all night. 

"I want a meal, " said Bert, "but I 'aven't very much money. I don' wantto give mor'n a shillin'. "

"Mor'n a WHAT?" said the proprietor, sharply. 

"Mor'n a shillin', " said Bert, with a sudden disagreeable realisationcoming into his mind. 

"Yes, " said the proprietor, startled for a moment from his courtlybearing. "But what in hell is a shilling?"

"He means a quarter, " said a wise-looking, lank young man in ridinggaiters. 

Bert, trying to conceal his consternation, produced a coin. "That's ashilling, " he said. 

"He calls A store A shop, " said the proprietor, "and he wants A meal forA shilling. May I ask you, sir, what part of America you hail from?"

Bert replaced the shilling in his pocket as he spoke, "Niagara, " hesaid. 

"And when did you leave Niagara?"

"'Bout an hour ago. "

"Well, " said the proprietor, and turned with a puzzled smile to theothers. "Well!"

They asked various questions simultaneously. 

Bert selected one or two for reply. "You see, " he said, "I been withthe German air-fleet. I got caught up by them, sort of by accident, andbrought over here. "

"From England?"

"Yes--from England. Way of Germany. I was in a great battle with themAsiatics, and I got lef' on a little island between the Falls. "

"Goat Island?"

"I don' know what it was called. But any'ow I found a flying-machine andmade a sort of fly with it and got here. "

Two men stood up with incredulous eyes on him. "Where's theflying-machine?" they asked; "outside?"

"It's back in the woods here--'bout arf a mile away. "

"Is it good?" said a thick-lipped man with a scar. 

"I come down rather a smash--. "

Everybody got up and stood about him and talked confusingly. They wantedhim to take them to the flying-machine at once. 

"Look 'ere, " said Bert, "I'll show you--only I 'aven't 'ad anything toeat since yestiday--except mineral water. "

A gaunt soldierly-looking young man with long lean legs in ridinggaiters and a bandolier, who had hitherto not spoken, intervened now onhis behalf in a note of confident authority. "That's aw right, " he said. "Give him a feed, Mr. Logan--from me. I want to hear more of that storyof his. We'll see his machine afterwards. If you ask me, I should sayit's a remarkably interesting accident had dropped this gentleman here. I guess we requisition that flying-machine--if we find it--for localdefence. "

3

So Bert fell on his feet again, and sat eating cold meat and good breadand mustard and drinking very good beer, and telling in the roughestoutline and with the omissions and inaccuracies of statement natural tohis type of mind, the simple story of his adventures. He told how he anda "gentleman friend" had been visiting the seaside for their health, howa "chep" came along in a balloon and fell out as he fell in, how he haddrifted to Franconia, how the Germans had seemed to mistake him for someone and had "took him prisoner" and brought him to New York, how hehad been to Labrador and back, how he had got to Goat Island andfound himself there alone. He omitted the matter of the Prince and theButteridge aspect of the affair, not out of any deep deceitfulness, but because he felt the inadequacy of his narrative powers. He wantedeverything to seem easy and natural and correct, to present himself as atrustworthy and understandable Englishman in a sound mediocre position, to whom refreshment and accommodation might be given with freedom andconfidence. When his fragmentary story came to New York and the battleof Niagara, they suddenly produced newspapers which had been lying abouton the table, and began to check him and question him by these vehementaccounts. It became evident to him that his descent had revived androused to flames again a discussion, a topic, that had been burningcontinuously, that had smouldered only through sheer exhaustion ofmaterial during the temporary diversion of the gramophone, a discussionthat had drawn these men together, rifle in hand, the one supreme topicof the whole world, the War and the methods of the War. He found anyquestion of his personality and his personal adventures falling into thebackground, found himself taken for granted, and no more than a sourceof information. The ordinary affairs of life, the buying and sellingof everyday necessities, the cultivation of the ground, the tendingof beasts, was going on as it were by force of routine, as the commonduties of life go on in a house whose master lies under the knife ofsome supreme operation. The overruling interest was furnished by thosegreat Asiatic airships that went upon incalculable missions across thesky, the crimson-clad swordsmen who might come fluttering down demandingpetrol, or food, or news. These men were asking, all the continent wasasking, "What are we to do? What can we try? How can we get at them?"Bert fell into his place as an item, ceased even in his own thoughts tobe a central and independent thing. 

After he had eaten and drunken his fill and sighed and stretched andtold them how good the food seemed to him, he lit a cigarette they gavehim and led the way, with some doubts and trouble, to the flying-machineamidst the larches. It became manifest that the gaunt young man, whosename, it seemed, was Laurier, was a leader both by position and naturalaptitude. He knew the names and characters and capabilities of all themen who were with him, and he set them to work at once with vigour andeffect to secure this precious instrument of war. They got the thingdown to the ground deliberately and carefully, felling a couple of treesin the process, and they built a wide flat roof of timbers and treeboughs to guard their precious find against its chance discovery by anypassing Asiatics. Long before evening they had an engineer from the nexttownship at work upon it, and they were casting lots among the seventeenpicked men who wanted to take it for its first flight. And Bert foundhis kitten and carried it back to Logan's store and handed it withearnest admonition to Mrs. Logan. And it was reassuringly clear to himthat in Mrs. Logan both he and the kitten had found a congenial soul. 

Laurier was not only a masterful person and a wealthy property owner andemployer--he was president, Bert learnt with awe, of the Tanooda CanningCorporation--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 ofthe 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 asingle sheet which acted like fuel in a blazing furnace of talk. Itwas nearly all American news; the old-fashioned cables had fallen intodisuse for some years, and the Marconi stations across the ocean andalong the Atlantic coastline seemed to have furnished particularlytempting points of attack. 

But such news it was. 

Bert sat in the background--for by this time they had gauged hispersonal quality pretty completely--listening. Before his staggeringmind passed strange vast images as they talked, of great issues at acrisis, of nations in tumultuous march, of continents overthrown, offamine and destruction beyond measure. Ever and again, in spite of hisefforts to suppress them, certain personal impressions would scamperacross the weltering confusion, the horrible mess of the explodedPrince, the Chinese aeronaut upside down, the limping and bandagedbird-faced officer blundering along in miserable and hopeless flight.... 

They spoke of fire and massacre, of cruelties and counter cruelties, ofthings that had been done to harmless Asiatics by race-mad men, of thewholesale burning and smashing up of towns, railway junctions, bridges, of whole populations in hiding and exodus. "Every ship they've got is inthe Pacific, " he heard one man exclaim. "Since the fighting began theycan't have landed on the Pacific slope less than a million men. They'vecome to stay in these States, and they will--living or dead. "

Slowly, broadly, invincibly, there grew upon Bert's mind realisationof the immense tragedy of humanity into which his life was flowing;the appalling and universal nature of the epoch that had arrived; theconception of an end to security and order and habit. The whole worldwas at war and it could not get back to peace, it might never recoverpeace. 

He had thought the things he had seen had been exceptional, conclusivethings, that the besieging of New York and the battle of the Atlanticwere epoch-making events between long years of security. And they hadbeen but the first warning impacts of universal cataclysm. Each daydestruction and hate and disaster grew, the fissures widened betweenman and man, new regions of the fabric of civilisation crumbled and gaveway. Below, the armies grew and the people perished; above, the airshipsand aeroplanes fought and fled, raining destruction. 

It is difficult perhaps for the broad-minded and long-perspectivedreader to understand how incredible the breaking down of the scientificcivilisation seemed to those who actually lived at this time, who intheir own persons went down in that debacle. Progress had marched as itseemed invincible about the earth, never now to rest again. For threehundred years and more the long steadily accelerated diastole ofEuropeanised civilisation had been in progress: towns had beenmultiplying, populations increasing, values rising, new countriesdeveloping; thought, literature, knowledge unfolding and spreading. Itseemed but a part of the process that every year the instruments of warwere vaster and more powerful, and that armies and explosives outgrewall other growing things.... 

Three hundred years of diastole, and then came the swift and unexpectedsystole, like the closing of a fist. They could not understand it wassystole. 

They could not think of it as anything but a jolt, a hitch, a mereoscillatory indication of the swiftness of their progress. Collapse, though it happened all about them, remained incredible. Presently somefalling mass smote them down, or the ground opened beneath their feet. They died incredulous.... 

These men in the store made a minute, remote group under this immensecanopy of disaster. They turned from one little aspect to another. Whatchiefly concerned them was defence against Asiatic raiders swooping forpetrol or to destroy weapons or communications. Everywhere levies werebeing formed at that time to defend the plant of the railroads day andnight in the hope that communication would speedily be restored. Theland war was still far away. A man with a flat voice distinguishedhimself by a display of knowledge and cunning. He told them all withconfidence just what had been wrong with the German drachenfliegerand the American aeroplanes, just what advantage the Japanese flyerspossessed. He launched out into a romantic description of the Butteridgemachine and riveted Bert's attention. "I SEE that, " said Bert, and wassmitten silent by a thought. The man with the flat voice talked on, without heeding him, of the strange irony of Butteridge's death. Atthat Bert had a little twinge of relief--he would never meet Butteridgeagain. It appeared Butteridge had died suddenly, very suddenly. 

"And his secret, sir, perished with him! When they came to look for theparts--none could find them. He had hidden them all too well. "

"But couldn't he tell?" asked the man in the straw hat. "Did he die sosuddenly as that?"

"Struck down, sir. Rage and apoplexy. At a place called Dymchurch inEngland. "

"That's right, " said Laurier. "I remember a page about it in the SundayAmerican. At the time they said it was a German spy had stolen hisballoon. "

"Well, sir, " said the flat-voiced man, "that fit of apoplexy atDyrnchurch was the worst thing--absolutely the worst thing that everhappened to the world. For if it had not been for the death of Mr. Butteridge--"

"No one knows his secret?"

"Not a soul. It's gone. His balloon, it appears, was lost at sea, withall the plans. Down it went, and they went with it. "

Pause. 

"With machines such as he made we could fight these Asiatic flierson more than equal terms. We could outfly and beat down those scarlethumming-birds wherever they appeared. But it's gone, it's gone, andthere's no time to reinvent it now. We got to fight with what wegot--and the odds are against us. THAT won't stop us fightin'. No! butjust think of it!"

Bert was trembling violently. He cleared his throat hoarsely. 

"I say, " he said, "look here, I--"

Nobody regarded him. The man with the flat voice was opening a newbranch of the subject. 

"I allow--" he began. 

Bert became violently excited. He stood up. 

He made clawing motions with his hands. "I say!" he exclaimed, "Mr. Laurier. Look 'ere--I want--about that Butteridge machine--. "

Mr. Laurier, sitting on an adjacent table, with a magnificent gesture, arrested the discourse of the flat-voiced man. "What's HE saying?" saidhe. 

Then the whole company realised that something was happening to Bert;either he was suffocating or going mad. He was spluttering. 

"Look 'ere! I say! 'Old on a bit!" and trembling and eagerly unbuttoninghimself. 

He tore open his collar and opened vest and shirt. He plunged into hisinterior and for an instant it seemed he was plucking forth his liver. Then as he struggled with buttons on his shoulder they perceived thisflattened horror was in fact a terribly dirty flannel chest-protector. In an other moment Bert, in a state of irregular decolletage, wasstanding over the table displaying a sheaf of papers. 

"These!" he gasped. "These are the plans!... You know! Mr. Butteridge--his machine! What died! I was the chap that went off in thatballoon!"

For some seconds every one was silent. They stared from these papers toBert's white face and blazing eyes, and back to the papers on the table. Nobody moved. Then the man with the flat voice spoke. 

"Irony!" he said, with a note of satisfaction. "Real rightdown Irony!When it's too late to think of making 'em any more!"

4

They would all no doubt have been eager to hear Bert's story over again, but it was it this point that Laurier showed his quality. "No, SIR, " hesaid, and slid from off his table. 

He impounded the dispersing Butteridge plans with one comprehensivesweep of his arm, rescuing them even from the expository finger-marks ofthe man with the flat voice, and handed them to Bert. "Put those back, "he said, "where you had 'em. We have a journey before us. "

Bert took them. 

"Whar?" said the man in the straw hat. 

"Why, sir, we are going to find the President of these States and givethese plans over to him. I decline to believe, sir, we are too late. "

"Where is the President?" asked Bert weakly in that pause that followed. 

"Logan, " said Laurier, disregarding that feeble inquiry, "you must helpus in this. "

It seemed only a matter of a few minutes before Bert and Laurier and thestorekeeper were examining a number of bicycles that were stowed in thehinder room of the store. Bert didn't like any of them very much. Theyhad wood rims and an experience of wood rims in the English climate hadtaught him to hate them. That, however, and one or two other objectionsto an immediate start were overruled by Laurier. "But where IS thePresident?" Bert repeated as they stood behind Logan while he pumped upa deflated tyre. 

Laurier looked down on him. "He is reported in the neighbourhood ofAlbany--out towards the Berkshire Hills. He is moving from place toplace and, as far as he can, organising the defence by telegraph andtelephones The Asiatic air-fleet is trying to locate him. When theythink they have located the seat of government, they throw bombs. Thisinconveniences him, but so far they have not come within ten miles ofhim. The Asiatic air-fleet is at present scattered all over theEastern States, seeking out and destroying gas-works and whatever seemsconducive to the building of airships or the transport of troops. Our retaliatory measures are slight in the extreme. But with thesemachines--Sir, this ride of ours will count among the historical ridesof the world!"

He came near to striking an attitude. "We shan't get to him to-night?"asked Bert. 

"No, sir!" said Laurier. "We shall have to ride some days, sure!"

"And suppose we can't get a lift on a train--or anything?"

"No, sir! There's been no transit by Tanooda for three days. It is nogood waiting. We shall have to get on as well as we can. "

"Startin' now?"

"Starting now!"

"But 'ow about--We shan't be able to do much to-night. "

"May as well ride till we're fagged and sleep then. So much clear gain. Our road is eastward. "

"Of course, " began Bert, with memories of the dawn upon Goat Island, andleft his sentence unfinished. 

He gave his attention to the more scientific packing of thechest-protector, for several of the plans flapped beyond his vest. 

5

For a week Bert led a life of mixed sensations. Amidst these fatiguein the legs predominated. Mostly he rode, rode with Laurier's backinexorably ahead, through a land like a larger England, with biggerhills and wider valleys, larger fields, wider roads, fewer hedges, andwooden houses with commodious piazzas. He rode. Laurier made inquiries, Laurier chose the turnings, Laurier doubted, Laurier decided. Now itseemed they were in telephonic touch with the President; now somethinghad happened and he was lost again. But always they had to go on, andalways Bert rode. A tyre was deflated. Still he rode. He grew saddlesore. Laurier declared that unimportant. Asiatic flying ships passedoverhead, the two cyclists made a dash for cover until the sky wasclear. Once a red Asiatic flying-machine came fluttering after them, solow they could distinguish the aeronaut's head. He followed them for amile. Now they came to regions of panic, now to regions of destruction;here people were fighting for food, here they seemed hardly stirredfrom the countryside routine. They spent a day in a deserted anddamaged Albany. The Asiatics had descended and cut every wire and made acinder-heap of the Junction, and our travellers pushed on eastward. They passed a hundred half-heeded incidents, and always Bert was toilingafter Laurier's indefatigable back.... 

Things struck upon Bert's attention and perplexed him, and then hepassed on with unanswered questionings fading from his mind. 

He saw a large house on fire on a hillside to the right, and no manheeding it.... 

They came to a narrow railroad bridge and presently to a mono-rail trainstanding in the track on its safety feet. It was a remarkably sumptuoustrain, the Last Word Trans-Continental Express, and the passengers wereall playing cards or sleeping or preparing a picnic meal on a grassyslope near at hand. They had been there six days.... 

At one point ten dark-complexioned men were hanging in a string from thetrees along the roadside. Bert wondered why.... 

At one peaceful-looking village where they stopped off to get Bert'styre mended and found beer and biscuits, they were approached by anextremely dirty little boy without boots, who spoke as follows:--

"Deyse been hanging a Chink in dose woods!"

"Hanging a Chinaman?" said Laurier. 

"Sure. Der sleuths got him rubberin' der rail-road sheds!"

"Oh!"

"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' norisks. All der Chinks dey can fine. "

Neither Bert nor Laurier made any reply, and presently, after alittle skilful expectoration, the young gentleman was attracted bythe appearance of two of his friends down the road and shuffled off, whooping weirdly.... 

That afternoon they almost ran over a man shot through the body andpartly decomposed, lying near the middle of the road, just outsideAlbany. He must have been lying there for some days.... 

Beyond Albany they came upon a motor car with a tyre burst and a youngwoman sitting absolutely passive beside the driver's seat. An old manwas under the car trying to effect some impossible repairs. Beyond, sitting with a rifle across his knees, with his back to the car, andstaring into the woods, was a young man. 

The old man crawled out at their approach and still on all-foursaccosted Bert and Laurier. The car had broken down overnight. The oldman, said he could not understand what was wrong, but he was tryingto puzzle it out. Neither he nor his son-in-law had any mechanicalaptitude. They had been assured this was a fool-proof car. It wasdangerous to have to stop in this place. The party had been attackedby tramps and had had to fight. It was known they had provisions. Hementioned a great name in the world of finance. Would Laurier and Bertstop and help him? He proposed it first hopefully, then urgently, atlast in tears and terror. 

"No!" said Laurier inexorable. "We must go on! We have something morethan a woman to save. We have to save America!"

The girl never stirred. 

And once they passed a madman singing. 

And at last they found the President hiding in a small saloon upon theoutskirts of a place called Pinkerville on the Hudson, and gave theplans of the Butteridge machine into his hands. 

CHAPTER XI. THE GREAT COLLAPSE

1

And now the whole fabric of civilisation was bending and giving, anddropping to pieces and melting in the furnace of the war. 

The stages of the swift and universal collapse of the financial andscientific civilisation with which the twentieth century opened followedeach other very swiftly, so swiftly that upon the foreshortened page ofhistory--they seem altogether to overlap. To begin with, one sees theworld nearly at a maximum wealth and prosperity. To its inhabitantsindeed it seemed also at a maximum of security. When now in retrospectthe thoughtful observer surveys the intellectual history of this time, when one reads its surviving fragments of literature, its scraps ofpolitical oratory, the few small voices that chance has selected out ofa thousand million utterances to speak to later days, the most strikingthing of all this web of wisdom and error is surely that hallucinationof security. To men living in our present world state, orderly, scientific and secured, nothing seems so precarious, so giddilydangerous, as the fabric of the social order with which the men of theopening of the twentieth century were content. To us it seems that everyinstitution and relationship was the fruit of haphazard and traditionand the manifest sport of chance, their laws each made for some separateoccasion and having no relation to any future needs, their customsillogical, their education aimless and wasteful. Their method ofeconomic exploitation indeed impresses a trained and informed mind asthe most frantic and destructive scramble it is possible to conceive;their credit and monetary system resting on an unsubstantial traditionof the worthiness of gold, seems a thing almost fantastically unstable. And they lived in planless cities, for the most part dangerouslycongested; their rails and roads and population were distributed overthe earth in the wanton confusion ten thousand irrevelant considerationshad made. 

Yet they thought confidently that this was a secure and permanentprogressive system, and on the strength of some three hundred yearsof change and irregular improvement answered the doubter with, "Thingsalways have gone well. We'll worry through!"

But when we contrast the state of man in the opening of the twentiethcentury with the condition of any previous period in his history, thenperhaps we may begin to understand something of that blind confidence. It was not so much a reasoned confidence as the inevitable consequenceof sustained good fortune. By such standards as they possessed, thingsHAD gone amazingly well for them. It is scarcely an exaggeration to saythat for the first time in history whole populations found themselvesregularly supplied with more than enough to eat, and the vitalstatistics of the time witness to an amelioration of hygienic conditionsrapid beyond all precedent, and to a vast development of intelligenceand ability in all the arts that make life wholesome. The level andquality of the average education had risen tremendously; and at the dawnof the twentieth century comparatively few people in Western Europe orAmerica were unable to read or write. Never before had there been suchreading masses. There was wide social security. A common man mighttravel safely over three-quarters of the habitable globe, could goround the earth at a cost of less than the annual earnings of a skilledartisan. Compared with the liberality and comfort of the ordinary lifeof the time, the order of the Roman Empire under the Antonines was localand limited. And every year, every month, came some new increment tohuman achievement, a new country opened up, new mines, new scientificdiscoveries, a new machine!

For those three hundred years, indeed, the movement of the world seemedwholly beneficial to mankind. Men said, indeed, that moral organisationwas not keeping pace with physical progress, but few attached anymeaning to these phrases, the understanding of which lies at the basisof our present safety. Sustaining and constructive forces did indeedfor a time more than balance the malign drift of chance and the naturalignorance, prejudice, blind passion, and wasteful self-seeking ofmankind. 

The accidental balance on the side of Progress was far slighter andinfinitely more complex and delicate in its adjustments than the peopleof that time suspected; but that did not alter the fact that it was aneffective balance. They did not realise that this age of relative goodfortune was an age of immense but temporary opportunity for their kind. They complacently assumed a necessary progress towards which they hadno moral responsibility. They did not realise that this security ofprogress was a thing still to be won--or lost, and that the time to winit was a time that passed. They went about their affairs energeticallyenough and yet with a curious idleness towards those threatening things. No one troubled over the real dangers of mankind. They, saw their armiesand navies grow larger and more portentous; some of their ironcladsat the last cost as much as the whole annual expenditure upon advancededucation; 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 racesdrew closer without concern or understanding, and they permittedthe growth in their midst of an evil-spirited press, mercenary andunscrupulous, incapable of good, and powerful for evil. The State hadpractically no control over the press at all. Quite heedlessly theyallowed this torch-paper to lie at the door of their war magazine forany spark to fire. The precedents of history were all one tale of thecollapse of civilisations, the dangers of the time were manifest. One isincredulous now to believe they could not see. 

Could mankind have prevented this disaster of the War in the Air?

An idle question that, as idle as to ask could mankind have preventedthe decay that turned Assyria and Babylon to empty deserts or the slowdecline 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 mankindcould achieve with a different will is a speculation as idle as itis magnificent. And this was no slow decadence that came to theEuropeanised world; those other civilisations rotted and crumbled down, the Europeanised civilisation was, as it were, blown up. Within thespace of five years it was altogether disintegrated and destroyed. Upto the very eve of the War in the Air one sees a spacious spectacle ofincessant advance, a world-wide security, enormous areas with highlyorganised industry and settled populations, gigantic cities spreadinggigantically, the seas and oceans dotted with shipping, the land nettedwith rails, and open ways. Then suddenly the German air-fleets sweepacross the scene, and we are in the beginning of the end. 

2

This story has already told of the swift rush upon New York of thefirst German air-fleet and of the wild, inevitable orgy of inconclusivedestruction that ensued. Behind it a second air-fleet was alreadyswelling at its gasometers when England and France and Spain and Italyshowed their hands. None of these countries had prepared for aeronauticwarfare on the magnificent scale of the Germans, but each guardedsecrets, each in a measure was making ready, and a common dread ofGerman vigour and that aggressive spirit Prince Karl Albert embodied, had long been drawing these powers together in secret anticipation ofsome such attack. This rendered their prompt co-operation possible, andthey certainly co-operated promptly. The second aerial power in Europeat this time was France; the British, nervous for their Asiaticempire, and sensible of the immense moral effect of the airship uponhalf-educated populations, had placed their aeronautic parks in NorthIndia, and were able to play but a subordinate part in the Europeanconflict. 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, whileBert was still surveying Manchester in bird's-eye view, the diplomaticexchanges were going on that led to an attack upon Germany. Aheterogeneous collection of navigable balloons of all sizes and typesgathered over the Bernese Oberland, crushed and burnt the twenty-fiveSwiss air-ships that unexpectedly resisted this concentration in thebattle of the Alps, and then, leaving the Alpine glaciers and valleysstrewn with strange wreckage, divided into two fleets and set itselfto terrorise Berlin and destroy the Franconian Park, seeking to do thisbefore the second air-fleet could be inflated. 

Both over Berlin and Franconia the assailants with their modernexplosives effected great damage before they were driven off. InFranconia twelve fully distended and five partially filled and mannedgiants were able to make head against and at last, with the help of asquadron of drachenflieger from Hamburg, defeat and pursue the attackand to relieve Berlin, and the Germans were straining every nerve to getan overwhelming fleet in the air, and were already raiding London andParis when the advance fleets from the Asiatic air-parks, the firstintimation of a new factor in the conflict, were reported from Burmahand Armenia. 

Already the whole financial fabric of the world was staggering whenthat occurred. With the destruction of the American fleet in the NorthAtlantic, and the smashing conflict that ended the naval existence ofGermany in the North Sea, with the burning and wrecking of billions ofpounds' worth of property in the four cardinal cities of the world, thefact of the hopeless costliness of war came home for the first time, came, like a blow in the face, to the consciousness of mankind. Creditwent down in a wild whirl of selling. Everywhere appeared a phenomenonthat had already in a mild degree manifested itself in preceding periodsof panic; a desire to SECURE AND HOARD GOLD before prices reachedbottom. But now it spread like wild-fire, it became universal. Above wasvisible conflict and destruction; below something was happening far moredeadly and incurable to the flimsy fabric of finance and commercialismin which men had so blindly put their trust. As the airships foughtabove, the visible gold supply of the world vanished below. An epidemicof private cornering and universal distrust swept the world. In a fewweeks, money, except for depreciated paper, vanished into vaults, intoholes, into the walls of houses, into ten million hiding-places. Moneyvanished, and at its disappearance trade and industry came to an end. The economic world staggered and fell dead. It was like the strokeof some disease it was like the water vanishing out of the blood ofa living creature; it was a sudden, universal coagulation ofintercourse.... 

And as the credit system, that had been the living fortress of thescientific civilisation, reeled and fell upon the millions it hadheld together in economic relationship, as these people, perplexed andhelpless, faced this marvel of credit utterly destroyed, the airshipsof Asia, countless and relentless, poured across the heavens, swoopedeastward to America and westward to Europe. The page of historybecomes a long crescendo of battle. The main body of the British-Indianair-fleet perished upon a pyre of blazing antagonists in Burmah; theGermans were scattered in the great battle of the Carpathians; the vastpeninsula of India burst into insurrection and civil war from end toend, and from Gobi to Morocco rose the standards of the "Jehad. "For some weeks of warfare and destruction it seemed as though theConfederation of Eastern Asia must needs conquer the world, and thenthe jerry-built "modern" civilisation of China too gave way underthe strain. The teeming and peaceful population of China had been"westernised" during the opening years of the twentieth century withthe deepest resentment and reluctance; they had been dragooned anddisciplined under Japanese and European--influence into an acquiescencewith sanitary methods, police controls, military service, and wholesaleprocess of exploitation against which their whole tradition rebelled. Under the stresses of the war their endurance reached the breakingpoint, the whole of China rose in incoherent revolt, and the practicaldestruction of the central government at Pekin by a handful of Britishand German airships that had escaped from the main battles rendered thatrevolt invincible. In Yokohama appeared barricades, the black flag andthe social revolution. With that the whole world became a welter ofconflict. 

So that a universal social collapse followed, as it were a logicalconsequence, 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 inthe world within three weeks of the beginning of the war. Within amonth there was not a city anywhere in which the ordinary law and socialprocedure had not been replaced by some form of emergency control, inwhich firearms and military executions were not being used to keeporder and prevent violence. And still in the poorer quarters, and in thepopulous districts, and even here and there already among those who hadbeen wealthy, famine spread. 

3

So what historians have come to call the Phase of the EmergencyCommittees sprang from the opening phase and from the phase of socialcollapse. Then followed a period of vehement and passionate conflictagainst disintegration; everywhere the struggle to keep order and tokeep fighting went on. And at the same time the character of the waraltered through the replacement of the huge gas-filled airships byflying-machines as the instruments of war. So soon as the big fleetengagements were over, the Asiatics endeavoured to establish in closeproximity to the more vulnerable points of the countries against whichthey were acting, fortified centres from which flying-machine raidscould be made. For a time they had everything their own way in this, andthen, as this story has told, the lost secret of the Butteridge machinecame to light, and the conflict became equalized and less conclusivethan ever. For these small flying-machines, ineffectual for any largeexpedition or conclusive attack, were horribly convenient for guerillawarfare, rapidly and cheaply made, easily used, easily hidden. Thedesign of them was hastily copied and printed in Pinkerville andscattered broadcast over the United States and copies were sent toEurope, and there reproduced. Every man, every town, every parish thatcould, was exhorted to make and use them. In a little while they werebeing constructed not only by governments and local authorities, but byrobber bands, by insurgent committees, by every type of private person. The peculiar social destructiveness of the Butteridge machine lay inits complete simplicity. It was nearly as simple as a motor-bicycle. Thebroad outlines of the earlier stages of the war disappeared under itsinfluence, the spacious antagonism of nations and empires and racesvanished in a seething mass of detailed conflict. The world passed at astride from a unity and simplicity broader than that of the Roman Empireat its best, to as social fragmentation as complete as the robber-baronperiod of the Middle Ages. But this time, for a long descent downgradual slopes of disintegration, comes a fall like a fall over a cliff. Everywhere were men and women perceiving this and struggling desperatelyto keep as it were a hold upon the edge of the cliff. 

A fourth phase follows. Through the struggle against Chaos, in the wakeof the Famine, came now another old enemy of humanity--the Pestilence, the Purple Death. But the war does not pause. The flags still fly. Fresh air-fleets rise, new forms of airship, and beneath their swoopingstruggles the world darkens--scarcely heeded by history. 

It is not within the design of this book to tell what further story, totell how the War in the Air kept on through the sheer inability ofany authorities to meet and agree and end it, until every organisedgovernment in the world was as shattered and broken as a heap of chinabeaten with a stick. With every week of those terrible years historybecomes more detailed and confused, more crowded and uncertain. Notwithout great and heroic resistance was civilisation borne down. Outof 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 doubleeffort destroyed them. And as the exhaustion of the mechanical resourcesof civilisation clears the heavens of airships at last altogether, Anarchy, Famine and Pestilence are discovered triumphant below. Thegreat nations and empires have become but names in the mouths of men. Everywhere there are ruins and unburied dead, and shrunken, yellow-facedsurvivors in a mortal apathy. Here there are robbers, here vigilancecommittees, and here guerilla bands ruling patches of exhaustedterritory, strange federations and brotherhoods form and dissolve, andreligious fanaticisms begotten of despair gleam in famine-bright eyes. It is a universal dissolution. The fine order and welfare of the earthhave crumpled like an exploded bladder. In five short years the worldand the scope of human life have undergone a retrogressive change asgreat as that between the age of the Antonines and the Europe of theninth century.... 

4

Across this sombre spectacle of disaster goes a minute and insignificantperson for whom perhaps the readers of this story have now someslight solicitude. Of him there remains to be told just one singleand miraculous thing. Through a world darkened and lost, through acivilisation in its death agony, our little Cockney errant went andfound his Edna! He found his Edna!

He got back across the Atlantic partly by means of an order from thePresident and partly through his own good luck. He contrived to gethimself aboard a British brig in the timber trade that put out fromBoston without cargo, chiefly, it would seem, because its captain hada vague idea of "getting home" to South Shields. Bert was able to shiphimself upon her mainly because of the seamanlike appearance of hisrubber boots. They had a long, eventful voyage; they were chased, orimagined themselves to be chased, for some hours by an Asiatic ironclad, which was presently engaged by a British cruiser. The two ships foughtfor three hours, circling and driving southward as they fought, untilthe twilight and the cloud-drift of a rising gale swallowed them up. Afew days later Bert's ship lost her rudder and mainmast in a gale. Thecrew ran out of food and subsisted on fish. They saw strange air-shipsgoing eastward near the Azores and landed to get provisions and repairthe rudder at Teneriffe. There they found the town destroyed and two bigliners, with dead still aboard, sunken in the harbour. From there theygot canned food and material for repairs, but their operations weregreatly impeded by the hostility of a band of men amidst the ruins ofthe town, who sniped them and tried to drive them away. 

At Mogador, they stayed and sent a boat ashore for water, and werenearly captured by an Arab ruse. Here too they got the Purple Deathaboard, and sailed with it incubating in their blood. The cook sickenedfirst, and then the mate, and presently every one was down and threein the forecastle were dead. It chanced to be calm weather, and theydrifted helplessly and indeed careless of their fate backwards towardsthe Equator. The captain doctored them all with rum. Nine died alltogether, and of the four survivors none understood navigation; when atlast they took heart again and could handle a sail, they made a courseby the stars roughly northward and were already short of food oncemore 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 inbright June weather, and found the Purple Death was there just beginningits ravages. 

The people were in a state of panic in Cardiff and many had fled to thehills, and directly the steamer came to the harbour she was boardedand her residue of food impounded by some unauthenticated ProvisionalCommittee. Bert tramped through a country disorganised by pestilence, foodless, and shaken to the very base of its immemorial order. He camenear death and starvation many times, and once he was drawn into scenesof violence that might have ended his career. But the Bert Smallwayswho tramped from Cardiff to London vaguely "going home, " vaguely seekingsomething of his own that had no tangible form but Edna, was a verydifferent person from the Desert Dervish who was swept out of Englandin Mr. Butteridge's balloon a year before. He was brown and lean andenduring, steady-eyed and pestilence-salted, and his mouth, which hadonce hung open, shut now like a steel trap. Across his brow ran a whitescar that he had got in a fight on the brig. In Cardiff he had feltthe need of new clothes and a weapon, and had, by means that would haveshocked him a year ago, secured a flannel shirt, a corduroy suit, anda revolver and fifty cartridges from an abandoned pawnbroker's. Healso got some soap and had his first real wash for thirteen months ina stream outside the town. The Vigilance bands that had at first shotplunderers very freely were now either entirely dispersed by the plague, or busy between town and cemetery in a vain attempt to keep pace withit. 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, andso fortified himself with a few square meals before he started eastward. 

The Welsh and English countryside at that time presented the strangestmingling of the assurance and wealth of the opening twentieth centurywith a sort of Dureresque medievalism. All the gear, the houses andmono-rails, the farm hedges and power cables, the roads and pavements, the sign-posts and advertisements of the former order were still for themost part intact. Bankruptcy, social collapse, famine, and pestilencehad done nothing to damage these, and it was only to the great capitalsand ganglionic centres, as it were, of this State, that positivedestruction had come. Any one dropped suddenly into the country wouldhave noticed very little difference. He would have remarked first, perhaps, that all the hedges needed clipping, that the roadside grassgrew rank, that the road-tracks were unusually rainworn, and that thecottages by the wayside seemed in many cases shut up, that a telephonewire had dropped here, and that a cart stood abandoned by the wayside. But he would still find his hunger whetted by the bright assurance thatWilder's Canned Peaches were excellent, or that there was nothing sogood for the breakfast table as Gobble's Sausages. And then suddenlywould come the Dureresque element; the skeleton of a horse, or somecrumpled mass of rags in the ditch, with gaunt extended feet and ayellow, purple-blotched skin and face, or what had been a face, gauntand glaring and devastated. Then here would be a field that had beenploughed and not sown, and here a field of corn carelessly trampled bybeasts, and here a hoarding torn down across the road to make a fire. 

Then presently he would meet a man or a woman, yellow-faced and probablynegligently dressed and armed--prowling for food. These people wouldhave 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 evenscraps of queer meat, or crusts of grey and doughy bread, in return forit. They would listen to Bert's story with avidity, and attempt tokeep him with them for a day or so. The virtual cessation of postaldistribution and the collapse of all newspaper enterprise had left animmense and aching gap in the mental life of this time. Men had suddenlylost sight of the ends of the earth and had still to recover therumour-spreading habits of the Middle Ages. In their eyes, in theirbearing, in their talk, was the quality of lost and deoriented souls. 

As Bert travelled from parish to parish, and from district to district, avoiding as far as possible those festering centres of violence anddespair, the larger towns, he found the condition of affairs varyingwidely. In one parish he would find the large house burnt, the vicaragewrecked, evidently in violent conflict for some suspected and perhapsimaginary store of food unburied dead everywhere, and the wholemechanism of the community at a standstill. In another he would findorganising forces stoutly at work, newly-painted notice boards warningoff vagrants, the roads and still cultivated fields policed by armedmen, the pestilence under control, even nursing going on, a store offood husbanded, the cattle and sheep well guarded, and a group of twoor three justices, the village doctor or a farmer, dominating thewhole place; a reversion, in fact, to the autonomous community of thefifteenth century. But at any time such a village would be liable to araid of Asiatics or Africans or such-like air-pirates, demandingpetrol and alcohol or provisions. The price of its order was an almostintolerable watchfulness and tension. 

Then the approach to the confused problems of some larger centre ofpopulation and the presence of a more intricate conflict would be markedby roughly smeared notices of "Quarantine" or "Strangers Shot, " or by astring of decaying plunderers dangling from the telephone poles at theroadside. About Oxford big boards were put on the roofs warning all airwanderers off with the single word, "Guns. "

Taking their risks amidst these things, cyclists still kept abroad, andonce or twice during Bert's long tramp powerful motor cars containingmasked and goggled figures went tearing past him. There were fewpolice in evidence, but ever and again squads of gaunt and tatteredsoldier-cyclists would come drifting along, and such encounters becamemore frequent as he got out of Wales into England. Amidst all thiswreckage they were still campaigning. He had had some idea of resortingto the workhouses for the night if hunger pressed him too closely, butsome of these were closed and others converted into temporary hospitals, and one he came up to at twilight near a village in Gloucestershirestood with all its doors and windows open, silent as the grave, and, ashe found to his horror by stumbling along evil-smelling corridors, fullof unburied dead. 

From Gloucestershire Bert went northward to the British aeronautic parkoutside Birmingham, in the hope that he might be taken on and givenfood, for there the Government, or at any rate the War Office, stillexisted as an energetic fact, concentrated amidst collapse and socialdisaster upon the effort to keep the British flag still flying inthe air, and trying to brisk up mayor and mayor and magistrate andmagistrate in a new effort of organisation. They had brought togetherall the best of the surviving artisans from that region, they hadprovisioned the park for a siege, and they were urgently building alarger type of Butteridge machine. Bert could get no footing at thiswork: he was not sufficiently skilled, and he had drifted to Oxford whenthe great fight occurred in which these works were finally wrecked. Hesaw something, but not very much, of the battle from a place calledBoar Hill. He saw the Asiatic squadron coming up across the hills to thesouth-west, and he saw one of their airships circling southward againchased by two aeroplanes, the one that was ultimately overtaken, wreckedand burnt at Edge Hill. But he never learnt the issue of the combat as awhole. 

He crossed the Thames from Eton to Windsor and made his way round thesouth of London to Bun Hill, and there he found his brother Tom, lookinglike some dark, defensive animal in the old shop, just recovering fromthe Purple Death, and Jessica upstairs delirious, and, as it seemed tohim, dying grimly. She raved of sending out orders to customers, andscolded Tom perpetually lest he should be late with Mrs. Thompson'spotatoes and Mrs. Hopkins' cauliflower, though all business had longsince ceased and Tom had developed a quite uncanny skill in the snaringof rats and sparrows and the concealment of certain stores of cerealsand biscuits from plundered grocers' shops. Tom received his brotherwith a sort of guarded warmth. 

"Lor!" he said, "it's Bert. I thought you'd be coming back some day, andI'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?"

Bert reassured his brother by a glimpse of a partly eaten swede, and wasstill telling his story in fragments and parentheses, when he discoveredbehind the counter a yellow and forgotten note addressed to himself. "What's this?" he said, and found it was a year-old note from Edna. "Shecame 'ere, " said Tom, like one who recalls a trivial thing, "arstin' foryou 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 'aveit--and so she borrowed five shillings of me quiet like and went on. Idessay she's tole you--"

She had, Bert found. She had gone on, she said in her note, to an auntand uncle who had a brickfield near Horsham. And there at last, afteranother fortnight of adventurous journeying, Bert found her. 

5

When Bert and Edna set eyes on one another, they stared and laughedfoolishly, so changed they were, and so ragged and surprised. And thenthey both fell weeping. 

"Oh! Bertie, boy!" she cried. "You've come--you've come!" and put outher arms and staggered. "I told 'im. He said he'd kill me if I didn'tmarry him. "

But Edna was not married, and when presently Bert could get talk fromher, she explained the task before him. That little patch of lonelyagricultural country had fallen under the power of a band of bulliesled by a chief called Bill Gore who had begun life as a butcher boy anddeveloped into a prize-fighter and a professional sport. They had beenorganised by a local nobleman of former eminence upon the turf, butafter a time he had disappeared, no one quite knew how and Bill hadsucceeded to the leadership of the countryside, and had developed histeacher's methods with considerable vigour. There had been a strainof advanced philosophy about the local nobleman, and his mind ran to"improving the race" and producing the Over-Man, which in practicetook the form of himself especially and his little band in moderationmarrying with some frequency. Bill followed up the idea with anenthusiasm that even trenched upon his popularity with his followers. One day he had happened upon Edna tending her pigs, and had at oncefallen a-wooing with great urgency among the troughs of slush. Ednahad made a gallant resistance, but he was still vigorously about andextraordinarily impatient. He might, she said, come at any time, and shelooked Bert in the eyes. They were back already in the barbaric stagewhen a man must fight for his love. 

And here one deplores the conflicts of truth with the chivalroustradition. One would like to tell of Bert sallying forth to challengehis rival, of a ring formed and a spirited encounter, and Bert by somemiracle of pluck and love and good fortune winning. But indeed nothingof 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 hisways, and thinking, thinking. Then suddenly Edna's aunt, with a thrillin her voice, announced the appearance of that individual. He was comingwith two others of his gang through the garden gate. Bert got up, putthe 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 fancyplay about his head-dress. Bill had a woman's hat full of cock'sfeathers, and all had wild, slouching cowboy brims. 

Bert sighed and stood up, deeply thoughtful, and Edna watched him, marvelling. The women stood quite still. He left the window, and wentout into the passage rather slowly, and with the careworn expression ofa man who gives his mind to a complex and uncertain business. "Edna!" hecalled, and when she came he opened the front door. 

He asked very simply, and pointing to the foremost of the three, "That'im?... Sure?"... And being told that it was, shot his rival instantlyand very accurately through the chest. He then shot Bill's best man muchless tidily in the head, and then shot at and winged the third man as hefled. The third gentleman yelped, and continued running with a comicalend-on twist. 

Then Bert stood still meditating, with the pistol in his hand, and quiteregardless of the women behind him. 

So far things had gone well. 

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 wordto the women, he went down to the village public-house he had passed anhour before on his way to Edna, entered it from the rear, and confrontedthe little band of ambiguous roughs, who were drinking in the tap-roomand discussing matrimony and Bill's affection in a facetious but enviousmanner, with a casually held but carefully reloaded revolver, andan invitation to join what he called, I regret to say, a "VigilanceCommittee" under his direction. "It's wanted about 'ere, and some of usare gettin' it up. " He presented himself as one having friends outside, though indeed, he had no friends at all in the world but Edna and heraunt and two female cousins. 

There was a quick but entirely respectful discussion of the situation. They thought him a lunatic who had tramped into, this neighbourhoodignorant of Bill. They desired to temporise until their leader came. Bill would settle him. Some one spoke of Bill. 

"Bill's dead, I jest shot 'im, " said Bert. "We don't need reckon with'IM. 'E's shot, and a red-'aired chap with a squint, 'E'S shot. We'vesettled up all that. There ain't going to be no more Bill, ever. 'E'dgot wrong ideas about marriage and things. It's 'is sort of chap we'reafter. "

That carried the meeting. 

Bill was perfunctorily buried, and Bert's Vigilance Committee (for so itcontinued to be called) reigned in his stead. 

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 oakthickets of the Weald, far away from the stream of events. From thattime forth life became a succession of peasant encounters, an affair ofpigs and hens and small needs and little economies and children, untilClapham and Bun Hill and all the life of the Scientific Age became toBert no more than the fading memory of a dream. He never knew how theWar in the Air went on, nor whether it still went on. There were rumoursof airships going and coming, and of happenings Londonward. Once ortwice their shadows fell on him as he worked, but whence they came orwhither they went he could not tell. Even his desire to tell died outfor want of food. At times came robbers and thieves, at times camediseases among the beasts and shortness of food, once the country wasworried by a pack of boar-hounds he helped to kill; he went through manyinconsecutive, irrelevant adventures. He survived them all. 

Accident and death came near them both ever and again and passed themby, and they loved and suffered and were happy, and she bore him manychildren--eleven children--one after the other, of whom only foursuccumbed to the necessary hardships of their simple life. They livedand did well, as well was understood in those days. They went the way ofall flesh, year by year. 

THE EPILOGUE

It happened that one bright summer's morning exactly thirty years afterthe launching of the first German air-fleet, an old man took a small boyto look for a missing hen through the ruins of Bun Hill and out towardsthe splintered pinnacles of the Crystal Palace. He was not a veryold man; he was, as a matter of fact, still within a few weeks ofsixty-three, but constant stooping over spades and forks and thecarrying of roots and manure, and exposure to the damps of life in theopen-air without a change of clothing, had bent him into the form of asickle. Moreover, he had lost most of his teeth and that had affectedhis digestion and through that his skin and temper. In face andexpression he was curiously like that old Thomas Smallways who had oncebeen coachman to Sir Peter Bone, and this was just as it should be, for he was Tom Smallways the son, who formerly kept the littlegreen-grocer's shop under the straddle of the mono-rail viaduct in theHigh 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 unoccupiedbuilding site that had been and was still the scene of his dailyhorticulture. He and his wife lived upstairs, and in the drawing anddining rooms, which had each French windows opening on the lawn, and allabout the ground floor generally, Jessica, who was now a lean and linedand baldish but still very efficient and energetic old woman, kepther three cows and a multitude of gawky hens. These two were part of alittle community of stragglers and returned fugitives, perhaps a hundredand fifty souls of them all together, that had settled down to the newconditions of things after the Panic and Famine and Pestilence thatfollowed in the wake of the War. They had come back from strange refugesand hiding-places and had squatted down among the familiar houses andbegun that hard struggle against nature for food which was now the chiefinterest of their lives. They were by sheer preoccupation with that apeaceful people, more particularly after Wilkes, the house agent, drivenby some obsolete dream of acquisition, had been drowned in the pool bythe ruined gas-works for making inquiries into title and displaying alitigious turn of mind. (He had not been murdered, you understand, butthe people had carried an exemplary ducking ten minutes or so beyond itshealthy limits. )

This little community had returned from its original habits of suburbanparasitism to what no doubt had been the normal life of humanity fornearly immemorial years, a life of homely economies in the most intimatecontact with cows and hens and patches of ground, a life that breathesand exhales the scent of cows and finds the need for stimulantssatisfied by the activity of the bacteria and vermin it engenders. Suchhad been the life of the European peasant from the dawn of history tothe beginning of the Scientific Era, so it was the large majority of thepeople of Asia and Africa had always been wont to live. For a time ithad 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 withthe smash of the high and dangerous and splendid edifice of mechanicalcivilisation that had arisen so marvellously, back to the land came thecommon man, back to the manure. 

The little communities, still haunted by ten thousand memories of agreater state, gathered and developed almost tacitly a customary lawand fell under the guidance of a medicine man or a priest. The worldrediscovered religion and the need of something to hold its communitiestogether. At Bun Hill this function was entrusted to an old Baptistminister. He taught a simple but adequate faith. In his teaching a goodprinciple called the Word fought perpetually against a diabolical femaleinfluence called the Scarlet Woman and an evil being called Alcohol. This Alcohol had long since become a purely spiritualised conceptiondeprived of any element of material application; it had no relation tothe occasional finds of whiskey and wine in Londoners' cellars that gaveBun Hill its only holidays. He taught this doctrine on Sundays, andon weekdays he was an amiable and kindly old man, distinguished by hisquaint disposition to wash his hands, and if possible his face, daily, and with a wonderful genius for cutting up pigs. He held his Sundayservices in the old church in the Beckenham Road, and then thecountryside came out in a curious reminiscence of the urban dress ofEdwardian times. All the men without exception wore frock coats, tophats, and white shirts, though many had no boots. Tom was particularlydistinguished on these occasions because he wore a top hat with goldlace about it and a green coat and trousers that he had found upon askeleton in the basement of the Urban and District Bank. The women, evenJessica, came in jackets and immense hats extravagantly trimmed withartificial flowers and exotic birds' feather's--of which there wereabundant supplies in the shops to the north--and the children (therewere not many children, because a large proportion of the babies born inBun Hill died in a few days' time of inexplicable maladies) had similarclothes cut down to accommodate them; even Stringer's little grandson offour wore a large top hat. 

That was the Sunday costume of the Bun Hill district, a curious andinteresting survival of the genteel traditions of the Scientific Age. Ona weekday the folk were dingily and curiously hung about with dirty ragsof housecloth and scarlet flannel, sacking, curtain serge, and patchesof old carpet, and went either bare-footed or on rude wooden sandals. These people, the reader must understand, were an urban populationsunken back to the state of a barbaric peasantry, and so without any ofthe simple arts a barbaric peasantry would possess. In many ways theywere curiously degenerate and incompetent. They had lost any ideaof making textiles, they could hardly make up clothes when they hadmaterial, and they were forced to plunder the continually dwindlingsupplies of the ruins about them for cover. 

All the simple arts they had ever known they had lost, and with thebreakdown of modern drainage, modern water supply, shopping, and thelike, their civilised methods were useless. Their cooking was worse thanprimitive. It was a feeble muddling with food over wood fires in rustydrawing-room fireplaces; for the kitcheners burnt too much. Among themall no sense of baking or brewing or metal-working was to be found. 

Their employment of sacking and such-like coarse material for work-a-dayclothing, and their habit of tying it on with string and of thrustingwadding and straw inside it for warmth, gave these people an odd, "packed" appearance, and as it was a week-day when Tom took his littlenephew for the hen-seeking excursion, so it was they were attired. 

"So you've really got to Bun Hill at last, Teddy, " said old Tom, beginning to talk and slackening his pace so soon as they were out ofrange of old Jessica. "You're the last of Bert's boys for me to see. Wat I've seen, young Bert I've seen, Sissie and Matt, Tom what's calledafter me, and Peter. The traveller people brought you along all right, eh?"

"I managed, " said Teddy, who was a dry little boy. 

"Didn't want to eat you on the way?"

"They was all right, " said Teddy, "and on the way near Leatherhead wesaw a man riding on a bicycle. "

"My word!" said Tom, "there ain't many of those about nowadays. Wherewas he going?"

"Said 'e was going to Dorking if the High Road was good enough. But Idoubt if he got there. All about Burford it was flooded. We came overthe hill, uncle--what they call the Roman Road. That's high and safe. "

"Don't know it, " said old Tom. "But a bicycle! You're sure it was abicycle? Had two wheels?"

"It was a bicycle right enough. "

"Why! I remember a time, Teddy, where there was bicycles no end, whenyou could stand just here--the road was as smooth as a board then--andsee twenty or thirty coming and going at the same time, bicycles andmoty-bicycles; moty cars, all sorts of whirly things. "

"No!" said Teddy. 

"I do. They'd keep on going by all day, --'undreds and 'undreds. "

"But where was they all going?" asked Teddy. 

"Tearin' off to Brighton--you never seen Brighton, I expect--it's downby the sea, used to be a moce 'mazing place--and coming and going fromLondon. "

"Why?"

"They did. "

"But why?"

"Lord knows why, Teddy. They did. Then you see that great thing therelike a great big rusty nail sticking up higher than all the houses, andthat one yonder, and that, and how something's fell in between 'em amongthe houses. They was parts of the mono-rail. They went down to Brightontoo and all day and night there was people going, great cars as big as'ouses full of people. "

The little boy regarded the rusty evidences acrosss the narrow muddyditch of cow-droppings that had once been a High Street. He was clearlydisposed to be sceptical, and yet there the ruins were! He grappled withideas beyond the strength of his imagination. 

"What did they go for?" he asked, "all of 'em?"

"They 'AD to. Everything was on the go those days--everything. "

"Yes, but where did they come from?"

"All round 'ere, Teddy, there was people living in those 'ouses, and upthe 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 keepon coming on 'ouses, more 'ouses, and more. There's no end to 'em. Noend. They get bigger and bigger. " His voice dropped as though he namedstrange names. 

"It's LONDON, " he said. 

"And it's all empty now and left alone. All day it's left alone. Youdon't find 'ardly a man, you won't find nothing but dogs and cats afterthe rats until you get round by Bromley and Beckenham, and there youfind the Kentish men herding swine. (Nice rough lot they are too!) Itell you that so long as the sun is up it's as still as the grave. Ibeen about by day--orfen and orfen. " He paused. 

"And all those 'ouses and streets and ways used to be full of peoplebefore the War in the Air and the Famine and the Purple Death. They usedto be full of people, Teddy, and then came a time when they was full ofcorpses, when you couldn't go a mile that way before the stink of 'emdrove you back. It was the Purple Death 'ad killed 'em every one. Thecats 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 youraunt, though it made 'er lose 'er 'air. Why, you find the skeletons inthe 'ouses now. This way we been into all the 'ouses and took what wewanted and buried moce of the people, but up that way, Norwood way, there's 'ouses with the glass in the windows still, and the furniturenot touched--all dusty and falling to pieces--and the bones of thepeople lying, some in bed, some about the 'ouse, jest as the PurpleDeath left 'em five-and-twenty years ago. I went into one--me and oldHiggins las' year--and there was a room with books, Teddy--you know whatI mean by books, Teddy?"

"I seen 'em. I seen 'em with pictures. "

"Well, books all round, Teddy, 'undreds of books, beyond-rhyme orreason, as the saying goes, green-mouldy and dry. I was for leaven' 'emalone--I was never much for reading--but ole Higgins he must touch em. 'I believe I could read one of 'em NOW, ' 'e says. 

"'Not it, ' I says. 

"'I could, ' 'e says, laughing and takes one out and opens it. 

"I looked, and there, Teddy, was a cullud picture, oh, so lovely! It wasa picture of women and serpents in a garden. I never see anything likeit. 

"'This suits me, ' said old Higgins, 'to rights. '

"And then kind of friendly he gave the book a pat--

Old Tom Smallways paused impressively. 

"And then?" said Teddy. 

"It all fell to dus'. White dus'!" He became still more impressive. "Wedidn't touch no more of them books that day. Not after that. "

For a long time both were silent. Then Tom, playing with a subject thatattracted him with a fatal fascination, repeated, "All day long theylie--still as the grave. "

Teddy took the point at last. "Don't they lie o' nights?" he asked. 

Old Tom shook his head. "Nobody knows, boy, nobody knows. "

"But what could they do?"

"Nobody knows. Nobody ain't seen to tell not nobody. "

"Nobody?"

"They tell tales, " said old Tom. "They tell tales, but there ain't nobelieving 'em. I gets 'ome about sundown, and keeps indoors, so I can'tsay nothing, can I? But there's them that thinks some things and them asthinks others. I've 'eard it's unlucky to take clo'es off of 'em unlessthey got white bones. There's stories--"

The boy watched his uncle sharply. "WOT stories?" he said. 

"Stories of moonlight nights and things walking about. But I take nostock in 'em. I keeps in bed. If you listen to stories--Lord! You'll getafraid of yourself in a field at midday. "

The little boy looked round and ceased his questions for a space. 

"They say there's a 'og man in Beck'n'am what was lost in London threedays and three nights. 'E went up after whiskey to Cheapside, and lorst'is way among the ruins and wandered. Three days and three nights 'ewandered 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 beenthere now. All day 'e went and all night--and all day long it was still. It was as still as death all day long, until the sunset came and thetwilight thickened, and then it began to rustle and whisper and gopit-a-pat with a sound like 'urrying feet. "

He paused. 

"Yes, " said the little boy breathlessly. "Go on. What then?"

"A sound of carts and 'orses there was, and a sound of cabs andomnibuses, and then a lot of whistling, shrill whistles, whistles thatfroze 'is marrer. And directly the whistles began things begun to show, people in the streets 'urrying, people in the 'ouses and shops busyingthemselves, moty cars in the streets, a sort of moonlight in all thelamps and winders. People, I say, Teddy, but they wasn't people. Theywas the ghosts of them that was overtook, the ghosts of them that usedto crowd those streets. And they went past 'im and through 'im and never'eeded 'im, went by like fogs and vapours, Teddy. And sometimes theywas cheerful and sometimes they was 'orrible, 'orrible beyond words. Andonce 'e come to a place called Piccadilly, Teddy, and there was lightsblazing like daylight and ladies and gentlemen in splendid clo'escrowding the pavement, and taxicabs follering along the road. And as 'elooked, they all went evil--evil in the face, Teddy. And it seemed to'im SUDDENLY THEY SAW 'IM, and the women began to look at 'im and saythings to 'im--'orrible--wicked things. One come very near 'im, Teddy, right up to 'im, and looked into 'is face--close. And she 'adn't got aface to look with, only a painted skull, and then 'e see; they wasall painted skulls. And one after another they crowded on 'im saying'orrible things, and catchin' at 'im and threatenin' and coaxing 'im, sothat 'is 'eart near left 'is body for fear. "

"Yes, " gasped Teddy in an unendurable pause. 

"Then it was he remembered the words of Scripture and saved himselfalive. 'The Lord is my 'Elper, 'e says, 'therefore I will fear nothing, 'and straightaway there came a cock-crowing and the street was emptyfrom end to end. And after that the Lord was good to 'im and guided 'im'ome. "

Teddy stared and caught at another question. "But who was the people, "he asked, "who lived in all these 'ouses? What was they?"

"Gent'men in business, people with money--leastways we thought itwas money till everything smashed up, and then seemingly it was jes'paper--all sorts. Why, there was 'undreds of thousands of them. Therewas millions. I've seen that 'I Street there regular so's you couldn'twalk along the pavements, shoppin' time, with women and peopleshoppin'. "

"But where'd they get their food and things?"

"Bort 'em in shops like I used to 'ave. I'll show you the place, Teddy, if we go back. People nowadays 'aven't no idee of a shop--no idee. Plate-glass winders--it's all Greek to them. Why, I've 'ad as much asa ton and a 'arf of petaties to 'andle all at one time. You'd open youreyes 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 greatnuts. " His voice became luscious--"Benanas, oranges. "

"What's benanas?" asked the boy, "and oranges?"

"Fruits they was. Sweet, juicy, d'licious fruits. Foreign fruits. Theybrought 'em from Spain and N' York and places. In ships and things. Theybrought 'em to me from all over the world, and I sold 'em in my shop. _I_ sold 'em, Teddy! me what goes about now with you, dressed up in oldsacks 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 thenines, and say, 'Well, Mr. Smallways, what you got 'smorning?' andI'd say, 'Well, I got some very nice C'nadian apples, 'or p'raps I gotcusted marrers. See? And they'd buy 'em. Right off they'd say, 'Send mesome up. ' Lord! what a life that was. The business of it, the bussel, the smart things you saw, moty cars going by, kerridges, people, organ-grinders, German bands. Always something going past--always. If itwasn't for those empty 'ouses, I'd think it all a dream. "

"But what killed all the people, uncle?" asked Teddy. 

"It was a smash-up, " said old Tom. "Everything was going right untilthey started that War. Everything was going like clock-work. Everybodywas busy and everybody was 'appy and everybody got a good square mealevery day. "

He met incredulous eyes. "Everybody, " he said firmly. "If you couldn'tget it anywhere else, you could get it in the workhuss, a nice 'ot bowlof soup called skilly, and bread better'n any one knows 'ow to make now, reg'lar WHITE bread, gov'ment bread. "

Teddy marvelled, but said nothing. It made him feel deep longings thathe found it wisest to fight down. 

For a time the old man resigned himself to the pleasures of gustatoryreminiscence. His lips moved. "Pickled Sammin!" he whispered, "an'vinegar.... Dutch cheese, BEER! A pipe of terbakker. "

"But 'OW did the people get killed?" asked Teddy presently. 

"There was the War. The War was the beginning of it. The War banged andflummocked about, but it didn't really KILL many people. But it upsetthings. They came and set fire to London and burnt and sank all theships there used to be in the Thames--we could see the smoke and steamfor weeks--and they threw a bomb into the Crystal Palace and made abust-up, and broke down the rail lines and things like that. But as forkillin' people, it was just accidental if they did. They killed eachother more. There was a great fight all hereabout one day, Teddy--up inthe air. Great things bigger than fifty 'ouses, bigger than the CrystalPalace--bigger, bigger than anything, flying about up in the air andwhacking 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. "

"But 'ow did the people get KILLED?" said the little boy in the pause. 

"I'm tellin' you, Teddy, " said the old man. "It was the stoppin' ofbusiness come next. Suddenly there didn't seem to be any money. Therewas cheques--they was a bit of paper written on, and they was jes' asgood as money--jes' as good if they come from customers you knew. Thenall of a sudden they wasn't. I was left with three of 'em and two I'dgiven' 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 loveor--anything. The banks in London 'ad got it, and the banks was allsmashed up. Everybody went bankrup'. Everybody was thrown out of work. Everybody!"

He paused, and scrutinised his hearer. The small boy's intelligent faceexpressed hopeless perplexity. 

"That's 'ow it 'appened, " said old Tom. He sought for some means ofexpression. "It was like stoppin' a clock, " he said. "Things were quietfor a bit, deadly quiet, except for the air-ships fighting about in thesky, and then people begun to get excited. I remember my lars' customer, the very lars' customer that ever I 'ad. He was a Mr. Moses Gluckstein, a city gent and very pleasant and fond of sparrowgrass and chokes, and'e cut in--there 'adn't been no customers for days--and began totalk very fast, offerin' me for anything I 'ad, anything, petaties oranything, its weight in gold. 'E said it was a little speculation 'ewanted 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 agambler, '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, perfectrespectful 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 unemployedwith a great banner they 'ad for every one to read--every one couldread those days--'We want Food. ' Three or four of 'em suddenly turns andcomes into my shop. 

"'Got any food?' says one. 

"'No, ' I says, 'not to sell. I wish I 'ad. But if I 'ad, I'm afraid Icouldn't let you have it. This gent, 'e's been offerin' me--'

"Mr. Gluckstein 'e tried to stop me, but it was too late. 

"'What's 'e been offerin' you?' says a great big chap with a 'atchet;'what's 'e been offerin you?' I 'ad to tell. 

"'Boys, ' 'e said, ''ere's another feenancier!' and they took 'im outthere and then, and 'ung 'im on a lam'pose down the street. 'E neverlifted a finger to resist. After I tole on 'im 'e never said a word.... "

Tom meditated for a space. "First chap I ever sin 'ung!" he said. 

"Ow old was you?" asked Teddy. 

"'Bout thirty, " said old Tom. 

"Why! I saw free pig-stealers 'ung before I was six, " said Teddy. "Father took me because of my birfday being near. Said I ought to beblooded.... "

"Well, you never saw no-one killed by a moty car, any'ow, " said old Tomafter a moment of chagrin. "And you never saw no dead men carried into achemis' shop. "

Teddy's momentary triumph faded. "No, " he said, "I 'aven't. "

"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 theFamine and Riotin' began. Then there was strikes and Socialism, thingsI never did 'old with, worse and worse. There was fightin' and shootin'down, and burnin' and plundering. They broke up the banks up in Londonand got the gold, but they couldn't make food out of gold. 'Ow did WEget on? Well, we kep' quiet. We didn't interfere with no-one and no-onedidn't interfere with us. We 'ad some old 'tatoes about, but mocely welived on rats. Ours was a old 'ouse, full of rats, and the famine neverseemed to bother 'em. Orfen we got a rat. Orfen. But moce of the peoplewho lived hereabouts was too tender stummicked for rats. Didn't seemto fancy 'em. They'd been used to all sorts of fallals, and they didn'ttake to 'onest feeding, not till it was too late. Died rather. 

"It was the famine began to kill people. Even before the Purple Deathcame along they was dying like flies at the end of the summer. 'Ow Iremember it all! I was one of the first to 'ave it. I was out, seein' ifI mightn't get 'old of a cat or somethin', and then I went round to mybit of ground to see whether I couldn't get up some young turnipsI'd forgot, and I was took something awful. You've no idee the pain, Teddy--it doubled me up pretty near. I jes' lay down by 'at therecorner, and your aunt come along to look for me and dragged me 'ome likea sack. 

"I'd never 'ave got better if it 'adn't been for your aunt. 'Tom, ' shesays to me, 'you got to get well, ' and I 'AD to. Then SHE sickened. Shesickened but there ain't much dyin' about your aunt. 'Lor!' she says, 'as if I'd leave you to go muddlin' along alone!' That's what she says. She's got a tongue, 'as your aunt. But it took 'er 'air off--and arstthough I might, she's never cared for the wig I got 'er--orf the oldlady what was in the vicarage garden. 

"Well, this 'ere Purple Death, --it jes' wiped people out, Teddy. Youcouldn't bury 'em. And it took the dogs and the cats too, and the ratsand '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 moveout of the 'I street into that villa we got. And all the water run shortthat way. The drains and underground tunnels took it. Gor' knows wherethe Purple Death come from; some say one thing and some another. Somesaid it come from eatin' rats and some from eatin' nothin'. Some say theAsiatics brought it from some 'I place, Thibet, I think, where it neverdid nobody much 'arm. All I know is it come after the Famine. And theFamine come after the Penic and the Penic come after the War. "

Teddy thought. "What made the Purple Death?" he asked. 

"'Aven't I tole you!"

"But why did they 'ave a Penic?"

"They 'ad it. "

"But why did they start the War?"

"They couldn't stop theirselves. 'Aving them airships made 'em. "

"And 'ow did the War end?"

"Lord knows if it's ended, boy, " said old Tom. "Lord knows if it'sended. There's been travellers through 'ere--there was a chap only twosummers ago--say it's goin' on still. They say there's bands of peopleup north who keep on with it and people in Germany and China and 'Mericaand 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 goingaway--over there. It was a littleish-sized thing and lopsided, as thoughit 'ad something the matter with it. "

He pointed, and came to a stop at a gap in the fence, the vestiges ofthe old fence from which, in the company of his neighbour Mr. Stringerthe milkman, he had once watched the South of England Aero Club'sSaturday afternoon ascents. Dim memories, it may be, of that particularafternoon returned to him. 

"There, down there, where all that rus' looks so red and bright, that'sthe gas-works. "

"What's gas?" asked the little boy. 

"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. "

The little boy tried vainly to imagine gas on the basis of theseparticulars. Then his thoughts reverted to a previous topic. 

"But why didn't they end the War?"

"Obstinacy. Everybody was getting 'urt, but everybody was 'urtin' andeverybody was 'igh-spirited and patriotic, and so they smeshed upthings instead. They jes' went on smeshin'. And afterwards they jes' gotdesp'rite and savige. "

"It ought to 'ave ended, " said the little boy. 

"It didn't ought to 'ave begun, " said old Tom, "But people was proud. People was la-dy-da-ish and uppish and proud. Too much meat and drinkthey 'ad. Give in--not them! And after a bit nobody arst 'em to give in. Nobody arst 'em.... "

He sucked his old gums thoughtfully, and his gaze strayed away acrossthe valley to where the shattered glass of the Crystal Palaceglittered in the sun. A dim large sense of waste and irrevocable lostopportunities pervaded his mind. He repeated his ultimate judgmentupon all these things, obstinately, slowly, and conclusively, his finalsaying upon the matter. 

"You can say what you like, " he said. "It didn't ought ever to 'avebegun. "

He said it simply--somebody somewhere ought to have stopped something, but who or how or why were all beyond his ken.