by H. G. Wells
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 hel
d 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-m
achine 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 leading, 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 be
en 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.