by H. G. Wells
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 e
normous 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. "Sm
allways, 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 Be
rt, "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!"