by H. G. Wells
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 pro
prietor.
"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 wa
r 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.