CHAPTER XXVIII
CONCERNING ASTRONOMY AND OYSTERS
In spite of the bold front that he had assumed during the interview, thestrain, not exactly of superstition but rather of supernaturalism whichruns so strongly in the Kaiser's family, made it impossible for him totreat such a tremendous threat as the destruction of the world as analternative to universal peace by any means as lightly as he appeared tohis visitors to do; and when the audience was over he picked up theenvelope which Lennard had left upon the table, beckoned Count vonMoltke into his room behind, locked the door, and said:
"Now, Count, what is your opinion of this? At first sight it looksridiculous; but whoever this Lennard may be, it seems hardly likely thattwo men like Lord Whittinghame and Lord Kitchener, two of thecoolest-headed and best-balanced men on earth, should take the troubleto come down here as a deputation from the British Cabinet only to makethemselves ridiculous. Suppose we have a look at these papers?Everything is in train for the advance. I daresay you and I understandenough of mathematics between us to find out if there is anythingserious in them, and if so, they shall go to Herr Doellinger at once."
"I think it would be at least worth while to look through them, yourMajesty," replied the Count. "Like yourself, I find it rather difficultto believe that this mysterious Mr Lennard, whoever he is, has been ableto impose upon the whole British Cabinet, to say nothing of LordKitchener, who is about the best engineer and mathematician in theBritish Army."
So the Count and the Kaiser sat down, and went through the elaborate andyet beautifully clear calculations and diagrams, page by page, eachmaking notes as he went on. At the end of an hour the Kaiser looked overhis own notes, and said to von Moltke:
"Well, what is your opinion, Count?"
"I am not an astronomer, your Majesty, but these calculations certainlyappear to me to be correct as far as they go--that is, granted alwaysthat the premisses from which Mr Lennard starts are correct. Butcertainly I think that your Majesty will be wise in sending them as soonas possible to Herr Doellinger."
"That is exactly the conclusion that I have come to myself," replied theKaiser. "I will write a note to Herr Doellinger, and one of the airshipsmust take it across to Potsdam. We can't afford to run any risks of thatinfernal submarine ram or whatever she is. I would almost give an Armycorps for that ship. There's no doubt she's lost us three fleets, ascore of transports, and twenty thousand men in the last three days, andshe's just as much a mystery as ever. It's the most extraordinaryposition a conquering army was ever put into before."
The Kaiser was perfectly right. There could be no doubt that up to thepresent the invading forces had been victorious, thanks of course mainlyto the irresistible advantage of the airships, but also in no smalldegree to the hopeless unpreparedness of the British home armies to meetan invasion, which both military and naval experts had simply refused tobelieve possible.
The seizure of the line from Dover to Chatham had been accomplished in asingle night. A dozen airships patrolled the air ahead of the advancingGerman forces, which of course far outnumbered the weak andhastily-collected British forces which could be brought against them,and which, attacked at once by land and from the air, never really had achance.
It was the most perfectly conducted invasion ever planned. Theconstruction trains which went in advance on both lines carried sectionsof metals of English gauge, already fastened to sleepers, and ready tolay down. Every little bridge and culvert had been known and wasprovided for. Not a bolt nor a fishplate had been forgotten, andmoreover John Castellan's operations from the air had reduced thedestruction to a minimum, and the consequence was that twelve hoursafter the Kaiser had landed at Dover he found himself in hisheadquarters at Canterbury, whence the British garrison had been forcedto retire after heavy fighting along the lines of wooded hills behindMaidstone.
It was the old, old story, the story of every war that England had goneinto and "muddled through" somehow; but with two differences. Hersoldiers had never had to fight an enemy in the skies before, and--therewas no time now to straighten out the muddle, even if every able-bodiedman in the United Kingdom had been trained soldiers, as the invaderswere.
But there was another element in the situation. Incredible as it mightseem to those ignorant of the tremendous forces brought into play, thehome fleets of Europe had been destroyed, practically to a ship, withinthree days and nights. The narrow seas were deserted. On the morning ofthe seventeenth, four transports attempting to cross from Hamburg toRamsgate, carrying a force of men, horses and light artillery, which wasintended to operate as a flying column along the northern shores ofKent, had been rammed and sent to the bottom within fifteen minutes halfway between land and land, and not a man nor an animal had escaped.
There was no news from the expeditions which had been sent against Hulland Newcastle--all the cables had been cut, save the transatlanticlines, the cutting of which the United States had already declared theywould consider as an unfriendly act on the part of the Allies, and theBritish cable from Gibraltar to the Lizard which connected with Palermoand Rome, and so formed the link of communication between Britain andthe Mediterranean.
The British Mediterranean Fleet was coming home, so were the West Indianand North American squadrons, while the squadron in the China seas wasalso ordered home, via the Suez Canal, to form a conjunction with ourItalian Allies. Of course, these ships would in due time be dealt withby the aerial submarines, but meanwhile commerce with Europe had becomeimpossible. Imports had stopped at most of the great ports through sheerterror of this demon of the sea, which appeared to be here, there andeverywhere at the same time; and with all these powerful squadronsconverging upon the shores of Britain the problem of feeding andgenerally keeping fit for war some three millions of men and over half amillion horses would soon begin to look distinctly serious.
Castellan's vessels had hunted in vain for this solitary vessel, whichsingle-handed, marvellous as it seemed, kept the narrow waters clear ofinvaders. The truth of this matter, however, was very simple. The_Ithuriel_ was nearly twice as fast in the water as the _Flying Fishes_,and she carried guns with an effective range of five miles, whereas theyonly carried torpedoes.
For instance, during the battle of Sheerness, in which the remainingunits of the North Sea Squadron had, with the _Ithuriel's_ aid, attackedand destroyed every German and Russian battleship and transport,Erskine's craft had done terrible execution without so much as beingseen until, when the last of the German Coast Defence ships had gonedown with all hands in the Great Nore, off the Nore lighthouse, whenceshe was shelling Garrison Fort, the _Ithuriel_ had risen above the waterfor a few moments, and Denis Castellan had taken a cockshot with thethree forward guns at a couple of _Flying Fishes_ that were circlingover the town and fort and river mouth.
The shells had time-fuses, and they were timed to the tenth of asecond. They burst simultaneously over the airships. Then came a rendingof the atmosphere, and descending streams of fire, which burst with arapid succession of sharp reports as they touched the airships. Thencame another blaze of light which seemed to darken the wintry sun for amoment, and then another quaking of the air, after which what was leftof the two _Flying Fishes_ fell in little fragments into the water,splashing here and there as though they had been shingle ballast thrownout of a balloon.
True, Garrison Fort had been blown up by the aerial torpedoes, and thesame fate was befalling the great forts at Tilbury, but their gallantdefenders did not die in vain, and, although the remainder of the aerialsquadron were able to go on and do their work of destruction on London,whither the _Ithuriel_ could not follow them, the wrecks of sixbattleships, a dozen destroyers and ten transports strewed theapproaches to the Thames and the Medway, while nearly thirty thousandsoldiers and sailors would never salute the flag of Czar or Kaiseragain.
In all the history of war no such loss of men, ships and material hadever taken place within the short space of three days and a few hours.Four great fleets and nearly a hundred thousa
nd men had been wiped outof existence since the assault on Southern England had begun, and evennow, despite the airships, had the millions of Britain's able-bodiedmen, who were grinding their teeth and clenching their fists in impotentfury, been trained just to shoot and march, it would have been possibleto take the invaders between overwhelming masses of men--who would holdtheir lives as nothing in comparison with their country's honour--andthe now impassable sea, and drive them back into it. But although menand youths went in their tens of thousands to the recruiting stationsand demanded to be enlisted, it was no use. Soldiers are not made in aday or a week, and the invaders of England had been making them forforty years.
While the Kaiser and Count von Moltke were going through Lennard'spapers, and coming to the decision to send them to Potsdam, LordWhittinghame's motor, instead of returning to Chatham, was running up toWhitstable to answer the telegram which Lennard had received atRochester. The German flag cleared them out of Canterbury. It wasalready known that they had been received by the Kaiser, and thereforetheir persons were sacred. In consequence of the loss of the squadronattacking the Thames and Medway, and the destruction of the Ramsgateflotilla, the country was not occupied by the enemy north of the greatmain road through Canterbury and Faversham, and that was just why the_Ithuriel_ was lying snugly in the mouth of the East Swale River, aboutthree miles from the little town, with a shabby-looking lighter besideher, from which she was taking in an extra complement of her own shellsand material for making Lennard's explosive, as well as a full load offuel for her engines. They pulled up at the door of the Bear and KeyHotel, and as the motor came to a standstill a man dressed in thecostume of an ordinary worker on the oyster-beds came up, touched hissou'wester, and said:
"Mr Lennard's car, gentlemen?"
"Yes, I'm here," said Lennard, shortly; "we've just left the Emperor atCanterbury. How about those oysters? I should think you ought to do wellwith them in Canterbury. Got plenty?"
"Yes, sir," replied the man. "If you will come down to the wharf I willbe able to show you a shipment that I can send along to-night if thetrain comes from Canterbury."
"I think we might as well have a drop of something hot first, it'srather cold riding."
The others nodded, and they went into the hotel without removing theircaps or goggles. They asked a waiter to show them into a private room,as they had some business to do, and when four glasses of hot whisky andwater had been put on the table, Lennard locked the door and said:
"My lords, allow me to have the pleasure of introducing to youLieutenant Denis Castellan of His Majesty's cruiser _Ithuriel_."
Lord Whittinghame's and Lord Kitchener's hands went out together, andthe former said:
"Delighted to meet you, Mr Castellan. You and Captain Erskine have donemagnificently for us in spite of all our troubles. In fact, I don't knowwhat we should have done without you and this wonderful craft of yours."
"With all due deference to the Naval Council," said "K. of K," ratherbluntly, "it's a pity they didn't put down a dozen of her. But whatabout these oysters that you telegraphed to Mr Lennard about?"
"There is only one oyster in question at present, my lord," said Denis,with an entirely Irish smile, "but it's rather a big one. It's theGerman Emperor's yacht, the _Hohenzollern_. She managed to run across,and get into Ramsgate, while we were up here in the Thames--that's theworst of there being only one of us, as we can only attend to one pieceof business at a time. Now, she's lying there waiting the Kaiser'sorders, in case he wants to take a trip across, and it seems to me thatshe'd be worth the watching for a day or two--she'd be a big prize, youknow, gentlemen, especially if we could catch her with the War Lord ofGermany on board her. I don't think myself that His Majesty would haveany great taste for a trip to the bottom of the North Sea, just when hethinks he's beginning the conquest of England so nicely, and, by thePowers, we'd send him there if he got into one of his awkward temperswith us."
Lord Kitchener, who was in England acting as Chief-of-the-Staff to theDuke of Connaught, and general adviser to the Council of NationalDefence, took Lord Whittinghame to the other end of the room, and saida few words to him in a low tone, and he came back and said:
"It is certainly worth trying, even if you can only catch the ship; butwe don't think you'll catch the Kaiser. The fact is, you seem to haveestablished such a holy terror in these waters that I don't think hewould trust his Imperial person between here and Germany. If he did goacross, he'd probably go in an airship. But if you can bring the_Hohenzollern_ up to Tilbury--of course, under the German flag--I thinkwe shall be able to make good use of her. If she won't come, sink her."
"Very good, my lords," said Denis, saluting. "If she's not coming up theThames to-morrow night with the _Ithuriel_ under her stern, ye'll knowthat she's on the bottom in pieces somewhere. And now," he continued,taking a long envelope from an inner pocket, "here is the full report ofour doings since the war began, with return of ships sunk, crippled andescaped; number of men landed, and so on, according to instructions. Wewill report again to-morrow night, I hope, with the _Hohenzollern_."
They shook hands and wished him good-night and good luck, and in half anhour the _Ithuriel_ was running half-submerged eastward along the coast,and the motor was on its way to Faversham by the northern road, as therewere certain reasons why it should not go back through Canterbury.
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