The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 05

by Anthology

On the opposite side of the main basin, on a rocky plateau about thirty feet above the water, there were two blast furnaces of the newest design in full operation, and water-power engines, actuated by penstocks and turbines under a five hundred-foot head of water, were running a plant of machinery capable of performing all the processes of steel ship-building, and were also operating a powerful installation for the extraction of aluminium from earths and clay by what seemed to be a highly improved and very economical process of electrolysis.

  From the interior of a large oblong wooden shed, that stood on a plain of rock sloping at an angle of about fifteen degrees down to the water's edge, came the sound of hammering, drilling, and rolling, which told the lieutenant's practised ear that some vessel, probably the three thousand ton forty-knot cruiser of which Markham had spoken, was being constructed within it.

  He would dearly have liked to have been admitted within the enclosure, to see what manner of naval marvel it concealed, but good manners and his recollection of the pledge Sir Harry had given compelled him to possess his soul with patience and hope for a future invitation. None was given, however; for Mr. Austen, on passing the shed, merely nodded towards it, and said--

  "We are trying an experiment in ship-building in there. Perhaps Markham may have told you of it, but as it isn't in a fit state for criticism yet, and as we're not quite sure about its ultimate success, I'm afraid I can't ask you to go and look at it."

  After that, of course, nothing could be said on the subject by any of the visitors. By the time they had seen what they were shown at the dockyard, the Calypso was safely shored up in the dry dock, and the hydraulic pumps were throwing the water in tons into the outer basin; and then, after Sir Harry had told the sailing-master not to allow any of the crew to leave her until he received word from him, the party went on board the Mermaid again, and were soon speeding across the green waters of the lagoon to the settlement.

  Then more introductions were gone through, everyone according a simply-worded and yet hearty welcome to the voyagers, and then Mr. Austen, insisting on the privilege on the ground of old acquaintance, carried off Violet, Sir Harry, and Lieutenant Wyndham to his house to lunch. Adams and Renault excused themselves from joining the party, saying that they would have plenty to talk about at first without them, but promised to come and smoke a pipe on the verandah after lunch, and hear all the news from the outer world.

  During the meal, the host did nearly all the talking in satisfying the curiosity of his guests as to the origin of Utopia, and the reason for his own presence in the colony. He told them, in a simple, circumstantial narrative, how the death of his son had led him to become a member of the "Brotherhood of the Better Life," and of the change in his social views, together with his determination to retire from the business that had brought him into commercial relations which ended in friendship with Sir Harry's father, and devote the whole of his fortune, amounting to over half a million, to the practical development of the scheme which he had heard Edward Adams propound at one of the meetings; how they had bought a steamer, loaded her with everything that could be of use in the new colony, from a spade to the elaborate machinery they had seen working at the dockyard, and had brought out the first party of five hundred colonists to this island, which had been discovered twenty years before by one of the members of the Brotherhood, named Ambrose Miller, an old salt who had been captain of a South Sea whaler.

  Then he went on to tell how the colonists prospered exceedingly during their first year in their island paradise, how they had escaped the fate of all similar ventures by rigorously excluding everything that savoured of politics and political economy from the primitive and purely domestic system which alone existed on the island, and how at the end of a year they had sent the steamer back to England with invitations to the best of their friends and kindred to come and join them, at any rate for a year's visit on trial; and, lastly, how, at the end of that year, every man, woman, and child of the six hundred souls who had accepted the invitation elected to renounce for ever the world that they had left, and become citizens of Utopia.

  "So far," said Mr. Austen, bringing his story to an end, "the experiment has been a distinct and undeniable success, and that, I think, is chiefly due to the fact that we have only tried to make ourselves comfortable, and have not played the fool with constitutions or theories of government. We are simply a collection of about two hundred families, each perfectly independent of all the others, and only acting with them where common interest prompts them. As a matter of fact, we get on very well together, and the one law that we have all solemnly agreed to effectually prevents any unpleasantness arising from personal ill-nature."

  "For pity's sake, tell us what it is - we want a law like that so badly in London!" broke in Violet, in a tone of eloquent mock entreaty.

  "With pleasure," smiled Mr. Austen in reply, "though I'm afraid English society is too hopelessly complicated to allow of its application. It is simply this: If any Utopian of responsible years meddles with the personal or domestic concerns of any other in word or deed, he or she is to be at once turned out of the colony, and banished for a year to a small islet about four miles off the eastern coast. A second offence would mean being set adrift in a boat with a month's provisions outside the reef, and being forbidden to return on pain of death."

  "Capital!" exclaimed Sir Harry. "What havoc a law like that would make with some of our most cherished institutions. Has it ever been put in force?"

  "No," said Mr. Austen, smiling, and slowly shaking his bead; "and I don't think it ever will be. We are too busy in Utopia to be busybodies. But here are Adams and Renault, and you must get your news ready."

  "And especially the news of this mysterious nineteenth-century pirate with no name and a red flag that Markham has been telling us about," said Renault, stepping in from the verandah as he spoke.

  CHAPTER IV.

  THE STORY OF THE RED PIRATE.

  LIEUTENANT WYNDHAM is the freshest of the party as far as news is concerned," said Sir Harry, when they had settled themselves in their easy lean-back chairs on the verandah, and had lighted their pipes, charged with fragrant Utopian-grown tobacco; "and, added to that, there's just a chance he may let some naval state secret out in the course of his yarn, and that will make it all the more interesting."

  "I don't know any naval state secrets," laughed Wyndham, in reply, "and therefore I can't tell any. The British Admiralty doesn't communicate its official secrets to lieutenants of British gun-boats. Of course, if you happen to be an officer in the German Navy with a handle to your name, and the favour of the Kaiser behind you, it is a very different matter. However, that's not the story.

  "The story itself," he continued, settling himself in his chair and blowing a long contemplative whiff of smoke up towards the verandah roof, with all the air of a man who knows how not to spoil an interesting story by an undue plunge in medias res, "is something so strange and unheard-of, that when the news was first published from some unknown source of information in the Pall Malt Gazette, it was received with about as much incredulity as you'll remember the Pall Mall's story about the retirement of Mr. Gladstone was, but I'm sorry to say it proved every bit as true as the other.

  "To begin at the beginning. You remember that about five years ago the British Admiralty, in some queer freak of common sense and patriotism, gave orders for the construction of a flotilla of forty-two torpedo-boat destroyers, and bargained for a speed of twenty-seven knots.

  "The first of these boats was the Havock, and the second was the Hornet, both built by Yarrow. The Havock did a trifle over twenty-seven knots, and the Hornet a bit over twenty-eight. This put the Russian Government on their mettle, and, as it is considered good business and correct commercial patriotism for loyal British firms to sell the deadliest possible weapons to our likeliest enemy, there was no objection to the builders of the Havock and the Hornet undertaking to build a twenty-nine knot boat for the Tsar.

  "Then, no sooner had the order
been given, than Thornycroft of Chiswick, who, by the way, has said that if the money was forthcoming, he could build a boat that would do forty knots, went one better, and, in June '94, turned out the Daring, which astounded everybody by doing twenty-nine and a quarter knots over the measured mile at Maplin. This, of course, woke Yarrow's people up like a shot, and they turned out the Tsar's boat, and rushed her over the measured mile three times running in a shade under two minutes, and that of course meant a speed of nearly thirty-one knots an hour.

  "We all thought the limit had been reached, at any rate for some time, but six months later, that is to say, towards the middle of '90, Thornycroft turned out the still celebrated Ariel, which knocked all the other records into a cocked hat by running the mile twice each way in less than a minute and fifty seconds. The average speed worked out at thirty-three knots an hour, and common consent seemed to take this as the maximum.

  "The Ariel remained unbeaten until the Pall Mall Gazette startled the world in the beginning of April last by publishing the news that Schichau, the crack torpedo-boat builder of the Continent, had built a destroyer for the Tsar, with a guaranteed speed of thirty-six knots an hour, engined on quite a new principle by a German engineering genius called Franz Hartog, and that she had gone out for a trial run on the Baltic, and had just vanished into space, taking Hartog among others with her.

  "All sorts of speculations of course began to fly about as soon as it became impossible to keep the affair secret, and the Pall Mall's story was confirmed by the German press. Some people said that she must have run full tilt into a rock or a sandbank, and gone down with all hands; some said that they had tried to over-drive her and had blown her up, and this certainly seemed the most feasible explanation. Some again said that she must have been stolen by the Nihilists, but this was laughed at as impossible.

  "For all that, however, it turned out to be very much nearer the truth than any of the other guesses. Four nights after she disappeared, the lieutenant in command of a Danish torpedo-boat coming through the Sound from Copenhagen to Kronborg went ashore as soon as he got into port, and stated that a grey-painted boat about the size of the missing destroyer, that's to say, about two hundred feet long, had passed him during the night at a tremendous speed, with no flame or sparks coming from her funnels.

  "He said that his own boat was travelling over twenty knots at the time, and yet the unknown vessel ran away from it as though he had been standing still. This, combined with the fact that she showed no lights, certainly made it look as though she had really been the runaway. The lieutenant's story leaked out, and of course the papers jumped at it, and then they seemed to plunge into a contest of invention to see which could get the wildest and most ridiculous answer to the problem: What had become of the lost destroyer?

  "I don't know whether any of you remember it, but there was a highly imaginative book published, I think, in the early part of '94, the author of which put a most curious combination of buccaneer and sentimentalist on board an equally curious cruiser worked by gas engines, which stopped at the most critical moment for want of oil, and brought her piratical raidings on the Atlantic to a timely but ignominious end.

  "Well, the general belief was that those who had stolen the lost destroyer had done so with the intention of emulating this gentleman's exploits in a really practical fashion, for I ought to have told you that the boat, with that excess of technical detail which the Germans sometimes indulge in, had been sent to sea for her trial fully equipped in fuel, stores, arms, and ammunition, just exactly as though she'd been going straight into a fight.

  "Affairs were rather strained just then between Russia and England, in consequence of the old row about Korea, and there was a rumour that the Russian Government had requested this to be done in case of emergencies.

  "A little over a month passed, and nothing more was heard of her. The rumours were beginning to die away and give place to fresh sensations, when, like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, came the news that the Alberta, one of the new fast Canadian line from Halifax to Liverpool had been stopped in mid-Atlantic by a long, wicked-looking grey-painted vessel, with a turtle-back deck for'ard, three funnels and one mast, and flying a plain blood-red flag from a flagstaff astern, and plundered of every ounce of specie, and all the portable valuables that she carried. The Alberta brought the news herself, and so there was no doubt about its truth. Not a bad morning's work, I must confess, even for a quite up-to-date pirate," added Wyndham, noticing with some curiosity a faint flush that deepened the bronze of Renault's cheek as he spoke.

  "I suppose an outrage like that produced a tremendous excitement as soon as the news was known?" said Adams, who had been following the story with the most intense interest.

  "Sensation? I should think it did," said Wyndham, with a short laugh. "The newspapers raised a howl that you might have heard almost here. Politics and divorce were discounted to nothing in the way of interest, while broadsides of questions were fired into the First Lord of the Admiralty. Standing Orders were suspended to discuss the pirate, and even the Admiralty itself began to wake up and rub its eyes, and wonder what the deuce it was all about, when, five days later, a much more terrible story was brought to Plymouth.

  "The American liner New York had been stopped in mid-Atlantic, just as the Alberta had been, and while the usual looting was going on, an American gun-boat, the Albany, appeared on the scene, and the New York signalled for assistance. The pirates that had boarded her opened fire with their magazine carbines, and cleared the decks; then they got into their launch as fast as the Lord would let them, and ran for the Destroyer, which, by the way, really turned out to be the proper name of the pirate.

  "They were no sooner on board than they opened fire with half a dozen quick-firing guns and a lot of machine guns, and riddled the New York like a sieve; then they sent a torpedo into her, and blew her up just as the gun-boat came within range. She opened fire right away, but she might just as well have shot at an express train a couple of miles away, for the pirate spun round on his heel, clapped on full speed, and went away, as one of the officers of the Albany put it, like a locomotive on the loose.

  "The gunboat saved about half of the New York's people, and brought them into Plymouth. Then the row began in good earnest. The pirate had outraged the British lion, and, as it were, fired point-blank in the face of the American Eagle. In less than a week British and American cruisers, gun-boats, and torpedo-destroyers were swarming on the Atlantic looking for him.

  "Of course, the Ariel was foremost in the hunt, and as luck would have it, she, in company with the cruiser Medea and the Firefly, the best of the Yarrow boats, was the first to sight him. This was about 150 miles north-west of the Azores, and, would you believe it, there was a North German liner, the Lahn, just on the point of sinking less than a mile away from him.

  "He was only about five miles ahead of our boats, and so the Ariel and the Firefly cracked on all steam and went at him like a couple of greyhounds just slipped from the leash. The brute actually bad the cheek to wait for them until they were almost in range.

  "Just as the Ariel fired the first shot with her forward quick-firing twelve-pounder, he slewed round, slipped like a streak of greased lightning through the water for about five hundred yards, stopped, and returned the shot. The Ariel's shell dropped about six hundred yards astern of him, and his burst squarely between her and the Firefly. Then he rushed away again on a wide curve trending round to the old Medea, who might as well have been motionless as doing the sixteen knots that was all they could grind out of her.

  "My cousin, Charlie Curzon, who was on board the Ariel, and who told me the story, said the excitement for the next half hour or so was something indescribable. The two boats dashed at him to head him off, the Ariel doing all her thirty-three knots and the Firefly a good thirty-two, but they were just too late.

  "The fellow tore through the water - incredible as you may think it - at a speed that must have been very nearly forty knots an hou
r. In fact, Charlie told me they could see nothing but a cloud of spray, with the boat's nose in front of it and her red flag showing through the after part of it. Do what they could, they couldn't stop him getting the Medea between them and him.

  "This forced them to separate. As they did so, the Medea opened fire and blazed away like a floating volcano, but it wasn't a bit of good, they no sooner got the range than they lost it again, the brute was moving at such a frightful speed. He ran up to within a mile of her, stopped dead, spun round on his heel, fired his two stern torpedoes at her, and away he went again, sending the spray flying thirty feet into the air on each side of him.

  "One torpedo missed, but I'm sorry to say the other took the old Medea under the quarter, and literally blew her stern off. The Firefly stood by to give what assistance she could, and the Ariel took up the chase again, with every ounce of steam her boilers would stand. From what Charlie said, she might just as well have tried to chase the Flying Dutchman.

  "She stuck to it the whole afternoon, and in six hours travelled over two hundred miles to the north-west - but all that her crew ever saw was that cloud of foam away ahead of them, always getting smaller and smaller; and at last night and a fog came on together, and it faded away into the darkness and the mist, and they lost sight of it.