SteampubkPrime

by Mike Ashley

  For foggy weather signaling there is still another ingenious device. A circular hole, about two feet in diameter, is cut in the vessel below the water-line, and closed by a circular steel plate or diaphragm one-eighth of an inch thick. On the inner side of this there is a thick iron chamber, completely inclosing the space behind the diaphragm; and here is placed a small, shrill, steam whistle, worked by compressed air or steam, and controllable by a valve or key. Alongside of this apparatus is another diaphragm made like the first; but there extends from the centre of it a very short fine steel wire, highly stretched, the other end of which is connected to a sensitive diaphragm, from which tubes lead to both ears of the signalman. By an adjustable attachment this steel wire can be regulated to greater or less tension, as a violin string is, and it is tuned to respond to the note given out by the whistles on other steamers, which are all of precisely the same pitch. In fogs the signalman alternately sounds the whistle and listens for a return, his receiving apparatus not being responsive to any other sound than that to which it is tuned, beyond the rippling or dashing of water on the sides of the vessel and the movement of the propelling shutter machinery, which are continuous and do not interfere with the signalman’s hearing a periodic musical sound. The sound-waves of the whistles are communicated to the water by the steel diaphragm in front, and travel through the sea just as in air, but much farther, since the conductivity of water for sound is greater than that of air. One of the most important uses of this machine on large passenger ships is to ascertain the direction of approaching vessels with exactness, and for this purpose they have two sets of diaphragms on opposite sides of the ship, connected telephonically.

  Still another contrivance for preventing collisions or giving notice of the nearness of icebergs or derelicts impressed me. This is “the automatic pilot,” a small cigar-shaped copper vessel some fifteen feet long and twenty-four inches at its greatest diameter, having within it an electric motor that drives a screw propeller at its end. From the masthead a reel passes two insulated wires, which run from the ship’s dynamo electric engine, down to the cigar-shaped “pilot,” to which they are joined side by side, about two feet apart. They not only carry electricity to the motor of the pilot, but also cause the pilot to move in harmony with the steamer’s course. As soon as the fog appears the “pilot” is launched, and the current passing to it through the wires from the masthead, revolves the motor in the little pilot-craft and sends her shooting ahead of the ship or steamer. If the pilot tends to veer from a straight line one of the wires becomes more taut than the other, and so affecting the steering apparatus as to bring the copper boat back to the right course. I forgot to say that these wires or cables, although having only about the thickness of a knitting-needle, are twisted together from a number of very fine steel wires: and as the speed of the pilot is greater than the ship’s and keeps her about half a mile ahead of the latter, the wires always tend to become taut. If the pilot strikes any obstacle the fact becomes known at once to the man at the dynamo, and the engine is stopped and reversed without loss of time. Many serious accidents have been avoided by this precaution. The automatic pilot-boat is taken on board again, of course, when the fog clears.

  It will be evident to anyone who reads this little sketch of my first experiences and impressions that, with such means of cloud-flashes and sea-signalling-besides which, it must be mentioned, the construction of ocean cables was now very cheap and great numbers of private cable lines were in use — it would not be possible for our party to escape indefinitely from vigilant and determined pursuers. A good pursuer, by means of the omnipresent telegraph-wires and signal systems, could tap the whole earth, as a woodpecker taps a tree for his prey; and, moreover, the French Submarine Society for mapping the bottom of the sea had its underwater boats and observers in all parts of the world, liable to bob up to the surface of the deep anywhere; so that, if these were to be utilized, one of them might locate our position on or over the ocean at any instant.

  However, we led our friends and enemies a pretty good chase, and kept it up many weeks. On our return from the Antarctic Commonwealth to Patagonia (now an important manufacturing country), we ascertained that Hammerfleet had survived his cyclone wreck — having, in fact, been picked up by a submarine geographical boat, and that he was using the wires, the clouds, and metalized sail telegraph to trace us. We therefore concluded to run quickly over to China and Japan, and were well repaid by the evidences of immense progress that we saw there; the same improvements that I have already described having been introduced in those countries. English, now the universal language, has been pretty well domesticated in China, though it still cuts some pigeon-wings in the dance of rustic lips. What interested Eva and me greatly, among other things, was the simple plan of making ice here, as in India and all hot countries, by hoisting balloons which carry water-tanks 20,000 ft. into the air, freeze the water and bring it down again; a constant relay of balloons steadily renewing the supply.

  As we passed on through Turkey — a peaceful, flourishing Christian country through strong and rehabilitated Greece and Italy, to Germany, France, and England, we were pleased to observe the wonderful effects obtained by the particular societies, each devoted to a specific fruit or flower, which now produced fruits of a lusciousness beyond belief, and had so changed flowers that the mysterious something in them, called harmonic grouping; gave us an indescribable sensation of beauty totally wanting in the flowers known to the ancients. In art also the Society of Harmonic Curves has brought about great changes. The human form, in this day, is — through wise cultivation — much more beautiful than the average of old times; besides which, painters and sculptors, owing to an improved knowledge of curveharmony, develop from the living model an ideal of loveliness and perfection formerly approached only by the Greeks, and even by them approached but partially. This development of beauty seems to have come from a radically altered, more restful mode of life, a purer application of supernatural religion to existence, and a better realization of the laws of natural science as in accord with religion.

  So, too, and from similar causes, the great changes in manufacturing systems have benefited the race. Owing to systems for the electric distribution of power over great areas, the industrial economy of very early times had been restored. Now, among the countless homes of the people, those of the mechanics are each provided with its little workshop, where only one operation in any particular manufacture is carried out. A single part of any machine is passed from house to house until finished, and is then returned to the great assembling shop to be assembled into the complete machine. The profound change in the moral, mental, and social condition of the working people effected by a return once more to occupation in the home, instead of the promiscuous association in large factories, has been one of the most potent agents in improving the state of the population, lessening crime, drunkenness, and other evils; stimulating true education, and restoring to labor its natural poetry and idyllic character. Thanks to the plastic process of building, even the poorest worker has his own home. With the children of mechanics learning their trade at home from the earliest years, highly trained workmen have been developed, who produce mechanisms and fabrics once thought to be impossible, and of a cheapness that is surprising. In those branches of the mechanical arts where labor cannot be so subdivided great factories still hold their place. But they are automatic — like that in which Hammerfleet had tried to entrap me — and need the attendance of only one watcher, so perfected are the science and art of automatic action by the higher type of intellect of the modem mechanic and artisan.

  There are many other things of which I would like to speak; but I must bring this memorandum to a close before leaving earth, as I am about to do, for a voyage and an absence which may be permanent.

  With all the improvements in machinery, inventions, and modes of life, human nature, also, has somewhat improved; but it has not radically altered. Its passions, good and bad, remain much the same, together with
its weakness, fickleness, and treachery. Noting this, and having seen so much of the world even in our rapid journeys, I began to grow a trifle tired of it all and to yearn for something new and for a rest. Moreover, Zorlin had stirred up so much controversy by his private and public talks wherever he went, regarding his large cosmic views in religion, philosophy, and science, that he, also, longed for return to his native planet.

  It was when we had arrived at this state of mind that Graemantle suddenly came up with us, just as we alighted from an air-ship, in Norway. After getting us under thorough observation by a number of emissaries, he had obtained from the World Committee of Twenty an order for Electra as an American “Child of the State” to return with him, and he now put her under a mildly paternal sort of arrest. A day or two later Hammerfleet arrived, surprising me while I was taking a walk in a quiet spot outside of Christiania. He looked haggard, vindictive and terrible. I nerved myself to resist whatever attack he might make, but I was not prepared for the particular weapon he produced. He unrolled in front of me a peculiar glittering curtain that uncurled from a rod in his hand, dropping thence to the ground; and in a moment I recognized that it was something I had heard of but had not seen before — nothing less than a hypnotizing machine!

  These machines are used medically, for the investigation of nervous disorders and weak organisms; and they are also applied officially to the examination of candidates for the Civil Service and for high office; but the laws of the world and all the nations forbid their use in any other way.

  I gazed helplessly at the glittering thing; and it was evident that my enemy was putting it in operation. The next moment I lost all consciousness of myself, as myself. What would have happened I do not know, for I came almost immediately back to myself, and found that Graemantle, Zorlin, and Electra had come to my rescue in the nick of time; having been guided by Zorlin, whose Kurol mind had enabled him to divine from a little distance what was going on.

  This episode settled Hammerfleet’s fate. He was promptly sent back to the United States in irons, and isolated in one of the penal districts. His merely using the hypnotizing machine was sufficient reason for this; and when he saw the game was up, he confessed that his object had been to hypnotize me back into the nineteenth century, into my glass chrysalis in Gladwin’s laboratory, then seclude me personally and keep me permanently hypnotized under this delusion; which would have been practically the same as death for this world.

  All through our journeying, I had been more and more impressed with Eva Pryor’s gentleness and winning qualities; and, from wondering at first whether I had not made a mistake as to my real feeling towards her, I came to the positive conclusion that I had done so. Now that we had completed our globe voyage, and Zorlin was pining for his home on Kuro or Mars, I had a candid little conversation with her, and wound up by asking her, “How would you like to carry out actually what you once said you would do — go to Mars with me? The Kurols don’t marry, and we can act with entire consistency by being brother and sister up there.”

  “Delightful,” she cried, grasping my hand. “Will Zorlin take us?”

  A stellar express car was ordered immediately; and I have barely time now to jot down here that we are about to depart. Whether I shall ever come back I do not know, but my mind is quite made up that I will not come back alone.

  POSTSCRIPT BY THE EDITOR

  A.D. 2201

  Bemis has returned to earth and married Eva. “It is worth while,” he says, “To have been vivificated for three hundred years and to have gone to Mars in order to find out a woman’s mind — and my own.”

  THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE SEVEN KINGS

  L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace

  The idea that the world is not as it seems but might be controlled behind the scenes by some secret cabal is another of those concepts that took hold in the late Victorian period. It had, of course, been around for a while, most notably with the Rosicrucians. Madame Helena Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophical Society in 1875, maintained that her books Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888) had been projected to her telepathically by secret Mahatmas in the Himalayas. Blavatsky settled in London in 1887 and spent her final years there, dying in 1891. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an occult society with many theosophists amongst its members, was founded in 1888.

  In Caesar’s Column (1890), Ignatius Donnelly suggested that in the future (the book is set at the end of the twentieth century) a small group of wealthy but ruthless plutocrats are the real rulers of Earth, operating either through governments or by manipulating the press. The idea was further implanted in popular fiction through the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan Doyle run in The Strand Magazine, starting in 1891. Holmes often finds himself pitted against evil masterminds or secret organisations.

  The success of the Holmes stories left the publisher and editor of The Strand, George Newnes and Greenhough Smith, in a quandary when, in 1893, Conan Doyle killed off Holmes with his dramatic struggle with Professor Moriarty and their plunge into the Reichenbach Falls. They turned to other contributors to create similar characters which they could run in regular series. One of those who responded and who became one of the most creative contributors to The Strand in the 1890s was L. T. Meade (1844-1914). Born Elizabeth Thomasina Meade in County Cork, Ireland, she was always known as Lillie, and retained her maiden name for all her professional work, even after her marriage in 1879 to the solicitor Alfred Toulmin Smith. She was an immensely prolific writer with around 280 books to her credit, all but one of those written between 1875 and 1914, averaging seven a year. Much of her output was for teenage girls, but responding to The Strand’s demands she produced a considerable amount of detective fiction. She usually relied on a collaborator to provide the scientific (often medical) details. Initially this was Edgar Beaumont (writing as Dr. Clifford Halifax), with whom she wrote three series of Stories from the Diary of a Doctor (1894, 1896 and 1901). Then she collaborated with Eustace Barton (1854-1943), writing as Robert Eustace, with whom she wrote A Master of Mysteries (1898), The Sanctuary Club (1900) and the series from which the following story comes, The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings (1899). In this series the narrator, Norman Head, had once belonged to this eponymous secret organisation which had been founded in Italy by the otherwise seemingly innocent and altruistic Madame Koluchy. He manages to escape her clutches and thereafter devotes his time, along with a lawyer colleague, Colin Dufrayer, to thwarting her evil schemes. Each story hinges upon the use of some new technological or scientific discovery, in this instance X-rays, which had only just been properly studied and identified by William Röngten in 1895. — M.A.

  THE STAR SHAPED MARKS

  ON A CERTAIN SUNDAY in the spring of 1897, as Dufrayer and I were walking in the Park, we came across one of his friends, a man of the name of Loftus Durham. Durham was a rising artist, whose portrait paintings had lately attracted notice. He invited us both to his studio on the following Sunday, where he was to receive a party of friends to see his latest work, an historical picture for the coming Academy.

  “The picture is an order from a lady, who has herself sat for the principal figure,” said Durham. “I hope you may meet her also on Sunday. My impression is that the picture will do well; but if so, it will be on account of the remarkable beauty of my model. But I must not add more — you will see what I mean for yourselves.”

  He walked briskly away.

  “Poor Durham,” said Dufrayer, when he had left us. “I am glad that he is beginning to get over the dreadful catastrophe which threatened to ruin him body and soul a year back.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I allude to the tragic death of his young wife,” said Dufrayer. “They were only married two years. She was thrown from her horse on the hunting-field; broke her back, and died a few hours afterwards. There was a child, a boy of about four months old at the time of the mother’s death. Durham was so frightfully prostrated from the shock that some of his
friends feared for his reason; but I now see that he is regaining his usual calibre. I trust his new picture will be a success; but, notwithstanding his remarkable talent, I have my doubts. It takes a man in ten thousand to do a good historical picture.”

  On the following Sunday, about four o’clock, Dufrayer and I found ourselves at Durham’s house in Lanchester Gardens. A number of well-known artists and their wives had already assembled in his studio. We found the visitors all gazing at a life-sized picture in a heavy frame which stood on an easel facing the window.

  Dufrayer and I took our places in the background, and looked at the group represented on the canvas in silence. Any doubt of Durham’s ultimate success must have immediately vanished from Dufrayer’s mind. The picture was a magnificent work of art, and the subject was worthy of an artist’s best efforts. It was taken from “The Lady of the Lake,” and represented Ellen Douglas in the guard-room of Stirling Castle, surrounded by the rough soldiers of James V. of Scotland. It was named “Soldiers, Attend!” — Ellen’s first words as she flung off her plaid and revealed herself in all her dark proud beauty to the wonder of the soldiers. The pose and attitude were superb, and did credit both to Durham and the rare beauty of his model.

  I was just turning round to congratulate him warmly on his splendid production, when I saw standing beside him Ellen Douglas herself, not in the rough garb of a Scotch lassie, but in the simple and yet picturesque dress of a well-bred English girl. Her large black velvet hat, with its plume of ostrich feathers, contrasted well with a face of dark and striking beauty, but I noticed even in that first glance a peculiar expression lingering round the curves of her beautiful lips and filling the big brown eyes. A secret care, an anxiety artfully concealed, and yet all too apparent to a real judge of character, spoke to me from her face. All the same, that very look of reserve and sorrow but strengthened her beauty, and gave that final touch of genius to the lovely figure on the canvas.