CHAPTER XLIV.
THE TURN OF THE BATTLE-TIDE.
The force which the Tsar had detached to operate against theFederation Army of the North left the headquarters at eleven o'clock,and proceeded in four main divisions by Edmonton, Chingford,Chigwell, and Romford. The aerostats, regulating their speed so as tokeep touch with the land force, maintained a position two miles aheadof it at three thousand feet elevation.
Strict orders had been given to press on at the utmost speed, and touse every means to discover the Federationists, and bring them to anengagement with as little delay as possible; but they marched on hourafter hour into the dusk of the early winter evening, with the soundsof battle growing fainter in their rear, without meeting with a signof the enemy.
As it would have been the height of imprudence to have advanced inthe dark into a hostile country occupied by an enemy of great butunknown strength, General Pralitzin, the Commander of the Russianforce, decided to bring his men to a halt at nightfall, and thereforetook up a series of positions between Cheshunt, Epping, ChippingOngar, and Ingatestone. From these points squadrons of Cossacksscoured the country in all directions, north, east, and west, insearch of the so far invisible army; and at the same time he sentmounted messengers back to headquarters to report that no enemy hadbeen found, and to ask for further orders.
The aerostats slowed down their engines until their propellers justcounteracted the force of the wind and they hung motionless at aheight of a thousand feet, ranged in a semicircle about fifteen mileslong over the heads of the columns.
All this time the motions of the Russian army had been watched by thecaptain of the _Ithuriel_ from an elevation of eight thousand feet,five miles to the rear. As soon as he saw them making preparationsfor a halt, and had noticed the disposition of the aerostats, he leftthe conning-tower which he had occupied nearly all day, and went intothe after saloon, where he found Natas and Natasha examining a largeplan of London and its environs.
"They have come to a halt at last," he said. "And if they only remainwhere they are for three hours longer, we have the whole army likerats in a trap, war-balloons and all. They have not seen us so far,for if they had they would certainly have sent an aerostat aloft toreconnoitre, and, of course, I must have destroyed it. The wholeforty are arranged in a semicircle over the heads of the four maincolumns in divisions of ten."
"And what do you propose to do with them now you have got them?" saidNatasha, looking up with a welcoming smile.
"Give me a cup of coffee first, for I am cold to the marrow, and thenI'll tell you," replied Arnold, seating himself at the table, onwhich stood a coffee-urn with a spirit lamp beneath it, somethingafter the style of a Russian samovar.
Natasha filled a cup and passed it to him, and he went on--
"You remember what I said to Tremayne in the Princess's sitting-roomat Petersburg about the eagle and the crows just before the trial ofthe Tsar's first war-balloon. Well, if you like to spend a couple ofhours with me in the conning-tower as soon as it is dark enough forus to descend, I will show you what I meant then. I suppose theoriginal general orders stand good?" he said, turning to Natas.
"Yes," replied the Master gravely. "They must all be destroyed. Thisis the day of vengeance and not of mercy. If my orders have beenobeyed, all the men belonging to the International in this force willhave managed to get to the rear by nightfall. They can be left totake care of themselves. Mazanoff assured me that all the members inthe armies of the League fully understood what they are to do. Someof the war-balloons have been taken possession of by our men, but wedon't know how many. As soon as you destroy the first of the fleet,these will rise and commence operations on the army, and they willalso fly the red flag, so there will be no fear of your mistakingthem."
"Very well," said Arnold, who had been quietly sipping his coffeewhile he listened to the utterance of this death sentence on morethan a quarter of a million of men. "If our fellows to the northwardonly obey orders promptly, there will not be many of the Russiansleft by sunrise. Now, Natasha, you had better put on your furs andcome to the conning-tower; it's about time to begin."
It did not take her many moments to wrap up, and within five minutesshe and Arnold were standing in the conning-tower watching the campfires of the Russian host coming nearer and nearer as the _Ithuriel_sank down through the rapidly increasing darkness towards the longdotted line which marked the position of the aerostats, whose greatgas-holders stood out black and distinct against the whitened earthbeneath them.
By means of electric signals to the engineers the captain of the_Ithuriel_ was able to regulate both the speed and the elevation ofthe air-ship as readily as though he had himself been in charge ofthe engine-room. Giving Natasha a pair of night-glasses, and tellingher to keep a bright look-out ahead, he brought the _Ithuriel_ roundby the westward to a position about five miles west of the extremityof the line of war-balloons, and as soon as he got on a level with ithe advanced comparatively slowly, until Natasha was able to make itout distinctly with the night-glass.
Then he signalled to the wheel-house aft to disconnect theafter-wheel, and at the same moment he took hold of the spokes of theforward-wheel in the conning-tower. The next signal was "Full speedahead," and as the _Ithuriel_ gathered way and rushed forward on hererrand of destruction he said hurriedly to Natasha--
"Now, don't speak till it's over. I want all my wits for this work,and you'll want all your eyes."
Without speaking, Natasha glanced up at his face, and saw on itsomewhat of the same expression that she had seen at the moment whenhe put the _Ariel_ at the rock-wall which barred the entrance toAeria. His face was pale, and his lips were set, and his eyes lookedstraight out from under his frowning brows with an angry gleam inthem that boded ill for the fate of those against whom he was aboutto use the irresistible engine of destruction under his command.
Twenty feet in front of them stretched out the long keen ram of theair-ship, edged and pointed like a knife. This was the sole weaponthat he intended to use. It was impossible to train the guns at thetremendous speed at which the _Ithuriel_ was travelling, but underthe circumstance the ram was the deadliest weapon that could havebeen employed.
In four minutes from the time the _Ithuriel_ started on her eastwardcourse the nearest war-balloon was only fifty yards away. Theair-ship, travelling at a speed of nearly two hundred miles an hour,leapt out of the dusk like a flash of white light. In ten secondsmore her ram had passed completely through the gas-holder without somuch as a shock being felt. The next one was only five hundred yardsaway. Obedient to her rudder the _Ithuriel_ swerved, ripped hergas-holder from end to end, and then darted upon the next one evenbefore a terrific explosion in their rear told that the car of thefirst one had struck the earth.
So she sped along the whole line, darting hither and thither inobedience to the guiding hand that controlled her, with suchinconceivable rapidity that before any of the unwieldy machines,saving only those whose occupants had been prepared for the assault,had time to get out of the way of the destroying ram, she had renther way through the gas-holders of twenty-eight out of the fortyballoons, and flung them to the earth to explode and spreadconsternation and destruction all along the van of the army encampedbelow.
From beginning to end the attack had not lasted ten minutes. When thelast of the aerostats had gone down under his terrible ram, Arnoldsignalled "Stop, and ascend," to the engine-room. A second signalturned on the searchlight in the bow, and from this a rapid series offlashes were sent up to the sky to the northward and eastward.
"Her ram had passed completely through the gasholder."
_See page 334._]
The effect was as fearful as it was instantaneous. The twelvewar-balloons which had escaped by flying the red flag took up theirpositions above the Russian lines, and began to drop their fire-shelland cyanogen bombs upon the masses of men below. The air-ship,swerving round again to the westward, with her fan-wheels aloft,moved slowly across the wide area over which men and ho
rses werewildly rushing hither and thither in vain attempts to escape the rainof death that was falling upon them from the sky.
Her searchlight, turned downwards to the earth, sought out the spotswhere they were crowded most thickly together, and then theair-ship's guns came into play also. Arnold had given orders to usethe new fire-shell exclusively, and its effects proved to befrightful beyond description. Wherever one fell a blaze of intenselight shone for an instant upon the earth. Then this burst into athousand fragments, which leapt into the air and spread themselvesfar and wide in all directions, burning with inextinguishable furyfor several minutes, and driving men and horses mad with agony andterror.
No human fortitude or discipline could withstand the fearful rain offire, in comparison with which even the deadly hail from theaerostats seemed insignificant. For half an hour the eight guns ofthe _Ithuriel_ hurled these awful projectiles in all directions,scattering death and hopeless confusion wherever they alighted, untilthe whole field of carnage seemed ablaze with them.
At the end of this time three rockets soared up from her deck intothe dark sky, and burst into myriads of brilliant white stars, whichfor a few moments shed an unearthly light upon the scene ofindescribable confusion and destruction below. But they made morethan this visible, for by their momentary light could be seenseemingly interminable lines of grey-clad figures swiftly closing infrom all sides, chasing the Cossack scouts before them in upon thecompletely disorganised Russian host.
A few minutes later a continuous roll of musketry burst out on front,and flank, and rear, and a ceaseless hail of rifle bullets began toplough its way through the helpless masses of the soldiers of theTsar. They formed as well as they could to confront these newenemies, but the moment that the searchlight of the air-ship,constantly sweeping the field, fell upon a company in anything likeorder, a shell descended in the midst of it and broke it up again.
All night long the work of death and vengeance went on; the greylines ever closing in nearer and nearer upon the dwindling remnantsof the Russian army. Hour after hour the hail of bullets neverslackened. There was no random firing on the part of the Federationsoldiers. Every man had been trained to use his rifle rapidly butdeliberately, and never to fire until he had found his mark; and theconsequence was that the long nickel-tipped bullets, firedpoint-blank into the dense masses of men, rent their way through halfa dozen bodies before they were spent.
At last the grey light began to break over an indescribably hideousscene of slaughter. Scarcely ten thousand men remained of the threehundred thousand who had started the day before in obedience to theorder of the Tsar; and these were split up into formless squads andragged companies fighting desperately amidst heaps of corpses fordear life, without any pretence at order or formation.
The cannonade from the air had ceased, and the last scene in thedrama of death had come. With bayonets fixed and rifles lowered tothe charge, the long grey lines closed up, and, as the bugles rangout the long-awaited order, they swept forward at the double, horsesand men went down like a field of standing corn under theirresistible rush of a million bayonets, and in twenty minutes allwas over. Not a man of the whole Russian army was left alive, savethose whose knot of red ribbon at the button-hole proclaimed themmembers of the International.
As soon as it was light enough for Arnold to see clearly that thefate of the Russians was finally decided, he descended to the earth,and, after complimenting the commander and officers of the Federationtroops on the splendid effectiveness of their force, and theiradmirable discipline and coolness, he gave orders for a two hours'rest and then a march on the Russian headquarters at Muswell Hillwith every available man. The Tsar and his Staff were to be takenalive at all hazards; every other Russian who did not wear theInternational ribbon was to be shot down without mercy.
These orders given, the _Ithuriel_ mounted into the air again, anddisappeared in the direction of London. She passed over the nowshattered and silent entrenchments of the Russians at a speed whichmade it possible to remain on deck without discomfort or danger, andat an elevation of two thousand feet. Natas was below in the saloon,alone with his own thoughts, the thoughts of twenty years of waitingand working and gradual approach to the hour of vengeance which wasnow so near. Andrew Smith was steering in the wheel-house, LieutenantMarston was taking his watch below, after being on deck nearly thewhole of the previous night, and Arnold and Natasha, wrapped in theirwarm furs, were pacing up and down the deck engaged in conversationwhich had not altogether to do with war.
The sun had risen before the _Ithuriel_ passed over London, andthrough the clear, cold air they could see with their field-glassessigns of carnage and destruction which made Natasha's soul sickenwithin her to gaze upon them, and even shook Arnold's now hardenednerves. All the main thoroughfares leading into London from the northand south were choked with heaps of dead bodies in Russian, French,and Italian uniforms, in the midst of which those who still survivedwere being forced forward by the pressure of those behind. Everyhouse that remained standing was spouting flames upon them from itswindows; and where the streets opened into squares and wider streetsthere were barricades manned with British and Federation troops, andfrom their summits and loopholes the quick-firing guns were rainingan incessant hail of shot and shell upon the struggling masses pentup in the streets.
A horrible chorus of the rattle of small arms, the harsh, grindingroar of the machine guns, the hurrahs of the defenders, and the criesof rage and agony from the baffled and decimated assailants, roseunceasingly to their ears as they passed over the last battlefield ofthe Western nations, where the Anglo-Saxon, the Russ, and the Gaulwere locked in the death struggle.
"There is some awful work going on down there," said Arnold, as theyheaded away towards the south, where, from behind the Surrey hills,soon came the sound of some tremendous conflict. "For the present wemust leave them to fight it out. They don't seem to have had sucheasy work of it to the south as we have had to the north; but Ididn't expect they would, for they have probably detached a very muchlarger force of French and Italians to attack the Army of the Souththan the Russian lot we had to deal with."
"Is all this frightful slaughter really necessary?" asked Natasha,slipping her arm through his, and looking up at him with eyes whichfor the first time were moistened by the tears of pity for herenemies.
"Necessary or not," replied Arnold, "it is the Master's orders, and Ihave only to obey them. This is the day of vengeance for which he haswaited so long, and you can hardly expect him to show much mercy. Itlies between him and Tremayne. For my part I will stay my hand onlywhen I am ordered to do so.
"Still, if any one can influence Natas to mercy, you can. Nothing cannow stop the slaughter on the north, I'm afraid, for the Russians arecaught in a hopeless trap. The Londoners are enraged beyond control,and if the men spared them I believe the women would tear them topieces. But there are two or three millions of lives or so to besaved at the south, and perhaps there is still time to do it. Itwould be a task worthy of the Angel of the Revolution; why should younot try it?"
"I will do so," said Natasha, and without another word she turnedaway and walked quickly towards the entrance to the saloon.
The Angel of the Revolution: A Tale of the Coming Terror Page 45