The War in the Air ..............................................................................................................................................1

H. G. Wells..............................................................................................................................................1

The reader should grasp clearly the date at which this book was written. It was done in 1907: it appeared in

various magazines as a serial in 1908 and it was published in the Fall of that year. At that time the aeroplane

was, for most people, merely a rumour and the "Sausage" held the air. The contemporary reader has all the

advantage of ten years' experience since this story was imagined. He can correct his author at a dozen points

and estimate the value of these warnings by the standard of a decade of realities. The book is weak on

antiaircraft guns, for example, and still more negligent of submarines. Much, no doubt, will strike the reader

as quaint and limited but upon much the writer may not unreasonably plume himself. The interpretation of

the German spirit must have read as a caricature in 1908. Was it a caricature? Prince Karl seemed a fantasy

then. Reality has since copied Prince Carl with an astonishing faithfulness. Is it too much to hope that some

democratic "Bert" may not ultimately get even with his Highness? Our author tells us in this book, as he has

told us in others, more especially in The World Set Free, and as he has been telling us this year in his War

and the Future, that if mankind goes on with war, the smashup of civilization is inevitable. It is chaos or the

United States of the World for mankind. There is no other choice. Ten years have but added an enormous

conviction to the message of this book. It remains essentially right, a pamphlet storyin support of the

It was along before the War in the Air began that Mr. Smallways made this remark. He as sitting on the fence

at the end of his garden and surveying the great Bun Hill gasworks with an eye that neither praised nor

blamed. Above the clustering gasometers three unfamiliar shapes appeared, thin, wallowing bladders that

flapped and rolled about, and grew bigger and bigger and rounder and rounderballoons in course of

"They goes up every Saturday," said his neighbour, Mr. Stringer, the milkman. "It's only yestiday, so to

speak, when all London turned out to see a balloon go over, and now every little place in the country has its

"Larst Satiday I got three barrerloads of gravel off my petaters," said Mr. Tom Smallways. "Three

barrerloads! What they dropped as ballase. Some of the plants was broke, and some was buried."

"Still, it ain't hardly my idea of a ladyflying about in the air, and throwing gravel at people. It ain't what I

Mr. Stringer nodded his head approvingly, and for a time they continued to regard the swelling bulks with

Mr. Tom Smallways was a greengrocer by trade and a gardener by disposition; his little wife Jessica saw to

the shop, and Heaven had planned him for a peaceful world. Unfortunately Heaven had not planned a

peaceful world for him. He lived in a world of obstinate and incessant change, tand in parts where its

operations were unsparingly conspicuous. Vicissitude was in the very soil he tilled; even his garden was upon

a yearly tenancy, and overshadowed by a huge board that proclaimed it not so much a garden as an eligible

building site. He was horticulture under notice to quit, the last patch of country in a district flooded by new

and prbaa things. He did his best to console himself, to imagine matters near the turn of the tide.

Mr. Smallways' aged father, could remember Bun Hill as an idyllic Kentish village. He had driven Sir Peter

Bone until he was fifty and then he took to drink a little, and driving the station bus, which lasted him until he

was seventyeight. Then he retired. He sat by the fireside, a shrivelled, very, very old coachman, full charged

with reminiscences, and ready for any careless stranger. He could tell you of the vanished estate of Sir Peter

Bone, long since cut up for building, and how that magnate ruled the countryside when it was countryside,

of shooting and hunting, and of caches along the high road, of how "where the gasworks is" was a

cricketfield, and of the coming of the Crystal Palace. The Crystal Palace was six miles away from Bun Hill,

a great facade that glittered in the morning, and was a clear blue outline against the sky in the afternoon, and

of a night, a source of gratuitous fireworks for all the population of Bun Hill. And then had come the railway,

and then villas and villas, and then the gasworks and the waterworks, and a great, ugly sea of workmen's

houses, and then drainage, and the water vanished out of the Otterbourne and left it a dreadful ditch, and then

a second railway station, Bun Hill South, and more houses and more, more shops, more competition,

plateglass shops, a schoolboard, rates, omnibuses, tramcarsgoing right away into London

"You'd hardly think it could keep on," said Mr. Tom Smallways, growing up among these marvels.

But it kept on. Even from the first the greengrocer's shop which he had set up in one of the smallest of the

old surviving village houses in the tail of the High Street had a submerged air, an air of hiding from

something that was looking for it.When they had made up the pavement of the High Street, they levelled that

up so that one had to go down three steps into the shop. Tom did his best to sell only his own excellent but

limited range of produce; but Progress came shoving things into his window, French artichokes and

aubergines, foreign apples apples from the State of New York, apples from California, apples from

Canada, apples from New Zealand, "pretty lookin' fruit, but not what I should call English apples," said

The motorcars that went by northward and southward grew more and more powerful and efficient, whizzed

faster and smelt worse, there appeared great clangorous petrol trolleys delivering coal and parcels in the place

of vanishing horsevans, motoromnibuses ousted the horseomnibuses, even the Kentish strawberries going

Londonward in the night took to machinery and clattered instead of creaking, and became affected in flavour

Nothing speaks more eloquently of the pitiless insistence of progress and expansion in our time than that it

should get into the Smallways blood. But there was something advanced and enterprising about young

Smallways before he was out of short frocks. He was lost for a whole day before he was five, and nearly

drowned in the reservoir of the new waterworks before he was seven. He had a real pistol taken away from

him by a real policeman when he was ten. And he learnt to smoke, not with pipes and brown paper and cane

as Tom had done, but with a penny packet of Boys of England American cigarettes. His language shocked his

father before he was twelve, and by that age, what with touting for parcels at the station and selling the Bun

Hill Weekly Express, he was making three shillings a week, or more, and spending it on Chips, Comic Cuts,

Ally Sloper's Halfholiday, cigarettes, and all the concomitants of a life of pleasure and enlightenment. All of

this without hindrance to his literary studies, which carried him up to the seventh standard at an exceptionally

early age. I mention these things so that you may have no doubt at all concerning the sort of stuff Bert had in

He was six years younger than Tom, and for a time there was an attempt to utilise him in the greengrocer's

shop when Tom at twentyone married Jessicawho was thirty, and had saved a little money in service. But

it was not Bert's forte to be utilised. He hated digging, and when he was given a basket of stuff to deliver, a

nomadic instinct arose irresistibly, it became his pack and he did not seem to care how heavy it was nor

where he took it, so long as he did not take it to its destination. Glamour filled the world, and he strayed after

it, basket and all. So Tom took his goods out himself, and sought employers for Bert who did not know of

this strain of poetry in his nature. And Bert touched the fringe of a number of trades in successiondraper's

porter, chemist's boy, doctor's page, junior assistant gasfitter, envelope addresser, milkcart assistant, golf

caddie, and at last helper in a bicycle shop. Here, apparently, he found the progressive quality his nature had

craved. His employer was a piratesouled young man named Grubb, with a blacksmeared face by day, and a

musichall side in the evening, who dreamt of a patent lever chain; and it seemed to Bert that he was the

perfect model of a gentleman of spirit. He hired out quite the dirtiest and unsafest bicycles in the whole south

of England, and conducted the subsequent discussions with astonishing verve. Bert and he settled down very

well together. Bert lived in, became almost a trick riderhe could ride bicycles for miles that would have

come to pieces instantly under you or metook to washing his face after business, and spent his surplus

money upon remarkable ties and collars, cigarettes, and shorthand classes at the Bun Hill Institute.

He would go round to Tom at times, and look and talk so brilliantly that Tom and Jessie, who both had a

natural tendency to be respectful to anybody or anything, looked up to him immensely.

"Let's hope he don't know too much," said Jessica, who had a fine sense of limitations.

"It's goahead Times," said Tom. "Noo petaters, and English at that; we'll be having 'em in March if things

"It wasn't suited to him, Tom. It was a gentleman's tie. He wasn't up to itnot the rest of him, It wasn't

Then presently Bert got a cyclist's suit, cap, badge, and all; and to see him and Grubb going down to Brighton

(and back)heads down, handlebars down, backbones curvedwas a revelation in the possibilities of the

Old Smallways would sit over the fire mumbling of the greatness of other days, of old Sir Peter, who drove

his coach to Brighton and back in eightandtwenty hours, of old Sir Peter's white tophats, of Lady Bone,

who never set foot to ground except to walk in the garden, of the great, prizefights at Crawley. He talked of

pink and pigskin breeches, of foxes at Ring's Bottom, where now the County Council pauper lunatics were

enclosed, of Lady Bone's chintzes and crinolines. Nobody heeded him. The world had thrown up a new type

of gentleman altogethera gentleman of most ungentlemanly energy, a gentleman in dusty oilskins and

motor goggles and a wonderful cap, a stinkmaking gentleman, a swift, highclass badger, who fled

perpetually along high roads from the dust and stink he perpetually made. And his lady, as they were able to

see her at Bun Hill, was a weatherbitten goddess, as free from refinement as a gipsynot so much dressed

So Bert grew up, filled with ideals of speed and enterprise, and became, so far as he became anything, a kind

of bicycle engineer of the let'shavealookatit and enamel chipping variety. Even a roadracer, geared to

a hundred and twenty, failed to satisfy him, and for a time he pined in vain at twenty miles an hour along

roads that were continually more dusty and more crowded with mechanical traffic. But at last his savings

accumulated, and his chance came. The hirepurchase system bridged a financial gap, and one bright and

memorable Sunday morning he wheeled his new possession through the shop into the road, got on to it with

the advice and assistance of Grubb, and teufteuffed off into the haze of the traffictortured high road, to add

himself as one more voluntary public danger to the amenities of the south of England.

"Orf to Brighton!" said old Smallways, regarding his youngest son from the sittingroom window over the

greengrocer's shop with something between pride and reprobation. "When I was 'is age, I'd never been to

London, never bin south of Crawleynever bin anywhere on my own where I couldn't walk. And nobody

didn't go. Not unless they was gentry. Now every body's orf everywhere; the whole dratted country sims

flying to pieces. Wonder they all get back. Orf to Brighton indeed! Anybody want to buy 'orses?"

"Nor don't want to go," said Jessica sharply; "creering about and spendin' your money."

For a time the possibilities of the motorbicycle so occupied Bert's mind that he remained regardless of the

new direction in which the striving soul of man was finding exercise and refreshment. He failed to observe

that the type of motorcar, like the type of bicycle, was settlingdown and losing its adventurous quality.

Indeed, it is as true as it is remarkable that Tom was the first to observe the new development. But his

gardening made him attentive to the heavens, and the proximity of the Bun Hill gasworks and the Crystal

Palace, from which ascents were continually being made, and presently the descent of ballast upon his

potatoes, conspired to bear in upon his unwilling mind the fact that the Goddess of Change was turning her

disturbing attention to the sky. The first great boom in aeronautics was beginning.

Grubb and Bert heard of it in a musichall, then it was driven home to their minds by the cinematograph,

then Bert's imagination was stimulated by a sixpenny edition of that aeronautic classic, Mr. George Griffith's

At first the most obvious aspect was the multiplication of balloons. The sky of Bun Hill began to be infested

by balloons. On Wednesday and Saturday afternoons particularly you could scarcely look skyward for a

quarter of an hour without discovering a balloon somewhere. And then one bright day Bert, motoring toward

Croydon, was arrested by the insurgence of a huge, bolstershaped monster from the Crystal Palace grounds,

and obliged to dismount and watch it. It was like a bolster with a broken nose, and below it, and

comparatively small, was a stiff framework bearing a man and an engine with a screw that whizzed round in

front and a sort of canvas rudder behind. The framework had an air of dragging the reluctant gascylinder

after it like a brisk little terrier towing a shy gasdistended elephant into society. The combined monster

certainly travelled and steered. It went overhead perhaps a thousand feet up (Bert heard the engine), sailed

away southward, vanished over the hills, reappeared a little blue outline far off in the east, going now very

fast before a gentle southwest gale, returned above the Crystal Palace towers, circled round them, chose a

And that was only the beginning of a succession of strange phenomena in the heavenscylinders, cones,

pearshaped monsters, even at last a thing of aluminium that glittered wonderfully, and that Grubb, through

some confusion of ideas about armour plates, was inclined to consider a war machine.

This, however, was not an affair that was visible from Bun Hill; it was something that occurred in private

grounds or other enclosed places and, under favourable conditions, and it was brought home to Grubb and

Bert Smallways only by means of the magazine page of the halfpenny newspapers or by cinematograph

records. But it was brought home very insistently, and in those days if, ever one heard a man saying in a

public place in a loud, reassuring, confident tone, "It's bound to come," the chances were ten to one he was

talking of flying. And Bert got a box lid and wrote out in correct windowticket style, and Grubb put in the

window this inscription, "Aeroplanes made and repaired." It quite upset Tomit seemed taking one's shop

so lightly; but most of the neighbours, and all the sporting ones, approved of it as being very good indeed.

Everybody talked of flying, everybody repeated over and over again, "Bound to come," and then you know it

didn't come. There was a hitch. They flewthat was all right; they flew in machines heavier than air. But

they smashed. Sometimes they smashed the engine, sometimes they smashed the aeronaut, usually they

smashed both. Machines that made flights of three or four miles and came down safely, went up the next time

to headlong disaster. There seemed no possible trusting to them. The breeze upset them, the eddies near the

ground upset them, a passing thought in the mind of the aeronaut upset them. Also they upsetsimply.

"It's this 'stability' does 'em," said Grubb, repeating his newspaper. "They pitch and they pitch, till they pitch

Experiments fell away after two expectant years of this sort of success, the public and then the newspapers

tired of the expensive photographic reproductions, the optimistic reports, the perpetual sequence of triumph

and disaster and silence. Flying slumped, even ballooning fell away to some extent, though it remained a

fairly popular sport, and continued to lift gravel from the wharf of the Bun Hill gasworks and drop it upon

deserving people's lawns and gardens. There were half a dozen reassuring years for Tomat least so far as

flying was concerned. But that was the great time of monorail development, and his anxiety was only

diverted from the high heavens by the most urgent threats and symptoms of change in the lower sky.

There had been talk of monorails for several years. But the real mischief began when Brennan sprang his

gyroscopic monorail car upon the Royal Society. It was the leading sensation of the 1907 soirees; that

celebrated demonstrationroom was all too small for its exhibition. Brave soldiers leading Zionists, deserving

novelists, noble ladies, congested the narrow passage and thrust distinguished elbows into ribs the world

would not willingly let break, deeming themselves fortunate if they could see "just a little bit of the rail."

Inaudible, but convincing, the great inventor expounded his discovery, and sent his obedient little model of

the trains of the future up gradients, round curves, and across a sagging wire. Itran along its single rail, on its

single wheels, simple and sufficient; it stopped, reversed stood still, balancing perfectly. It maintained its

astounding equilibrium amidst a thunder of applause. The audience dispersed at last, discussing how far they

would enjoy crossing an abyss on a wire cable. "Suppose the gyroscope stopped!" Few of them anticipated a

tithe of what the Brennan monorail would do for their railway securities and the face of the world.

In a few, years they realised better. In a little while no one thought anything of crossing an abyss on a wire,

and the mono rail was superseding the tramlines, railways: and indeed every form of track for mechanical

locomotion. Where land was cheap the rail ran along the ground, where it was dear the rail lifted up on iron

standards and passed overhead; its swift, convenient cars went everywhere and did everything that had once

When old Smallways died, Tom could think of nothing more striking to say of him than that, "When he was a

boy, there wasn't nothing higher than your chimbleysthere wasn't a wire nor a cable in the sky!"

Old SmallWays went to his grave under an intricate network of wires and cables, for Bun Hill became not

only a sort of minor centre of power distributionthe Home Counties Power Distribution Company set up

transformers and a generating station close beside the old gasworksbut, also a junction on the suburban

monorail system. Moreover, every tradesman in the place, and indeed nearly every house, had its own

The monorail cable standard became a striking fact in urban landscape, for the most part stout iron erections

rather like tapering trestles, and painted a bright bluish green. One, it happened, bestrode Tom's house, which

looked still more retiring and apologetic beneath its immensity; and another giant stood just inside the corner

of his garden, which was still not built upon and unchanged, except for a couple of advertisement boards, one

recommending a twoandsixpenny watch, and one a nerve restorer. These, by the bye, were placed almost

horizontally to catch the eye of the passing monorail passengers above, and so served admirably to roof over

a toolshed and a mushroomshed for Tom. All day and all night the fast cars from Brighton and Hastings

went murmuring by overhead long, broad, comfortablelooking cars, that were brightly lit after dusk. As they

flew by at night, transient flares of light and a rumbling sound of passage, they kept up a perpetual summer

Presently the English Channel was bridgeda series of great iron Eiffel Tower pillars carrying monorail

cables at a height of a hundred and fifty feet above the water, except near the middle, where they rose higher

to allow the passage of the London and Antwerp shipping and the HamburgAmerica liners.

Then heavy motorcars began to run about on only a couple of wheels, one behind the other, which for some

reason upset Tom dreadfully, and made him gloomy for days after the first one passed the shop...

All this gyroscopic and monorail development naturally absorbed a vast amount of public attention, and

there,was also a huge excitement consequent upon the amazing gold discoveries off the coast of Anglesea

made by a submarine prospector, Miss Patricia Giddy. She had taken her degree in geology and mineralogy

in the University of London, and while working upon the auriferous rocks of North Wales, after a brief

holiday spent in agitating for women's suffrage, she had been struck by the possibility of these reefs cropping

up again under the water. She had set herself to verify this supposition by the use of the submarine crawler

invented by Doctor Alberto Cassini. By a happy mingling of reasoning and intuition peculiar to her sex she

found gold at her first descent, and emerged after three hours' submersion with about two hundredweight of

ore containing gold in the unparalleled quantity of seventeen ounces to the ton. But the whole story of her

submarine mining, intensely interesting as it is, must be told at some other time; suffice it now to remark

simply that it was during the consequent great rise of prices, confidence, and enterprise that the revival of

It is curious how that revival began. It was like the coming of a breeze on a quiet day; nothing started it, it

came. People began to talk of flying with an air of never having for one moment dropped the subject. Pictures

of flying and flying machines returned to the newspapers; articles and allusions increased and multiplied in

the serious magazines. People asked in monorail trains, "When are we going to fly?" A new crop of

inventors sprang up in a night or so like fungi. The Aero Club announced the project of a great Flying

Exhibition in a large area of ground that the removal of slums in Whitechapel had rendered available.

The advancing wave soon produced a sympathetic ripple in the Bun Hill establishment. Grubb routed out his

flyingmachine model again, tried it in the yard behind the shop, got a kind of flight out of it, and broke

seventeen panes of glass and nine flowerpots in the greenhouse that occupied the next yard but one.

And then, springing from nowhere, sustained one knew not how, came a persistent, disturbing rumour that

the problem had been solved, that the secret was known. Bert met it one earlyclosing afternoon as he

refreshed himself in an inn near Nutfield, whither his motorbicycle had brought him. There smoked and

meditated a person in khaki, an engineer, who presently took an interest in Bert's machine. It was a sturdy

piece of apparatus, and it had acquired a kind of documentary value in these quickchanging times; it was

now nearly eight years old. Its points discussed, the soldier broke into a new topic with, "My next's going to

"I don't mean flap up and smash up; I mean real, safe, steady, controlled flying, against the wind, good and

"I 'AVE! Aldershot. They try to keep it a secret. They got it right enough. You betour War Office isn't

"I tell you they got nearly a square mile fenced ina sort of valley. Fences of barbed wire ten feet high, and

inside that they do things. Chaps about the campnow and then we get a peep. It isn't only us neither.

The soldier stood with his legs very wide apart, and filled his pipe thoughtfully. Bert sat on the low wall

"Flying's going to break out," said the soldier. "When it DOES come, when the curtain does go up, I tell you

you'll find every one on the stagebusy.... Such fighting, too!... I suppose you don't read the papers about

"Well, have you noticed what one might call the remarkable case of the disappearing inventorthe inventor

who turns up in a blaze of publicity, fires off a few successful experiments, and vanishes?"

"Well, I 'ave, anyhow. You get anybody come along who does anything striking in this line, and, you bet, he

vanishes. Just goes off quietly out of sight. After a bit, you don't hear anything more of 'em at all. See? They

disappear. Goneno address. Firstoh! it's an old story nowthere was those Wright Brothers out in

America. They glidedthey glided miles and miles. Finally they glided off stage. Why, it must be nineteen

hundred and four, or five, THEY vanished! Then there was those people in Irelandno, I forget their names.

Everybody said they could fly. THEY went. They ain't dead that I've heard tell; but you can't say they're

alive. Not a feather of 'em can you see. Then that chap who flew round Paris and upset in the Seine. De

Booley, was it? I forget. That was a grand fly, in spite of the accident; but where's he got to? The accident

The soldier lit his match, and drew. "Secret society," he repeated, with his pipe between his teeth and the

match flaring, in response to his words. "War Departments; that's more like it." He threw his match aside, and

walked to his machine. "I tell you, sir," he said, "there isn't a big Power in Europe, OR Asia, OR America,

OR Africa, that hasn't got at least one or two flying machines hidden up its sleeve at the present time. Not

one. Real, workable, flying machines. And the spying! The spying and manoeuvring to find out what the

others have got. I tell you, sir, a foreigner, or, for the matter of that, an unaccredited native, can't get within

four miles of Lydd nowadays not to mention our little circus at Aldershot, and the experimental camp in

"Well," said Bert, "I'd like to see one of them, anyhow. Jest to help believing. I'll believe when I see, that I'll

"You'll see 'em, fast enough," said the soldier, and led his machine out into the road.

He left Bert on his wall, grave and pensive, with his cap on the back of his head, and a cigarette smouldering

"If what he says is true," said Bert, "me and Grubb, we been wasting our blessed old time. Besides incurring

It was while this mysterious talk with the soldier still stirred in Bert Smallways' imagination that the most

astounding incident in the whole of that dramatic chapter of human history, the coming of flying, occurred.

People talk glibly enough of epochmaking events; this was an epochmaking event. It was the unanticipated

and entirely successful flight of Mr. Alfred Butteridge from the Crystal Palace to Glasgow and back in a

small businesslikelooking machine heavier than airan entirely manageable and controllable machine that

It wasn't, one felt, a fresh step forward in the matter so much as a giant stride, a leap. Mr. Butteridge

remained in the air altogether for about nine hours, and during that time he flew with the ease and assurance

of a bird. His machine was, however neither birdlike nor butterflylike, nor had it the wide, lateral

expansion of the ordinary aeroplane. The effect upon the observer was rather something in the nature of a bee

or wasp. Parts of the apparatus were spinning very rapidly, and gave one a hazy effect of transparent wings;

but parts, including two peculiarly curved "wingcases"if one may borrow a figure from the flying

beetlesremained expanded stiffly. In the middle was a long rounded body like the body of a moth, and on

this Mr. Butteridge could be seen sitting astride, much as a man bestrides a horse. The wasplike

resemblance was increased by the fact that the apparatus flew with a deep booming hum, exactly the sound

Mr. Butteridge took the world by surprise. He was one of those gentlemen from nowhere Fate still succeeds

in producing for the stimulation of mankind. He came, it was variously said, from Australia and America and

the South of France. He was also described quite incorrectly as the son of a man who had amassed a

comfortable fortune in the manufacture of gold nibs and the Butteridge fountain pens. But this was an entirely

different strain of Butteridges. For some years, in spite of a loud voice, a large presence, an aggressive

swagger, and an implacable manner, he had been an undistinguished member of most of the existing

aeronautical associations. Then one day he wrote to all the London papers to announce that he had made

arrangements for an ascent from the Crystal Palace of a machine that would demonstrate satisfactorily that

the outstanding difficulties in the way of flying were finally solved. Few of the papers printed his letter, still

fewer were the people who believed in his claim. No one was excited even when a fracas on the steps of a

leading hotel in Piccadilly, in which he tried to horsewhip a prominent German musician upon some

personal account, delayed his promised ascent. The quarrel was inadequately reported, and his name spelt

variously Betteridge and Betridge. Until his flight indeed, he did not and could not contrive to exist in the

public mind. There were scarcely thirty people on the lookout for him, in spite of all his clamour, when

about six o'clock one summer morning the doors of the big shed in which he had been putting together his

apparatus openedit was near the big model of a megatherium in the Crystal Palace groundsand his giant

But before he had made his second circuit of the Crystal Palace towers, Fame was lifting her trumpet, she

drew a deep breath as the startled tramps who sleep on the seats of Trafalgar Square were roused by his buzz

and awoke to discover him circling the Nelson column, and by the time he had got to Birmingham, which

place he crossed about halfpast ten, her deafening blast was echoing throughout the country. The

Scotland was agape for his coming. Glasgow he reached by one o'clock, and it is related that scarcely a

shipyard or factory in that busy hive of industry resumed work before halfpast two. The public mind was

just sufficiently educated in the impossibility of flying to appreciate Mr. Butteridge at his proper value. He

eircled the University buildings, and dropped to within shouting distance of the crowds in West End Park and

on the slope of Gilmorehill. The thing flew quite steadily at a pace of about three miles an hour, in a wide

circle, making a deep hum that, would have drowned his full, rich voice completely had he not provided

himself with a megaphone. He avoided churches, buildings, and monorail cables with consummate ease as

And having assured himself that he had been understood, he rose amidst cheers and shouting and patriotic

cries, and then flew up very swiftly and easily into the southeastern sky, rising and falling with long, easy

His return to Londonhe visited and hovered over Manchester and Liverpool and Oxford on his way, and

spelt his name out to each placewas an occasion of unparalleled excitement. Every one was staring

heavenward. More people were run over in the streets upon that one day, than in the previous three months,

and a County Council steamboat, the Isaac Walton, collided with a pier of Westminster Bridge, and narrowly

escaped disaster by running ashoreit was low wateron the mud on the south side. He returned to the

Crystal Palace grounds, that classic startingpoint of aeronautical adventure, about sunset, reentered his

shed without disaster, and had the doors locked immediately upon the photographers and journalists who

"Look here, you chaps," he said, as his assistant did so, "I'm tired to death, and saddle sore. I can't give you a

word of talk. I'm toodone. My name's Butteridge. BUTTERID GE. Get that right. I'm an

Foggy snapshots still survive to record that incident. His assistant struggles in a sea of aggressive young men

carrying notebooks or upholding cameras and wearing bowler hats and enterprising ties. He himself towers

up in the doorway, a big figure with a mouthan eloquent cavity beneath a vast black moustachedistorted

by his shout to these relentless agents of publicity. He towers there, the most famous man in the country,.

Almost symbolically he holds and gesticulates with a megaphone in his left hand.

Tom and Bert Smallways both saw that return. They watched from the crest of Bun Hill, from which they had

so often surveyed the pyrotechnics of the Crystal Palace. Bert was excited, Tom kept calm and lumpish, but

neither of them realised how their own lives were to be invaded by the fruits of that beginning. "P'raps old

Grubb'll mind the shop a bit now," he said, "and put his blessed model in the fire. Not that that can save us, if

Bert knew enough of things and the problem of aeronautics to realise that this gigantic imitation of a bee

would, to use his own idiom, "give the newspapers fits." The next day it was clear the fits had been given

even as he said: their magazine pages were black with hasty photographs, their prose was convulsive they

foamed at the headline. The next day they were worse. Before the week was out they were not so much

The dominant fact in the uproar was the exceptional personality of Mr. Butteridge, and the extraordinary

For it was a secret and he kept it secret in the most elaborate fashion. He built his apparatus himself in the

safe privacy of the great Crystal Palace sheds, with the assistance of inattentive workmen, and the day next

following his flight he took it to pieces single handed, packed certain portions, and then secured unintelligent

assistance in packing and dispersing the rest. Sealed packingcases went north and east and west to various

pantechnicons, and the engines were boxed with peculiar care. It became evident these precautions were not

inadvisable in view of the violent demand for any sort of photograph or impressions of his machine. But Mr.

Butteridge, having once made his demonstration, intended to keep his secret safe from any further risk of

leakage. He faced the British public now with the question whether they wanted his secret or not; he was, he

said perpetually, an "Imperial Englishman," and his first wish and his last was to see his invention the

Mr. Butteridge, it became evident, was a man singularly free from any false modestyindeed, from any

modesty of any kindsingularly willing to see interviewers, answer questions upon any topic except

aeronautics, volunteer opinions, criticisms, and autobiography, supply portraits and photographs of himself,

and generally spread his personality across the terrestrial sky. The published portraits insisted primarily upon

an immense black moustache, and secondarily upon a fierceness behind the moustache. The general

impression upon the public was that Butteridge, was a small man. No one big, it was felt, could have so

virulently aggressive an expression, though, as a matter of fact, Butteridge had a height of six feet two inches,

and a weight altogether proportionate to that. Moreover, he had a love affair of large and unusual dimensions

and irregular circumstances and the still largely decorous British public learnt with reluctance and alarm that

a sympathetic treatment of this affair was inseparable from the exclusive acquisition of the priceless secret of

aerial stability by the British Empire. The exact particulars of the similarity never came to light, but

apparently the lady had, in a fit of highminded inadvertence, had gone through the ceremony of marriage

with, one quotes the unpublished discourse of Mr. Butteridge"a whitelivered skunk," and this zoological

aberration did in some legal and vexatious manner mar her social happines. He wanted to talk about the

business, to show the splendour of her nature in the light of its complications. It was really most embarrassing

to a press that has always possessed a considerable turn for reticence, that wanted things personal indeed in

the modern fashion. Yet not too personal. It was embarrassing, I say, to be inexorably confronted with Mr.

Butteridge's great heart, to see it laid open in relentlesss selfvivisection, and its pulsating dissepiments'

Confronted they were, and there was no getting away from it. He would make this appalling viscus beat and

throb before the shrinking journalistsno uncle with a big watch and a little ever baby ever harped upon it

so relentlessly; whatever evasion they attempted he set aside. He "gloried in his love," he said, and compelled

"The injustice, sorr, is public. I do not care either I am up against institutions or individuals. I do not care if I

am up against the universal All. I am pleading the cause of a woman, a woman I lurve, sorra noble

womanmisunderstood. I intend to vindicate her, sorr, to the four winds of heaven!"

"I lurve England," he used to say"lurve England, but Puritanism, sorr, I abhor. It fills me with loathing. It

He insisted relentlessly upon his heart, and upon seeing proofs of the interview. If they had not done justice to

his erotic bellowings and gesticulations, he stuck in, in a large inky scrawl, all and more than they had

It was a strangely embarrassing thing for British journalism. Never was there a more obvious or uninteresting

affair; never had the world heard the story of erratic affection with less appetite or sympathy. On the other

hand it was extremely curious about Mr. Butteridge's invention. But when Mr. Butteridge could be deflected

for a moment from the cause of the lady he championed, then he talked chiefly, and usually with tears of

tenderness in his voice, about his mother and his childhoodhis mother who crowned a complete

encyclopedia of maternal virtue by being "largely Scotch." She was not quite neat, but nearly so. "I owe

everything in me to me mother," he asserted"everything. Eh!" and"ask any man who's done anything.

You'll hear the same story. All we have we owe to women. They are the species, sorr.

Man is but a dream. He comes and goes. The woman's soul leadeth us upward and on!"

What in particular he wanted from the Government for his secret did not appear, nor what beyond a money

payment could be expected from a modem state in such an affair. The general effect upon judicious

observers, indeed, was not that he was treating for anything, but that he was using an unexampled opportunity

to bellow and show off to an attentive world. Rumours of his real identity spread abroad. It was said that he

had been the landlord of an ambiguous hotel in Cape Town, and had there given shelter to, and witnessed, the

experiments and finally stolen the papers and plans of, an extremely shy and friendless young inventor named

Palliser, who had come to South Africa from England in an advanced stage of consumption, and died there.

This, at any rate, was the allegation of the more outspoken American press. But the proof or disproof of that

Mr. Butteridge also involved himself passionately in a tangle of disputes for the possession of a great number

of valuable money prizes. Some of these had been offered so long ago as 1906 for successful mechanical

flight. By the time of Mr. Butteridge's success a really very considerable number of newspapers, tempted by

the impunity of the pioneers in this direction, had pledged themselves to pay in some cases, quite

overwhelming sums to the first person to fly from Manchester to Glasgow, from London to Manchester, one

hundred miles, two hundred miles in England, and the like. Most had hedged a little with ambiguous

conditions, and now offered resistance; one or two paid at once, and vehemently called attention to the fact;

and Mr. Butteridge plunged into litigation with the more recalcitrant, while at the same time sustaining a

vigorous agitation and canvass to induce the Government to purchase his invention.

One fact, however, remained permanent throughout all the developments of this affair behind Butteridge's

preposterous love interest, his politics and personality, and all his shouting and boasting, and that was that, so

far as the mass of people knew, he was in sole possession of the secret of the practicable aeroplane in which,

for all one could tell to the contrary, the key of the future empire of the world resided. And presently, to the

great consternation of innumerable people, including among others Mr. Bert Smallways, it became apparent

that whatever negotiations were in progress for the acquisition of this precious secret by the British

Government were in danger of falling through. The London Daily Requiem first voiced the universal alarm,

and published an interview under the terrific caption of, "Mr. Butteridge Speaks his Mind."

"I came from the end of the earth," he said, which rather seemed to confirm the Cape Town story, "bringing

me Motherland the secret that would give her the empire of the world. And what do I get?" He paused. "I am

sniffed at by elderly mandarins! . . . And the woman I love is treated like a leper!"

"I am an Imperial Englishman," he went on in a splendid outburst, subsequently written into the interview by

his own hand; "but there there are limits to the human heart! There are younger nationsliving nations!

Nations that do not snore and gurgle helplessly in paroxysms of plethora upon beds of formality and red tape!

There are nations that will not fling away the empire of earth in order to slight an unknown man and insult a

noble woman whose boots they are not fitted to unlatch. There are nations not blinded to Science, not given

over hand and foot to effete snobocracies and Degenerate Decadents. In short, mark my wordsTHERE

This speech it was that particularly impressed Bert Smallways. "If them Germans or them Americans get hold

of this," he said impressively to his brother, "the British Empire's done. It's UP. The Union Jack, so to

"I suppose you couldn't lend us a hand this morning," said Jessica, in his impressive pause. "Everybody in

"We're living on a volcano," said Bert, disregarding the suggestion. "At any moment war may comesuch a

"You'd better take this lot first, Tom," said Jessica. She turned briskly on Bert. "Can you spare us a

"I dessay I can," said Bert. "The shop's very quiet s'morning. Though all this danger to the Empire worries me

And presently he too was going out into a world of change and wonder, bowed beneath a load of potatoes and

patriotic insecurity, that merged at last into a very definite irritation at the weight and want of style of the

It did not occur to either Tom or Bert Smallways that this remarkable aerial performance of Mr. Butteridge

was likely to affect either of their lives in any special manner, that it would in any way single them out from

the millions about them; and when they had witnessed it from the crest of Bun Hill and seen the flylike

mechanism, its rotating planes a golden haze in the sunset, sink humming to the harbour of its shed again,

they turned back towards the sunken greengrocery beneath the great iron standard of the London to

Brighton monorail, and their minds reverted to the discussion that had engaged them before Mr. Butteridge's

It was a difficult and unsuccessful discussions. They had to carry it on in shouts because of the moaning and

roaring of the gyroscopic motorcars that traversed the High Street, and in its nature it was contentious and

private. The Grubb business was in difficulties, and Grubb in a moment of financial eloquence had given a

halfshare in it to Bert, whose relations with his employer had been for some time unsalaried and pallish and

Bert was trying to impress Tom with the idea that the reconstructed Grubb Smallways offered unprecedented

and unparalleled opportunities to the judicious small investor. It was coming home to Bert, as though it were

an entirely new fact, that Tom was singularly impervious to ideas. In the end he put the financial issues on

one side, and, making the thing entirely a matter of fraternal affection, succeeded in borrowing a sovereign on

The firm of Grubb Smallways, formerly Grubb, had indeed been singularly unlucky in the last year or so. For

many years the business had struggled along with a flavour of romantic insecurity in a small,

dissolutelooking shop in the High Street, adorned with brilliantly coloured advertisements of cycles, a

display of bells, trouserclips, oilcans, pumpclips, framecases, wallets, and other accessories, and the

announcement of "Bicycles on Hire," "Repairs," "Free inflation," "Petrol," and similar attractions. They were

agents for several obscure makes of bicycle,two samples constituted the stock,and occasionally they

effected a sale; they also repaired punctures and did their bestthough luck was not always on their side

with any other repairing that was brought to them. They handled a line of cheap gramophones, and did a little

The staple of their business was, however, the letting of bicycles on hire. It was a singular trade, obeying no

known commercial or economic principlesindeed, no principles. There was a stock of ladies' and

gentlemen's bicycles in a state of disrepair that passes description, and these, the hiring stock, were let to

unexacting and reckless people, inexpert in the things of this world, at a nominal rate of one shilling for the

first hour and sixpence per hour afterwards. But really there were no fixed prices, and insistent boys could get

bicycles and the thrill of danger for an hour for so low a sum as threepence, provided they could convince

Grubb that that was all they had. The saddle and handlebar were then sketchily adjusted bv Grubb, a deposit

exacted, except in the case of familiar boys, the machine lubricated, and the adventurer started upon his

career. Usually he or she came back, but at times, when the accident was serious, Bert or Grubb had to go out

and fetch the machine home. Hire was always charged up to the hour of return to the shop and deducted from

the deposit. It was rare that a bicycle started out from their hands in a state of pedantic efficiency. Romantic

possibilities of accident lurked in the worn thread of the screw that adjusted the saddle, in the precarious

pedals, in the looseknit chain, in the handlebars, above all in the brakes and tyres. Tappings and clankings

and strange rhythmic creakings awoke as the intrepid hirer pedalled out into the country. Then perhaps the

bell would jam or a brake fail to act on a hill; or the seatpillar would get loose, and the saddle drop three or

four inches with a disconcerting bump; or the loose and rattling chain would jump the cogs of the

chainwheel as the machine ran downhill, and so bring the mechanism to an abrupt and disastrous stop

without at the same time arresting the forward momentum of the rider; or a tyre would bang, or sigh quietly,

When the hirer returned, a heated pedestrian, Grubb would ignore all verbal complaints, and examine the

He became a mild embodiment of the spirit of reason. "You can't expect a bicycle to take you up in its arms

and carry you," he used to say. "You got to show intelligence. After allit's machinery."

Sometimes the process of liquidating the consequent claims bordered on violence. It was always a very

rhetorical and often a trying affair, but in these progressive times you have to make a noise to get a living. It

was often hard work, but nevertheless this hiring was a fairly steady source of profit, until one day all the

panes in the window and door were broken and the stock on sale in the window greatly damaged and

disordered bv two overcritical hirers with no sense of rhetorical irrelevance. They were big, coarse stokers

from Gravesend. One was annoyed because his left pedal had come off, and the other because his tyre had

become deflated, small and indeed negligible accidents by Bun Hill standards, due entirely to the ungentle

handling of the delicate machines entrusted to themand they failed to see clearly how they put themselves

in the wrong by this method of argument. It is a poor way of convincing a man that he has let you a defective

machine to throw his footpump about his shop, and take his stock of gongs outside in order to return them

through the windowpanes. It carried no real conviction to the minds of either Grubb or Bert; it only irritated

and vexed them. One quarrel makes many, and this unpleasantness led to a violent dispute between Grubb

and the landlord upon the moral aspects of and legal responsibility for the consequent reglazing. In the end

Grubb and Smallways were put to the expense of a strategic nocturnal removal to another position.

It was a position they had long considered. It was t small, shedlike shop with a plateglass window and one

room behind, just at the sharp bend in the road at the bottom of Bun Hill; and here they struggled along

bravely, in spite of persistent annoyance from their former landlord, hoping for certain eventualities the

peculiar situation of the shop seemed to promise. Here, too, they were doomed to disappointment.

The High Road from London to Brighton that ran through Bun Hill was like the British Empire or the British

Constitutiona thing that had grown to its present importance. Unlike any other roads in Europe the British

high roads have never been subjected to any organised attempts to grade or straighten them out, and to that no

doubt their peculiar picturesqueness is to be ascribed. The old Bun Hill High Street drops at its end for

perhaps eighty or a hundred feet of descent at an angle of one in five, turns at right angles to the left, runs in a

curve for about thirty yards to a brick bridge over the dry ditch that had once been the Otterbourne, and then

bends sharply to the right again round a dense clump of trees and goes on, a simple, straightforward, peaceful

high road. There had been one or two horseandvan and bicycle accidents in the place before the shop Bert

and Grubb took was built, and, to be frank, it was the probability of others that attracted them to it.

"Here's one of the places where a chap might get a living by keeping hens," said Grubb.

"You'd keep the hen and have it spatchcocked," said Grubb. "The motor chaps would pay for it."

When they really came to take the place they remembered this conversation. Hens, however, were out of the

question; there was no place for a run unless they had it in the shop. It would have been obviously out of

place there. The shop was much more modern than their former one, and had a plateglass front. "Sooner or

"That's all right," said Grubb. "Compensation. I don't mind when that motorcar comes along. I don't mind

"And meanwhile," said Bert, with great artfulness, "I'm going to buy myself a dog."

He did. He bought three in succession. He surprised the people at the Dogs' Home in Battersea by demanding

a deaf retriever, and rejecting every candidate that pricked up its ears. "I want a good, deaf, slowmoving

They displayed inconvenient curiosity; they declared a great scarcity of deaf dogs.

"Mine's got to be," said Bert. "I've HAD dogs that aren't deaf. All I want. It's like this, you seeI sell

gramophones. Naturally I got to make 'em talk and tootle a bit to show 'em orf. Well, a dog that isn't deaf

doesn't like itgets excited, smells round, barks, growls. That upsets the customer. See? Then a dog that has

his hearing fancies things. Makes burglars out of passing tramps. Wants to fight every motor that makes a

whizz. All very well if you want livening up, but our place is lively enough. I don't want a dog of that sort. I

In the end he got three in succession, but none of them turned out well. The first strayed off into the infinite,

heeding no appeals; the second was killed in the night by a fruit motorwaggon which fled before Grubb

could get down; the third got itself entangled in the front wheel of a passing cyclist, who came through the

plate glass, and proved to be an actor out of work and an undischarged bankrupt. He demanded compensation

for some fancied injury, would hear nothing of the valuable dog he had killed or the window he had broken,

obliged Grubb by sheer physical obduracy to straighten his buckled front wheel, and pestered the struggling

firm with a series of inhumanly worded solicitor's letters. Grubb answered themstingingly, and put

Affairs got more and more exasperating and strained under these pressures. The window was boarded up, and

an unpleasant altercation about their delay in repairing it with the new landlord, a Bun Hill butcherand a

loud, bellowing, unreasonable person at thatserved to remind them of their unsettled troubles with the old.

Things were at this pitch when Bert bethought himself of creating a sort of debenture capital in the business

for the benefit of Tom. But, as I have said, Tom had no enterprise in his composition. His idea of investment

And then illluck made its last lunge at their crumbling business and brought it to the ground.

It is a poor heart that never rejoices, and Whitsuntide had an air of coming as an agreeable break in the

business complications of Grubb Smallways. Encouraged by the practical outcome of Bert's negotiations with

his brother, and by the fact that half the hiringstock was out from Saturday to Monday, they decided to

ignore the residuum of hiringtrade on Sunday and devote that day to muchneeded relaxation and

refreshmentto have, in fact, an unstinted good time, a beano on Whit Sunday and return invigorated to

grapple with their difficulties and the Bank Holiday repairs on the Monday. No good thing was ever done by

exhausted and dispirited men. It happened that they had made the acquaintance of two young ladies in

employment in Clapham, Miss Flossie Bright and Miss Edna Bunthorne, and it was resolved therefore to

make a cheerful little cyclist party of four into the heart of Kent, and to picnic and spend an indolent

afternoon and evening among the trees and bracken between Ashford and Maidstone.

Miss Bright could ride a bicycle, and a machine was found for her, not among the hiring stock, but specially,

in the sample held for sale. Miss Bunthorne, whom Bert particularly affected, could not ride, and so with

some difficulty he hired a basket work trailer from the big business of Wray's in the Clapham Road.

To see our young men, brightly dressed and cigarettes alight, wheeling off to the rendezvous, Grubb guiding

the lady's machine beside him with one skilful hand and Bert teufteuffing steadily, was to realise how pluck

may triumph even over insolvency. Their landlord, the butcher, said, "Gurr," as they passed, and shouted,

The weather was fine, and though they were on their way southward before nine o'clock, there was already a

great multitude of holiday people abroad upon the roads. There were quantities of young men and women on

bicycles and motorbicycles, and a majority of gyroscopic motorcars running bicyclefashion on two

wheels, mingled with oldfashioned fourwheeled traffic. Bank Holiday times always bring out old

storedaway vehicles and odd people; one saw tricars and electric broughams and dilapidated old racing

motors with huge pneumatic tyres. Once our holiday makers saw a horse and cart, and once a youth riding a

black horse amidst the badinage of the passersby. And there were several navigable gas airships, not to

mention balloons, in the air. It was all immensely interesting and refreshing after the dark anxieties of the

shop. Edna wore a brown straw hat with poppies, that suited her admirably, and sat in the trailer like a queen,

Little it seemed to matter to Mr. Bert Smallways that a newspaper placard proclaimed:

This sort of thing was alvays going on, and on holidays one disregarded it as a matter of course. Weekdavs,

in the slack time after the midday meal, then perhaps one might worry about the Empire and international

politics; but not on a sunny Sunday, with a pretty girl trailing behind one, and envious cyclists trying to race

you. Nor did our young people attach any great importance to the flitting suggestions of military activity they

glimpsed ever and again. Near Maidstone they came on a string of eleven motorguns of peculiar

construction halted by the roadside, with a number of businesslike engineers grouped about them watching

through fieldglasses some sort of entrenchment that was going on near the crest of the downs. It signified

The last great British war, the Boer war, was over and forgotten, and the public had lost the fashion of expert

Our four young people picnicked cheerfully, and were happy in the manner of a happiness that was an ancient

mode in Nineveh. Eyes were bright, Grubb was funny and almost witty, and Bert achieved epigrams; the

hedges were full of honeysuckle and dogroses; in the woods the distant toottoottoot of the traffic on the

dusthazy high road might have been no more than the horns of elfland. They laughed and gossiped and

picked flowers and made love and talked, and the girls smoked cigarettes. Also they scuffled playfully.

Among other things they talked aeronautics, and how thev would come for a picnic together in Bert's

flyingmachine before ten years were out. The world seemed full of amusing possibilities that afternoon.

They wondered what their greatgrandparents would have thought of aeronautics. In the evening, about

seven, the party turned homeward, expecting no disaster, and it was onlv on the crest of the downs between

They had come up the hill in the twilight; Bert was anxious to get as far as possible before he litor

attempted to light, for the issue was a doubtful onehis lamps, and they had scorched past a number of

cyclists, and by a fourwheeled motorcar of the old style lamed by a deflated tyre. Some dust had

penetrated Bert's horn, and the result was a curious, amusing, wheezing sound had got into his "honk, honk."

For the sake of merriment and glory he was making this sound as much as possible, and Edna was in fits of

laughter in the trailer. They made a sort of rushing cheerfulness along the road that affected their fellow

travellers variously, according to their temperaments. She did notice a good lot of bluish, evilsmelling

smoke coming from about the bearings between his feet, but she thought this was one of the natural

concomitants of motortraction, and troubled no more about it, until abruptly it burst into a little

But Bert had put on the brakes with such suddenness that she found herself involved with his leg as he

dismounted. She got to the side of the road and hastily readjusted her hat, which had suffered.

He stood for some fatal seconds watching the petrol drip and catch, and the flame, which was now beginning

to smell of enamel as well as oil, spread and grew. His chief idea was the sorrowful one that he had not sold

the machine secondhand a year ago, and that he ought to have done soa good idea in its way, but not

immediately helpful. He turned upon Edna sharply. "Get a lot of wet sand," he said. Then he wheeled the

machine a little towards the side of the roadway, and laid it down and looked about for a supply of wet sand.

The flames received this as a helpful attention, and made the most of it. They seemed to brighten and the

twilight to deepen about them. The road was a flinty road in the chalk country, and illprovided with sand.

Edna accosted a short, fat cyclist. "We want wet sand," she said, and added, "our motor's on fire." The short,

fat cyclist stared blankly for a moment, then with a helpful cry began to scrabble in the roadgrit. Whereupon

Bert and Edna also scrabbled in the roadgrit. Other cyclists arrived, dismounted and stood about, and their

flamelit faces expressed satisfaction, interest, curiositv. "Wet sand," said the short, fat man, scrabbling

terribly"wet stnd." One joined him. They threw hardearned handfuls of roadgrit upon the flames, which

Grubb arrived, riding hard. He was shouting something. He sprang off and threw his bicycle into the hedge.

"Don't throw water on it!" he said"don't throw water on it!" He displayed commanding presence of mind.

He became captain of the occasion. Others were glad to repeat the things he said and imitate his actions.

He seized a rug from the trailer (it was an Austrian blanket, and Bert's winter coverlet) and began to beat at

the burning petrol. For a wonderful minute he seemed to succeed. But he scattered burning pools of petrol on

the road, and others, fired by his enthusiasm, imitated his action. Bert caught up a trailercushion and began

to beat; there was another cushion and a tablecloth, and these also were seized. A young hero pulled off his

jacket and joined the beating. For a moment there was less talking than hard breathing, and a tremendous

flapping. Flossie, arriving on the outskirts of the crowd, cried, "Oh, my God!" and burst loudly into tears.

The lame motorcar arrived, and stopped in consternation. A tall, goggled, greyhaired man who was driving

inquired with an Oxford intonation and a clear, careful enunciation, "Can WE help at all?"

It became manifest that the rug, the tablecloth, the cushions, the jacket, were getting smeared with petrol

and burning. The soul seemed to go out of the cushion Bert was swaying, and the air was full of feathers, like

Bert had got very dusty and sweaty and strenuous. It seemed to him his weapon had been wrested from him at

the moment of victory. The fire lay like a dying thing, close to the ground and wicked; it gave a leap of

anguish at every whack of the beaters. But now Grubb had gone off to stainp out the burning blanket; the

others were lacking just at the moment of victory. One had dropped the cushion and was running to the

He flung the deflated burning rags of cushion aside, whipped off his jacket and sprang at the flames with a

shout. He stamped into the ruin until flames ran up his boots. Edna saw him, a redlit hero, and thought it

A bystander was hit by a hot halfpenny flying out of the air. Then Bert thought of the papers in his pockets,

and staggered back, trying to extinguish his burning jacketchecked, repulsed, dismayed.

Edna was struck by the benevolent appearance of an elderly spectator in a silk hat and Sabbatical garments.

An earnestlooking man in a very light grey cyclingsuit had suddenly appeared at the side of the lame

"That's it," said the earnestlooking man, suddenly shouting. "Let's have it, quick!"

The gentlemanly man, with feeble and deprecatory gestures, and in the manner of a hypnotised person,

Then everybody realised that a new method was to be tried. A number of willing hands seized upon the

Oxford gentleman's tarpaulin. The others stood away with approving noises. The tarpaulin was held over the

There was a moment of triumph. The flames vanished. Every one who could contrive to do so touched the

edge of the tarpaulin. Bert held down a corner with two hands and a foot. The tarpaulin, bulged up in the

centre, seemed to be suppressing triumphant exultation. Then its selfapproval became too much for it; it

burst into a bright red smile in the centre. It was exactly like the opening of a mouth. It laughed with a gust of

flames. They were reflected redly in the observant goggles of the gentleman who owned the tarpaulin.

"Save the trailer!" cried some one, and that was the last round in the battle. But the trailer could not be

detached; its wickerwork had caught, and it was the last thing to burn. A sort of hush fell upon the

gathering. The petrol burnt low, the wickerwork trailer banged and crackled. The crowd divided itself into

an outer circle of critics, advisers, and secondary characters, who had played undistinguished parts or no parts

at all in the affair, and a central group of heated and distressed principals. A young man with an inquiring

mind and a considerable knowledge of motorbicycles fixed on to Grubb and wanted to argue that the thing

could not have happened. Grubb wass short and inattentive with him, and the young man withdrew to the

back of the crowd, and there told the benevolent old gentleman in the silk hat that people who went out with

machines they didn't understand had only themselves to blame if things went wrong.

The old gentleman let him talk for some time, and then remarked, in a tone of rapturous enjoyment: "Stone

A rosyfaced man in a straw hat claimed attention. "I DID save the front wheel," he said; "you'd have had

that tyre catch, too, if I hadn't kept turning it round." It became manifest that this was so. The front wheel had

retained its tyre, was intact, was still rotating slowly among the blackened and twisted ruins of the rest of the

machine. It had something of that air of conscious virtue, of unimpeachable respectability, that distinguishes

a rent collector in a low neighbourhood. "That wheel's worth a pound," said the rosyfaced man, making a

Newcomers kept arriving from the south with the question, "What's up?" until it got on Grubb's nerves.

Londonward the crowd was constantly losing people; they would mount their various wheels with the

satisfied manner of spectators who have had the best. Their voices would recede into the twilight; one would

"I'm afraid," said the gentleman of the motorcar, "my tarpaulin's a bit done for."

"Nothin, else I can do for you?" said the gentleman of the motorcar, it may be with a suspicion of irony.

Bert was roused to action. "Look here," he said. "There's my young lady. If she ain't 'ome by ten they lock her

out. See? Well, all my money was in my jacket pocket, and it's all mixed up with the burnt stuff, and that's

"All in the day's work," said the gentleman with the motorcar, and turned to Edna. "Very pleased indeed,"

he said, "if you'll come with us. We're late for dinner as it is, so it won't make much difference for us to go

home by way of Clapham. We've got to get to Surbiton, anyhow. I'm afraid you"ll find us a little slow."

"I don't know that we can accommodate Bert," said the motorcar gentleman, "though we're tremendously

"You couldn't take the whole lot?" said Bert, waving his hand at the deboshed and blackened ruins on the

"Then I'll have to stick 'ere for a bit," said Bert. "I got to see the thing through. You go on, Edna."

The last Edna saw of Bert was his figure, in charred and blackened shirtsleeves, standing in the dusk. He was

musing deeply by the mixed ironwork and ashes of his vanished motorbicycle, a melancholy figure. His

retinue of spectators had shrunk now to half a dozen figures. Flossie and Grubb were preparing to follow her

"See you tomorrer," said Bert, though he was destined, as a matter of fact, to see much of the habitable

Bert began to light matches from a borrowed boxful, and search for a halfcrown that still eluded him among

And at last Bert was left almost alone, a sad, blackened Promethean figure, cursed by the gift of fire. He had

entertained vague ideas of hiring a cart, of achieving miraculous repairs, of still snatching some residual

value from his one chief possession. Now, in the darkening night, he perceived the vanity of such intentions.

Truth came to him bleakly, and laid her chill conviction upon him. He took hold of the handlebar, stood the

thing up, tried to push it forward. The tyreless hindwheel was jammed hopelessly, even as he feared. For a

minute or so he stood upholding his machine, a motionless despair. Then with a great effort he thrust the

ruins from him into the ditch, kicked at it once, regarded`it for a moment, and turned his face resolutely

"That's the end of THAT game!" said Bert. "No more teufteufteuf for Bert Smallwavs for a year or two.

Goodbye 'Olidays! ... Oh! I ought to 'ave sold the blasted thing when I had a chance three years ago."

The next morning found the firm of Grubb Smallways in a state of profound despondency. t seemed a

smallmatter to them that the newspaper and cigarette shop opposite displayed such placards as this:

Bert stared at these over the card of pumpclips in the pane in the door with unseeing eyes. He wore a

blackened flannel shirt, and the jacketless ruins of the holiday suit of yesterday. The boardedup shop was

dark and depressing beyond words, the few scandalous hiring machines had never looked so hopelessly

disreputable. He thought of their fellows who were "out," and of the approaching disputations of the

afternoon. He thought of their new landlord, and of their old landlord, and of bills and claims. Life presented

"Grubb, o' man," he said, distilling the quintessence, "I'm fair sick of this shop."

"I'm out of conceit with it. I don't seem to care ever to speak to a customer again."

"Blow the trailer!" said Bert. "Anyhow, I didn't leave a deposit on it. I didn't do that. Still"

He turned round on his friend. "Look 'ere," he said, "we aren't gettin' on here. We been losing money hand

"Clear out. Sell what we can for what it will fetch, and quit. See? It's no good 'anging on to a losing concern.

"That's all right," said Grubb"that's all right; but it ain't your capital been sunk in it."

"I'm not going to be held responsible for that trailer, anyhow. That ain't my affair."

"Nobody arst you to make it your affair. If you like to stick on here, well and good. I'm quitting. I'll see Bank

Grubb looked round the shop. It certainly had become distasteful. Once upon a time it had been bright with

hope and new beginnings and stock and the prospect of credit. Nownow it was failure and dust. Very

likely the landlord would be round presently to go on with the row about the window...."Where d'you think of

Bert turned round and regarded him. "I thought it out as I was walking 'ome, and in bed. I couldn't sleep a

"She got a fly in her eye," said Grubb; "I saw it. But what's this got to do with your plan?"

"Streets! No fear! But 'ow about the Tour of the Waterin' Places of England, Grubb? Singing! Young men of

family doing it for a lark? You ain't got a bad voice, you know, and mine's all right. I never see a chap singing

on the beach yet that I couldn't 'ave sung into a cocked hat. And we both know how to put on the toff a bit.

Eh? Well,that's my ideer. Me and you, Grubb, with a refined song and a breakdown. Like we was doing for

foolery yestiday. That was what put it into my 'ead. Easy make up a programmeeasy. Six choice items, and

Grubb remained regarding his darkened and disheartening shop; he thought of his former landlord and his

present landlord, and of the general disgustingness of business in an age which reechoes to The Bitter Cry

of the Middle Class; and then it seemed to him that afar off he heard the twankle, twankle of a banjo, and the

voice of a stranded siren singing. He had a sense of hot sunshine upon sand, of the children of it least

transiently opulent holiday makers in a circle round about him, of the whisper, "They are really gentlemen,"

and then dollop, dollop came the coppers in the hat. Sometimes even silver. It was all income; no outgoings,

"We needn't start without capital neither," said Grubb. "If we take the best of these machines up to the

Bicycle Mart in Finsbury we'd raise six or seven pounds on 'em. We could easy do that tomorrow before

"Nice to think of old SuetandBones coming round to make his usual row with us, and finding a card up

"We'll do that," said Grubb with zest"we'll do that. And we'll put up another notice, and jest arst all

Before the day was out the whole enterprise was planned. They decided at first that they would call

themselves the Naval Mr. O's, a plagiarism, and not perhaps a very good one, from the title of the

wellknown troupe of "Scarlet Mr. E's," and Bert rather clung to the idea of a uniform of bright blue serge,

with a lot of gold lace and cord and ornamentation, rather like a naval officer's, but more so. But that had to

be abandoned as impracticable, it would have taken too much time and money to prepare. They perceived

they must wear some cheaper and more readily prepared costume, and Grubb fell back on white dominoes.

They entertained the notion for a time of selecting the two worst machines from the hiringstock, painting

them over with crimson enamel paint, replacing the bells by the loudest sort of motorhorn, and doing a ride

about to begin and end the entertainment. They doubted the advisability of this step.

"There's people in the world," said Bert, "who wouldn't recognise us, who'd know them bicycles again like a

"We want to forget thingsand cut all these rotten old worries. They ain't doin' us good."

Nevertheless, they decided to take the risk of these bicycles, and they decided their costumes should be

brown stockings and sandals, and cheap unbleached sheets with a hole cut in the middle, and wigs and beards

of tow. The rest their normal selves! "The Desert Dervishes," they would call themselves, and their chief

songs would be those popular ditties, "In my Trailer," and "What Price Hairpins Now?"

They decided to begin with small seaside places, and gradually, as they gained confidence, attack larger

centres. To begin with they selected Littlestone in Kent, chiefly because of its unassuming name.

So they planned, and it seemed a small and unimportant thing to them that as they clattered the governments

of half the world and more were drifting into war. About midday they became aware of the first of the

"They'll get it in the neck in real earnest one of these days, if they ain't precious careful."

So you will understand the sudden apparition that surprised rather than delighted the quiet informality of

Dymchurch sands. Dymchurch was one of the last places on the coast of England to be reached by the

monorail, and so its spacious sands were still, at the time of this story, the secret and delight of quite a

limited number of people. They went there to flee vulgarity and extravagances, and to bathe and sit and talk

and play with their children in peace, and the Desert Dervishes did not please them at all.

The two white figures on scarlet wheels came upon them out of the infinite along the sands from Littlestone,

grew nearer and larger and more audible, honkhonking and emitting weird cries, and generally threatening

liveliness of the most aggressive type. "Good heavens!" said Dymchurch, "what's this?"

Then our young men, according to a preconcerted plan, wheeled round from file to line, dismounted and

stood it attention. "Ladies and gentlemen," they said, "we beg to present ourselves the Desert Dervishes."

The few scattered groups upon the beach regarded them with horror for the most part, but some of the

children and young people were interested and drew nearer. "There ain't a bob on the beach," said Grubb in

an undertone, and the Desert Dervishes plied their bicycles with comic "business," that got a laugh from one

very unsophisticated little boy. Then they took a deep breath and struck into the cheerful strain of "What

Price Hairpins Now?" Grubb sang the song, Bert did his best to make the chorus a rousing one, and it the

end of each verse they danced certain steps, skirts in hand, that they had carefully rehearsed.

So they chanted and danced their steps in the sunshine on Dymchurch beach, and the children drew near these

foolish young men, marvelling that they should behave in this way, and the older people looked cold and

All round the coasts of Europe that morning banjos were ringing, voices were bawling and singing, children

were playing in the sun, pleasureboats went to and fro; the common abundant life of the time, unsuspicious

of all dangers that gathered darkly against it, flowed on its cheerful aimless way. In the cities men fussed

about their businesses and engagements. The newspaper placards that had cried "wolf!" so often, cried

Now as Bert and Grubb bawled their chorus for the third time, they became aware of a very big,

goldenbrown balloon low in the sky to the northwest, and coming rapidly towards them. "Jest as we're

gettin' hold of 'em," muttered Grubb, "up comes a counterattraction. Go it, Bert!"

The balloon rose and fell, went out of sight"landed, thank goodness," said Grubbreappeared with a

Everybody now was looking at the balloon, drawing rapidly nearer before a brisk northwesterly breeze. The

song and dance were a "dead frost." Nobody thought any more about it. Even Bert and Grubb forgot it, and

ignored the next item on the programme altogether. The balloon was bumping as though its occupants were

trying to land; it would approach, sinking slowly, touch the ground, and instantly jump fifty feet or so in the

air and immediately begin to fall again. Its car touched a clump of trees, and the black figure that had been

struggling in the ropes fell back, or jumped back, into the car. In another moment it was quite close. It

seemed a huge affair, as big as a house, and it floated down swiftly towards the sands; a long rope trailed

behind it, and enormous shouts came from the man in the car. He seemed to be taking off his clothes, then his

head came over the side of the car. "Catch hold of the rope!" they heard, quite plain.

Bert followed him, and collided, without upsetting, with a fisherman bent upon a similar errand. A woman

carrying a baby in her arms, two small boys with toy spades, and a stout gentleman in flannels all got to the

trailing rope at about the same time, and began to dance over it in their attempts to secure it. Bert came up to

this wriggling, elusive serpent and got his foot on it, went down on all fours and achieved a grip. In half a

dozen seconds the whole diffused population of the beach had, as it were, crystallised on the rope, and was

pulling against the balloon under the vehement and stimulating directions of the man in the car. "Pull, I tell

For a second or so the btlloon obeyed its momentum and the wind and tugged its human anchor seaward. It

dropped, touched the water, and made a flat, silvery splash, and recoiled as one's finger recoils when one

He occupied himself with some unseen object while the people on the rope pulled him in. Bert was nearest

the balloon, and much excited and interested. He kept stumbling over the tail of the Dervish costume in his

zeal. He had never imagined before what a big, light, wallowing thing a balloon was. The car was of brown

coarse wickerwork, and comparatively small. The rope he tugged at was fastened to a stoutlooking ring,

four or five feet above the car. At each tug he drew in a yard or so of rope, and the waggling wickerwork

was drawn so much nearer. Out of the car came wrathful bellowings: "Fainted, she has!" and then: "It's her

The balloon ceased to struggle, and sank downward. Bert dropped the rope, and ran forward to catch it in a

new place. In another moment he had his hand on the car. "Lay hold of it," said the man in the ear, and his

face appeared close to Bert'sa strangely familiar face, fierce eyebrows, a flattish nose, a huge black

moustache. He had discarded coat and waistcoatperhaps with some idea of presently having to swim for

his lifeand his black hair was extraordinarily disordered. "Will all you people get hold round the car?" he

said. "There's a lady here fainted or got failure of the heart. Heaven alone knows which! My name is

Butteridge. Butteridge, my name isin a balloon. Now please, all on to the edge. This is the last time I trust

myself to one of these paleolithic contrivances. The rippingcord failed, and the valve wouldn't act. If ever I

He stuck his head out between the ropes abruptly, and said, in a note of earnest expostulation: "Get some

In the car, sprawling upon a sort of bedbench, in an attitude of elaborate selfabandonment, was a large,

blond lady, wearing a fur coat and a big floriferous hat. Her head lolled back against the padded corner of the

car, and her eyes were shut and her mouth open. "Me dear!" said Mr. Butteridge, in a common, loud voice,

"Me dear!" said Mr. Butteridge, in a greatly intensified loud voice, "we're safe!"

Then Mr. Butteridge showed the fiery core of his soul. "If she is dead," he said, slowly lifting a fist towards

the balloon above him, and speaking in an immense tremulous bellow"if she is dead, I will rrrend the

heavens like a garment! I must get her out," he cried, his nostrils dilated with emotion"I must get her out. I

cannot have her die in a wickerwork basket nine feet squareshe who was made for kings' palaces! Keep

holt of this car! Is there a strong man among ye to take her if I hand her out?"

He swept the lady together by a powerful movement of his arms, and lifted her. "Keep the car from jumping,"

he said to those who clustered about him. "Keep your weight on it. She is no light woman, and when she is

Bert leapt lightly into a sitting position on the edge of the car. The others took a firmer grip upon the ropes

He stood upon the bedbench and lifted the lady carefully. Then he sat down on the wicker edge opposite to

Bert, and put one leg over to dangle outside. A rope or so seemed to incommode him. "Will some one assist

It was just at this moment, with Mr. Butteridge and the lady balanced finely on the basket brim, that she

cameto. She cameto suddenly and violently with a loud, heartrending cry of "Alfred! Save me!" And she

It seemed to Bert that the car swayed for a moment and then buckjumped and kicked him. Also he saw the

boots of the lady and the right leg of the gentleman describing arcs through the air, preparatory to vanishing

over the side of the car. His impressions were complex, but they also comprehended the fact that he had lost

his balance, and was going to stand on his head inside this creaking basket. He spread out clutching arms. He

did stand on his head, more or less, his towbeard came off and got in his mouth, and his cheek slid along

against padding. His nose buried itself in a bag of sand. The car gave a violent lurch, and became still.

He had an impression he must be stunned because of a surging in his ears, and because all the voices of the

people about him had become small and remote. They were shouting like elves inside a hill.

He found it a little difficult to get on his feet. His limbs were mixed up with the garments Mr. Butteridge had

discarded when that gentleman had thought he must needs plunge into the sea. Bert bawled out half angry,

half rueful, "You might have said you were going to tip the basket." Then he stood up and clutched the ropes

Below him, far below him, shining blue, were the waters of the English Channel. Far off, a little thing in the

sunshine, and rushing down as if some one was bending it hollow, was the beach and the irregular cluster of

houses that constitutes Dymchurch. He could see the little crowd of people he had so abruptly left. Grubb, in

the white wrapper of a Desert Dervish, was running along the edge of the sea. Mr. Butteridge was kneedeep

in the water, bawling immensely. The lady was sitting up with her floriferous hat in her lap, shockingly

neglected. The beach, east and west, was dotted with little peoplethey seemed all heads and feetlooking

up. And the balloon, released from the twentyfive stone or so of Mr. Butteridge and his lady, was rushing up

into the sky at the pace of a racing motorcar. "My crikey!" said Bert; "here's a go!"

He looked down with a pinched face at the receding beach, and reflected that he wasn't giddy; then he made a

superficial survey of the cords and ropes about him with a vague idea of "doing something." "I'm not going to

mess about with the thing," he said at last, and sat down upon the mattress. "I'm not going to touch it.... I

Soon he got up again and stared for a long time it the sinking world below, at white cliffs to the east and

flattening marsh to the left, at a minute wide prospect of weald and downland, at dim towns and harbours and

rivers and ribbonlike roads, at ships and ships, decks and foreshortened funnels upon the everwidening sea,

and at the great monorail bridge that straddled the Channel from Folkestone to Boulogne, until at last, first

little wisps and then a veil of filmy cloud hid the prospect from his eyes. He wasn't at all giddy nor very much

Bert Smallways was a vulgar little creature, the sort of pert, limited soul that the old civilisation of the early

twentieth century produced by the million in every country of the world. He had lived all his life in narrow

streets, and between mean houses he could not look over, and in a narrow circle of ideas from which there

was no escape. He thought the whole duty of man was to be smarter than his fellows, get his hands, as he put

it, "on the dibs," and have a good time. He was, in fact, the sort of man who had made England and America

what they were. The luck had been against him so far, but that was by the way. He was a mere aggressive and

acquisitive individual with no sense of the State, no habitual loyalty, no devotion, no code of honour, no code

even of courage. Now by a curious accident he found himself lifted out of his marvellous modern world for a

time, out of all the rush and confused appeals of it, and floating like a thing dead and disembodied between

sea and sky. It was as if Heaven was experimenting with him, had picked him out as a sample from the

English millions, to look at him more nearly, and to see what was happening to the soul of man. But what

Heaven made of him in that case I cannot profess to imagine, for I have long since abandoned all theories

To be alone in a balloon at a height of fourteen or fifteen thousand feetand to that height Bert Smallways

presently rose is like nothing else in human experience. It is one of the supreme things possible to man. No

flying machine can ever better it. It is to pass extraordinarily out of human things. It is to be still and alone to

an unprecedented degree. It is solitude without the suggestion of intervention; it is calm without a single

irrelevant murmur. It is to see the sky. No sound reaches one of all the roar and jar of humanity, the air is

clear and sweet beyond the thought of defilement. No bird, no insect comes so high. No wind blows ever in a

balloon, no breeze rustles, for it moves with the wind and is itself a part of the atmosphere. Once started, it

does not rock nor sway; you cannot feel whether it rises or falls. Bert felt acutely cold, but he wasn't

mountainsick; he put on the coat and overcoat and gloves Butteridge had discardedput them over the

"Desert Dervish" sheet that covered his cheap best suitand sat very still for a long, time, overawed by the

newfound quiet of the world. Above him was the light, translucent, billowing globe of shining brown oiled

Below, far below, was a torn floor of sunlit cloud slashed by enormous rents through which he saw the sea.

If you had been watching him from below, you would have seen his head, a motionless little black knob,

sticking out from the car first of all for a long time on one side, and then vanishing to reappear after a time at

He wasn't in the least degree uncomfortable nor afraid. He did think that as this uncontrollable thing had thus

rushed up the sky with him it might presently rush down again, but this consideration did not trouble him

very much. Essentially his state was wonder. There is no fear nor trouble in balloons until they descend.

"Gollys!" he said at last, feeling a need for talking; "it's better than a motorbike.

The second hour found him examining the equipment of the car with great particularity. Above him was the

throat of the balloon bunched and tied together, but with an open lumen through which,Bert could peer up

into a vast, empty, quiet interior, and out of which descended two fine cords of unknown import, one white,

one crimson, to pockets below the ring. The netting about the balloonended in cords attached to the ring, a

big steelbound hoop. to which the car was slung by ropes. From it depended the trail rope and grapnel, and

over the sides of the car were a number of canvas bags that Bert decided must be ballast to "chuck down" if

There were an aneroid and another boxshaped instrument hanging from the ring. The latter had an ivory

plate bearing "statoscope" and other words in French, and a little indicator quivered and waggled, between

Montee and Descente. "That's all right," said Bert. "That tells if you're going up or down." On the crimson

padded seat of the balloon there lay a couple of rugs and a Kodak, and in opposite corners of the bottom of

the car were an empty champagne bottle and a glass. "Refreshments," said Bert meditatively, tilting the

empty bottle. Then he had a brilliant idea. The two padded bedlike seats, each with blankets and mattress,

he perceived, were boxes, and within he found Mr. Butteridge's conception of an adequate equipment for a

balloon ascent: a hamper which included a game pie, a Roman pie, a cold fowl, tomatoes, lettuce, ham

sandwiches, shrimp sandwiches, a large cake, knives and forks and paper plates, selfheating tins of coffee

and cocoa, bread, butter, and marmalade, several carefully packed bottles of champagne, bottles of Perrier

water, and a big jar of water for washing, a portfolio, maps, and a compass, a rucksack containing a number

of conveniences, including curlingtongs and hairpins,, a cap with earflaps, and so forth.

"A 'ome from 'ome," said Bert, surveying this provision as he tied the earflaps under his chin. He looked

over the side of the car. Far below were the shining clouds. They had thickened so that the whole world was

hidden. Southward they were piled in great snowy masses, so that he was half disposed to think them

mountains; northward and eastward they were in wavelike levels, and blindingly sunlit.

He imagined he was not moving, so insensibly did the monster drift with the air about it. "No good coming

Afterwards he did pull both the ripping and the valvecords, but, as Mr. Butteridge had already discovered,

they had fouled a fold of silk in the throat. Nothing happened. But for that little hitch the rippingcord would

have torn the balloon open as though it had been slashed by a sword, and hurled Mr. Smallways to eternity at

the rate of some thousand feet a second. "No go!" he said, giving it a final tug. Then he lunched.

He opened a bottle of champagne, which, as soon as he cut the wire, blew its cork out with incredible

violence, and for the most part followed it into space. Bert, however, got about a tumblerful. "Atmospheric

pressure," said Bert, finding a use at last for the elementary physiography of his seventhstandard days. "I'll

Then he routed about for matches to utilise Mr. Butteridge's cigars; but here again luck was on his side, and

he couldn't find any wherewith to set light to the gas above him. Or else he would have dropped in a flare, a

splendid but transitory pyrotechnic display. "'Eng old Grubb!" said Bert, slapping unproductive pockets. "'E

He reposed for a time. Then he got up, paddled about, rearranged the ballast bags on the floor, watched the

clouds for a time, and turned over the maps on the locker. Bert liked maps, and he spent some time in trying

to find one of France or the Channel; but they were all British ordnance maps of English counties. That set

him thinking about languages and trying to recall his seventhstandard French. "Je suis Anglais. C'est une

meprise. Je suis arrive par accident ici," he decided upon as convenient phrases. Then it occurred to him that

he would entertain himself by reading Mr. Butteridge's letters and examining his pocketbook, and in this

He sat upon the padded locker, wrapped about very carefully, for the air, though calm, was exhilaratingly

cold and clear. He was wearing first a modest suit of blue serge and all the unpretending underwear of a

suburban young man of fashion, with sandallike cyclingshoes and brown stockings drawn over his trouser

ends; then the perforated sheet proper to a Desert Dervish; then the coat and waistcoat and big furtrimmed

overcoat of Mr. Butteridge; then a lady's large fur cloak, and round his knees a blanket. Over his head was a

tow wig, surmounted by a large cap of Mr. Butteridge's with the flaps down over his ears. And some fur

sleepingboots of Mr. Butteridge's warmed his feet. The car of the balloon was small and neat, some bags of

ballast the untidiest of its contents, and he had found a light foldingtable and put it at his elbow, and on that

was a glass with champagne. And about him, above and below, was spacesuch a clear emptiness and

He did not know where he might be drifting, or what might happen next. He accepted this state of affairs with

a serenity creditable to the Smallways' courage, which one might reasonably have expected to be of a more

degenerate and contemptible quality altogether. His impression was that he was bound to come down

somewhere, and that then, if he wasn't smashed, some one, some "society" perhaps, would probably pack him

and the balloon back to England. If not, he would ask very firmly for the British Consul.

"Le consuelo Britannique," he decided this would be. "Apportez moi a le consuelo Britannique, s'il vous

plait," he would say, for he was by no means ignorant of French. In the meanwhile, he found the intimate

There were letters of an entirely private character addressed to Mr. Butteridge, and among others several

loveletters of a devouring sort in a large feminine hand. These are no business of ours, and one remarks with

When he had read them he remarked, "Gollys!" in an awestricken tone, and then, after a long interval, "I

He resumed his exploration of the Butteridge interior. It included a number of press cuttings of interviews

and also several letters in German, then some in the same German handwriting, but in English. "HulLO!"

One of the latter, the first he took, began with an apology to Butteridge for not writing to him in English

before, and for the inconvenience and delay that had been caused him by that, and went on to matter that Bert

found exciting in, the highest degree. "We can understand entirely the difficulties of your position, and that

you shall possibly be watched at the present juncture.But, sir, we do not believe that any serious obstacles

will be put in your way if you wished to endeavour to leave the country and come to us with your plans by

the customary routeseither via Dover, Ostend, Boulogne, or Dieppe. We find it difficult to think you are

right in supposing yourself to be in danger of murder for your invaluable invention."

"They seem to want him to come," said Bert, "but they don't seem hurting themselves to get 'im. Or else

"They don't quite seem to be the gov'ment," he reflected, after an interval. "It's more like some firm's paper.

All this printed stuff at the top. Drachenflieger. Drachenballons. Ballonstoffe. Kugelballons. Greek to me.

"But he was trying to sell his blessed secret abroad. That's all right. No Greek about that! Gollys! Here IS the

He tumbled off the seat, opened the locker, and had the portfolio open before him on the foldingtable. It was

full of drawings done in the peculiar flat style and conventional colours engineers adopt. And, in, addition

there were some rather underexposed photographs, obviously done by an amateur, at close quarters, of the

actual machine's mutterings had made, in its shed near the Crystal Palace. Bert found he was trembling.

"Lord" he said, "here am I and the whole blessed secret of flyinglost up here on the roof of everywhere.

"Let's see!" He fell to studying the drawings and comparing them with the photographs. They puzzled him.

Half of them seemed to be missing. He tried to imagine how they fitted together, and found the effort too

"It's tryin'," said Bert. "I wish I'd been brought up to the engineering. If I could only make it out!"

He went to the side of the car and remained for a time staring with unseeing eyes at a huge cluster of great

cloudsa cluster of slowly dissolving Monte Rosas, sunlit below. His attention was arrested by a strange

black spot that moved over them. It alarmed him. It was a black spot moving slowly with him far below,

following him down there, indefatigably, over the cloud mountains. Why should such a thing follow him?

He had an inspiration. "Uv course!" he said. It was the shadow of the balloon. But he still watched it

He spent a long afternoon between his struggles to understand them and fits of meditation. He evolved a

"Voici, Mossoo!Je suis un inventeur Anglais. Mon nom est Butteridge. Beh. oo. teh. teh. eh. arr. E. deh.

geh. eh. J'avais ici pour vendre le secret de le flyingmachine. Comprenez? Vendre pour l'argent tout suite,

l'argent en main. Comprenez? C'est le machine a jouer dans l'air. Comprenez? C'est le machine a faire

l'oiseau. Comprenez? Balancer? Oui, exactement! Battir l'oiseau en fait, a son propre jeu. Je desire de vendre

"Bit rummy, I expect, from the point of view of grammar," said Bert, "but they ought to get the hang of it all

He returned in a worried way to the plans. "I don't believe it's all here!" he said....

He got more and more perplexed up there among the clouds as to what he should do with this wonderful find

of his. At any moment, so far as he knew he might descend among he knew not what foreign people.

It became more and more manifest to him that it wasn't. "Directly I come down they'll telegraphput it in

Butteridge would be a terrible person to be on any one's track. Bert thought of the great black moustaches, the

triangular nose, the searching bellow and the glare. His afternoon's dream of a marvellous seizure and sale of

the great Butteridge secret crumpled up in his mind, dissolved, and vanished. He awoke to sanity again.

"Wouldn't do. What's the good of thinking of it?" He proceeded slowly and reluctantly to replace the

Butteridge papers in pockets and portfolio as he had found them. He became aware of a splendid golden light

upon the balloon above him, and of a new warmth in the blue dome of the sky. He stood up and beheld the

sun, a great ball of blinding gold, setting upon a tumbled sea of goldedged crimson and purple clouds,

strange and wonderful beyond imagining. Eastward cloudland stretched for ever, darkling blue, and it

Then far, away over the blue he caught sight of three long, dark shapes like hurrying fish that drove one after

the other, as porpoises follow one another in the water. They were very fishlike indeedwith tails. It was

an unconvincing impression in that light. He blinked his eyes, stared again, and they had vanished. For a long

"Wonder if I ever saw anything," he said, and then: "There ain't such things...."

Down went the sun and down, not diving steeply, but passing northward as it sank, and then suddenly

daylight and the expansive warmth of daylight had gone altogether, and the index of the statoscope quivered

He found the cold, grey cloud wilderness rising towards him with a wide, slow steadiness. As he sank down

among them the clouds ceased to seem the snowclad mountainslopes they had resembled heretofore,

became unsubstantial, confessed an immense silent drift and eddy in their substance. For a moment, when he

was nearly among their twilight masses, his descent was checked. Then abruptly the sky was hidden, the last

vestiges of daylight gone, and he was falling rapidly in an evening twilight through a whirl of fine snowflakes

that streamed past him towards the zenith, that drifted in upon the things about him and melted, that touched

his face with ghostly fingers. He shivered. His breath came smoking from his lips, and everything was

He had an impression of a snowstorm pouring with unexampled and increasing fury UPWARD; then he

Imperceptibly a sound grew upon his ears. The great silence of the world was at an end. What was this

First he seemed to see, and then not to see. Then he saw clearly little edges of foam pursuing each other, and

a wide waste of weltering waters below him. Far away was a pilot boat with a big sail bearing dim black

letters, and a little pinkishyellow light, and it was rolling and pitching, rolling and pitching in a gale, while

he could feel no wind at, all. Soon the sound of waters was loud and near. He was dropping, droppinginto

"Ballast!" he cried, and seized a little sack from the floor, and heaved it overboard. He did not wait for the

effect of that, but sent another after it. He looked over in time to see a minute white splash in the dim waters

He sent out quite needlessly a third sack of ballast and a fourth, and presently had the immense satisfaction of

soaring up out of the damp and chill into the clear, cold, upper air in which the day still lingered.

A few stars now had pierced the blue, and in the east there shone brightly a prolate moon.

That first downward plunge filled Bert with a haunting sense of boundless waters below. It was a summer's

night, but it seemed to him, nevertheless, extraordinarily long. He had a feeling of insecurity that he fancied

quite irrationally the sunrise would dispel. Also he was hungry. He felt, in the dark, in the locker, put his

fingers in the Roman pie, and got some sandwiches, and he also opened rather successfully a halfbottle of

champagne. That warmed and restored him, he grumbled at Grubb about the matches, wrapped himself up

warmly on the locker, and dozed for a time. He got up once or twice to make sure that he was still securely

high above the sea. The first time the moonlit clouds were white and dense, and the shadow of the balloon ran

athwart them like a dog that followed; afterwards they seemed thinner. As he lay still, staring up at the huge

dark balloon above, he made a discovery. Hisor rather Mr. Butteridge'swaistcoat rustled as he breathed.

It was lined with papers. But Bert could not see to get them out or examine them, much as he wished to do

He was awakened by the crowing of cocks, the barking of dogs, and a clamour of birds. He was driving

slowly at a low level over a broad land lit golden by sunrise under a clear sky. He stared out upon hedgeless,

wellcultivated fields intersected by roads, each lined with cablebearing red poles. He had just passed over

a compact, whitewashed, village with a straight church tower and steep redtiled roofs. A number of

peasants,men and women, in shiny blouses and lumpish footwear, stood regarding him, arrested on their way

He found himself drifting down towards a monorail line, and hastily flung out two or three handfuls of

"Lemme see! One might say just 'Pre'nez'! Wish I knew the French for take hold of the rope!... I suppose they

He surveyed the country again. "Might be Holland. Or Luxembourg. Or Lorraine 's far as _I_ know. Wonder

what those big affairs over there are? Some sort of kiln. Prosperouslooking country..."

The respectability of the country's appearance awakened answering chords in his nature.

He resolved to rise a little and get rid of his wig (which now felt hot on his head), and so forth. He threw out a

bag of ballast, and was astonished to find himself careering up through the air very rapidly.

"Blow!" said Mr. Smallways. "I've overdone the ballast trick.... Wonder when I shall get down again? ...

He removed his cap and wig, for the air was warm, and an improvident impulse made him cast the latter

"The blessed thing goes up if you only LOOK overboard," he remarked, and assailed the locker. He found

among other items several tins of liquid cocoa containing explicit directions for opening that he followed

with minute care. He pierced the bottom with the key provided in the holes indicated, and forthwith the can

grew from cold to hotter and hotter, until at last he could scarcely touch it, and then he opened the can at the

other end, and there was his cocoa smoking, without the use of match or flame of any sort. It was an old

invention, but new to Bert. There was also ham and marmalade and bread, so that he had a really very

Then he took off his overcoat, for the sunshine was now inclined to be hot, and that reminded him of the

rustling he had heard in the night. He took off the waistcoat and examined it. "Old Butteridge won't like me

unpicking this." He hesitated, and finally proceeded to unpick it. He found the missing drawings of the lateral

An observant angel would have seen Bert sitting for a long time after this discovery in a state of intense

meditation. Then at last he rose with an air of inspiration, took Mr. Butteridge's ripped, demolished, and

ransacked waistcoat, and hurled it from the balloon whence it fluttered down slowly and eddyingly until at

last it came to rest with a contented flop upon the face of German tourist sleeping peacefully beside the

Hohenweg near Wildbad. Also this sent the balloon higher, and so into a position still more convenient for

observation by our imaginary angel who would next have seen Mr. Smallways tear open his own jacket and

waistcoat, remove his collar, open his shirt, thrust his hand into his bosom, and tear his heart outor at least,

if not his heart, some large bright scarlet object. If the observer, overcoming a thrill of celestial horror, had

scrutinised this scarlet object more narrowly, one of Bert's most cherished secrets, one of his essential

weaknesses, would have been laid bare. It was a redflannel chestprotector, one of those large

quasihygienic objects that with pills and medicines take the place of beneficial relics and images among the

Protestant peoples of Christendom. Always Bert wore this thing; it was his cherished delusion, based on the

He now proceeded to unbutton his fetish, to attack it with a periknife, and to thrust the newfound plans

between the two layers of imitation Saxony flannel of which it was made. Then with the help of Mr.

Butteridge's small shaving mirror and his folding canvas basin he readjusted his costume with the gravity of a

man who has taken an irrevocable step in life, buttoned up his jacket, cast the white sheet of the Desert

Dervish on one side, washed temperately, shaved, resumed the big cap and the fur overcoat, and, much

It was indeed a spectacle of incredible magnificence. If perhaps it was not so strange and magnificent as the

sunlit cloudland of the previous day, it was at any rate infinitely more interesting.

The air was at its utmost clearness and except to the south and southwest there was not a cloud in the sky.

The country was hilly, with occasional fir plantations and bleak upland spaces, but also with numerous farms,

and the hills were deeply intersected by the gorges of several winding rivers interrupted at intervals by the

bankedup ponds and weirs of electric generating wheels. It was dotted with brightlooking, steeproofed,

villages, and each showed a distinctive and interesting church beside its wireless telegraph steeple; here and

there were large chateaux and parks and white roads, and paths lined with red and, white cable posts were

extremely conspicuous in the landscape. There were walled enclosures like gardens and rickyards and great

roofs of barns and many electric dairy centres. The uplands were mottled with cattle. At places he would see

the track of one of the old railroads (converted now to monorails) dodging through tunnels and crossing

embankments, and a rushing hum would mark the passing of a train. Everything was extraordinarily clear as

well as minute. Once or twice he saw guns and soldiers, and was reminded of the stir of military preparations

he had witnessed on the Bank Holiday in England; but there was nothing to tell him that these military

preparations were abnormal or to explain an occasional faint irregular firing Of guns that drifted up to him....

"Wish I knew how to get down," said Bert, ten thousand feet or so above it all, and gave himself to much

futile tugging at the red and white cords. Afterwards he made a sort of inventory of the provisions. Life in the

high air was giving him an appalling appetite, and it seemed to him discreet at this stage to portion out his

At first all the vast panorama below had been as silent as a painted picture. But as the day wore on and the

gas diffused slowly from the balloon, it sank earthward again, details increased, men became more visible,

and he began to hear the whistle and moan of trains and cars, sounds of cattle, bugles and kettle drums, and

presently even men's voices. And at last his guiderope was trailing again, and he found it possible to attempt

a landing. Once or twice as the rope dragged over cables he found his hair erect with electricity, and once he

had a slight shock, and sparks snapped about the car. He took these things among the chances of the voyage.

He had one idea now very clear in his mind, and that was to drop the iron grapnel that hung from the ring.

From the first this attempt was unfortunate, perhaps because the place for descent was illchosen. A balloon

should come down in an empty open space, and he chose a crowd. He made his decision suddenly, and

without proper reflection. As he trailed, Bert saw ahead of him one of the most attractive little towns in the

worlda cluster of steep gables surmounted by a high church tower and diversified with trees, walled, and

with a fine, large gateway opening out upon a treelined high road. All the wires and cables of the

countryside converged upon it like guests to entertainment. It had a most homelike and comfortable quality,

and it was made gayer by abundant flags. Along the road a quantity of peasant folk, in big pairwheeled carts

and afoot, were coming and going, besides an occasional monorail, car; and at the carjunction, under the

trees outside the town, was a busy little fair of booths. It seemed a warm, human, wellrooted, and altogether

delightful place to Bert. He came low over the treetops, with his grapnel ready to throw and so anchor

hima curious, interested, and interesting guest, so his imagination figured it, in the very middle of it all.

He thought of himself performing feats with the sign language and chance linguistics amidst a circle of

The rope made itself unpopular long before the crowd had fully realised his advent over the trees. An elderly

and apparently intoxicated peasant in a shiny black hat, and carrying a large crimson umbrella, caught sight

of it first as it trailed past him, and was seized with a discreditable ambition to kill it. He pursued it, briskly

with unpleasant cries. It crossed the road obliquely, splashed into a pail of milk upon a stall, and slapped its

milky tail athwart a motorcar load of factory girls halted outside the town gates. They screamed loudly.

People looked up and saw Bert making what he meant to be genial salutations, but what they considered, in

view of the feminine outcry, to be insulting gestures. Then,the car hit the roof of the gatehouse smartly,

snapped a flag staff, played a tune upon some telegraph wires, and sent a broken wire like a whiplash to do

its share in accumulating unpopularity. Bert, by clutching convulsively, just escaped being pitched headlong.

Two young soldiers and several peasants shouted things iup to him and shook fists at him and began to run in

The balloon leapt at once, in the manner of balloons when part of their weight is released by touching down,

with a sort of flippancy, and in another moment Bert was over a street crowded with peasants and soldiers,

"Grapnel," said Bert, and then with an afterthought shouted, "TETES there, you! I say! I say! TETES. 'Eng

The grapnel smashed down a steeply sloping roof, followed by an avalanche of broken tiles, jumped the street

amidst shrieks and cries, and smashed into a plateglass window with an immense and sickening,impact. The

balloon rolled nauseatingly, and the car pitched. But the grapnel had not held. It emerged at once bearing on

one fluke, with a ridiculous air of fastidious selection, a small child's chair, and pursued by a maddened

shopman. It lifted its catch, swung about with an appearance of painful indecision amidst a roar of wrath, and

dropped it at last neatly, and as if by inspiration, over the head of a peasant woman in charge of an assortment

Everybody now was aware of the balloon. Everybody was either trying to dodge the grapnel or catch the trail

rope. With a pendulumlike swoop through the crowd, that sent people flying right and left the grapnel came

to earth again, tried for and missed a stout gentleman in a blue suit and a straw hat, smacked away a trestle

from under a stall of haberdashery, made a cyclist soldier in knickerbockers leap like a chamois, and secured

itself uncertainly among the hindlegs of a sheepwhich made convulsive, ungenerous efforts to free itself,

and was dragged into a position of rest against a stone cross in the middle of the place. The balloon pulled up

with a jerk. In another moment a score of willing hands were tugging it earthward. At the same instant Bert

For some seconds he stood staggering in the car, which now swayed sickeningly, surveying the exasperated

crowd below him and trying to collect his mind. He was extraordinarily astonished at this run of mishaps.

Were the people really so annoyed? Everybody seemed angry with him. No one seemed interested or amused

by his arrival. A disproportionate amount of the outcry had the flavour of imprecationhad, indeed a strong

flavour of riot. Several greatly uniformed officials in cocked hats struggled in vain to control the crowd. Fists

and sticks were shaken. And when Bert saw a man on the outskirts of the crowd run to a haycart and get a

brightly pronged pitchfork, and a blueclad soldier unbuckle his belt, his rising doubt whether this little

He had clung to the fancy that they would make something of a hero of him. Now he knew that he was

He was perhaps ten feet above the people when he made his decision. His paralysis ceased. He leapt up on

the seat, and, at imminent risk of falling headlong, released the grapnelrope from the toggle that held it,

sprang on to the trail rope and disengaged that also. A hoarse shout of disgust greeted the descent of the

grapnelrope and the swift leap of the balloon, and somethinghe fancied afterwards it was a

turnipwhizzed by his head. The trailrope followed its fellow. The crowd seemed to jump away from him.

With an immense and horrifying rustle the balloon brushed against a telephone pole, and for a tense instant he

anticipated either an electric explosion or a bursting of the oiled silk, or both. But fortune was with him.

In another second he was cowering in the bottom of the car, and released from the weight of the grapnel and

the two ropes, rushing up once more through the air. For a time he remained crouching, and when at last he

looked out again the little town was very small and travelling, with the rest of lower Germany, in a circular

orbit round and round the caror atleast it appeared to be doing that. When he got used to it, he found this

Late in the afternoon of a pleasant summer day in the year 191, if one may borrow a mode of phrasing that

once found favour with the readers of the late G. P. R. James, a solitary balloonistreplacing. the solitary

horseman of the classic romancesmight have been observed wending his way across Franconia in a

northeasterly direction, and at a height of about eleven thousand feet above the sea and still spindling

slowly. His head was craned over the side of the car, and he surveyed the country below with an expression

of profound perplexity; ever and again his lips shaped inaudible words. "Shootin' at a chap," for example, and

"I'll come down right enough soon as I find out 'ow." Over the side of the basket the robe of the Desert

He was now very distinctly aware that the world below him, so far from being the naive countryside of his

earlier imaginings that day, sleepily unconscious of him and capable of being amazed and nearly reverential

at his descent, was acutely irritated by his career, and extremely impatient with the course he was

taking.Butindeed it was not he who took that course, but his masters, the winds of heaven. Mysterious

voices spoke to him in his ear, jerking the words up to him by means of megaphones, in a weird and startling

ipanner, in a great variety of languages. Officiallooking persons had signalled to him by means of flag

flapping and arm waving. On the whole a guttural variant of English prevailed in the sentences that alighted

Then they shot a little wide of the car. Latterly he had been shot at six or seven times, and once the bullet had

gone by with a sound so persuasively like the tearing of silk that he had resigned himself to the prospect of a

headlong fall. But either they were aiming near him or they had missed, and as yet nothing was torn but the

He was now enjoying a respite from these attentions, but he felt it was at best an interlude, and he was doing

what he could to appreciate his position. Incidentally he was having some hot coffee and pie in an untidy

inadvertent manner, with an eye fluttering nervously over the side of the car. At first he had ascribed the

growing interest in his career to his illconceived attempt to land in the bright little upland town, but now he

was beginning to realise that the military rather than the civil arm was concerned about him.

He was quite involuntarily playing that weird mysterious partthe part of an International Spy. He was

seeing secret things. He had, in fact, crossed the designs of no less a power than the German Empire, he had

blundered into the hot focus of WeltPolitik, he was drifting helplessly towards the great Imperial secret, the

immense aeronautic park that had been established at a headlong pace in Franconia to develop silently,

swiftly, and on an immense scale the great discoveries of Hunstedt and Stossel, and so to give Germany

before all other nations a fleet of airships, the air power and the Empire of the world.

Later, just before they shot him down altogether, Bert saw that great area of passionate work, warm lit in the

evening light, a great area of upland on which the airships lay like a herd of grazing monsters at their feed. It

was a vast busy space stretching away northward as far as he could see, methodically cut up into numbered

sheds, gasometers, squad encampments, storage areas, interlaced with the omnipresent monorail lines, and

altogether free from overhead wires or cables. Everywhere was the white, black and yellow of Imperial

Germany, everywhere the black eagles spread their wings. Even without these indications, the large vigorous

neatness of everything would have marked it German. Vast multitudes of men went to and fro, many in white

and drab fatigue uniforms busy about the balloons, others drilling in sensible drab. Here and there a full

uniform glittered. The airships chi6fly engaged his attention, and he knew at once it was three of these he had

seen on the previous night, taking advantage of the cloud welkin to manoeuvre unobserved. They were

altogether fishlike. For the great airships with which Germany attacked New York in her last gigantic effort

for world supremacybefore humanity realized that world supremacy was a dreamwere the lineal

descendants of the Zeppelin airship that flew over Lake Constance in 1906, and of the Lebaudy navigables

These German airships were held together by riblike skeletons of steel and aluminium and a stout inelastic

canvas outerskin, within which was an impervious rubber gasbag, cut up by transverse dissepiments into

from fifty to a hundred compartments. These were all absolutely gas tight and filled with hydrogen, and the

entire aerostat was kept at any level by means of a long internal balloonette of oiled and toughened silk

canvas, into which air could be forced and from which it could be pumped. So the airship could be made

either heavier or lighter than air, and losses of weight through the consumption of fuel, the casting of bombs

and so forth, could also be compensated by admitting air to sections of the general gasbag. Ultimately that

made a highly explosive mixture; but in all these matters risks must be taken and guarded against. There was

a steel axis to the whole affair, a central backbone which terminated in the engine and propeller, and the men

and magazines were forward in a series of cabins under the expanded headlike forepart. The engine, which

was of the extraordinarily powerful Pforzheim type, that supreme triumph of German invention, was worked

by wires from this forepart, which was indeed the only really habitable part of the ship. If anything went

wrong, the engineers went aft along a rope ladder beneath the frame. The tendency of the whole affair to roll

was partly corrected by a horizontal lateral fin on either side, and steering was chiefly effected by two vertical

fins, which normally lay back like gillflaps on either side of the head. It was indeed a most complete

adaptation of the fish form to aerial conditions, the position of swimming bladder, eyes, and brain being,

however, below instead of above. A striking, and unfishlike feature was the apparatus for wireless

telegraphy that dangled from the forward cabinthat is to say, under the chin of the fish.

These monsters were capable of ninety miles an hour in a calm, so that they could face and make headway

against nearly everything except the fiercest tornado. They varied in length from eight hundred to two

thousand feet, and they had a carrying power of from seventy to two hundred tons. How many Germany

possessed history does not record, but Bert counted nearly eighty great bulks receding in perspective during

his brief inspection. Such were the instruments on which she chiefly relied to sustain her in her repudiation of

the Monroe Doctrine and her bold bid for a share in the empire of the New World. But not altogether did she

rely on these; she had also a oneman bombthrowing Drachenflieger of unknown value among the

But the Drachenflieger were away in the second great aeronautic park east of Hamburg, and Bert Smallways

saw nothing of them in the bird'seye view he took of ihe Franconian establishment before they shot him

down very neatly. The bullet tore past him and made a sort of pop as it pierced his balloona pop that was

followed by a rustling sigh and a steady downward movement. And when in the confusion of the moment he

dropped a bag of ballast, the Germans, very politely but firmly overcame his scruples by shooting his balloon

Of all the productions of the human imagination that make the world in which Mr. Bert Smallways lived

confusingly wonderful, there was none quite so strange, so headlong and disturbing, so noisy and persuasive

and dangerous, as the modernisations of patriotism produced by imperial and international politics. In the

soul of all men is a liking for kind, a pride in one's own atmosphere, a tenderness for one's Mother speech and

one's familiar land. Before the coming of the Scientific Age this group of gentle and noble emotions had been

a fine factor in the equipment of every worthy human being, a fine factor that had its less amiable aspect in a

usually harmless hostility to strange people, and a usually harmless detraction of strange lands. But with the

wild rush of change in the pace, scope, materials, scale, and possibilities of human life that then occurred, the

old boundaries, the old seclusions and separations were violently broken down. All the old settled mental

habits and traditions of men found themselves not simply confronted by new conditions, but by constantly

renewed and changing new conditions. They had no chance of adapting themselves. They were annihilated or

Bert Smallways' grandfather, in the days when Bun Hill was a village under the sway of Sir Peter Bone's

parent, had "known his place" to the uttermost farthing, touched his hat to his betters, despised and

condescended to his inferiors, and hadn't changed an idea from the cradle to the grave. He was Kentish and

English, and that meant hops, beer, dogrose's, and the sort of sunshine that was best in the world.

Newspapers and politics and visits to "Lunnon" weren't for the likes of him. Then came the change. These

earlier chapters have given an idea of what happened to Bun Hill, and how the flood of novel things had

poured over its devoted rusticity. Bert Smallways was only one of countless millions in Europe and America

and Asia who, instead of being born rooted in the soil, were born struggling in a torrent they never clearly

understood. All the faiths of their fathers had been taken by surprise, and startled into the strangest forms and

reactions. Particularly did the fine old tradition of patriotism get perverted and distorted in the rush of the new

times. Instead of the sturdy establishment in prejudice of Bert's grandfather, to whom the word "Frenchified"

was the ultimate term of contempt, there flowed through Bert's brain a squittering succession of thinly violent

ideas about German competition, about the Yellow Danger, about the Black Peril, about the White Man's

Burthenthat is to say, Bert's preposterous right to muddle further the naturally very muddled politics of the

entirely similar little cads to himself (except for a smear of brown) who smoked cigarettes and rode bicycles

in Buluwayo, Kingston (Jamaica), or Bombay. These were Bert's "Subject Races," and he was ready to

dieby proxy in the person of any one who cared to enlistto maintain his hold upon that right. It kept him

The essential fact of the politics of the age in which Bert Smallways livedthe age that blundered at last into

the catastrophe of the War in the Airwas a very simple one, if only people had had the intelligence to be

simple about it. The development of Science had altered the scale of human affairs. By means of rapid

mechanical traction, it had brought men nearer together, so much nearer socially, economically, physically,

that the old separations into nations and kingdoms were no longer possible, a newer, wider synthesis was not

only needed, but imperatively demanded. Just as the once independent dukedoms of France had to fuse into a

nation, so now the nations had to adapt themselves to a wider coalescence, they had to keep what was

precious and possible, and concede what was obsolete and dangerous. A saner world would have perceived

this patent need for a reasonable synthesis, would have discussed it temperately, achieved and gone on to

organise the great civilisation that was manifestly possible to mankind. The world of Bert Smallways did

nothing of the sort. Its national governments, its national interests, would not hear of anything so obvious;

they were too suspicious of each other, too wanting in generous imaginations. They began to behave like

illbred people in a crowded public car, to squeeze against one another, elbow, thrust, dispute and quarrel.

Vain to point out to them that they had only to rearrange themselves to be comfortable. Everywhere, all over

the world, the historian,of the early twentieth century finds the same thing, the flow and rearrangement of

human affairs inextricably entangled by the old areas, the old prejudices and a sort of heated irascible

stupidity, and everywhere congested nations in inconvenient areas, slopping population and produce into each

other, annoying each other with tariffs, and every possible commercial vexation, and threatening each other

It is impossible now to estimate how much of the intellectual and physical energy of the world was wasted in

military preparation and equipment, but it was an enormous proportion. Great Britain spent upon army and

navy money and capacity, that directed into the channels of physical culture and education would have made

the British the aristocracy of the world. Her rulers could have kept the whole population learning and

exercising up to the age of eighteen and made a broadchested and intelligent man of every Bert Smallways

in the islands, had they given the resources they spent in war material to the making of men. Instead of which

they waggled flags at him until he was fourteen, incited him to cheer, and then turned him out of school to

begin that career of private enterprise we have compactly recorded. France achieved similar imbecilities;

Germany was, if possible worse; Russia under the waste and stresses of militarism festered towards

bankruptcy and decay. All Europe was producing big guns and countless swarms of little Smallways. The

Asiatic peoples had been forced in selfdefence into a like diversion of the new powers science had brought

them. On the eve of the outbreak of the war there were six great powers in the world and a cluster of smaller

ones, each armed to the teeth and straining every nerve to get ahead of the others in deadliness of equipment

and military efficiency. The great powers were first the United States, a nation addicted to commerce, but

roused to military necessities by the efforts of Germany to expand into South America, and by the natural

consequences of her own unwary annexations of land in the very teeth of Japan. She maintained two

immense fleets east and west, and internally she was in violent conflict between Federal and State

governments upon the question of univiorsal service in a defensive militia. Next came the great alliance of

Eastern Asia, a closeknit coalescence of China and Japan, advancing with rapid strides year by year to

predominance in the world's affairs. Then the German alliance still struggled to achieve its dream of imperial

expansion, and its imposition of the German language upon a forcibly united Europe. These were the three

most spirited and aggressive powers in the world. Far more pacific was the British Empire, perilously

scattered over the globe, and distracted now by insurrectionary movements in Ireland and among all its

Subject Races. It had given these subject races cigarettes, boots, bowler hats, cricket, race meetings, cheap

revolvers, petroleum, the factory system of industry, halfpeuny newspapers in both English and the

vernacular, inexpensive university degrees, motorbicycles and electric trams; it had produced a considerable

literature expressing contempt for the Subject Races, and rendered it freely accessible to them, and it had

been content to believe that nothing would result from these stimulants because somebody once wrote "the

Instead of which, Egypt, India, and the subject countries generally had produced new generations in a state of

passionate indignation and the utmost energy, activity and modernity. The governing class in Great Britain

was slowly adapting itself to a new conception, of the Subject Races as waking peoples, and finding its

efforts to keep the Empire together under these, strains and changing ideas greatly impeded by the entirely

sporting spirit with which Bert Smallways at home (by the million) cast his vote, and by the tendency of his

more highly coloured equivalents to be disrespectful to irascible officials. Their impertinence was excessive;

it was no mere stonethrowing and shouting. They would quote Burns at them and Mill and Darwin and

Even more pacific than the British Empire were France and its allies, the Latin powers, heavily armed states

indeed, but reluctant warriors, and in many ways socially and politically leading western civilisation. Russia

was a pacific power perforce, divided within itself, torn between revolutionaries and reactionaries who were

equally incapable of social reconstruction, and so sinking towards a tragic disorder of chronic political

vendetta. Wedged in among these portentous larger bulks, swayed and threatened by them, the smaller states

of the world maintained a precarious independence, each keeping itself armed as dangerously as its utmost

So it came about that in every country a great and growing body of energetic and inventive men was busied

either for offensive or defensive ends, in elaborating the apparatus of war, until the accumulating tensions

should reach the breakingpoint. Each power sought to keep its preparations secret, to hold new weapons in

reserve, to anticipate and learn the preparations of its rivals. The feeling of danger from fresh discoveries

affected the patriotic imagination of every people in the world. Now it was rumoured the British had an

overwhelming gun, now the French an invincible rifle, now the Japanese a new explosive, now the

Americans a submarine that would drive every ironclad from the seas. Each time there would be a war panic.

The strength and heart of the nations was given to the thought of war, and yet the mass of their citizens was a

teeming democracy as heedless of and unfitted for fighting, mentally, morally, physically, as any population

has ever beenor, one ventures to add, could ever be. That was the paradox of the time. It was a period

altogether unique in the world's history. The apparatus of warfare, the, art and method of fighting, changed

absolutely every dozen years in a stupendous progress towards perfection, and people grew less and less

And then at last it came. It came as a surprise to all the world because its real causes were hidden. Relations

were strained between Germany and the United States because of the intense exasperation of a tariff conflict

and the ambiguous attitude of the former power towards the Monroe Doctrine, and they were strained

between the United States and Japan because of the perennial citizenship question. But in both cases these

were standing causes of offence. The real deciding cause, it is now known, was the perfecting of the

Pforzheim engine by Germany and the consequent possibility of a rapid and entirely practicable airship. At

that time Germany was by far the most efficient power in the world, better organised for swift and secret

action, better equipped with the resources of modern science, and with her official and administrative classes

at a higher level of education and training. These things she knew, and she exaggerated that knowledge to the

pitch of contempt for the secret counsels of her neighbours. It may be that with the habit of selfconfidence

her spying upon them had grown less thorough. Moreover, she had a tradition of unsentimental and

unscrupulous action that vitiated her international outlook profoundly. With the coming of these new

weapons her collective intelligence thrilled with the sense that now her moment had come. Once again in the

history of progress it seemed she held the decisive weapon. Now she might strike and conquerbefore the

Particularly she must strike America, swiftly, because there, if anywhere, lay the chance of an aerial rival. It

was known that America possessed a flyingmachine of considerable practical value, developed out of the

Wright model; but it was not supposed that the Washington War Office had made any wholesale attempts to

create air aerial navy. It was necessary to strike before they could do so. France had a fleet of slow

navigables, several dating from 1908, that could make no possible headway against the new type. They had

been built solely for reconnoitring purposes on the eastern frontier, they were mostly too small to carry more

than a couple, of dozen men without arms or provisions, and not one could do forty miles. an hour. Great

Britain, it seemed, in an access of meanness, temporised and wrangled with the imperial spirited Butteridge

and his extraordinary invention. That also was not in playand could not be for some months at the earliest.

From Asia there, came no sign. The Germans explained this by saying the yellow peoples were without

invention. No other competitor was worth considering. "Now or never," said the Germans"now or never

we may seize the airas once the British seized the seas! While all the other powers are still experimenting."

Swift and systematic and secret were their preparations, and their plan most excellent. So far as their

knowledge went, America was the only dangerous possibility; America, which was also now the leading

trade rival of Germany and one of the chief barriers to her Imperial expansion. So at once they would strike at

America. They would fling a great force across the Atlantic heavens and bear America down unwarned and

Altogether it was a wellimagined and most hopeful and spirited enterprise, having regard to the information

in the possession of the German government. The chances of it being a successful surprise were very great.

The airship and the flyingmachine were very different things from ironclads, which take a couple of years to

build. Given hands, given plant, they could be made innumerably in a few weeks. Once the needful parks and

foundries were organised, airships and Dracheinflieger could be poured into the sky. Indeed, when the time

came, they did pour into the sky like, as a bitter French writer put it, flies roused from filth.

The attack upon America was to be the first move in this tremendous game. But no sooner had it started than

instantly the aeronautic parks were to proceed to put together and inflate the second fleet which was to

dominate Europe and manoeuvre significantly over London, Paris, Rome, St. Petersburg, or wherever else its

moral effect was required. A World Surprise it was to beno less a World Conquest; and it is wonderful

how near the calmly adventurous minds that planned it came to succeeding in their colossal design.

Von Sternberg was the Moltke of this War in the Air, but it was the curious hard romanticism of Prince Karl

Albert that won over the hesitating Emperor to the scheme. Prince Karl Albert was indeed the central figure

of the world drama. He was the darling of the Imperialist spirit in German, and the ideal of the new

aristocratic feelingthe new Chivalry, as it was calledthat followed the overthrow of Socialism through

its internal divisions and lack of discipline, and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few great

families. He was compared by obsequious flatterers to the Black Prince, to Alcibiades, to the young Caesar.

To many he seemed Nietzsche's Overman revealed. He was big and blond and virile, and splendidly

nonmoral. The first great feat that startled Europe, and almost brought about a new Trojan war, was his

abduction of the Princess Helena of Norway and his blank refusal to marry her. Then followed his marriage

with Gretchen Krass, a Swiss girl of peerless beauty. Then came the gallant rescue, which almost cost him his

life, of three drowning tailors whose boat had upset in the sea near Heligoland. For that and his victory over

the American yacht Defender, C.C.I., the Emperor forgave him and placed him in control of the new

aeronautic arm of the German forces. This he developed with marvellous energy and ability, being resolved,

as he said, to give to Germany land and sea and sky. The national passion for aggression found in him its

supreme exponent, and achieved through him its realisation in this astounding war. But his fascination was

more than national; all over the world his ruthless strength dominated minds as the Napoleonic legend had

dominated minds. Englishmen turned in disgust from the slow, complex, civilised methods of their national

politics to this uncompromising, forceful figure. Frenchmen believed in him. Poems were written to him in

Quite equally with the rest of the world, the general German population was taken by surprise by the swift

vigour of the Imperial government. A considerable literature of military forecasts, beginning as early as 1906

with Rudolf Martin, the author not merely of a brilliant book of anticipations, but of a proverb, "The future of

Germany lies in the air," had, however, partially prepared the German imagination for some such enterprise.

Of all these worldforces and gigantic designs Bert Smallways knew nothing until he found himself in the

very focus of it all and gaped down amazed on the spectacle of that giant herd of air ships. Each one seemed

as long as the Strand, and as big about as Trafalgar Square. Some must have been a third of a mile in length.

He had never before seen anything so vast and disciplined as this tremendous park. For the first time in his

life he really had an intimation of the extraordinary and quite important things of which a contemporary may

go in ignorance. He had always clung to the illusion that Germans were fat, absurd men, who smoked china

pipes, and were addicted to knowledge and horseflesh and sauerkraut and indigestible things generally.

His bird'seye view was quite transitory. He ducked at the first shot; and directly his balloon began to drop,

his mind ran confusedly upon how he might explain himself, and whether he should pretend to be Butteridge

or not. "O Lord!" he groaned, in an agony of indecision. Then his eye caught his sandals, and he felt a spasm

of selfdisgust. "They'll think I'm a bloomin' idiot," he said, and then it was he rose up desperately and threw

It flashed into his head, as he cowered in the bottom of the car, that he might avoid all sorts of disagreeable

That was his last idea before the airships seemed to rush up about him as if to look at him, and his car hit the

He awoke to find himself famous, and to hear a voice crying, "Booteraidge! Ja! Jai Herr Booteraidge!

He was lying on a little patch of grass beside one of the main avenues of the aeronautic park. The airships

receded down a great vista, an im mense perspective, and the blunt prow of each was adorned with a black

eagle of a hundred feet or so spread. Down the other side of the avenue ran a series of gas generators, and big

hosepipes trailed everywhere across the intervening space. Close at hand was his now nearly deflated

balloon and the car on its side looking minutely small, a mere broken toy, a shrivelled bubble, in contrast

with the gigantic bulk of the nearer airship. This he saw almost endon, rising like a cliff and sloping forward

towards its fellow on the other side so as to overshadow the alley between them. There was a crowd of

excited people about him, big men mostly in tight uniforms. Everybody was talking, and several were

shouting, in German; he knew that because they splashed and aspirated sounds like startled kittens.

Only one phrase, repeated again and again could he recognizethe name of "Herr Booteraidge."

He perceived that close at hand was a field telephone, and that a tall officer in blue was talking thereat about

him. Another stood close beside him with the portfolio of drawings and photographs in his hand. They looked

Bert decided that he had better be dazed. He did his best to seem thoroughly dazed. "Where AM I?" he asked.

Volubility prevailed. "Der Prinz," was mentioned. A bugle sounded far away, and its call was taken up by

one nearer, and then by one close at hand. This seemed to increase the excitement greatly. A monorail car

bumbled past. The telephone bell rang passionately, and the tall officer seemed to engage in a heated

altercation. Then he approached the group about Bert, calling out something about "mitbringen."

An earnestfaced, emaciated man with a white moustache appealed to Bert. "Herr Booteraidge, sir, we are

"Herr Booteraidge, we are chust to start!" repeated the white moustache, and then helplessly, "What is de

The officer from the telephone repeated his sentence about "Der Prinz" and "mitbringen." The man with the

moustache stared for a moment, grasped an idea and became violently energetic, stood up and bawled

directions at unseen people. Questions were asked, and the doctor at Bert's side answered, "Ja! Ja!" several

times, also something about "Kopf." With a certain urgency he got Bert rather unwillingly to his feet. Two

huge soldiers in grey advanced upon Bert and seized hold of him. "'Ullo!" said Bert, startled. "What's up?"

Before Bert could decide to say anything more he was whisked up by the two soldiers. They joined hands to

seat him, and his arms were put about their necks. "Vorwarts!" Some one ran before him with the portfolio,

and he was borne rapidly along the broad avenue between the gas generators and the airships, rapidly and on

the whole smoothly except that once or twice his bearers stumbled over hosepipes and nearly let him down.

He was wearing Mr. Butteridge's Alpine cap, and his little shoulders were in Mr. Butteridge's furlined

overcoat, and he had responded to Mr. Butteridge's name. The sandals dangled helplessly. Gaw! Everybody

seemed in a devil of a hurry. Why? He was carried joggling and gaping through the twilight, marvelling

The systematic arrangement of wide convenient spaces, the quantities of businesslike soldiers everywhere,

the occasional neat piles of material, the ubiquitous monorail lines, and the towering shiplike hulls about

him, reminded him a little of impressions he had got as a boy on a visit to Woolwich Dockyard. The whole

camp reflected the colossal power of modern science that had created it. A peculiar strangeness was produced

by the lowness of the electric light, which lay upon the ground, casting all shadows upwards and making a

grotesque shadow figure of himself and his bearers on the airship sides, fusing all three of them into a

monstrous animal with attenuated legs and an immense fanlike humped body. The lights were on the ground

because as far as possible all poles and standards had been dispensed with to prevent complications when the

It was deep twilight now, a tranquil blueskyed evening; everything rose out from the splashes of light upon

the ground into dim translucent tall masses; within the cavities of the airships small inspecting lamps glowed

like cloudveiled stars, and made them seem marvellously unsubstantial. Each airship had its name in black

letters on white on either flank, and forward the Imperial eagle sprawled, an overwhelming bird in the

Bugles sounded, monorail cars of quiet soldiers slithered burbling by. The cabins under the heads of the

There was a matter of sentinels, gangways and a long narrow passage, a scramble over a disorder of baggage,

and then Bert found himself lowered to the ground and standing in the doorway of a spacious cabinit was

perhaps ten feet square and eight high, furnished with crimson padding and aluminium. A tall, birdlike

young man with a small head, a long nose, and very pale hair, with his hands full of things like

shavingstrops, boottrees, hairbrushes, and toilet tidies, was saying things about Gott and thunder and

Dummer Booteraidge as Bert entered. He was apparently an evicted occupant. Then he vanished, and Bert

was lying back on a couch in the corner with a pillow under his head and the door of the cabin shut upon him.

The room he was in puzzled him. "'Tisn't a prison and 'tisn't a norfis?" Then the old trouble came uppermost.

"I wish to 'eaven I adn't these silly sandals on," he cried querulously to the universe. "They give the whole

His door was flung open, and a compact young man in uniform appeared, carrying Mr. Butteridge's portfolio,

"I say!" he said in faultless English as he entered. He had a beaming face, and a sort of pinkish blond hair.

"We'd have started," he said, "in another halfhour! You didn't give yourself much time!"

He surveyed Bert curiously. His gaze rested for a fraction of a moment on the sandals. "You ought to have

He didn't wait for an answer. "The Prince says I've got to look after you. Naturally he can't see you now, but

he thinks your coming's providential. Last grace of Heaven. Like a sign. Hullo!"

Outside there was a going to and fro of feet, a sound of distant bugles suddenly taken up and echoed close at

hand, men called out in loud tones short, sharp, seemingly vital things, and were answered distantly. A bell

jangled, and feet went down the corridor. Then came a stillness more distracting than sound, and then a great

gurgling and rushing and splashing of water. The young man's eyebrows lifted. He hesitated, and dashed out

of the room. Presently came a stupendous bang to vary the noises without, then a distant cheering. The young

A gentle quivering crept upon Bert's senses. "That's the engine," said the compact young man approvingly.

The cabin swayed. "By Jove! we're starting already;" he cried. "We're starting!"

But the young man was out of the room again. There were noises of German in the passage, and other

"I say!", said Bert, "where are we starting? I wish you'd explain. What's this place? I don't understand."

"No. I'm 'all dazedlike from that crack on the nob I got. Where ARE we? WHERE are we starting?"

"What a lark!" cried the young man. "I say! What a thundering lark! Don't you know? We're off to America,

and you haven't realised. You've just caught us by a neck. You're on the blessed old flagship with the Prince.

"Me! going to America on an airship! After that balloon! 'Ere! I sayI don't want to go! I want to walk

The young man arrested Bert with a gesture, took hold of a strap, lifted up a panel in the padded wall, and a

They were rising in the air smoothly and quietly, and moving slowly to the throb of the engine athwart the

aeronautic park. Down below it stretched, dimly geometrical in the darkness, picked out at regular intervals

by glowworm spangles of light. One black gap in the long line of grey, roundbacked airships marked the

position from which the Vaterland had come. Beside it a second monster now rose softly, released from its

bonds and cables into the air. Then, taking a beautifully exact distance, a third ascended, and then a fourth.

"Too late, Mr. Butteridge!" the young man remarked. "We're off! I daresay it is a bit of a shock to you, but

"Look 'ere, " said Bert. "I really am dazed. What's this thing? Where are we going?"

"This, Mr. Butteridge," said the young man, taking pains to be explicit, "is an airship. It's the flagship of

Prince Karl Albert. This is the German airfleet, and it is going over to America, to give that spirited people

'what for.' The only thing we were at all uneasy about was your invention. And here you are!"

"Mother was Englishwent to school in England. Afterwards, Rhodes scholar. German none the less for

that. Detailed for the present, Mr. Butteridge, to look after you. You're shaken by your fall. It's all right,

really. They're going to buy your machine and everything. You sit down, and take it quite calmly. You'll soon

Bert sat down on the locker, collecting his mind, and the young man talked to him about the airship.

He was really a very tactful young man indeed, in a natural sort of way. "Daresay all this is new to you," he

"Here is the bed," he said, whipping down a couch from the wall and throwing it back again with a click.

"Here are toilet things," and he opened a neatly arranged cupboard. "Not much washing. No water we've got;

no water at all except for drinking. No baths or anything until we get to America and land. Rub over with

loofah. One pint of hot for shaving. That's all. In the locker below you are rugs and blankets; you will need

them presently. They say it gets cold. I don't know. Never been up before. Except a little work with

gliderswhich is mostly going down. Threequarters of the chaps in the fleet haven't. Here's a foldingchair

He took the chair and balanced it on his little finger. "Pretty light, eh? Aluminium and magnesium alloy and a

vacuum inside. All these cushions stuffed with hydrogen. Foxy! The whole ship's like that. And not a man in

the fleet, except the Prince and one or two others, over eleven stone. Couldn't sweat the Prince, you know.

He beamed at Bert. "You DO look young," he remarked. "I always thought you'd be an old man with a

bearda sort of philosopher. I don't know why one should expect clever people always to be old. I do."

Bert parried that compliment a little awkwardly, and then the lieutenant was struck with the riddle why Herr

"It's a long story," said Bert. "Look here!" he said abruptly, "I wish you'd lend me a pair of slippers, or

something. I'm regular sick of these sandals. They're rotten things. I've been trying them for a friend."

The exRhodes scholar whisked out of the room and reappeared with a considerable choice of

footwearpumps, cloth bathslippers, and a purple pair adorned with golden sunflowers.

"I don't even wear them myself," he said. "Only brought 'em in the zeal of the moment." He laughed

confidentially. "Had 'em worked for mein Oxford. By a friend. Take 'em everywhere."

The lieutenant broke into a cheerful snigger. "Here we are trying on slippers," he said, "and the world going

Bert peeped with him out of the window, looking from the bright pettiness of the redandsilver cabin into a

dark immensity. The land below, except for a lake, was black and featureless, and the other airships were

hidden. "See more outside, " said the lieutenant. "Let's go! There's a sort of little gallery."

He led the way into the long passage, which was lit by one small electric light, past some notices in German,

to an open balcony and a light ladder and gallery of metal, lattice overhanging, empty space. Bert followed

his leader down to the gallery slowly and cautiously. From it he was able to watch the wonderful spectacle of

the first airfleet flying through the night. They flew in a wedgeshaped formation, the Vaterland highest and

leading, the tail receding into the corners of the sky. They flew in long, regular undulations, great dark

fishlike shapes, showing hardly any light at all, the engines making a throbthrobthrobbing sound that was

very audible out on the gallery. They were going at a level of five or six thousand feet, and rising steadily.

Below, the country lay silent, a clear darkness dotted and lined out with clusters of furnaces, and the lit streets

of a group of big towns. The world seemed to lie in a bowl; the overhanging bulk of the airship above hid all

"Jolly it must be to invent things," said the lieutenant suddenly. "How did you come to think of your machine

"Our people are frightfully keen on you. They thought the British had got you. Weren't the British keen?"

"I think it's an immense thingto invent. I couldn't invent a thing to save my life."

They both fell silent, watching the darkened world and following their thoughts until a bugle summoned them

to a belated dinner. Bert was suddenly alarmed. "Don't you 'ave to dress and things?" he said. "I've always

"No fear," said Kurt. "Nobody's got more than the clothes they wear. We're travelling light. You might

perhaps take your overcoat off. They've an electric radiator each end of the room."

And so presently Bert found himself sitting to eat in the presence of the "German Alexander"that great and

puissant Prince, Prince Karl Albert, the War Lord, the hero of two hemispheres. He was a handsome, blond

man, with deepset eyes, a snub nose, upturned moustache, and long white hands, a strangelooking man. He

sat higher than the others, under a black eagle with widespread wings and the German Imperial flags; he was,

as it were, enthroned, and it struck Bert greatly that as he ate he did not look at people, but over their heads

like one who sees visions. Twenty officers of various ranks stood about the tableand Bert. They all seemed

extremely curious to see the famous Butteridge, and their astonishment at his appearance was illcontrolled.

The Prince gave him a dignified salutation, to which, by an inspiration, he bowed. Standing next the Prince

was a brownfaced, wrinkled man with silver spectacles and fluffy, dingygrey sidewhiskers, who regarded

Bert with a peculiar and disconcerting attention. The company sat after ceremonies Bert could not

understand. At the other end of the table was the birdfaced officer Bert had dispossessed, still looking

hostile and whispering about Bert to his neighbour. Two soldiers waited. The dinner was a plain onea

A curious solemnity indeed brooded over every one. Partly this was reaction after the intense toil and

restrained excitement of starting; partly it was the overwhelming sense of strange new experiences, of

portentous adventure. The Prince was lost in thought. He roused himself to drink to the Emperor in

champagne, and the company cried "Hoch!" like men repeating responses in church.

No smoking was permitted, but some of the officers went down to the little open gallery to chew tobacco. No

lights whatever were safe amidst that bundle of inflammable things. Bert suddenly fell yawning and

shivering. He was overwhelmed by a sense of his own insignificance amidst these great rushing monsters of

He said something to Kurt about his head, went up the steep ladder from the swaying little gallery into the

Bert slept for a time, and then his sleep was broken by dreams. Mostly he was fleeing from formless terrors

down an interminable passage in an airshipa passage paved at first with ravenous trapdoors, and then

"Gaw!" said Bert, turning over after his seventh fall through infinite space that night.

He sat up in the darkness and nursed his knees. The progress of the airship was not nearly so smooth as a

balloon; he could feel a regular swaying up, up, up and then down, down, down, and the throbbing and

Through them, like a struggling swimmer in broken water, came the perplexing question, what am I to do

tomorrow? Tomorrow, Kurt had told him, the Prince's secretary, the Graf Von Winterfeld, would come to

him and discuss his flyingmachine, and then he would see the Prince. He would have to stick it out now that

he was Butteridge, and sell his invention. And then, if they found him out! He had a vision of infuriated

Butteridges.... Suppose after all he owned up? Pretended it was their misunderstanding? He began to scheme

What should he ask for the thing? Somehow twenty thousand pounds struck him as about the sum indicated.

He fell into that despondency that lies in wait in the small hours. He had got too big a job ontoo big a

He recapitulated his evenings tediously and lengthily. Last night he had been up above the clouds in

Butteridge's balloon. He thought of the moment when he dropped through them and saw the cold twilight sea

close below. He still remembered that disagreeable incident with a nightmare vividness. And the night before

he and Grubb had been looking for cheap lodgings at Littlestone in Kent. How remote that seemed now. It

might be years ago. For the first time he thought of his fellow Desert Dervish, left with the two redpainted

bicycles on Dymchurch sands. "'E won't make much of a show of it, not without me. Any'ow 'e did 'ave the

treasurysuch as it wasin his pocket!" ...The night before that was Bank Holiday night and they had sat

discussing their minstrel enterprise, drawing up a programme and rehearsing steps. And the night before was

Whit Sunday. "Lord!" cried Bert, "what a doing that motorbicycle give me!" He recalled the empty flapping

of the eviscerated cushion, the feeling of impotence as the flames rose again. From among the confused

memories of that tragic flare one little figure emerged very bright and poignantly sweet, Edna, crying back

Other memories of Edna clustered round that impression. They led Bert's mind step by step to an agreeable

state that found expression in "I'll marry 'ER if she don't look out." And then in a flash it followed in his mind

that if he sold the Butteridge secret he could! Suppose after all he did get twenty thousand pounds; such sums

have been paid! With that he could buy house and garden, buy new clothes beyond dreaming, buy a motor,

travel, have every delight of the civilised life as he knew it, for himself and Edna. Of course, risks were

He meditated upon that. He declined again to despondency. As yet he was only in the beginning of the

adventure. He had still to deliver the goods and draw the cash. And before thatJust now he was by no

means on his way home. He was flying off to America to fight there. "Not much fighting," he considered; "all

our own way." Still, if a shell did happen to hit the Vaterland on the underside!...

He lay back for some time composing willschiefly in favour of Edna. He had settled now it was to be

twenty thousand pounds. He left a number of minor legacies. The wills became more and more meandering

He woke from the eighth repetition of his nightmare fall through space. "This flying gets on one's nerves," he

He could feel the airship diving down, down, down, then slowly swinging to up, up, up. Throb, throb, throb,

He got up presently and wrapped himself about with Mr. Butteridge's overcoat and all the blankets, for the air

was very keen. Then he peeped out of the window to see a grey dawn breaking over clouds, then turned up

his light and bolted his door, sat down to the table, and produced his chestprotector.

He smoothed the crumpled plans with his hand, and contemplated them. Then he referred to the other

drawings in the portfolio. Twenty thousand pounds. If he worked it right! It was worth trying, anyhow.

Presently he opened the drawer in which Kurt had put paper and writingmaterials.

Bert Smallways was by no means a stupid person, and up to a certain limit he had not been badly educated.

His board school had taught him to draw up to certain limits, taught him to calculate and understand a

specification. If at that point his country had tired of its efforts, and handed him over unfinished to scramble

for a living in an atmosphere of advertiseinents and individual enterprise, that was really not his fault. He was

as his State had made him, and the reader must not imagine because he was a little Cockney cad, that he was

absolutely incapable of grasping the idea of the Butteridge flyingmachine. But he found it stiff and

perplexing. His motorbicycle and Grubb's experiments and the "mechanical drawing" he had done in

standard seven all helped him out; and, moreover, the maker of these drawings, whoever he was, had been

anxious to make his intentions plain. Bert copied sketches, he made notes, he made a quite tolerable and

intelligent copy of the essential drawings and sketches of the others. Then he fell into a meditation upon

At last he rose with a sigh, folded up the originals that had formerly been in his chestprotector and put them

into the breastpocket of his jacket, and then very carefully deposited the copies he had made in the place of

the originals. He had no very clear plan in his mind in doing this, except that he hated the idea of altogether

parting with the secret. For a long time he meditated profoundlynodding. Then he turned out his light and

The hochgeboren Graf von Winterfeld was also a light sleeper that night, but then he was one of these people

who sleep little and play chess problems in their heads to while away the timeand that night he had a

He came in upon Bert while he was still in bed in the glow of the sunlight reflected from the North Sea

below, consumng the rolls and coffee a soldier had brought him. He had a portfolio under his arm, and in the

clear, early morning light his dingy grey hair and heavy, silverrimmed spectacles made him look almost

benevolent. He spoke English fluently, but with a strong German flavour. He was particularly bad with his

"b's," and his "th's" softened towards weak "z'ds." He called Bert explosively, "Pooterage." He began with

some indistinct civilities, bowed, took a foldingtable and chair from behind the door, put the former

between himself and Bert, sat down on the latter, coughed drily, and opened his portfolio. Then he put his

elbows on the table, pinched his lower lip with his two forefingers, and regarded Bert disconcertingly with

magnified eyes. "You came to us, Herr Pooterage, against your will," he said at last.

"I chuge by ze maps in your car. They were all English. And your provisions. They were all picnic. Also your

cords were entangled. You haf' been tuggingbut no good. You could not manage ze balloon, and anuzzer

"You started with a laty. That is evident. You shtarted for an afternoon excursiona picnic. A man of your

temperamenthe would take a laty. She was not wiz you in your balloon when you came down at Dornhof.

"I chuge by ze nature of your farious provisions. I cannot account, Mr. Pooterage, for ze laty, what you haf

done with her. Nor can I tell why you should wear naturesandals, nor why you should wear such cheap plue

clothes. These are outside my instructions. Trifles, perhaps. Officially they are to be ignored. Laties come and

goI am a man of ze worldt. I haf known wise men wear sandals and efen practice vegetarian habits. I haf

known menor at any rate, I haf known chemistswho did not schmoke. You haf, no doubt, put ze laty

down somewhere. Well. Let us get tobusiness. A higher power"his voice changed its emotional quality,

his magnified eyes seemed to dilate"has prought you and your secret straight to us. So!" he bowed his

head"so pe it. It is ze Destiny of Chermany and my Prince. I can undershtandt you always carry zat secret.

You are afraidt of roppers and spies. So it comes wiz youto us. Mr. Pooterage, Chermany will puy it."

"She will," said the secretary, looking hard at Bert's abandoned sandals in the corner of the locker. He roused

himself, consulted a paper of notes for a moment, and Bert eyed his brown and wrinkled face with

expectation and terror. "Chermany, I am instructed to say," said the secretary, with his eyes on the table and

his notes spread out, "has always been willing to puy your secret. We haf indeed peen eager to acquire it fery

eager; and it was only ze fear that you might be, on patriotic groundts, acting in collusion with your Pritish

War Office zat has made us discreet in offering for your marvellous invention through intermediaries. We haf

no hesitation whatefer now, I am instructed, in agreeing to your proposal of a hundert tousand poundts."

"Ah! Also I am instructed to say that as for that noble, unrightly accused laty you haf championed so brafely

against Pritish hypocrisy and coldness, all ze chivalry of Chermany is on her site."

"Lady?" said Bert faintly, and then recalled the great Butteridge love story. Had the old chap also read the

letters? He must think him a scorcher if he had. "Oh! that's awright," he said, "about 'er. I 'adn't any doubts

He stopped. The secretary certainly had a most appalling stare. It seemed ages before he looked down again.

"Well, ze laty as you please. She is your affair. I haf performt my instructions. And ze title of Paron, zat also

He drummed on the table for a second or so, and resumed. "I haf to tell you, sir, zat you come to us at a crisis

inWeltPolitik. There can be no harm now for me to put our plans before you. Pefore you leafe this ship

again they will be manifest to all ze worldt. War is perhaps already declared. We goto America. Our fleet

will descend out of ze air upon ze United Statesit is a country quite unprepared for war

eferywhereeferywhere. Zey have always relied on ze Atlantic. And their navy. We have selected a certain

pointit is at present ze secret of our commanderswhich we shall seize, and zen we shall establish a

depota sort of inland Gibraltar. It will bewhat will it be?an eagle's nest. Zere our airships will gazzer

and repair, and thence they will fly to and fro ofer ze United States, terrorising cities, dominating

Washington, levying what is necessary, until ze terms we dictate are accepted. You follow me?"

"We could haf done all zis wiz such Luftschiffe and Drachenflieger as we possess, but ze accession of your

machine renders our project complete. It not only gifs us a better Drachenflieger, but it remofes our last

uneasiness as to Great Pritain. Wizout you, sir, Great Pritain, ze land you lofed so well and zat has requited

you so ill, zat land of Pharisees and reptiles, can do nozzing!nozzing! You see, I am perfectly frank wiz

you. Well, I am instructed that Chermany recognises all this. We want you to place yourself at our disposal.

We want you to become our Chief Head Flight Engineer. We want you to manufacture, we want to equip a

swarm of hornets under your direction. We want you to direct this force. And it is at our depot in America we

want you. So we offer you simply, and without haggling, ze full terms you demanded weeks agoone

hundert tousand poundts in cash, a salary of three tousand poundts a year, a pension of one tousand poundts a

"That's all right, of course," said Bert, a little short of breath, but otherwise resolute and calm; and it seemed

The secretary contemplated Bert's collar with sustained attention. Only for one moment did his gaze move to

"Jes' lemme think a bit," said Bert, finding the stare debilitating. "Look 'ere I" he said at last, with an air of

"But I don't want the name of Butteridge to appearsee? I been thinking that over."

His voice failed him a little, and the stare continued. "I want to do the thing Enonymously. See?"

Still staring. Bert drifted on like a swimmer caught by a current. "Fact is, I'm going to edop' the name of

Smallways. I don't want no title of Baron; I've altered my mind. And I want the money quietlike. I want the

hundred thousand pounds paid into benksthirty thousand into the London and County Benk Branch at Bun

Hill in Kent directly I 'and over the plans; twenty thousand into the Benk of England; 'arf the rest into a good

French bank, the other 'arf the German National Bank, see? I want it put there, right away. I don't want it put

in the name of Butteridge. I want it put in the name of Albert Peter Smallways; that's the name I'm going to

"The nex condition," said Bert, "is that you don't make any inquiries as to title. I mean what English

gentlemen do when they sell or let you land. You don't arst 'ow I got it. See? 'Ere I amI deliver you the

goodsthat's all right. Some people 'ave the cheek to say this isn't my invention, see? It is, you

knowTHAT'S all right; but I don't want that gone into. I want a fair and square agreement saying that's all

The secretary sighed at last, leant back in his chair and produced a toothpick, and used it, to assist his

meditation on Bert's case. "What was that name?" he asked at last, putting away the toothpick; "I must write

The secretary wrote it down, after a little difficulty about the spelling because of the different names of the

"And now, Mr. Schmallvays," he said at last, leaning back and resuming the stare, "tell me: how did you ket

When at last the Graf von Winterfold left Bert Smallways, he left him in an extremely deflated condition,

He had, as people say, made a clean breast of it. He had been pursued into details. He had had to explain the

blue suit, the sandals, the Desert Dervisheseverything. For a time scientific zeal consumed the secretary,

and the question of the plans remained in suspense. He even went into speculation about the previous

occupants of the balloon. "I suppose," he said, "the laty WAS the laty. Bot that is not our affair.

"It is fery curious and amusing, yes: but I am afraid the Prince may be annoyt. He acted wiz his usual

decisionalways he acts wiz wonterful decision. Like Napoleon. Directly he was tolt of your descent into

the camp at Dornhof, he said, 'Pring him!pring him! It is my schtar!' His schtar of Destiny! You see? He

will be dthwarted. He directed you to come as Herr Pooterage, and you haf not done so. You haf triet, of

course; but it has peen a poor try. His chugments of men are fery just and right, and it is better for men to act

He resumed that attitude of his, with his underlip pinched between his forefingers. He spoke almost

confidentially. "It will be awkward. I triet to suggest some doubt, but I was overruled. The Prince does not

listen. He is impatient in the high air. Perhaps he will think his schtar has been making a fool of him. Perhaps

"Yes. There is that! Yes. But you see the Prince was interested in Herr Pooterage because of his romantic seit.

Herr Pooterage was so much moreah!in the picture. I am afraid you are not equal to controlling the

flying machine department of our aerial park as he wished you to do. He hadt promised himself that....

"And der was also the prestigethe worldt prestige of Pooterage with us.... Well, we must see what we can

A terrible chill ran through the being of Mr. Smallways. To this day he is not clear in his mind whether he

wept or no, but certainly there was weeping in his voice. "'Ere, I say!" he protested. "Ain't I to 'avenothin'

The secretary regarded him with benevolent eyes. "You do not deserve anyzing!" he said.

Bert's being seemed to tighten towards desperate deeds. "Gaw!" he said, clutching his coat, "AIN'T there?"

"Pe galm,"said the secretary. "Listen! You shall haf five hundert poundts. You shall haf it on my promise. I

will do that for you, and that is all I can do. Take it from me. Gif me the name of that bank. Write it down.

So! I tell you the Prince is no choke. I do not think he approffed of your appearance last night. No! I can't

answer for him. He wanted Pooterage, and you haf spoilt it. The PrinceI do not understand quite, he is in a

strange state. It is the excitement of the starting and this great soaring in the air. I cannot account for what he

does. But if all goes well I will see to ityou shall haf five hundert poundts. Will that do? Then gif me the

He rubbed the bridge of his nose thoughtfully. "I gave the whole blessed show away. If I'd j'es' kep quiet

about being Enonymous.... Gaw! ...Too soon, Bert, my boytoo soon and too rushy. I'd like to kick my silly

"After all, five 'undred pounds....It isn't MY secret, anyhow. It's jes' a pickup on the road. Five 'undred.

And later in the day an extremely shattered and disorganised Bert Smallways stood in the presence of the

The proceedings were in German. The Prince was in his own cabin, the end room of the airship, a charming

apartment furnished in wickerwork with a long window across its entire breadth, looking forward. He was

sitting at a foldingtable of green baize, with Von Winterfeld and two officers sitting beside him, and littered

before them was a number of American maps and Mr. Butteridge's letters and his portfolio and a number of

loose papers. Bert was not asked to sit down, and remained standing throughout the interview. Von

Winterfeld told his story, and every now and then the words Ballon and Pooterage struck on Bert's ears. The

Prince's face remained stern and ominous and the two officers watched it cautiously or glanced at Bert. There

was something a little strange in their scrutiny of the Princea curiosity, an apprehension. Then presently he

was struck by an idea, and they fell discussing the plans. The Prince asked Bert abruptly in English. "Did you

"Couldn't say, your Royal Highness. The papers, leastways the Daily Courier, said eighty miles an hour."

"Viel besser, nicht wahr?" said the Prince to Von Winterfeld, and then went on in German for a time.

Presently they came to an end, and the two officers looked at Bert. One rang a bell, and the portfolio was

Then they reverted to the case of Bert, and it was evident the Prince was inclined to be hard with him. Von

Winterfeld protested. Apparently theological considerations came in, for there were several mentions of

"Gott!" Some conclusions emerged, and it was apparent that Von Winterfeld was instructed to convey them

"Mr. Schmallvays, you haf obtained a footing in this airship," he said, "by disgraceful and systematic lying."

"However, in consideration of the happy chance that mate you the instrument unter Gott of this Pooterage

flyingmachine reaching his Highness's hand, you haf been spared. Yes,you were the pearer of goot

tidings. You will be allowed to remain on this ship until it is convenient to dispose of you. Do you

"We will bring him," said the Prince, and added terribly with a terrible glare, "als Ballast."

Bert opened his mouth to ask about the five hundred pounds, and then a saving gleam of wisdom silenced

him. He met Von Winterfeld's eye, and it seemed to him the secretary nodded slightly.

"Go!" said the Prince, with a sweep of the great arm and hand towards the door. Bert went out like a leaf

But in between the time when the Graf von Winterfeld had talked to him and this alarming conference with

the Prince, Bert had explored the Vaterland from end to end. He had found it interesting in spite of grave

preoccupations. Kurt, like the greater number of the men upon the German airfleet, had known hardly

anything of aeronautics before his appointment to the new flagship. But he was extremely keen upon this

wonderful new weapon Germany had assumed so suddenlv and dramatically. He showed things to Bert with

a boyish eagerness and appreciation. It was as if he showed them,over again to himself, like a child showing a

new toy. "Let's go all over the ship," he said with zest. He pointed out particularly the lightness of everything,

the use of exhausted aluminium tubing, of springy cushions inflated with compressed hydrogen; the partitions

were hydrogen bags covered with light imitation leather, the very crockery was a light biscuit glazed in a

vacuum, and weighed next to nothing. Where strength was needed there was the new Charlottenburg alloy,

German steel as it was called, the toughest and most resistant metal in the world.

There was no lack of space. Space did not matter, so long as load did not grow. The habitable part of the ship

was two hundred and fifty feet long, and the rooms in two tiers; above these one could go up into remarkable

little whitemetal turrets with big windows and airtight double doors that enabled one to inspect the vast

cavity of the gaschambers. This inside view impressed Bert very much. He had never realised before that an

airship was not one simple continuous gasbag containing nothing but gas. Now he saw far above him the

backbone of the apparatus and its big ribs, "like the neural and haemal canals," said Kurt, who had dabbled in

"Rather!" said Bert appreciatively, though he had not the ghost of an idea what these phrases meant.

Little electric lights could be switched on up there if anything went wrong in the night. There were even

ladders across the space. "But you can't go into the gas," protested Bert. "You can't breve it."

The lieutenant opened a cupboard door and displayed a diver's suit, only that it was made of oiled silk, and

both its compressedair knapsack and its helmet were of an alloy of aluminium and some light metal. "We

can go all over the inside netting and stick up bullet holes or leaks," he explained. "There's netting inside and

Aft of the habitable part of the airship was the magazine of explosives, coming near the middle of its length.

They were all bombs of various types mostly in glassnone of the German airships carried any guns at all

except one small pompom (to use the old English nickname dating from the Boer war), which was forward

From the magazine amidships a covered canvas gallery with aluminium treads on its floor and a handrope,

ran back underneath the gaschamber to the engineroom at the tail; but along this Bert did not go, and from

first to last he never saw the engines. But he went up a ladder against a gale of ventilationa ladder that was

encased in a kind of gastight fire escapeand ran right athwart the great forward airchamber to the little

lookout gallery with a telephone, that gallery that bore the light pompom of German steel and its locker of

shells. This gallery was all of aluminium magnesium alloy, the tight front of the airship swelled clifflike

above and below, and the black eagle sprawled overwhelmingly gigantic, its extremities all hidden by the

bulge of the gasbag. And far down, under the soaring' eagles, was England, four thousand feet below

The realisation that there was England gave Bert sudden and unexpected qualms of patriotic compunction. He

was struck by a quite novel idea. After all, he might have torn up those plans and thrown them away. These

people could not have done so very much to him. And even if they did, ought not an Englishman to die for

his country? It was an idea that had hitherto been rather smothered up by the cares of a competitive

civilisation. He became violently depressed. He ought, he perceived, to have seen it in that light before. Why

Indeed, wasn't he a sort of traitor?....He wondered how the aerial fleet must look from down there.

He was passing between Manchester and Liverpool, Kurt told him; a gleaming band across the prospect was

the Ship Canal, and a weltering ditch of shipping far away ahead, the Mersey estuary. Bert was a Southerner;

he had never been north of the Midland counties, and the multitude of factories and chimneysthe latter for

the most part obsolete and smokeless now, superseded by huge electric generating stations that consumed

their own reekold railway viaducts, monorail networks and goods yards, and the vast areas of dingy

homes and narrow streets, spreading aimlessly, struck him as though Camberwell and Rotherhithe had run to

seed. Here and there, as if caught in a net, were fields and agricultural fragments. It was a sprawl of

undistinguished population. There were, no doubt, museums and town halls and even cathedrals of a sort to

mark theoretical centres of municipal and religious organisation in this confusion; but Bert could not see

them, they did not stand out at all in that wide disorderly vision of congested workers' houses and places to

work, and shops and meanly conceived chapels and churches. And across this landscape of an industrial

civilisation swept the shadows of the German airships like a hurrying shoal of fishes....

Kurt and he fell talking of aerial tactics, and presently went down to the undergallery in order that Bert might

see the Drachenflieger that the airships of the right wing had picked up overnight and were towing behind

them; each airship towing three or four. They looked, like big boxkites of an exaggerated form, soaring at

the ends of invisible cords. They had long, square headsand flattened tails, with lateral propellers.

"Quite different," said Bert. "More like an insect, and less like a bird. And it buzzes, and don't drive about so.

Kurt was not very clear upon that himself, and was still explaining when Bert was called to the conference we

And after that was over, the last traces of Butteridge fell from Bert like a garment, and he became Smallways

to all on board. The soldiers ceased to salute him, and the officers ceased to seem aware of his existence,

except Lieutenant Kurt. He was turned out of his nice cabin, and packed in with his belongings to share that

of Lieutenant Kurt, whose luck it was to be junior, and the birdheaded officer, still swearing slightly, and

carrying strops and aluminium boottrees and weightless hairbrushes and handmirrors and pomade in his

hands, resumed possession. Bert was put in with Kurt because there was nowhere else for him to lay his

bandaged head in that closepacked vessel. He was to mess, he was told, with the men.

Kurt came and stood with his legs wide apart and surveyed, him for a moment as he sat despondent in his

"What's your real name, then?" said Kurt, who was only imperfectly informed of the new state of affairs.

"I thought you were a bit of a fraudeven when I thought you were Butteridge. You're jolly lucky the Prince

took it calmly. He's a pretty tidy blazer when he's roused. He wouldn't stick a moment at pitching a chap of

your sort overboard if he thought fit. No!... They've shoved you on to me, but it's my cabin, you know."

Kurt left him, andwhen he came to look about him the first thing he saw pasted on the padded wall was a

reproduction, of the great picture by Siegfried Schmalz of the War God, that terrible, trampling figure with

the viking helmet and the scarlet cloak, wading through destruction, sword in hand, which had so strong a

The Prince Karl Albert had made a profound impression upon Bert. He was quite the most terrifying person

Bert had ever encountered. He filled the Smallways soul with passionate dread and antipathy. For a long time

Bert sat alone in Kurt's cabin, doing nothing and not venturing even to open the door lest he should be by that

So it came about that he was probably the last person on board to hear the news that wireless telegraphy was

bringing to the airship in throbs and fragments of a great naval battle in progress in midAtlantic.

Kurt came in with a general air of ignoring Bert, but muttering to himself in English nevertheless.

"Stupendous!" Bert heard him say. "Here!" he said, "get off this locker." And he proceeded to rout out two

books and a case of maps. He spread them on the foldingtable, and stood regarding them. For a time his

Germanic discipline struggled with his English informality and his natural kindliness and talkativeness, and

"Fighting! The American North Atlantic squadron and pretty nearly the whole of our fleet. Our Eiserne Kreuz

has had a gruelling and is sinking, and their Miles Standishshe's one of their biggesthas sunk with all

hands. Torpedoes, I suppose. She was a bigger ship than the Karl der Grosse, but five or six years older.

Gods! I wish we could see it Smallways; a square fight in blue water, guns or nothing, and all of 'em

He spread his maps, he had to talk, and so he delivered a lecture on the naval situation to Bert.

"Here it is," he said, latitude 30 degrees 50 minutes N. longitude 30 degrees 50 minutes W. It's a good day off

us, anyhow, and they're all going southwest by south at full pelt as hard as they can go. We shan't see a bit

The naval situation in the North Atlantic at that time was a peculiar one. The United States was by far the

stronger of the two powers upon the sea, but the bulk of the American fleet was still in the Pacific. It was in

the direction of Asia that war had been most feared, for the situation between Asiatic and white had become

unusually violent and dangerous, and the Japanese government had shown itself quite unprecedentedly

difficult. The German attack therefore found half the American strength at Manila, and what was called the

Second Fleet strung out across the Pacific in wireless contact between the Asiatic station and San Francisco.

The North Atlantic squadron was the sole American force on her eastern shore, it was returning from a

friendly visit to France and Spain, and was pumping oilfuel from tenders in midAtlanticfor most of its

ships were steamshipswhen the international situation became acute. It was made up of four battleships

and five armoured cruisers ranking almost with battleships, not one of which was of a later date than 1913.

The Americans had indeed grown so accustomed to the idea that Great Britain could be trusted to keep the

peace of the Atlantic that a naval attack on the eastern seaboard found them unprepared even in their

imaginations. But long before the declaration of warindeed,on Whit Mondaythe whole German fleet of

eighteen battleships, with a flotilla of fuel tenders and converted liners containing stores to be used in support

of the airfleet, had passed through the straits of Dover and headed boldly for New York. Not only did these

German battleships outnumber the Americans two to one, but they were more heavily armed and more

modern in constructionseven of them having high explosive engines built of Charlottenburg steel, and all

The fleets came into contact on Wednesday before any actual declaration of war. The Americans had strung

out in the modern fashion at distances of thirty miles or so, and were steaming to keep themselves between

the Germans and either the eastern states or Panama; because, vital as it was to defend the seaboard cities and

particularly New York, it was still more vital to save the canal from any attack that might prevent the return

of the main fleet from the Pacific. No doubt, said Kurt, this was now making records across that ocean,

"unless the Japanese have had the same idea as the Germans." It was obviously beyond human possibility that

the American North Atlantic fleet could hope to meet and defeat the German; but, on the other hand, with

luck it might fight a delaying action and inflict such damage as to greatly weakenthe attack upon the coast

defences. Its duty, indeed, was not victory but devotion, the severest task in the world. Meanwhile the

submarine defences of New York, Panama, and the other more vital points could be put in some sort of order.

This was the naval situation, and until Wednesday in Whit week it was the only situation the American

people had realised. It was then they heard for the first time of the real scale of the Dornhof aeronautic park

and the possibility of an attack coming upon them not only by sea, but by the air. But it is curious that so

discredited were the newspapers of that period that a large majority of New Yorkers, for example, did not

believe the most copious and circumstantial accounts of the German airfleet until it was actually in sight of

Kurt's talk was half soliloquy. He stood with a map on Mercator's projection before him, swaying to the

swinging of the ship and talking of guns and tonnage, of ships and their build and powers and speed, of

strategic points, and bases of operation. A certain shyness that reduced him to the status of a listener at the

Bert stood by, saying very little, but watching Kurt's finger on the map. "They've been saying things like this

Kurt had a detailed knowledge of the Miles Standish. "She used to be a crack ship for gunneryheld the

record. I wonder if we beat her shooting, or how? I wish I was in it. I wonder which of our ships beat her.

Maybe she got a shell in her engines. It's a running fight! I wonder what the Barbarossa is doing," he went on,

"She's my old ship. Not a firstrater, but good stuff. I bet she's got a shot or two home by now if old

Schneider's up to form. Just think of it! There they are whacking away at each other, great guns going, shells

exploding, magazines bursting, ironwork flying about like straw in a gale, all we've been dreaming of for

years! I suppose we shall fly right away to New Yorkjust as though it wasn't anything at all. I suppose we

shall reckon we aren't wanted down there. It's no more than a covering fight on our side. All those tenders and

storeships of ours are going on southwest by west to New York to make a floating depot for us. See?" He

dabbed his forefinger on the map. "Here we are. Our train of stores goes there, our battleships elbow the

When Bert went down to the men's messroom to get his evening ration, hardly any one took notice of him

except just to point him out for an instant. Every one was talking of thebattle, suggesting, contradictingat

times, until the petty officers hushed them, it rose to a greatuproar. There was a new bulletin, but what it said

he did not gather except that it concerned the Barbarossa. Some of the men stared at him, and he heard the

name of "Booteraidge" several times; but no one molested him, and there was no difficulty about his soup

and bread when his turn at the end of the queue came. He had feared there might be no ration for him, and if

Afterwards he ventured out upon the little hanging gallery with the solitary sentinel. The weather was still

fine, but the wind was rising and the rolling swing of the airship increasing. He clutched the rail tightly and

felt rather giddy. They were now out of sight of land, and over blue water rising and falling in great masses.

A dingy old brigantine under the British flag rose and plunged amid the broad blue wavesthe only ship in

In the evening it began to blow and the airship to roll like a porpoise as it swung through the air. Kurt said

that several of the men were seasick, but the motion did not inconvenience Bert, whose luck it was to be of

that mysterious gastric disposition which constitutes a good sailor. He slept well, but in the small hours the

light awoke him, and he found Kurt staggering about in search of something. He found it at last in the locker,

"We've changed our direction," he said, "and come into the wind. I can't make it out. We've turned away from

Day came, wet and windy. The window was bedewed externally, and they could see nothing through it. It

was also very cold, and Bert decided to keep rolled up in his blankets on the locker until the bugle summoned

him to his morning ration. That consumed, he went out on the little gallery; but he could see nothing but

eddying clouds driving headlong by, and the dim outlines of the nearer airships. Only at rare intervals could

Later in the morning the Vaterland changed altitude, and soared up suddenly in a high, clear sky, going, Kurt

Bert was in his cabin, and chanced to see the dew vanish from the window and caught the gleam of sunlight

outside. He looked out, and saw once more that sunlit cloud floor he had seen first from the balloon, and the

ships of the German airfleet rising one by one from the white, as fish might rise an become visible from

deep water. He stared for a moment and then ran out to the little gallery to see this wonder better. Below was

cloudland and storm, a great drift of tumbled weather going hard away to the northeast, and the air about

him was clear and cold and serene save for the faintest chill breeze and a rare, drifting snowflake. Throb,

throb, throb, throb, went the engines in the stillness. That huge herd of airships rising one after another had an

effect of strange, portentous monsters breaking into an altogether unfamiliar world.

Either there was no news of the naval battle that morning, or the Prince kept to himself whatever came until

past midday. Then the bulletins came with a rush, bulletins that made the lieutenant wild with excitement.

"Barbarossa disabled and sinking," he cried. "Gott im Himmel! Der alte Barbarossa! Aber welch ein braver

Then he became English again. "Think of it, Smallways! The old ship we kept so clean and tidy! All smashed

about, and the iron flying about in fragments, and the chaps one knewGott!flying about too! Scalding

water squirting, fire, and the smash, smash of the guns! They smash when you're near! Like everything

bursting to pieces! Wool won't stop itnothing! And me up hereso near and so far! Der alte Barbarossa!"

"Gott! Yes! We've lost the Karl der Grosse, our best and biggest. Run down in the night by a British liner that

blundered into the fighting in trying to blunder out. They're fighting in a gale. The liner's afloat with her nose

broken, sagging about! There never was such a battle!never before! Good ships and good men on both

sides,and a storm and the night and the dawn and all in the open ocean full steam ahead! No stabbing! No

submarines! Guns and shooting! Half our ships we don't hear of any more, because their masts are shot away.

Latitude, 30 degrees 40 minutes N.longitude, 40 degrees 30 minutes W. where's that?"

"Der alte Barbarossa! I can't get it out of my headwith shells in her engineroom, and the fires flying out

of her furnaces, and the stokers and engineers scalded and dead. Men I've messed with, Smallwaysmen

I've talked to close! And they've had their day at last! And it wasn't all luck for them.!

"Disabled and sinking! I suppose everybody can't have all the luck in a battle. Poor old Schneider! I bet he

So it was the news of the battle came filtering through to them all that morning. The Americans had lost a

second ship, name unknown; the Hermann had been damaged in covering the Barbarossa.... Kurt fretted like

an imprisoned animal about the airship, now going up to the forward gallery under the eagle, now down into

the swinging gallery, now poring over his maps. He infected Smallways with a sense of the immediacy of this

battle that was going on just over the curve of the earth. But when Bert went down to the gallery the world

was empty and still, a clear inkyblue sky above and a rippled veil of still, thin sunlit cirrus below, through

which one saw a racing drift of raincloud, and never a glimpse of sea. Throb, throb, throb, throb, went the

engines, and the long, undulating wedge of airships hurried after the flagship like a flight of swans after their

leader. Save for the quiver of the engines it was as noiseless as a dream. And down there, somewhere in the

wind and rain, guns roared, shells crashed home, and, after the old manner of warfare, men toiled and died.

As the afternoon wore on the lower weather abated, and the sea became intermittently visible again. The

airfleet dropped slowly to the middle air, and towards sunset they had a glimpse of the disabled Barbarossa

far away to the east. Smallways heard men hurrying along the passage, and was drawn out to the gallery,

where he found nearly a dozen officers collected and scrutinising the helpless ruins of the battleship through

fieldglasses. Two other vessels stood by her, one an exhausted petrol tank, very high out of the water, and

the other a converted liner. Kurt was at the end of the gallery, a little apart from the others.

"Gott!" he said at last, lowering his binocular, "it is like seeing an old friend with his nose cut offwaiting to

With a sudden impulse he handed his glass to Bert, who had peered beneath his hands, ignored by every one,

Never had Bert seen the like of that magnified slightly hazy image before. It was not simply a battered

ironclad that wallowed helpless, it was a mangled ironclad. It seemed wonderful she still floated. Her

powerful engines had been her ruin. In the long chase of the night she had got out of line with her consorts,

and nipped in between the Susquehanna and the Kansas City. They discovered her proximity, dropped back

until she was nearly broadside on to the former battleship, and signalled up the Theodore Roosevelt and the

little Monitor. As dawn broke she had found herself hostess of a circle. The fight had not lasted five minutes

before the appearance of the Hermann to the east, and immediately after of the Furst Bismarck in the west,

forced the Americans to leave her, but in that time they had smashed her iron to rags. They had vented the

accumulated tensions of their hard day's retreat upon her. As Bert saw her, she seemed a mere metalworker's

fantasy of frozen metal writhings. He could not tell part from part of her, except by its position.

"Gott!" murmured Kurt, taking the glasses Bert restored to him "Gott! Da waren Albrechtder gute

Long after the Barbarosa had been swallowed up in the twilight and distance he remained on the gallery

peering through his glasses, and when he came back to his cabin he was unusually silent and thoughtful.

"This is a rough game, Smallways," he said at last"this war is a rough game. Somehow one sees it different

after a thing like that. Many men there were worked to make that Barbarossa, and there were men in itone

does not meet the like of them every day. Albrechtthere was a man named Albrechtplayed the zither

and improvised; I keep on wondering what has happened to him. He and Iwe were very close friends, after

Smallways wokethe next night to discover the cabin in darkness, a draught blowing through it, and Kurt

talking to himself in German. He could see him dimly by the window, which he had unscrewed and opened,

peering down. That cold, clear, attenuated light which is not so much light as a going of darkness, which casts

Into the stillness came the repeated heavy thud of guns, one, two, a pause, then three in quick succession.

"Gaw!" said Bert"guns!" and was instantly at the lieutenant's side. The airship was still very high and the

sea below was masked by a thin veil of clouds. The wind had fallen, and Bert, following Kurt's pointing

finger, saw dimly through the colourless veil first a red glow, then a quick red flash, and then at a little

distance from it another. They were, it seemed for a while, silent flashes, and seconds after, when one had

ceased to expect them, came the belated thudsthud, thud. Kurt spoke in German, very quickly.

Kurt sprang to his feet, saying something in an excited tone, still using German, and went to the door.

The lieutenant stopped for an instant in the doorway, dark against the light passage. "You stay where you are,

Smallways. You keep there and do nothing. We're going into action," he explained, and vanished.

Bert's heart began to beat rapidly. He felt himself poised over the fighting vessels far below. In a moment,

were they to drop like a hawk striking a bird? "Gaw!" he whispered at last, in awestricken tones.

Thud! . . . thud! He discovered far away a second ruddy flare flashing guns back at the first. He perceived

some difference on the Vaterland for which he could not account, and then he realised that the engines had

slowed to an almost inaudible beat. He stuck his head out of the windowit was a tight fitand saw in the

A second bugle sounded, was taken up faintly from ship to ship. Out went the lights; the fleet became dim,

dark bulks against an intense blue sky that still retained an occasional star. For a long time they hung, for an

interminable time it seemed to him, and then began the sound of air being pumped into the balloonette, and

He craned his neck, but he could not see if the rest of the fleet was following them; the overhang of the

gaschambers intervened. There was something that stirred his imagination deeply in that stealthy, noiseless

descent. The obscurity deepened for a time, the last fading star on the horizon vanished, and he felt the cold

presence of cloud. Then suddenly the glow beneath assumed distinct outlines, became flames, and the

Vaterland ceased to descend and hung observant, and it would seem unobserved, just beneath a drifting

In the night the struggling naval battle and retreat had entered upon a new phase. The Americans had drawn

together the ends of the flying line skilfully and dexterously, until at last it was a column and well to the

south of the lax sweeping pursuit of the Germans. Then in the darkness before the dawn they had come about

and steamed northward in close order with the idea of passing through the German battleline and falling

upon the flotilla that was making for New York in support of the German airfleet. Much had altered since

the first contact of the fleets. By this time the American admiral, O'Connor, was fully informed of the

existence of the airships, and he was no longer vitally concerned for Panama, since the submarine flotilla was

reported arrived there from Key West, and the Delaware and Abraham Lincoln, two powerful and entirely

modern ships, were already at Rio Grande, on the Pacific side of the canal. His manoeuvre was, however,

delayed by a boiler explosion on board the Susquehanna, and dawn found this ship in sight of and indeed so

close to the Bremen and Weimar that they instantly engaged. There was no alternative to her abandonment

but a fleet engagement. O'Connor chose the latter course. It was by no means a hopeless fight. The Germans,

though much more numerous and powerful than the Americans, were in a dispersed line measuring nearly

fortyfive miles from end to end, and there were many chances that before they could gather in for the fight

The day broke dim and overcast, and neither the Bremen nor the Weimar realised they had to deal with more

than the Susquehanna until the whole column drew out from behind her at a distance of a mile. or less and

bore down on them. This was the position of affairs when the Vaterland appeared in the sky. The red glow

Bert had seen through the column of clouds came from the luckless Susquehanna; she lay almost immediately

below, burning fore and aft, but still fighting two of her guns and steaming slowly southward. The Bremen

and the Weimar, both hit in several places, were going west by south and away from her. The American fleet,

headed by the Theodore Roosevelt, was crossing behind them, pounding them in succession, steaming in

between them and the big modern Furst Bismarck, which was coming up from the west. To Bert, however,

the names of all these ships were unknown, and for a considerable time indeed, misled by the direction in

which the combatants were moving, he imagined the Germans to be Americans and the Americans Germans.

He saw what appeared to him to be a column of six battleships pursuing three others who were supported by

a newcomer, until the fact that the Bremen and Weimar were firing into the Susquehanna upset his

calculations. Then for a time he was hopelessly at a loss. The noise of the guns, too, confused him, they no

longer seemed to boom; they went whack, whack, whack, whack, and each faint flash made his heart jump in

anticipation of the instant impact. He saw these ironclads, too, not in profile, as he was accustomed to see

ironclads in pictures, but in plan and curiously foreshortened. For the most part they presented empty decks,

but here and there little knots of men sheltered behind steel bulwarks. The long, agitated noses of their, big

guns, jetting thin transparent flashes and the broadside activity of the quickfirers, were the chief facts in this

bird'seye view. The Americans being steamturbine ships, had from two to four blast funnels each; the

Germans lay lower in the water, having explosive engines, which now for some reason made an unwonted

mu tering roar. Because of their steam propulsion, the American ships were larger and with a more graceful

outline. He saw all these foreshortened ships rolling considerably and fighting their guns over a sea of huge

low waves and under the cold, explicit light of dawn. The whole spectacle waved slowly with the long

At first only the Vaterland of all the flying fleet appeared upon the scene below. She hovered high, over the

Theodore Roosevelt, keeping pace with the full speed of that ship. From that ship she must have been

intermittently visible through the drifting clouds. The rest of the German fleet remained above the cloud

canopy at a height of six or seven thousand feet, communicating with the flagship by wireless telegraphy, but

It is doubtful at what particular time the unlucky Americans realised the presence of this new factor in the

fight. No account now survives of their experience. We have to imagine as well as we can what it must have

been to a battledstrained sailor suddenly glancing upward to discover that huge long silent shape overhead,

vaster than any battleship, and trailing now from its hinder quarter a big German flag. Presently, as the sky

cleared, more of such ships appeared in the blue through the dissolving clouds, and more, all disdainfully free

From first to last no gun whatever was fired at the Vaterland, and only a few rifle shots. It was a mere adverse

stroke of chance that she had a man killed aboard her. Nor did she take any direct share in the fight until the

end. She flew above the doomed American fleet while the Prince by wireless telegraphy directed the

movements of her consorts. Meanwhile the Vogelstern and Preussen, each with half a dozen drachenflieger

in tow, went full speed ahead and then dropped through the clouds, perhaps five miles ahead of the

Americans. The Theodore Roosevelt let fly at once with the big guns in her forward barbette, but the shells

burst far below the Vogelstern, and forthwith a dozen singleman drachenflieger were swooping down to

Bert, craning his neck through the cabin porthole, saw,the whole of that incident, that first encounter of

aeroplane and ironclad. He saw the queer German drachenflieger, with their wide flat wings and square

boxshaped heads, their wheeled bodies, and their singleman riders, soar down the air like a flight of birds.

"Gaw!" he said. One to the right pitched extravagantly, shot steeply up into the air, burst with a loud report,

and flamed down into the sea; another plunged nose forward into the water and seemed to fly to pieces as it

hit the waves. He saw little men on the deck of the Theodore Roosevelt below, men foreshortened in plan into

mere heads and feet, running out preparing to shoot at the others. Then the foremost flyingmachine was

rushing between Bert and the American's deck, and then bang! came the thunder of its bomb flung neatly at

the forward barbette, and a thin little crackling of rifle shots in reply. Whack, whack, whack, went the

quickfiring guns of the Americans' battery, and smash came an answering shell from the Furst Bismarck.

Then a second and third flyingmachine passed between Bert and the American ironclad, dropping bombs

also, and a fourth, its rider hit by a bullet, reeled down and dashed itself to pieces and exploded between the

shottorn funnels, blowing them apart. Bert had a momentary glimpse of a little black creature jumping from

the crumpling frame of the flying machine, hitting the funnel, and falling limply, to be instantly caught and

Smash! came a vast explosion in the forward part of the flagship, and a huge piece of metalwork seemed to

lift out of her and dump itself into the sea, dropping men and leaving a gap into which a prompt

drachenflieger planted a flaring bomb. And then for an instant Bert perceived only too clearly in the growing,

pitiless light a number of minute, convulsively active animalcula scorched and struggling in the Theodore

Roosevelt's foaming wake. What were they? Not mensurely not men? Those drowning, mangled little

creatures tore with their clutching fingers at Bert's soul. "Oh, Gord!" he cried, "Oh, Gord!" almost

whimpering. He looked again and they had gone, and the black stem of the Andrew Jackson, a little

disfigured by the sinking Bremen's last shot, was parting the water that had swallowed them into two neatly

symmetrical waves. For some moments sheer blank horror blinded Bert to the destruction below.

Then, with an immense rushing sound, bearing as it were a straggling volley of crashing minor explosions on

its back, the Susquehanna, three miles and more now to the east, blew up and vanished abruptly in a boiling,

steaming welter. For a moment nothing was to be seen but tumbled water, andthen there came belching up

from below, with immense gulping noises, eructations of steam and air and petrol and fragments of canvas

That made a distinct pause in the fight. It seemed a long pause to Bert. He found himself looking for the

drachenflieger. The flattened ruin of one was floating abeam of the Monitor, the rest had passed, dropping

bombs down the American column; several were in the water and apparently uninjured, and three or four

were still in the air and coming round now in a wide circle to return to their mother airships. The American

ironclads were no longer in column formation; the Theodore Roosevelt, badly damaged, had turned to the

southeast, and the Andrew Jackson, greatly battered but uninjured in any fighting part was passing between

her and the still fresh and vigorous Furst Bismarck to intercept and meet the latter's fire. Away to the west the

In the pause, after the Susquehanna's disaster Bert became aware of a trivial sound like the noise of an

illgreased, illhung door that falls ajarthe sound of the men in the Furst Bismarck cheering.

And in that pause in the uproar too, the sun rose, the dark waters became luminously blue, and a torrent of

golden light irradiated the world. It came like a sudden smile in a scene of hate and terror. The cloud veil had

vanished as if by magic, and the whole immensity of the German airfleet was revealed in the sky; the

"Whackbang, whackbang," the guns resumed, but ironclads were not built to fight the zenith, and the only

hits the Americans scored were a few lucky chances in a generally ineffectual rifle fire. Their column was

now badly broken, the Susquehanna had gone, the Theodore Roosevelt had fallen astern out of the line, with

her forward guns disabled, in a heap of wreckage, and the Monitor was in some grave trouble. These two had

ceased fire altogether, and so had the Bremen and Weimar, all four ships lying within shot of each other in an

involuntary truce and with their respective flags still displayed. Only four American ships now, with the

Andrew Jackson readings kept to the southeasterly course. And the Furst Bismarck, the Hermann, and the

Germanicus steamed parallel to them and drew ahead of them, fighting heavily. The Vaterland rose slowly in

Then, falling into place one behind the other, a string of a dozen airships dropped with unhurrying swiftness

down the air in pursuit of the American fleet. They kept at a height of two thousand feet or more until they

were over and a little in advance of the rearmost ironclad, and then stooped swiftly down into a fountain of

bullets, and going just a little faster than the ship below, pelted her thinly protected decks with bombs until

they became sheets of detonating flame. So the airships passed one after the other along the American

column as it sought to keep up its fight with the Furst Bismarck, the Hermann, and the Germanicus, and each

airship added to the destruction and confusion its predecessor had made. The American gunfire ceased,

except for a few heroic shots, but they still steamed on, obstinately unsubdued, bloody, battered, and

wrathfully resistant, spitting bullets at the airships and unmercifully pounded by the German ironclads. But

now Bert had but intermittent glimpses of them between the nearer bulks of the airships that assailed them....

It struck Bert suddenly that the whole battle was receding and growing small and less thunderously noisy.

The Vaterland was rising in the air, steadily and silently, until the impact of the guns no longer smote upon

the heart but came to the ear dulled by distance, until the four silenced ships to the eastward were little distant

things: but were there four? Bert now could see only three of those floating, blackened, and smoking rafts of

ruin against the sun. But the Bremen had two boats out; the Theodore Roosevelt was also dropping boats to

where the drift of minute objects struggled, rising and falling on the big, broad Atlantic waves.... The

Vaterland was no longer following the fight. The whole of that hurrying tumult drove away to the

southeastward, growing smaller and less audible as it passed. One of the airships lay on the water burning, a

remote monstrous fount of flames, and far in the southwest appeared first one and then three other German

Steadily the Vaterland soared, and the airfleet soared with her and came round to head for New York, and

the battle became a little thing far away, an incident before the breakfast. It dwindled to a string of dark

shapes and one smoking yellow flare that presently became a mere indistinct smear upon the vast horizon and

So it was that Bert Smallways saw the first fight of the airship and the last fight of those strangest things in

the whole history of war: the ironclad battleships, which began their career with the floating batteries of the

Emperor Napoleon III in the Crimean war and lasted, with an enormous expenditure of human energy and

resources, for seventy years. In that space of time the world produced over twelve thousand five hundred of

these strange monsters, in schools, in types, in series, each larger and heavier and more deadly than its

predecessors. Each in its turn was hailed as the last birth of time, most in their turn were sold for old iron.

Only about five per cent of them ever fought in a battle. Some foundered, some went ashore, and broke up,

several rammed one another by accident and sank. The lives of countless men were spent in their service, the

splendid genius, and patience of thousands of engineers and inventors, wealth and material beyond

estimating; to their account we must put, stunted and starved lives on land, millions of children sent to toil

unduly, innumerable opportunities of fine living undeveloped and lost. Money had to be found for them at

any costthat was the law of a nation's existence during that strange time. Surely they were the weirdest,

most destructive and wasteful megatheria in the whole history of mechanical invention.

And then cheap things of gas and basketwork made an end of them altogether, smiting out of the sky!...

Never before had Bert Smallways seen pure destruction, never had he realised the mischief and waste of war.

His startled mind rose to the conception; this also is in life. Out of all this fierce torrent of sensation one

impression rose and became cardinalthe impression of the men of the Theodore Roosevelt who had

struggled in the water after the explosion of the first bomb. "Gaw!" he said at the memory; "it might 'ave been

me and Grubb! ... I suppose you kick about and get the water in your mouf. I don't suppose it lasts long."

He became anxious to see how Kurt was affected by these things. Also he perceived he was hungry. He

hesitated towards the door of the cabin and peeped out into the passage. Down forward, near the gangway to

the men's mess, stood a little group of air sailors looking at something that was hidden from him in a recess.

One of them was in the light diver's costume Bert had already seen in the gas chamber turret, and he was

moved to walk along and look at this person more closely and examine the helmet he carried under his arm.

But he forgot about the helmet when he got to the recess, because there he found lying on the floor the dead

Bert had not observed that any bullets at all had reached the Vaterland or, indeed, imagined himself under

fire. He could not understand for a time what had killed the lad, and no one explained to him.

The boy lay just as he had fallen and died, with his jacket torn and scorched, his shoulderblade smashed and

burst away from his body and all the left side of his body ripped and rent. There was much blood. The sailors

stood listening to the man with the helmet, who made explanations and pointed to the round bullet hole in the

floor and the smash in the panel of the passage upon which the still vicious missile had spent the residue of

its energy. All the faces were grave and earnest: they were the faces of sober, blond, blueeyed men

accustomed to obedience and an orderly life, to whom this waste, wet, painful thing that had been a comrade

A peal of wild laughter sounded down the passage in the direction of the little gallery and something

"Der Prinz," said a voice, and all the men became stiffer and less natural. Down the passage appeared a group

He stopped point blank when he saw the thing in the recess, and his ruddy face went white.

The Prince was following him, talking over his shoulder to Von Winterfeld and the Kapitan.

"Eh?" he said to Kurt, stopping in midsentence, and followed the gesture of Kurt's hand. He glared at the

He made a slight, careless gesture towards the boy's body and turned to the Kapitan.

"Dispose of that," he said in German, and passed on, finishing his sentence to Von Winterfeld in the same

The deep impression of helplessly drowning men that Bert had brought from the actual fight in the Atlantic

mixed itself up inextricably with that of the lordly figure of Prince Karl Albert gesturing aside the dead body

of the Vaterland sailor. Hitherto he had rather liked the idea of war as being a jolly, smashing, exciting affair,

something like a Bank Holiday rag on a large scale, and on the whole agreeable and exhilarating. Now he

The next day there was added to his growing disillusionment a third ugly impression, trivial indeed to

describe, a mere necessary everyday incident of a state of war, but very distressing to his urbanised

imagination. One writes "urbanised" to express the distinctive gentleness of the period. It was quite peculiar

to the crowded townsmen of that time, and different altogether from the normal experience of any preceding

age, that they never saw anything killed, never encountered, save through the mitigating media of book or

picture, the fact of lethal violence that underlies all life. Three times in his existence, and three times only,

had Bert seen a dead human being, and he had never assisted at the killing of anything bigger than a

The incident that gave him his third shock was the execution of one of the men on the Adler for carrying a

box of matches. The case was a flagrant one. The man had forgotten he had it upon him when coming aboard.

Ample notice had been given to every one of the gravity of this offence, and notices appeared at numerous

points all over the airships. The man's defence was that he had grown so used to the notices and had been so

preoccupied with his work that he hadn't applied them to himself; he pleaded, in his defence, what is indeed

in military affairs another serious crime, inadvertency. He was tried by his captain, and the sentence

confirmed by wireless telegraphy by the Prince, and it was decided to make his death an example to the

whole fleet. "The Germans," the Prince declared, "hadn't crossed the Atlantic to go wool gathering." And in

order that this lesson in discipline and obedience might be visible to every one, it was determined not to

Accordingly the airfleet came clustering round the flagship like carp in a pond at feeding time. The Adler

hung at the zenith immediately alongside the flagship. The whole crew of the Vaterland assembled upon the

hanging gallery; the crews of the other airships manned the airchambers, that is to say, clambered up the

outer netting to the upper sides. The officers appeared upon the machinegun platforms. Bert thought it an

altogether stupendous sight, looking down, as he was, upon the entire fleet. Far off below two steamers on the

rippled blue water, one British and the other flying the American flag, seemed the minutest objects, and

marked the scale. They were immensely distant. Bert stood on the gallery, curious to see the execution, but

uncomfortable, because that terrible blond Prince was within a dozen feet of him, glaring terribly, with his

They hung the man from the Adler. They gave him sixty feet of rope, so, that he should hang and dangle in

the sight of all evildoers who might be hiding matches or contemplating any kindred disobedience. Bert saw

the man standing, a living, reluctant man, no doubt scared and rebellious enough in his heart, but outwardly

erect and obedient, on the lower gallery of the Adler about a hundred yards away. Then they had thrust him

Down he fell, hands and feet extending, until with a jerk he was at the end of the rope. Then he ought to have

died and swung edifyingly, but instead a more terrible thing happened; his head came right off, and down the

body went spinning to the sea, feeble, grotesque, fantastic, with the head racing it in its fall.

"Ugh!" said Bert, clutching the rail before him, and a sympathetic grunt came from several of the men beside

"So!" said the Prince, stiffer and sterner, glared for some seconds, then turned to the gang way up into the

For a long time Bert remained clinging to the railing of the gallery. He was almost physically sick with the

horror of this trifling incident. He found it far more dreadful than the battle. He was indeed a very degenerate,

Late that afternoon Kurt came into the cabin and found him curled up on his locker, and looking very white

"We ought to reach New York this evening. There's a good breeze coming up under our tails. Then we shall

Kurt opened out folding chair and table, and rustled for a time with his maps. Then he fell thinking darkly. He

roused himself presently, and looked at his companion. "What's the matter?" he said.

"I saw them kill that chap. I saw that flyingmachine man hit the funnels of the big ironclad. I saw that dead

chap in the passage. I seen too much smashing and killing lately. That's the matter. I don't like it. I didn't

"I've read about war, and all that, but when you see it it's different. And I'm gettin' giddy. I'm gettin' giddy. I

didn't mind a bit being up in that balloon at first, but all this looking down and floating over things and

Kurt thought. "You're not the only one. The men are all getting strung up. The flyingthat's just flying.

Naturally it makes one a little swimmy in the head at first. As for the killing, we've got to be blooded; that's

all. We're tame, civilised men. And we've got to get blooded. I suppose there's not a dozen men on the ship

who've really seen bloodshed. Nice, quiet, lawabiding Germans they've been so far.... Here they arein for

He turned again to his maps. Bert sat crumpled up in the corner, apparently heedless of him. For some time

"That was all right," said Kurt, "that was all right. QUITE right. Here were the orders, plain as the nose on

Kurt did not answer him. He was measuring their distance from New York and speculating. "Wonder what

the American aeroplanes are like?" he said. "Something like our drachenflieger.... We shall know by this time

to morrow.... I wonder what we shall know? I wonder. Suppose, after all, they put up a fight.... Rum sort of

He whistled softly and mused. Presently he fretted out of the cabin, and later Bert found him in the twilight

upon the swinging platform, staring ahead, and speculating about the things that might happen on the

morrow. Clouds veiled the sea again, and the long straggling wedge of airships rising and falling as they

flew seemed like a flock of strange new births in a Chaos that had neither earth nor water but only mist and

The City of New York was in the year of the German attack the largest, richest, in many respects the most

splendid, and in some, the wickedest city the world had ever seen. She was the supreme type of the City of

the Scientific Commercial Age; she displayed its greatness, its power, its ruthless anarchic enterprise, and its

social disorganisation most strikingly and completely. She had long ousted London from her pride of place as

the modern Babylon, she was the centre of the world's finance, the world's trade, and the world's pleasure;

and men likened her to the apocalyptic cities of the ancient prophets. She sat drinking up the wealth of a

continent as Rome once drank the wealth of the Mediterranean and Babylon the wealth of the east. In her

streets one found the extremes of magnificence and misery, of civilisation and disorder. In one quarter,

palaces of marble, laced and, crowned with light and flame and flowers, towered up into her marvellous

twilights beautiful, beyond description; in another, a black and sinister polyglot population sweltered in

indescribable congestion in warrens, and excavations beyond the power and knowledge of government. Her

vice, her crime, her law alike were inspired by a fierce and terrible energy, and like the great cities of

It was the peculiar shape of Manhattan Island, pressed in by arms of the sea on either side, and incapable of

comfortable expansion, except along a narrow northward belt, that first gave the New York architects their

bias for extreme vertical dimensions. Every need was lavishly supplied themmoney, material, labour; only

space was restricted. To begin, therefore, they built high perforce. But to do so was to discover a whole new

world of architectural beauty, of exquisite ascendant lines, and long after the central congestion had been

relieved by tunnels under the sea, four colossal bridges over the east river, and a dozen monorail cables east

and west, the upward growth went on. In many ways New York and her gorgeous plutocracy repeated Venice

in the magnificence of her architecture, painting, metalwork and sculpture, for example, in the grim

intensity,of her political method, in her maritime and commercial ascendancy. But she repeated no previous

state at all in the lax disorder of her internal administration, a laxity that made vast sections of her area

lawless beyond precedent, so that it was possible for whole districts to be impassable, while civil war raged

between street and street, and for Alsatias to exist in her midst in which the official police never set foot. She

was an ethnic whirlpool. The flags of all nations flew in her harbour, and at the climax, the yearly coming and

going overseas numbered together upwards of two million human beings. To Europe she was America, to

America she was the gateway of the world. But to tell the story of New York would be to write a social

history of the world; saints and martyrs, dreamers and scoundrels, the traditions of a thousand races and a

thousand religions, went to her making and throbbed and jostled in her streets. And over all that torrential

confusion of men and purposes fluttered that strange flag, the stars and stripes, that meant at once the noblest

thing in life, and the least noble, that is to say, Liberty on the one hand, and on the other the base jealousy the

For many generations New York had taken no heed of war, save as a thing that happened far away, that

affected prices and supplied the newspapers with exciting headlines and pictures. The New Yorkers felt

perhaps even more certainly than the English had done that war in their own land was an impossible thing. In

that they shared the delusion of all North America. They felt as secure as spectators at a bullfight; they risked

their money perhaps on the result, but that was all. And such ideas of war as the common Americans

possessed were derived from the limited, picturesque, adventurous war of the past. They saw war as they saw

history, through an iridescent mist, deodorised, scented indeed, with all its essential cruelties tactfully hidden

away. They were inclined to regret it as something ennobling, to sigh that it could no longer come into their

own private experience. They read with interest, if not with avidity, of their new guns, of their immense and

still more immense ironclads, of their incredible and still more incredible explosives, but just what these

tremendous engines of destruction might mean for their personal lives never entered their heads. They did

not, so far as one can judge from their contemporary literature, think that they meant anything to their

personal lives at all. They thought America was safe amidst all this piling up of explosives. They cheered the

flag by habit and tradition, they despised other nations, and whenever there was an international difficulty

they were intensely patriotic, that is to say, they were ardently against any native politician who did not say,

threaten, and do harsh and uncompromising things to the antagonist people. They were spirited to Asia,

spirited to Germany, so spirited to Great Britain that the international attitude of the mother country to her

great daughter was constantly compared in contemporary caricature to that between a henpecked husband

and a vicious young wife. And for the rest, they all went about their business and pleasure as if war had died

And then suddenly, into a world peacefully busied for the most part upon armaments and the perfection of

explosives, war came; came the shock of realising that the guns were going off, that the masses of

The immediate effect upon New York of the sudden onset of war was merely to intensify her normal

The newspapers and magazines that fed the American mindfor books upon this impatient continent had

become simply material for the energy of collectorswere instantly a coruscation of war pictures and of

headlines that rose like rockets and burst like shells. To the normal highstrung energy of New York streets

was added a touch of warfever. Great crowds assembled, more especially in the dinner hour, in Madison

Square about the Farragut monument, to listen to and cheer patriotic speeches, and a veritable epidemic of

little flags and buttons swept through these great torrents of swiftly moving young people, who poured into

New York of a morning by car and monorail and subway and train, to toil, and ebb home again between the

hours of five and seven. It was dangerous not to wear a war button. The splendid musichalls of the time

sank every topic in patriotism and evolved scenes of wild enthusiasm, strong men wept at the sight of the

national banner sustained by the whole strength of the ballet, and special searchlights and illuminations

amazed the watching angels. The churches reechoed the national enthusiasm in graver key and slower

measure, and the aerial and naval preparations on the East River were greatly incommoded by the multitude

of excursion steamers which thronged, helpfully cheering, about them. The trade in smallarms was

enormously stimulated, and many overwrought citizens found an immediate relief for their emotions in

letting off fireworks of a more or less heroic, dangerous, and national character in the public streets. Small

children's airballoons of the latest model attached to string became a serious check to the pedestrian in

Central Park. And amidst scenes of indescribable emotion the Albany legislature in permanent session, and

with a generous suspension of rules and precedents, passed through both Houses the longdisputed Bill for

Critics of the American character are disposed to considerthat up to the actual impact of the German attack

the people of New York dealt altogether too much with the war as if it was a political demonstration. Little or

no damage, they urge, was done to either the German or Japanese forces by the wearing of buttons, the

waving of small flags, the fireworks, or the songs. They forgot that, under the conditions of warfare a century

of science had brought about, the nonmilitary section of the population could do no serious damage in any

form to their enemies, and that there was no reason, therefore, why they should, not do as they did. The

balance of military efficiency was shifting back from the many to the few, from the common to the

The days when the emotional infantryman decided battles had passed by for ever. War had become a matter

of apparatus of special training and skill of the most intricate kind. It had become undemocratic. And

whatever the value of the popular excitement, there can be no denying that the small regular establishment of

the United States Government, confronted by this totally unexpected emergency of an armed invasion from

Europe, acted with vigour, science, and imagination. They were taken by surprise so far as the diplomatic

situation was concerned, and their equipment for building either navigables or aeroplanes was contemptible

in comparison with the huge German parks. Still they set to work at once to prove to the world that the spirit

that had created the Monitor and the Southern submarines of 1864 was not dead. The chief of the aeronautic

establishment near West Point was Cabot Sinclair, and he allowed himself but one single moment of the

posturing that was so universal in that democratic time. "We have chosen our epitaphs," he said to a reporter,

The curious thing is that they did all do all they could; there is no exception known. Their only defect indeed

was a defect of style. One of the most striking facts historically about this war, and the one that makes the

complete separation that had arisen between the methods of warfare and the necessity of democratic support,

is the effectual secrecy of the Washington authorities about their airships. They did not bother to confide a

single fact of their preparations to the public. They did not even condescend to talk to Congress. They burked

and suppressed every inquiry. The war was fought by the President and the Secretaries of State in an entirely

autocratic manner. Such publicity as they sought was merely to anticipate and prevent inconvenient agitation

to defend particular points. They realised that the chief danger in aerial warfare from an excitable and

intelligent public would be a clamour for local airships and aeroplanes to defend local interests. This, with

such resources as they possessed, might lead to a fatal division and distribution of the national forces.

Particularly they feared that they might be forced into a premature action to defend New York. They realised

with prophetic insight that this would be the particular advantage the Germans would seek. So they took great

pains to direct the popular mind towards defensive artillery, and to divert it from any thought of aerial battle.

Their real preparations they masked beneath ostensible ones. There was at Washington a large relserve of

naval guns, and these were distributed rapidly, conspicuously, and with much press attention, among the

Eastern cities. They were mounted for the most part upon hills and prominent crests around the threatened

centres of population. They were mounted upon rough adaptations of the Doan swivel, which at that time

gave the maximum vertical range to a heavy gun. Much of this artillery was still unmounted, and nearly all of

it was unprotected when the German airfleet reached New York. And down in the crowded streets, when

that occurred, the readers of the New York papers were regaling themselves with wonderful and wonderfully

The German fleet reached New York in advance of the news of the American naval disaster. It reached New

York in the late afternoon and was first seen by watchers at Ocean Grove and Long Branch coming swiftly

out of the southward sea and going away to the northwest. The flagship passed almost vertically over the

Sandy Hook observation station, rising rapidly as it did so, and in a few minutes all New York was vibrating

Several of these guns, and especially that at Giffords and the one on Beacon Hill above Matawan, were

remarkably well handled. The former, at a distance of five miles, and with an elevation of six thousand feet,

sent a shell to burst so close to the Vaterland that a pane of the Prince's forward window was smashed by a

fragment. This sudden explosion made Bert tuck in his head with the celerity of a startled tortoise. The whole

airfleet immediately went up steeply to a height of about twelve thousand feet and at that level passed

unscathed over the ineffectual guns. The airships lined out as they moved forward into the form of a flattened

V, with its apex towards the city, and with the flagship going highest at the apex. The two ends of the V

passed over Plumfield and Jamaica Bay, respectively, and the Prince directed his course a little to the east of

the Narrows, soared over Upper Bay, and came to rest over Jersey City in a position that dominated lower

New York. There the monsters hung, large and wonderful in the evening light, serenely regardless of the

It was a pause of mutual inspection. For a time naive humanity swamped the conventions of warfare

altogether; the interest of the millions below and of the thousands above alike was spectacular. The evening

was unexpectedly fineonly a few thin level bands of clouds at seven or eight thousand feet broke its

luminous clarity. The wind had dropped; it was an evening infinitely peaceful and still. The heavy

concussions of the distant guns and those incidental harmless pyrotechnics at the level of the clouds seemed

to have as little to do with killing and force, terror and submission, as a salute at a naval review. Below, every

point of vantage bristled with spectators, the roofs of the towering buildings, the public squares, the active

ferry boats, and every favourable street intersection had its crowds: all the river piers were dense with people,

the Battery Park was solid black with eastside population, and every position of advantage in Central Park

and along Riverside Drive had its peculiar and characteristic assembly from the adjacent streets. The

footways of the great bridges over the East River were also closely packed and blocked. Everywhere

shopkeepers had left their shops, men their work, and women and children their homes, to come out and see

And from above, many of the occupants of the airships stared with an equal curiosity. No city in the world

was ever so finely placed as New York, so magnificently cut up by sea and bluff and river, so admirably

disposed to display the tall effects of buildings, the complex immensities of bridges and monorailways and

feats of engineering. London, Paris, Berlin, were shapeless, low agglomerations beside it. Its port reached to

its heart like Venice, and, like Venice, it was obvious, dramatic, and proud. Seen from above it was alive with

crawling trains and cars, and at a thousand points it was already breaking into quivering light. New York was

It was so great, and in its collective effect so pacifically magnificent, that to make war upon it seemed

incongruous beyond measure, like laying siege to the National Gallery or attacking respectable people in an

hotel diningroom with battleaxe and mail. It was in its entirety so large, so complex, so delicately

immense, that to bring it to the issue of warfare was like driving a crowbar into the mechanism of a clock.

And the fishlike shoal of great airships hovering light and sunlit above, filling the sky, seemed equally

remote from the ugly forcefulness of war. To Kurt, to Smallways, to I know not how many more of the

people in the airfleet came the distinctest apprehension of these incompatibilities. But in the head of the

Prince Karl Albert were the vapours of romance: he was a conqueror, and this was the enemy's city. The

greater the city, the greater the triumph. No doubt he had a time of tremendous exultation and sensed beyond

There came an end at last to that pause. Some wireless communications had failed of a satisfactory ending,

and fleet and city remembered they were hostile powers. "Look!" cried the multitude; "look!"

"What?"... Down through the twilight sank five attacking airships, one to the Navy Yard on East River, one to

City Hall, two over the great business buildings of Wall Street and Lower Broadway, one to the Brooklyn

Bridge, dropping from among their fellows through the danger zone from the distant guns smoothly and

rapidly to a safe proximity to the city masses. At that descent all the cars in the streets stopped with dramatic

suddenness, and all the lights that had been coming on in the streets and houses went out again. For the City

Hall had awakened and was conferring by telephone with the Federal command and taking measures for

defence. The City Hall was asking for airships, refusing to surrender as Washington advised, and developing

into a centre of intense emotion, of hectic activity. Everywhere and hastily the police began to clear the

assembled crowds. "Go to your homes," they said; and the word was passed from mouth to mouth, "There's

going to be trouble." A chill of apprehension ran through the city, and men hurrying in the unwonted

darkness across City Hall Park and Union Square came upon the dim forms of soldiers and guns, and were

challenged and sent back. In half an hour New York had passed from serene sunset and gaping admiration to

The first loss of life occurred in the panic rush from Brooklyn Bridge as the airship approached it. With the

cessation of the traffic an unusual stillness came upon New York, and the disturbing concussions of the futile

defending guns on the hills about grew more and more audible. At last these ceased also. A pause of further

negotiation followed. People sat in darkness, sought counsel from telephones that were dumb. Then into the

expectant hush came a great crash and uproar, the breaking down of the Brooklyn Bridge, the rifle fire from

the Navy Yard, and the bursting of bombs in Wall Street and the City Hall. New York as a whole could do

nothing, could understand nothing. New York in the darkness peered and listened to these distant sounds until

presently they died away as suddenly as they had begun. "What could be happening?" They asked it in vain.

A long, vague period intervened, and people looking out of the windows of upper rooms discovered the dark

hulls of German airships, gliding slowly and noiselessly, quite close at hand. Then quietly the electric lights

The units of that vast and varied population bought and learnt what had happened; there had been a fight and

The lamentable incidents that followed the surrender of New York seem now in the retrospect to be but the

necessary and inevitable consequence of the clash of modern appliances and social conditions produced by

the scientific century on the one hand, and the tradition of a crude, romantic patriotism on the other. At first

people received the fact with an irresponsible detachment, much as they would have received the slowing

down of the train in which they were travelling or the erection of a public monument by the city to which

"We have surrendered. Dear me! HAVE we?" was rather the manner in which the first news was met. They

took it in the same spectacular spirit they had displayed at the first apparition of the airfleet. Only slowly

was this realisation of a capitulation suffused with the flush of passion, only with reflection did they make

any personal application. "WE have surrendered!" came later; "in us America is defeated." Then they began

The newspapers, which were issued about one in the morning contained no particulars of the terms upon

which New York had yieldednor did they give any intimation of the quality of the brief conflict that had

preceded the capitulation. The later issues remedied these deficiencies. There came the explicit statement of

the agreement to victual the German airships, to supply the complement of explosives to replace those

employed in the fight and in the destruction of the North Atlantic fleet, to pay the enormous ransom of forty

million dollars, and to surrender the in the East River. There came, too, longer and longer descriptions of the

smashing up of the City Hall and the Navy Yard, and people began to realise faintly what those brief minutes

of uproar had meant. They read the tale of men blown to bits, of futile soldiers in that localised battle

fightingagainst hope amidst an indescribable wreckage, of flags hauled down by weeping men. And these

strange nocturnal editions contained also the first brief cables from Europe of the fleet disaster, the North

Atlantic fleet for which New York had always felt an especial pride and solicitude. Slowly, hour by hour, the

collective consciousness woke up, the tide of patriotic astonishment and humiliation came floating in.

America had come upon disaster; suddenly New York discovered herself with amazement giving place to

As that fact shaped itself in the public mind, there sprang up, as flames spring up, an angry repudiation. "No!"

cried New York, waking in the dawn. "No! I am not defeated. This is a dream." Before day broke the swift

American anger was running through all the city, through every soul in those contagious millions. Before it

took action, before it took shape, the men in the airships could feel the gigantic insurgence of emotion, as

cattle and natural creatures feel, it is said, the coming of an earthquake. The newspapers of the Knype group

first gave the thing words and a formula. "We do not agree," they said simply. "We have been betrayed!"

Men took that up everywhere, it passed from mouth to mouth, at every street corner under the paling lights of

dawn orators stood unchecked, calling upon the spirit of America to arise, making the shame a personal

reality to every one who heard. To Bert, listening five hundred feet above, it seemed that the city, which had

at first produced only confused noises, was now humming like a hive of beesof very angry bees.

After the smashing of the City Hall and PostOffice, the white flag had been hoisted from a tower of the old

Park Row building, and thither had gone Mayor O'Hagen, urged thither indeed by the terrorstricken

property owners of lower New York, to negotiate the capitulation with Von Winterfeld. The Vaterland,

having dropped the secretary by a rope ladder, remained hovering, circling very slowly above the great

buildings, old and new, that clustered round City Hall Park, while the Helmholz, which had done the fighting

there, rose overhead to a height of perhaps two thousand feet. So Bert had a near view of all that occurred in

that central place. The City Hall and Court House, the PostOffice and a mass of buildings on the west side

of Broadway, had been badly damaged, and the three former were a heap of blackened ruins. In the case of

the first two the loss of life had not been considerable, but a great multitude of workers, including many girls

and women, had been caught in the destruction of the PostOffice, and a little army of volunteers with white

badges entered behind the firemen, bringing out the often still living bodies, for the most part frightfully

charred, and carrying them into the big Monson building close at hand. Everywhere the busy firemen were

directing their bright streams of water upon the smouldering masses: their hose lay about the square, and long

cordons of police held back the gathering lack masses of people, chiefly from the east side, from these central

In violent and extraordinary contrast with this scene of destruction, close at hand were the huge newspaper

establishments of Park Row. They were all alight and working; they had not been abandoned even while the

actual bomb throwing was going on, and now staff and presses were vehemently active, getting out the story,

the immense and dreadful story of the night, developing comment and, in most cases, spreading the idea of

resistance under the very noses of the airships. For a long time Bert could not imagine what these callously

active offices could be, then he detected the noise of the presses and emitted his "Gaw!"

Beyond these newspaper buildings again, and partially hidden by the arches of the old Elevated Railway of

New York (long since converted into a monorail), there was another cordon of police and a sort of

encampment of ambulances and doctors, busy with the dead and wounded who had been killed early in the

night by the panic upon Brooklyn Bridge. All this he saw in the perspectives of a bird'seye view, as things

happening in a big, irregularshaped pit below him, between cliffs of high building. Northward he looked

along the steep canon of Broadway, down whose length at intervals crowds were assembling about excited

speakers; and when he lifted his eyes he saw the chimneys and cablestacks and roof spaces of New York,

and everywhere now over these the watching, debating people clustered, except where the fires raged and the

jets of water flew. Everywhere, too, were flagstaffs devoid of flags; one white sheet drooped and flapped and

drooped again over the Park Row buildings. And upon the lurid lights, the festering movement and intense

For Bert Smallways all this was framed in the frame of the open porthole. It was a pale, dim world outside

that dark and tangible rim. All night he had clutched at that rim, jumped and quivered at explosions, and

watched phantom events. Now he had been high and now low; now almost beyond hearing, now flying close

to crashings and shouts and outcries. He had seen airships flying low and swift over darkened and groaning

streets; watched great buildings, suddenly redlit amidst the shadows, crumple at the smashing impact of

bombs; witnessed for the first time in his life the grotesque, swift onset, of insatiable conflagrations. From it

all he felt detached, disembodied. The Vaterland did not even fling a bomb; she watched and ruled. Then

down they had come at last to hover over City Hall Park, and it had crept in upon his mind,, chillingly,

terrifyingly, that these illuminated black masses were great offices afire, and that the going to and fro of

minute, dim spectres of lanternlit grey and white was a harvesting of the wounded and the dead. As the light

grew clearer he began to understand more and more what these crumpled black things signified....

He had watched hour after hour since first New York had risen out of the blue indistinctness of the landfall.

He lifted weary eyes to the pink flush in the sky, yawned immensely, and crawled back whispering to himself

across the cabin to the locker. He did not so.much lie down upon that as fall upon it and instantly become

There, hours after, sprawling undignified and sleeping profoundly, Kurt found him, a very image of the

democratic mind confronted with the problems of a time too complex for its apprehension. His face was pale

"Gott!" he cried presently, rubbing his hands over his face, "but I'd like a cold bath! I've been looking for

stray bullet holes in the airchambers all night until now." He yawned. "I must sleep. You'd better clear out,

Smallways. I can't stand you here this morning. You're so infernally ugly and useless. Have you had your

rations? No! Well, go in and get 'em, and don't come back. Stick in the gallery...."

So Bert, slightly refreshed by coffee and sleep, resumed his helpless cooperation in the War in the Air. He

went down into the little gallery as the lieutenant had directed, and clung to the rail at the extreme end beyond

the lookout man, trying to seem as inconspicuous and harmless a fragment of life as possible.

A wind was rising rather strongly from the southeast. It obliged the Vaterland to come about in that

direction, and made her roll a great deal as she went to and fro over Manhattan Island. Away in the

northwest clouds gathered. The throbthrob of her slow screw working against the breeze was much more

perceptible than when she was going full speed ahead; and the friction of the wind against the underside of

the gaschamber drove a series of shallow ripples along it and made a faint flapping sound like, but fainter

than, the beating of ripples under the stem of a boat. She was stationed over the temporary City Hall in the

Park Row building, and every now and then she would descend to resume communication with the mayor

and with Washington. But the restlessness of the Prince would not suffer him to remain for long in any one

place. Now he would circle over the Hudson and East River; now he would go up high, as if to peer away

into the blue distances; once he ascended so swiftly and so far that mountain sickness overtook him and the

The swaying view varied with these changes of altitude. Now they would be low and close, and he would

distinguish in that steep, unusual perspective, windows, doors, street and sky signs, people and the minutest

details, and watch the enigmatical behaviour of crowds and clusters upon the roofs and in the streets; then as

they soared the details would shrink, the sides of streets draw together, the view widen, the people cease to be

significant. At the highest the effect was that of a concave relief map; Bert saw the dark and crowded land

everywhere intersected by shining waters, saw the Hudson River like a spear of silver, and Lower Island

Sound like a shield. Even to Bert's unphilosophical mind the contrast of city below and fleet above pointed an

opposition, the opposition of the adventurous American's tradition and character with German order and

discipline. Below, the immense buildings, tremendous and fine as they were, seemed like the giant trees of a

jungle fighting for life; their picturesque magnificence was as planless as the chances of crag and gorge, their

casualty enhanced by the smoke and confusion of still unsubdued and spreading conflagrations. In the sky

soared the German airships like beings in a different, entirely more orderly world, all oriented to the same

angle of the horizon, uniform in build and appearance, moving accurately with one purpose as a pack of

It dawned upon Bert that hardly a third of the fleet was visible. The others had gone upon errands he could

not imagine, beyond the compass of that great circle of earth. and sky. He wondered, but there was no one to

ask. As the day wore on, about a dozen reappeared in the east with their stores replenished from the flotilla

and towing a number of drachenffieger. Towards afternoon the weather thickened, driving clouds appeared in

the southwest and ran together and seemed to engender more clouds, and the wind came round into that

quarter and blew stronger. Towards the evening the, wind became a gale into which the now tossing airships

All that day the Prince was negotiating with Washington, while his detached scouts sought far and wide over

the Eastern States looking for anything resembling an aeronautic park. A squadron of twenty airships

detached overnight had dropped out of the air upon Niagara and was holding the town and power works.

Meanwhile the insurrectionary movement in the giant city grew uncontrollable. In spite of five great fires

already involving many acres, and spreading steadily, New York was still not satisfied that she was beaten.

At first the rebellious spirit below found vent only in isolated shouts, streetcrowd speeches, and newspaper

suggestions; then it found much more definite expression in the appearance in the morning sunlight of

American flags at point after point above the architectural cliffs of the city. It is quite possible that in many

cases this spirited display of bunting by a city already surrendered was the outcome of the innocent

informality of the American mind, but it is also undeniable thatin many it was a deliberate indication that the

The German sense of correctitude was deeply shocked by this outbreak. The Graf von Winterfeld

immediately communicated with the mayor, and pointed out the irregularity, and the fire lookout stations

were instructed in the matter. The New York police was speedily hard at work, and a foolish contest in full

swing between impassioned citizens resolved to keep the flag flying, and irritated and worried officers

The trouble became acute at last in the streets above Columbia University. The captain of the airship

watching this quarter seems to have stooped to lasso and drag from its staff a flag hoisted upon Morgan Hall.

As he did so a volley of rifle and revolver shots was fired from the upper windows of the huge apartment

Most of these were ineffectual, but two or three perforated gaschambers, and one smashed the hand and arm

of a man upon the forward platform; The sentinel on the lower gallery immediately replied, and the machine

gun on the shield of the eagle let fly and promptly stopped any further shots. The airship rose and signalled

the flagship and City Hall, police and militiamen were directed at once to the spot, and this particular incident

But hard upon that came the desperate attempt of a party of young clubmen from New York, who, inspired by

patriotic and adventurous imaginations, slipped off in half a dozen motorcars to Beacon Hill, and set to

work with remarkable vigour to improvise a fort about the Doan swivel gun that had been placed there. They

found it still in the hands of the disgusted gunners, who had been ordered to cease fire at the capitulation, and

it was easy to infect these men with their own spirit. They declared their gun hadn't had half a chance,

and,were burning to show what it could do. Directed by the newcomers, they made a trench and bank about

the mounting of the piece, and constructed flimsy shelterpits of corrugated iron.

They were actually loading the gun when they were observed by the airship Preussen and the shell they

succeeded in firing before the bombs of the latter smashed them and their crude defences to fragments, burst

over the middle gaschambers of the Bingen, and brought her to earth, disabled, upon Staten Island. She was

badly deflated, and dropped among trees, over which her empty central gasbags spread in canopies and

festoons. Nothing, however, had caught fire, and her men were speedily at work upon her repair. They

behaved with a confidence that verged upon indiscretion. While most of them commenced patching the tears

of the membrane, half a dozen of them started off for the nearest road in search of a gas main, and presently

found themselves prisoners in the hands of a hostile crowd. Close at hand was a number of villa residences,

whose occupants speedily developed from an unfriendly curiosity to aggression. At that time the police

control of the large polyglot population of Staten Island had become very lax, and scarcely a household but

had its rifle or pistols and ammunition. These were presently produced, and after two or three misses, one of

the men at work was hit in the foot. Thereupon the Germans left their sewing and mending, took cover among

The crackling of shots speedily brought the Preussen and Kiel on the scene, and with a few hand grenades

they made short work of every villa within a mile. A number of noncombatant American men, women, and

children were killed and the actual assailants driven off. For a time the repairs went on in peace under the

immediate protection of these two airships. Then when they returned to their quarters, an intermittent sniping

and fighting round the stranded Bingen was resumed, and went on all the afternoon, and merged at last in the

About eight the Bingen was rushed by an armed mob, and all its defenders killed after a fierce, disorderly

The difficulty of the Germans in both these cases came from the impossibility of landing any efficient force

or, indeed, any force at all from the airfleet. The airships were quite unequal to the transport of any adequate

landing parties; their complement of men was just sufficient to manoeuvre and fight them in the air. From

above they could inflict immense damage; they could reduce any organised Government to a capitulation in

the briefest space, but they could not disarm, much less could they occupy, the surrendered areas below. They

had to trust to the pressure upon the authorities below of a threat to renew the bombardment. It was their sole

resource. No doubt, with a highly organised and undamaged Government and a homogeneous and

welldisciplined people that would have sufficed to keep the peace. But this was not the American case. Not

only was the New York Government a weak one and insufficiently provided with police, but the destruction

of the City Halland PostOffide and other central ganglia had hopelessly disorganised the cooperation of

part with part. The street cars and railways had ceased; the telephone service was out of gear and only worked

intermittently. The Germans had struck at the head, and the head was conquered and stunnedonly to

release the body from its rule. New York had become a headless monster, no longer capable of collective

submission. Everywhere it lifted itself rebelliously; everywhere authorities and officials left to their own

imitative were joining in the arming and flaghoisting and excitement of that afternoon.

The disintegrating truce gave place to a definite general breach with the assassination of the Wetterhornfor

that is the only possible word for the actabove Union Square, and not a mile away from the exemplary

ruins of City Hall. This occurred late in the afternoon, between five and six. By that time the weather had

changed very much for the worse, and the operations of the airships were embarrassed by the necessity they

were under of keeping head on to the gusts. A series of squalls, with hail and thunder, followed one another

from the south by southeast, and in order to avoid these as much as possible, the airfleet came low over the

houses, diminishing its range of observation and exposing itself to a rifle attack.

Overnight there had been a gun placed in Union Square. It had never been mounted, much less fired, and in

the darkness after the surrender it was taken with its supplies and put out of the way under the arches of the

great Dexter building. Here late in the morning it was remarked by a number of patriotic spirits. They set to

work to hoist and mount it inside the upper floors of the place. They made, in fact, a masked battery behind

the decorous office blinds, and there lay in wait as simply excited as children until at last the stem of the

luckless Wetterhorn appeared, beating and rolling at quarter speed over the recently reconstructed pinnacles

of Tiffany's. Promptly that onegun battery unmasked. The airship's lookout man must have seen the whole

of the tenth story of the Dexter building crumble out and smash in the street below to discover the black

The gun fired two shells before the frame of the Dexter building collapsed, and each shell raked the

Wetterhorn from stem to stern. They smashed her exhaustively. She crumpled up like a can that has been

kicked by a heavy boot, her forepart came down in the square, and the rest of her length, with a great

snapping and twisting of shafts and stays, descended, collapsing athwart Tammany Hall and the streets

towards Second Avenue. Her gas escaped to mix with air, and the air of her rent balloonette poured into her

The Vaterland at that time was beating up to the south of City Hall from over the ruins of the Brooklyn

Bridge, and the reports of the gun, followed by the first crashes of the collapsing Dexter building, brought

Kurt and, Smallways to the cabin porthole. They were in time to see the flash of the exploding gun, and then

they were first flattened against the window and then rolled head over heels across the floor of the cabin by

the air wave of the explosion. The Vaterland bounded like a football some one has kicked and when they

looked out again, Union Square was small and remote and shattered, as though some cosmically vast giant

had rolled over it. The buildings to the east of it were ablaze at a dozen points, under the flaming tatters and

warping skeleton of the airship, and all the roofs and walls were ridiculously askew and crumbling as one

But before Kurt could produce an explanation, the shrill bells of the airship were ringing to quarters, and he

had to go. Bert hesitated and stepped thoughtfully into the passage, looking back at the window as he did so.

He was knocked off his feet at once by the Prince, who was rushing headlong from his cabin to the central

Bert had a momentary impression of the great figure of the Prince, white with rage, bristling with gigantic

anger, his huge fist swinging. "Blut und Eisen!" cried the Prince, as one who swears. "Oh! Blut und Eisen!"

Some one fell over Bertsomething in the manner of falling suggested Von Winterfeldand some one else

paused and kicked him spitefully and hard. Then he was sitting up in the passage, rubbing a freshly bruised

cheek and readjusting the bandage he still wore on his head. "Dem that Prince," said Bert, indignant beyond

He stood up, collected his wits for a minute, and then went slowly towards the gangway of the little gallery.

As he did so he heard noises suggestive of the return of the Prince. The lot of them were coming back again.

He shot into his cabin like a rabbit into its burrow, just in time to escape that shouting terror.

He shut the door, waited until the passage was still, then went across to the window and looked out. A drift of

cloud made the prospect of the streets and squares hazy, and the rolling of the airship swung the picture up

and down. A few people were running to and fro, but for the most part the aspect of the district was desertion.

The streets seemed to broaden out, they became clearer, and the little dots that were people larger as the

Vaterland came down again. Presently she was swaying along above the lower end of Broadway. The dots

below, Bert saw, were not running now, but standing and looking up. Then suddenly they were all running

Something had dropped from the aeroplane, something that looked small and flimsy. It hit the pavement near

a big archway just underneath Bert. A little man was sprinting along the sidewalk within half a dozen yards,

and two or three others and one woman were bolting across the roadway. They were odd little figures, so very

small were they about the heads, so very active about the elbows and legs. It was really funny to see their legs

going. Foreshortened, humanity has no dignity. The little man on the pavement jumped comicallyno doubt

Then blinding flames squirted out in all directions from the point of impact, and the little man who had

jumped became, for an instant, a flash of fire and vanishedvanished absolutely. The people running out

into the road took preposterous clumsy leaps, then flopped down and lay still, with their torn clothes

smouldering into flame. Then pieces of the archway began to drop, and the lower masonry of the building to

fall in with the rumbling sound of coals being shot into a cellar. A faint screaming reached Bert, and then a

crowd of people ran out into the street, one man limping and gesticulating awkwardly. He halted, and went

back towards the building. A falling mass of brickwork hit him and sent him sprawling to lie still and

crumpled where he fell. Dust and black smoke came pouring into the street, and were presently shot with red

In this manner the massacre of New York began. She was the first of the great cities of the Scientific Age to

suffer by the enormous powers and grotesque limitations of aerial warfare. She was wrecked as in the

previous century endless barbaric cities had been bombarded, because she was at once too strong to be

occupied and too undisciplined and proud to surrender in order to escape destruction. Given the

circumstances, the thing had to be done. It was impossible for the Prince to desist, and own himself defeated,

and it was impossible to subdue the city except by largely destroying it. The catastrophe was the logical

outcome of the situation, created by the application of science to warfare. It was unavoidable that great cities

should be destroyed. In spite of his intense exasperation with his dilemma, the Prince sought to be moderate

even in massacre. He tried to give a memorable lesson with the minimum waste of life and the minimum

expenditure of explosives. For that night he proposed only the wrecking of Broadway. He directed the

airfleet to move in column over the route of this thoroughfare, dropping bombs, the Vaterland leading. And

so our Bert Smallways became a participant in one of the most coldblooded slaughters in the world's

history, in which men who were neither excited nor, except for the remotest chance of a bullet, in any danger,

He clung to the frame of the porthole as the airship tossed and swayed, and stared down through the light rain

that now drove before the wind, into the twilight streets, watching people running out of the houses, watching

buildings collapse and fires begin. As the airships sailed along they smashed up the city as a child will shatter

its cities of brick and card. Below, they left ruins and blazing conflagrations and heaped and scattered dead;

men, women, and children mixed together as though they had been no more than Moors, or Zulus, or

Chinese. Lower New York was soon a furnace of crimson flames, from which there was no escape. Cars,

railways, ferries, all had ceased, and never a light lit the way of the distracted fugitives in that dusky

confusion but the light of burning. He had glimpses of what,it must mean to be down thereglimpses. And it

came to him suddenly as an incredible discovery, that such disasters were not only possible now in this

strange, gigantic, foreign New York, but also in Londonin Bun Hill! that the little island in the silver seas

was at the end of its immunity, that nowhere in the world any more was there a place left where a Smallways

might lift his head proudly and vote for war and a spirited foreign policy, and go secure from such horrible

And then above the flames of Manhattan Island came a battle, the first battle in the air. The Americans had

realised the price their waiting game must cost, and struck with all the strength they had, if haply they might

still save New York from this mad Prince of Blood and Iron, and from fire and death.

They came down upon the Germans on the wings of a great gale in the twilight, amidst thunder and rain.

They came from the yards of Washington and Philadelphia, full tilt in two squadrons, and but for one sentinel

The Germans, sick and weary with destruction, and half empty of ammunition, were facing up into the

weather when the news of this onset reached them. New York they had left behind to the southeastward, a

darkened city with one hideous red scar of flames. All the airships rolled and staggered, bursts of hailstorm

bore them down and forced them to fight their way up again; the air had become bitterly cold. The Prince was

on the point of issuing orders to drop earthward and trail copper lightning chains when the news of the

aeroplane attack came to him. He faced his fleet in line abreast south, had the drachenflieger manned and

held ready to cast loose, and ordered a general ascent into the freezing clearness above the wet and darkness.

The news of what was imminent came slowly to Bert's perceptions. He was standing in the messroom at the

time and the evening rations were being served out. He had resumed Butteridge's coat and gloves, and in

addition he had wrapped his blanket about him. He was dipping his bread into his soup and was biting off big

mouthfuls. His legs were wide apart, and he leant against the partition in order to steady himself amidst the

pitching and oscillation of the airship. The men about him looked tired and depressed; a few talked, but most

were sullen and thoughtful, and one or two were airsick. They all seemed to share the peculiarly outcast

feeling that had followed the murders of the evening, a sense of a land beneath them, and an outraged

Then the news hit them. A redfaced sturdy man, a man with light eyelashes and a scar, appeared in the

doorway and shouted something in German that manifestly startled every one. Bert felt the shock of the

altered tone, though he could not understand a word that was said. T he announcement was followed by a

pause, and then a great outcry of questions and suggestions. Even the airsick men flushed and spoke. For

some minutes the messroom was Bedlam, and then, as if it were a confirmation of the news, came the shrill

He stayed only to gulp down the remainder of his soup, and then ran along the swaying passage and,

clutching tightly, down the ladder to the little gallery. The weather hit him like cold water squirted from a

hose. The airship engaged in some new feat of atmospheric JiuJitsu. He drew his blanket closer about him,

clutching with one straining hand. He found himself tossing in a wet twilight, with nothing to be seen but

mist pouring past him. Above him the airship was warm with lights and busy with the movements of men

going to their quarters. Then abruptly the lights went out, and the Vaterland with bounds and twists and

He had a glimpse, as the Vaterland rolled over, of some large buildings burning close below them, a

quivering acanthus of flames, and then he saw indistinctly through the driving weather another airship

wallowing along like a porpoise, and also working up. Presently the clouds swallowed her again for a time,

and then she came back to sight as a dark and whalelike monster, amidst streaming weather. The air was full

of flappings and pipings, of void, gusty shouts and noises; it buffeted him and confused him; ever and again

Something fell past him out of the vast darknesses above and vanished into the tumults below, going

obliquely downward. It was a German drachenflieger. The thing was going so fast he had but an instant

apprehension of the dark figure of the aeronaut crouched together clutching at his wheel. It might be a

"Puppuppup" went a gun somewhere in the mirk ahead and suddenly and quite horribly the Vaterland

lurched, and Bert and the sentinel were clinging to the rail for dear life. "Bang!" came a vast impact out of the

zenith, followed by another huge roll, and all about him the tumbled clouds flashed red and lurid in response

to flashes unseen, revealing immense gulfs. The rail went right overhead, and he was hanging loose in the air

For a time Bert's whole mind and being was given to clutching. "I'm going into the cabin," he said, as the

airship righted again and brought back the gallery floor to his feet. He began to make his way cautiously

towards the ladder. "Wheewow!" he cried as the whole gallery reared itself up forward, and then plunged

Crack! Bang! Bang! Bang! And then hard upon this little rattle of shots and bombs came, all about him,

enveloping him, engulfing him, immense and overwhelming, a quivering white blaze of lightning and a

Just for the instant before that explosion the universe seemed to be standing still in a shadowless glare.

It was then he saw the American aeroplane. He saw it in the light of the flash as a thing altogether motionless.

Even its screw appeared still, and its men were rigid dolls. (For it was so near he could see the men upon it

quite distinctly.) Its stern was tilting down, and the whole machine was heeling over. It was of the

ColtCoburnLangley pattern, with double uptilted wings and the screw ahead, and the men were in a

boatlike body netted over. From this very light long body, magazine guns projected on either side. One

thing that was strikingly odd and wonderful in that moment of revelation was that the left upper wing was

burning downward with a reddish, smoky flame. But this was not the most wonderful thing about this

apparition. The most wonderful thing was that it and a German airship five hundred yards below were

threaded as it were on the lightning flash, which turned out of its path as if to take them, and, that out from

the corners and projecting points of its huge wings everywhere, little branching thorntrees of lightning were

Like a picture Bert saw these things, a picture a little blurred by a thin veil of windtorn mist.

The crash of the thunderclap followed the flash and seemed a part of it, so that it is hard to say whether Bert

And then darkness, utter darkness, and a heavy report and a thin small sound of voices that went wailing

There followed upon these things a long, deep swaying of the airship, and then Bert began a struggle to get

back to his cabin. He was drenched and cold and terrified beyond measure, and now more than a little

airsick. It seemed to him that the strength had gone out of his knees and hands, and that his feet had become

icily slippery over the metal they trod upon. But that was because a thin film of ice had frozen upon the

He never knew how long his ascent of the ladder back into the airship took him, but in his dreams afterwards,

when he recalled it, that experience seemed to last for hours. Below, above, around him were gulfs,

monstrous gulfs of howling wind and eddies of dark, whirling snowflakes, and he was protected from it all by

a little metal grating and a rail, a grating and rail that seemed madly infuriated with him, passionately eager to

Once he had a fancy that a bullet tore by his ear, and that the clouds and snowflakes were lit by a flash, but he

never even turned his head to see what new assailant whirled past them in the void. He wanted to get into the

passage! He wanted to get into the passage! He wanted to get into the passage! Would the arm by which he

was clinging hold out, or would it give way and snap? A handful of hail smacked him in the face, so that for a

time he was breathless and nearly insensible. Hold tight, Bert! He renewed his efforts.

He found himself, with an enormous sense of relief and warmth, in the passage. The passage was behaving

like a dicebox, its disposition was evidently to rattle him about and then throw him out again. He hung on

with the convulsive clutch of instinct until the passage lurched down ahead. Then he would make a short run

He snappedto the door, and for a time he was not a human being, he was a case of airsickness. He wanted

to get somewhere that would fix him, that he needn't clutch. He opened the locker and got inside among the

loose articles, and sprawled there helplessly, with his head sometimes bumping one side and sometimes the

other. The lid shut upon him with a click. He did not care then what was happening any more. He did not care

who fought who, or what bullets were fired or explosions occurred. He did not care if presently he was shot

or smashed to pieces. He was full of feeble, inarticulate rage and despair. "Foolery!" he said, his one

exhaustive comment on human enterprise, adventure, war, and the chapter of accidents that had entangled

him. "Foolery! Ugh!" He included the order of the universe in that comprehensive condemnation. He wished

He saw nothing of the stars, as presently the Vaterland cleared the rush and confusion of the lower weather,

nor of the duel she fought with two circling aeroplanes, how they shot her rearmost chambers through, and

The rush and swoop of these wonderful night birds was all lost upon him; their heroic dash and selfsacrifice.

The Vaterland was rammed, and for some moments she hung on the verge of destruction, and sinking swiftly,

with the American aeroplane entangled with her smashed propeller, and the Americans trying to scramble

aboard. It signified nothing to Bert. To him it conveyed itself simply as vehement swaying. Foolery! When

the American airship dropped off at last, with most of its crew shot or fallen, Bert in his locker appreciated

But then came infinite relief, incredibly blissful relief. The rolling, the pitching, the struggle ceased, ceased

instantly and absolutely. The Vaterland was no longer fighting the gale; her smashed and exploded engines

throbbed no more; she was disabled and driving before the wind as smoothly as a balloon, a huge,

To Bert it was no more than the end of a series of disagreeable sensations. He was not curious to know what

had happened to the airship, nor what had happened to the battle. For a long time he lay waiting

apprehensively for the pitching and tossing and his qualms to return, and so, lying, boxed up in the locker, he

He awoke tranquil but very stuffy, and at the same time very cold, and quite unable to recollect where he

could be. His head ached, and his breath was suffocated. He had been dreaming confusedly of Edna, and

desert dervishes, and of riding bicycles in an extremely perilous manner through the upper air amidst a

pyrotechnic display of crackers and Bengal lightsto the great annoyance of a sort of composite person

made up of the Prince and Mr. Butteridge. Then for some reason Edna and he had begun to cry pitifully for

each other, and he woke up with wet eyelashes into this illventilated darkness of thelocker. He would

He thought he must be back in the bedroom behind the cycle shop at the bottom of Bun Hill, and he was sure

the vision he had had of the destruction of a magnificent city, a city quite incredibly great and splendid, by

The answering silence, and the dull resonance of the locker to his voice, supplementing the stifling quality of

the air, set going a new train of ideas. He lifted up his hands and feet, and met an inflexible resistance. He

was in a coffin, he thought! He had been buried alive! He gave way at once to wild panic. "'Elp!" he

screamed. "'Elp!" and drummed with his feet, and kicked and struggled. "Let me out! Let me out!"

For some seconds he struggled with this intolerable horror, and then the side of his imagined coffin gave way,

and he was flying out into daylight. Then he was rolling about on what seemed to be a padded floor with

He sat up. His head bandage had become loose and got over one eye, and he whipped the whole thing off.

Kurt was also sitting up, a yard away from him, pink as ever, wrapped in blankets, and with an aluminium

diver's helmet over his knee, staring at him with a severe expression, and rubbing his downy unshaven chin.

They were both on a slanting floor of crimson padding, and above them was an opening like a long, low

cellar flap that Bert by an effort perceived to be the cabin door in a halfinverted condition. The whole cabin

"What the deuce do you mean by it, Smallways?" said Kurt, "jumping out of that locker when I was certain

"I haven't seen the papers, Smallways. We left before the finish. We got disabled and unmanageable, and our

colleaguesconsorts I meanwere too busy most of them to trouble about us, and the wind blew

usHeaven knows where the wind IS blowing us. It blew us right out of action at the rate of eighty miles an

"In the air, Smallwaysin the air! When we get down on the earth again we shan't know what to do with our

"Canada, to the best of my knowledgeand a jolly bleak, empty, inhospitable country it looks."

"Last I remember was seeing a sort of flyingmachine in a lightning flash," said Bert. "Gaw! that was

'orrible. Guns going off ! Things explodin'! Clouds and 'ail. Pitching and tossing. I got so scared and

"Not a bit of it. I was up with my squad in those divers' dresses, inside the gaschambers, with sheets of silk

for caulking. We couldn't see a thing outside except the lightning flashes. I never saw one of those American

aeroplanes. Just saw the shots flicker through the chambers and sent off men for the tears. We caught fire a

bitnot much, you know. We were too wet, so the fires spluttered out before we banged. And then one of

their infernal things dropped out of the air on us and rammed. Didn't you feel it?"

"They must have been pretty desperate if they meant it. They slashed down on us like a knife; simply ripped

the after gaschambers like gutting herrings, crumpled up the engines and screw. Most of the engines

dropped off as they fell off usor we'd have groundedbut the rest is sort of dangling. We just turned up

our nose to the heavens and stayed there. Eleven men rolled off us from various points, and poor old

Winterfeld fell through the door of the Prince's cabin into the chartroom and broke his ankle. Also we got

our electric gear shot or carried awayno one knows how. That's the position, Smallways. We're driving

through the air like a common aerostat, at the mercy of the elements, almost due northprobably to the

North Pole. We don't know what aeroplanes the Americans have, or anything at all about it. Very likely we

have finished 'em up. One fouled us, one was struck by lightning, some of the men saw a third upset,

apparently just for fun. They were going cheap anyhow. Also we've lost most of our drachenflieger. They just

skated off into the night. No stability in 'em. That's all. We don't know if we've won or lost. We don't know if

we're at war with the British Empire yet or at peace. Consequently, we daren't get down. We don't know what

we are up to or what we are going to do. Our Napoleon is alone, forward, and I suppose he's rearranging his

plans. Whether New York was our Moscow or not remains to be seen. We've had a high old time and

murdered no end of people! War! Noble war! I'm sick of it this morning. I like sitting in rooms rightway up

and not on slippery partitions. I'm a civilised man. I keep thinking of old Albrecht and the Barbarossa.... I feel

I want a wash and kind words and a quiet home. When I look at you, I KNOW I want a wash. Gott!"he

He meditated upon Bert for a time. "So far as I can judge, Smallways," he said, "the Prince will probably

want to throw you overboardnext time he thinks of you. He certainly will if he sees you.... After all, you

know, you came als Ballast.... And we shall have to lighten ship extensively pretty soon. Unless I'm mistaken,

the Prince will wake up presently and start doing things with tremendous vigour.... I've taken a fancy to you.

It's the English strain in me. You're a rum little chap. I shan't like seeing you whizz down the air.... You'd

better make yourself useful, Smallways. I think I shall requisition you for my squad. You'll have to work, you

know, and be infernally intelligent and all that. And you'll have to hang about upside down a bit. Still, it's the

best chance you have. We shan't carry passengers much farther this trip, I fancy. Ballast goes overboardif

we don't want to ground precious soon and be taken prisoners of war. The Prince won't do that anyhow. He'll

By means of a folding chair, which was still in its place behind the door, they got to the window and looked

out in turn and contemplated a sparsely wooded country below, with no railways nor roads, and only

occasional signs of habitation. Then a bugle sounded, and Kurt interpreted it as a summons to food. They got

through the door and clambered with some difficulty up the nearly vertical passage, holding on desperately

with toes and fingertips, to the ventilating perforations in its floor. The mess stewards had found their

fireless heating arrangements intact, and there was hot cocoa for the officers and hot soup for the men.

Bert's sense of the queerness of this experience was so keen that it blotted out any fear he might have felt.

Indeed, he was far more interested now than afraid. He seemed to have touched down to the bottom of fear

and abandonment overnight. He was growing accustomed to the idea that he would probably be killed

presently, that this strange voyage in the air was in all probability his death journey. No human being can

keep permanently afraid: fear goes at last to the back of one's mind, accepted, and shelved, and done with. He

squatted over his soup, sopping it up with his bread, and contemplated his comrades. They were all rather

yellow and dirty, with fourday beards, and they grouped themselves in the tired, unpremeditated manner of

men on a wreck. They talked little. The situation perplexed them beyond any suggestion of ideas. Three had

been hurt in the pitching up of the ship during the fight, and one had a bandaged bullet wound. It was

incredible that this little band of men had committed murder and massacre on a scale beyond precedent. None

of them who squatted on the sloping gaspadded partition, soup mug in hand, seemed really guilty of

anything of the sort, seemed really capable of hurting a dog wantonly. They were all so manifestly built for

homely chalets on the solid earth and carefully tilled fields and blond wives and cheery merrymaking. The

redfaced, sturdy man with light eyelashes who had brought the first news of the air battle to the men's mess

had finished his soup, and with an expression of maternal solicitude was readjusting the bandages of a

Bert was crumbling the last of his bread into the last of his soup, eking it out as long as possible, when

suddenly he became aware that every one was looking at a pair of feet that were dangling across the

downturned open doorway. Kurt appeared and squatted across the hinge. In some mysterious way he had

shaved his face and smoothed down his light golden hair. He looked extraordinarily cherubic. "Der Prinz," he

A second pair of boots followed, making wide and magnificent gestures in their attempts to feel the door

frame. Kurt guided them to a foothold, and the Prince, shaved and brushed and beeswaxed and clean and big

and terrible, slid down into position astride of the door. All the men and Bert also stood up and saluted.

The Prince surveyed them with the gesture of a man who site a steed. The head of the Kapitan appeared

Then Bert had a terrible moment. The blue blaze of the Prince's eye fell upon him, the great finger pointed, a

Then the Prince addressed the men in short, heroic sentences, steadying himself on the hinge with one hand

and waving the other in a fine variety of gesture. What he said Bert could not tell, but he perceived that their

demeanor changed, their backs stiffened. They began to punctuate the Prince's discourse with cries of

approval. At the end their leader burst into song and all the men with him. "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott,"

they chanted in deep, strong tones, with an immense moral uplifting. It was glaringly inappropriate in a

damaged, halfoverturned, and sinking airship, which had been disabled and blown out of action after

inflicting the cruellest bombardment in the world's history; but it was immensely stirring nevertheless. Bert

was deeply moved. He could not sing any of the words of Luther's great hymn, but he opened his mouth and

Far below, this deep chanting struck on the ears of a little camp of Christianised halfbreeds who were

lumbering. They were breakfasting, but they rushed out cheerfully, quite prepared for the Second Advent.

They stared at the shattered and twisted Vaterland driving before the gale, amazed beyond words. In so many

respects it was like their idea of the Second Advent, and then again in so many respects,it wasn't. They stared

at its passage, awestricken and perplexed beyond their power of words. The hymn ceased. Then after a long

interval a voice came out of heaven. "Vat id diss blace here galled itself; vat?"

They made no answer. Indeed they did not understand, though the question repeated itself.

And at last the monster drove away northward over a crest of pine woods and was no more seen. They fell

The hymn ended. The Prince's legs dangled up the passage again, and every one was briskly prepared for

Then Bert under Kurt's direction, had his first experience of the work of an airsailor.

The immediate task before the captain of the Vaterland was a very simple one. He had to keep afloat. The

wind, though it had fallen from its earlier violence, was still blowing strongly enough to render the grounding

of so clumsy a mass extremely dangerous, even if it had been desirable for the Prince to land in inhabited

country, and so risk capture. It was necessary to keep the airship up until the wind fell and then, if possible, to

descend in some lonely district of the Territory where there would be a chance of repair or rescue by some

searching consort. In order to do this weight had to be dropped, and Kurt was detailed with a dozen men to

climb down among the wreckage of the deflated airchambers and cut the stuff clear, portion by portion, as

the airship sank. So Bert, armed with a sharp cutlass, found himself clambering about upon netting four

thousand feet up in the air, trying to understand Kurt when he spoke in English and to divine him when he

It was giddy work, but not nearly so giddy as a rather overnourished reader sitting in a warm room might

imagine. Bert found it quite possible to look down and contemplate the wild subarctic landscape below, now

devoid of any sign of habitation, a land of rocky cliffs and cascades and broad swirling desolate rivers, and of

trees and thickets that grew more stunted and scrubby as the day wore on. Here and there on the hills were

patches and pockets of snow. And over all this he worked, hacking away at the tough and slippery oiled silk

and clinging stoutly to the netting. Presently they cleared and dropped a tangle of bent steel rods and wires

from the frame, and a big chunk of silk bladder. That was trying. The airship flew up at once as this loose

hamper parted. It seemed almost as though they were dropping all Canada. The stuff spread out in the air and

floated down and hit and twisted up in a nasty fashion on the lip of a gorge. Bert clung like a frozen monkey

But there was something very exhilarating, he found, in this dangerous work, and above every thing else,

there was the sense of fellowship. He was no longer an isolated and distrustful stranger among these others,

he had now a common object with them, he worked with a friendly rivalry to get through with his share

before them. And he developed a great respect and affection for Kurt, which had hitherto been only latent in

him. Kurt with a job to direct was altogether admirable; he was resourceful, helpful, considerate, swift. He

seemed to be everywhere. One forgot his pinkness, his light cheerfulness of manner. Directly one had trouble

he was at hand with sound and confident advice. He was like an elder brother to his men.

All together they cleared three considerable chunks of wreckage, and then Bert was glad to clamber up into

the cabins again and give place to a second squad. He and his companions were given hot coffee, and indeed,

even gloved as they were, the job had been a cold one. They sat drinking it and regarding each other with

satisfaction. One man spoke to Bert amiably in German, and Bert nodded and smiled. Through Kurt, Bert,

whose ankles were almost frozen, succeeded in getting a pair of topboots from one of the disabled men.

In the afternoon the wind abated greatly, and small, infrequent snowflakes came drifting by. Snow also

spread more abundantly below, and the only trees were clumps of pine and spruce in the lower valleys. Kurt

went with three men into the still intact gaschambers, let out a certain quantity of gas from them, and

prepared a series of ripping panels for the descent. Also the residue of the bombs and explosives in the

magazine were thrown overboard and fell, detonating loudly, in the wilderness below. And about four o'clock

in the afternoon upon a wide and rocky plain within sight of snowcrested cliffs, the Vaterland ripped and

It was necessarily a difficult and violent affair, for the Vaterland had not been planned for the necessities of a

balloon. The captain got one panel ripped too soon and the others not soon enough. She dropped heavily,

bounced clumsily, and smashed the hanging gallery into the forepart, mortally injuring Von Winterfeld, and

then came down in a collapsing heap after dragging for some moments. The forward shield and its machine

gun tumbled in upon the things below. Two men were hurt badly one got a broken leg and one was

internally injuredby flying rods and wires, and Bert was pinned for a time under the side. When at last he

got clear and could take a view of the situation, the great black eagle that had started so splendidly from

Franconia six evenings ago, sprawled deflated over the cabins of the airship and the frostbitten rocks of this

desolate place and looked a most unfortunate birdas though some one had caught it and wrung its neck and

cast it aside. Several of the crew of the airship were standing about in silence, contemplating the wreckage

and the empty wilderness into which they had fallen. Others were busy under the imromptu tent made by the

empty gaschambers. The Prince had gone a little way off and was scrutinising the distant heights through

his fieldglass. They had the appearance of old sea cliffs; here and there were small clumps of conifers, and

in two places tall cascades. The nearer ground was strewn with glaciated boulders and supported nothing but

a stunted Alpine vegetation of compact clustering stems and stalkless flowers. No river was visible, but the

air was full of the rush and babble of a torrent close at hand. A bleak and biting wind was blowing. Ever and

again a snowflake drifted past. The springless frozen earth under Bert's feet felt strangely dead and heavy

So it came about that that great and powerful Prince Karl Albert was for a time thrust out of the stupendous

conflict he chiefly had been instrumental in provoking. The chances of battle and the weather conspired to

maroon him in Labrador, and there he raged for six long days, while war and wonder swept the world. Nation

rose against nation and airfleet grappled airfleet, cities blazed and men died in multitudes; but in Labrador

one might have dreamt that, except for a little noise of hammering, the world was at peace.

There the encampment lay; from a distance the cabins, hovered over with the silk of the balloon part, looked

like a gipsy's tent on a rather exceptional scale, and all the available hands were busy in building out of the

steel of the framework a mast from which the Vaterland's electricians might hang the long conductors of the

apparatus for wireless telegraphy that was to link the Prince to the world again. There were times when it

seemed they would never rig that mast. From the outset the party suffered hardship. They were not too

abundantly provisioned, and they were put on short rations, and for all the thick garments they had, they were

but illequipped against the piercing wind and inhospitable violence of this wilderness. The first night was

spent in darkness and without fires. The engines that had supplied power were smashed and dropped far away

to the south, and there was never a match among the company. It had been death to carry matches. All the

explosives had been thrown out of the magazine, and it was only towards morning that the birdfaced man

whose cabin Bert had taken in the beginning confessed to a brace of duelling pistols and cartridges, with

which a fire could be started. Afterwards the lockers of the machine gun were found to contain a supply of

The night was a distressing one and seemed almost interminable. Hardly any one slept. There were seven

wounded men aboard, and Von Winterfeld's head had been injured, and he was shivering and in delirium,

struggling with his attendant and shouting strange things about the burning of New York. The men crept

together in the messroom in the darkling, wrapped in what they could find and drank cocoa from the fireless

heaters and listened to his cries. In the morning the Prince made them a speech about Destiny, and the God of

his Fathers and the pleasure and glory of giving one's life for his dynasty, and a number of similar

considerations that might otherwise have been neglected in that bleak wilderness. The men cheered without

Then they set to work, and for a week they toiled to put up a mast of steel, and hang from it a gridiron of

copper wires two hundred feet by twelve. The theme of all that time was work, work continually, straining

and toilsome work, and all the rest was grim hardship and evil chances, save for a certain wild splendour in

the sunset and sunrise in the torrents and drifting weather, in the wilderness about them. They built and

tended a ring of perpetual fires, gangs roamed for brushwood and met with wolves, and the wounded men

and their beds were brought out from the airship cabins, and put in shelters about the fires. There old Von

Winterfeld raved and became quiet and presently died, and three of the other wounded sickened for want of

good food, while their fellows mended. These things happened, as it were, in the wings; the central facts

before Bert's consciousness were always firstly the perpetual toil, the holding and lifting, and lugging at

heavy and clumsy masses, the tedious filing and winding of wires, and secondly, the Prince, urgent and

threatening whenever a man relaxed. He would stand over them, and point over their heads, southward into

the empty sky. "The world there," he said in German, "is waiting for us! Fifty Centuries come to their

Consummation." Bert did not understand the words, but he read the gesture. Several times the Prince grew

angry; once with a man who was working slowly, once with a man who stole a comrade's ration. The first he

scolded and set to a more tedious task; the second he struck in the face and illused. He did no work himself.

There was a clear space near the fires in which he would walk up and down, sometimes for two hours

together, with arms folded, muttering to himself of Patience and his destiny. At times these mutterings broke

out into rhetoric, into shouts and gestures that would arrest the workers; they would stare at him until they

perceived that his blue eyes glared and his waving hand addressed itself always to the southward hills. On

Sunday the work ceased for half an hour, and the Prince preached on faith and God's friendship for David,

In an improvised hovel lay Von Winterfeld, and all one morning he raved of the greatness of Germany. "Blut

und Eisen!" he shouted, and then, as if in derision, "WeltPolitikha, ha!" Then he would explain

complicated questions of polity to imaginary hearers, in low, wily tones. The other sick men kept still,

listening to him. Bert's distracted attention would be recalled by Kurt. "Smallways, take that end. So!"

Slowly, tediously, the great mast was rigged and hoisted foot by foot into place. The electricians had

contrived a catchment pool and a wheel in the torrent close at handfor the little Mulhausen dynamo with its

turbinal volute used by the telegraphists was quite adaptable to water driving, and on the sixth day in the

evening the apparatus was in working order and the Prince was callingweakly, indeed, but callingto his

The effect of that evening was to linger long in Bert's memory. A red fire spluttered and blazed close by the

electricians at their work, and red gleams xan up the vertical steel mast and threads of copper wire towards

the zenith. The Prince sat on a rock close by, with his chin on his hand, waiting. Beyond and to the northward

was the cairn that covered Von Winterfeld, surmounted by a cross of steel, and from among the tumbled

rocks in the distance the eyes of a wolf gleamed redly. On the other hand was the wreckage of the great

airship and the men bivouacked about a second ruddy flare. They were all keeping very still, as if waiting to

hear what news might presently be given them. Far away, across many hundreds of miles of desolation, other

wireless masts would be clicking, and snapping, and waking into responsive vibration. Perhaps they were not.

Perhaps those throbs upon the etherz .wasted themselves upon a regardless world. When the men spoke, they

spoke in low tones. Now and then a bird shrieked remotely, and once a wolf howled. All these things were set

Bert got the news last, and chiefly in broken English, from a linguist among his mates. It was only far on in

the night that the weary telegraphist got an answer to his calls, but then the messages came clear and strong.

"All de vorlt is at vor!" said the linguist, waving his cocoa in an illustrative manner, "all de vorlt is at vor!"

"All de vorlt is at vor! They haf burn' Berlin; they haf burn' London; they haf burn' Hamburg and Paris.

Chapan hass burn San Francisco. We haf mate a camp at Niagara. Dat is whad they are telling us. China has

That was all Bert could get for a time. But the excitement of all the men about him was contagious, and

presently he saw Kurt standing alone, hands behind him, and looking at one of the distant waterfalls very

steadfastly. He went up and saluted, soldierfashion. "Beg pardon, lieutenant," he said.

Kurt turned his face. It was unusually grave that morning. "I was just thinking I would like to see that

"I can't make 'ead or tail of what they're saying, sir. Would you mind telling me the news?"

"Damn the news," said Kurt. "You'll get news enough before the day's out. It's the end of the world. They're

sending the Graf Zeppelin for us. She'll be here by the morning, and we ought to be at Niagaraor eternal

smashwithin eight and forty hours.... I want to look at that waterfall. You'd better come with me. Have you

And musing profoundly, Kurt led the way across the rocks towards the distant waterfall.

For a time Bert walked behind him in the character of an escort; then as they passed out of the atmosphere of

"We shall be back in it all in two days' time," he said. "And it's a devil of a war to go back to. That's the news.

The world's gone mad. Our fleet beat the Americans the night we got disabled, that's clear. We lost

eleveneleven airships certain, and all their aeroplanes got smashed. God knows how much we smashed or

how many we killed. But that was only the beginning. Our start's been like firing a magazine. Every country

was hiding flyingmachines. They're fighting in the air all over Europeall over the world. The Japanese

and Chinese have joined in. That's the great fact. That's the supreme fact. They've pounced into our little

quarrels.... The Yellow Peril was a peril after all! They've got thousands of airships. They're all over the

world. We bombarded London and Paris, and now the French and English have smashed up Berlin. And now

Asia is at us all, and on the top of us all.... It's mania. China on the top. And they don't know where to stop.

It's limitless. It's the last confusion. They're bombarding capitals, smashing up dockyards and factories, mines

"This Labrador seems a quiet place," he resumed at last. "I'm half a mind to stay here. Can't do that. No! I've

got to see it through. I've got to see it through. You've got to, too. Every one.... But why?... I tell youour

world's gone to pieces. There's no way out of it, no way back. Here we are! We're like mice caught in a house

on fire, we're like cattle overtaken by a flood. Presently we shall be picked up, and back we shall go into the

fighting. We shall kill and smash againperhaps. It's a ChinoJapanese airfleet this time, and the odds are

against us. Our turns will come. What will happen to you I don't know, but for myself, I know quite well; I

"No!" said Kurt, "I'm going to be killed. I didn't know, it before, but this morning, at dawn, I knew itas

"I know," he repeated, and for a time they walked in silence towards the waterfall.

Kurt, wrapped in his thoughts, walked heedlessly, and at last broke out again. "I've always felt young before,

Smallways, but this morning I feel oldold. So old! Nearer to death than old men feel. And I've always.

thought life was a lark. It isn't.... This sort of thing has always been happening, I supposethese things, wars

and earthquakes, that sweep across all the decency of life. It's just as though I had woke up to it all for the

first time. Every night since we were at New York I've dreamt of it.... And it's always been soit's the way

of life. People are torn away from the people they care for; homes are smashed, creatures full of life, and

memories, and little peculiar gifts are scalded and smashed, and torn to pieces, and starved, and spoilt.

London! Berlin! San Francisco! Think of all the human histories we ended in New York!... And the others go

on again as though such things weren't possible. As I went on! Like animals! Just like animals."

He said nothing for a long time, and then he dropped out, "The Prince is a lunatic!"

They came to a place where they had to climb, and then to a long peat level beside rivulet. There a quantity of

delicate little pink flowers caught Bert's eye. "Gaw!" he said, and stooped to pick one. "In a place like this."

At last they came to a rocky hummock, from which the view of the waterfall opened out. There Kurt stopped

"That's as much as I wanted to see," he explained. "It isn't very like, but it's like enough."

"Funny thing," said Bert, "those flowers, I suppose.I was jes' thinking of 'er."

"No. I was thinking of MY Edna. We've all got Ednas, I suppose, for our imaginations to play about. This

was a girl. But all that's past for ever. It's hard to think I can't see her just for a minutejust let her know I'm

"I met her," he went on, "in a place like thisin the AlpsEngstlen Alp. There's a waterfall rather like this

onea broad waterfall down towards Innertkirchen. That's why I came here this morning. We slipped away

and had half a day together beside it. And we picked flowers. Just such flowers as you picked. The same for

"I know" said Bert, "me and Ednawe done things like that. Flowers. And all that. Seems years off now."

"She was beautiful and daring and shy, Mein Gott! I can hardly hold myself for the desire to see her and hear

her voice again before I die. Where is she?... Look here, Smallways, I shall write a sort of letter And

"No'! I shall never see her again.... I don't understand why people should meet just to be torn apart. But I

know she and I will never meet again. That I know as surely as that the sun will rise, and that cascade come

shining over the rocks after I am dead and done.... Oh! It's all foolishness and haste and violence and cruel

folly, stupidity and blundering hate and selfish ambitionall the things that men have doneall the things

they will ever do. Gott! Smallways, what a muddle and confusion life has always beenthe battles and

massacres and disasters, the hates and harsh acts, the murders and sweatings, the lynchings and cheatings.

This morning I am tired of it all, as though I'd just found it out for the first time. I HAVE found it out. When

a man is tired of life, I suppose it is time for him to die. I've lost heart, and death is over me. Death is close to

me, and I know I have got to end. But think of all the hopes I had only a little time ago, the sense of fine

beginnings!... It was all a sham. There were no beginnings.... We're just ants in anthill cities, in a world that

doesn't matter; that goes on and rambles into nothingness. New YorkNew York doesn't even strike me as

"Think of it, Smallways: there's war everywhere! They're smashing up their civilisation before they have

made it. The sort of thing the English did at Alexandria, the Japanese at Port Arthur, the French at

Casablanca, is going on everywhere. Everywhere! Down in South America even they are fighting among

themselves! No place is safeno place is at peace. There is no place where a woman and her daughter can

hide and be at peace. The war comes through the air, bombs drop in the night. Quiet people go out in the

It was only very slowly that Bert got hold of this idea that the whole world was at war, that he formed any

image at all of the crowded countries south of these Arctic solitudes stricken with terror and dismay as these

newborn aerial navies swept across their skies. He was not used to thinking of the world as a whole, but as a

limitless hinterland of happenings beyond the range of his immediate vision. War in his imagination was

something, a source of news and emotion, that happened in a restricted area, called the Seat of War. But now

the whole atmosphere was the Seat of War, and every land a cockpit. So closely had the nations raced along

the path of research and invention, so secret and yet so parallel had been their plans and acquisitions, that it

was within a few hours of the launching of the first fleet in Franconia that an Asiatic Armada beat its

westward way across, high above the marvelling millions in the plain of the Ganges. But the preparations of

the Confederation of Eastern Asia had been on an altogether more colossal scale than the German. "With this

step," said Tan Tingsiang, "we overtake and pass the West. We recover the peace of the world that these

Their secrecy and swiftness and inventions had far surpassed those of the Germans, and where the Germans

had had a hundred men at work the Asiatics had ten thousand. There came to their great aeronautic parks at

Chinsifu and Tsingyen by the monorails that now laced the whole surface of China a limitless supply of

skilled and able workmen, workmen far above the average European in industrial efficiency. The news of the

German World Surprise simply quickened their efforts. At the time of the bombardment of New York it is

doubtful if the Germans had three hundred airships all together in the world; the score of Asiatic fleets flying

east and west and south must have numbered several thousand. Moreover the Asiatics had a real fighting

flyingmachine, the Niais as they were called, a light but quite efficient weapon, infinitely superior to the

German drachenflieger. Like that, it was a oneman machine, but it was built very lightly of steel and cane

and chemical silk, with a transverse engine, and a flapping sidewing. The aeronaut carried a gun firing

explosive bullets loaded with oxygen, and in addition, and true to the best tradition of Japan, a sword. Mostly

they were Japanese, and it is characteristic that from the first it was contemplated that the aeronaut should be

a swordsman. The wings of these flyers had batlike hooks forward, by which they were to cling to their

antagonist's gaschambers while boarding him. These light flyingmachines were carried with the fleets, and

also sent overland or by sea to the front with the men. They were capable of flights of from two to five

So, hard upon the uprush of the first German airfleet, these Asiatic swarms took to the atmosphere. Instantly

every organised Government in the world, was frantically and vehemently building airships and whatever

approach to a flying machine its inventors' had discovered. There was no time for diplomacy. Warnings and

ultimatums wer telegraphed to and fro, and in a few hours all the panicfierce world was openly at war, and

at war in the most complicated way. For Britain and France and Italy had declared war upon Germany and

outraged Swiss neutrality; India, at the sight of Asiatic airships, had broken into a Hindoo insurrection in

Bengal and a Mohametan revolt hostile to this in the Northwest Provincesthe latter spreading like

wildfire from Gobi to the Gold Coastand the Confederation of Eastern Asia had seized the oil wells of

Burmha and was impartially attacking America and Germany. In a week they were building airships in

Damascus and Cairo and Johannesburg; Australia and New Zealand were frantically equipping themselves.

One unique and terrifying aspect of this development was the swiftness with which these monsters could be

produced. To build an ironclad took from two to four years; an airship could be put together in as many

weeks. Moreover, compared with even a torpedo boat, the airship was remarkably simple to construct, given

the airchamber material, the engines, the gas plant, and the design, it was reallt not more complicated and

far easier than an ordinary wooden boat had been a hundred years before. And now from Cape Horn to Nova

Zembla, and from Canton round to Canton again, there were factories and workshops and industrial

And the German airships were barely in sight of the Atlantic waters, the first Asiatic fleet was scarcely

reported from Upper Burmah, before the fantastic fabric of credit and finance that had held the world together

economically for a hundred years strained and snapped. A tornado of realisation swept through every stock

exchange in the world; banks stopped payment, business shrank and ceased, factories ran on for a day or so

by a sort of inertia, completing the orders of bankrupt and extinguished customers, then stopped. The New

York Bert Smallways saw, for all its glare of light and traffic, was in the pit of an economic and financial

collapse unparalleled in history. The flow of the food supply was already a little checked. And before the

worldwar had lasted two weeksby the time, that is, that mast was rigged in Labradorthere was not a

city or town in the world outside China, however fair from the actual centres of destruction, where police and

government were not adopting special emergency methods to deal with a want of food and a glut of

The special peculiarities of aerial warfare were of such a nature as to trend, once it had begun, almost

inevitably towards social disorganisation. The first of these peculiarities was brought home to the Germans in

their attack upon New York; the immense power of destruction an airship has over the thing below, and its

relative inability to occupy or police or guard or garrison a surrendered position. Necessarily, in the face of

urban populations in a state of economic disorganisation and infuriated and starving, this led to violent and

destructive collisions, and even where the airfleet floated inactive above, there would be civil conflict and

passionate disorder below. Nothing comparable to this state of affairs had been known in the previous history

of warfare, unless we take such a case as that of a nineteenth century warship attacking some large savage or

barbaric settlement, or one of those naval bombardments that disfigure the history of Great Britain in the late

eighteenth century. Then, indeed, there had been cruelties and destruction that faintly foreshadowed the

horrors of the aerial war. Moreover, before the twentieth century the world had had but one experience, and

that a comparatively light one, in the Communist insurrection of Paris, 1871, of the possibilities of a modern

A second peculiarity of airship war as it first came to the world that also made for social collapse, was the

ineffectiveness of the early airships against each other. Upon anything below they could rain explosives in

the most deadly fashion, forts and ships and cities lay at their mercy, but unless they were prepared for a

suicidal grapple they could do remarkably little mischief to each other. The armament of the huge German

airships, big as the biggest mammoth liners afloat, was one machine gun that could easily have been packed

up on a couple of mules. In addition, when it became evident that the air must be fought for, the airsailors

were provided with rifles with explosive bullets of oxygen or inflammable substance, but no airship at any

time ever carried as much in the way of guns and armour as the smallest gunboat on the navy list had been

accustomed to do. Consequently, when these monsters met in battle, they manoeuvred for the upper place, or

grappled and fought like junks, throwing grenades fighting hand to hand in an entirely medieval fashion. The

risks of a collapse and fall on either side came near to balancing in every case the chances of victory. As a

consequence, and after their first experiences of battle, one finds a growing tendency on the part of the

airfleet admirals to evade joining battle, and to seek rather the moral advantage of a destructive counter

And if the airships were too ineffective, the early drachenflieger were either too unstable, like the German, or

too light, like the Japanese, to produce immediately decisive results. Later, it is true, the Brazilians launched a

flyingmachine of a type and scale that was capable of dealing with an airship, but they built only three or

four, they operated only in South America, and they vanished from history untraceably in the time when

worldbankruptcy put a stop to all further engineering production on any considerable scale.

The third peculiarity of aerial warfare was that it was at once enormously destructive and entirely indecisive.

It had this unique feature, that both sides lay open to punitive attack. In all previous forms of war, both by

land and sea, the losing side was speedily unable to raid its antagonist's territory and the communications.

One fought on a "front," and behind that front the winner's supplies and resources, his towns and factories

and capital, the peace of his country, were secure. If the war was a naval one, you destroyed your enemy's

battle fleet and then blockaded his ports, secured his coaling stations, and hunted down any stray cruisers that

threatened your ports of commerce. But to blockade and watch a coastline is one thing, to blockade and

watch the whole surface of a country is another, and cruisers and privateers are things that take long to make,

that cannot be packed up and hidden and carried unostentatiously from point to point. In aerial war the

stronger side, even supposing it destroyed the main battle fleet of the weaker, had then either to patrol and

watch or destroy every possible point at which he might produce another and perhaps a novel and more

deadly form of flyer. It meant darkening his air with airships. It meant building them by the thousand and

making aeronauts by the.hundred thousand. A small uninitated airship could be hidden in a railway shed, in a

And in the air are no streets, no channels, no point where one can say of an antagonist, "If he wants to reach

Consequently it was impossible to end a war by any of the established methods. A, having outnumbered and

overwhelmed B, hovers, a thousand airships strong, over his capital, threatening to bombard it unless B

submits. B replies by wireless telegraphy that he is now in the act of bombarding the chief manufacturing city

of A by means of three raider airships. A denounces B's raiders as pirates and so forth, bombards B's capital,

and sets off to hunt down B's airships, while B, in a state of passionate emotion and heroic

unconquerableness, sets to work amidst his ruins, making fresh airships and explosives for the benefit of A.

The war became perforce a universal guerilla war, a war inextricably involving civilians and homes and all

These aspects of aerial fighting took the world by surprise. There had been no foresight to deduce these

consequences. If there had been, the world would have arranged for a Universal Peace Conference in 1900.

But mechanical invention had gone faster than intellectual and social organisation, and the world, with its

silly old flags, its silly unmeaning tradition of nationality, its cheap newspapers and cheaper passions and

imperialisms, its base commercial motives and habitual insincerities and vulgarities, its race lies and

conflicts, was taken by surprise. Once the war began there was no stopping it. The flimsy fabric of credit that

had grown with no man foreseeing, and that had held those hundreds of millions in an economic

interdependence that no man clearly understood, dissolved in panic. Everywhere went the airships dropping

bombs, destroying any hope of a rally, and everywhere below were economic catastrophe, starving workless

people, rioting, and social disorder. Whatever constructive guiding intelligence there had been among the

nations vanished in the passionate stresses of the time. Such newspapers and documents and histories as

survive from this period all tell one universal story of towns and cities with the food supply interrupted and

their streets congested with starving unemployed; of crises in administration and states of siege, of

provisional Governments and Councils of Defence, and, in the cases of India and Egypt, insurrectionary

committees taking charge of the rearming of the population, of the making of batteries and gunpits, of the

One sees these things in glimpses, in illuminated moments, as if through a driving reek of clouds, going on all

over the world. It was the dissolution of an age; it was the collapse of the civilisation that had trusted to

machinery, and the instruments of its destruction were machines. But while the collapse of the previous great

civilisation, that of Rome, had been a matter of centuries, had been a thing of phase and phase, like the ageing

and dying of a man, this, like his killing by railway or motor car, was one swift, conclusive smashing and an

The early battles of the aerial war were no doubt determined by attempts to realise the old naval maxim, to

ascertain the position of the enemy's fleet and to destroy it. There was first the battle of the Bernese Oberland,

in which the Italian and French navigables in their flank raid upon the Franconian Park were assailed by the

Swiss experimental squadron, supported as the day wore on by German airships, and then the encounter of

Then came the Battle of North India, in which the entire AngloIndian aeronautic settlement establishment

fought for three days against overwhelming odds, and was dispersed and destroyed in detail.

And simultaneously with the beginning of that, commenced the momentous struggle of the Germans and

Asiatics that is usually known as the Battle of Niagara because of the objective of the Asiatic attack. But it

passed gradually into a sporadic conflict over half a continent. Such German airships as escaped destruction

in battle descended and surrendered to the Americans, and were remanned, and in the end it became a series

of pitiless and heroic encounters between the Americans, savagely resolved to exterminate their enemies, and

a continually reinforced army of invasion from Asia quartered upon the Pacific slope and supported by an

immense fleet. From the first the war in America was fought with implacable bitterness; no quarter was

asked, no prisoners were taken. With ferocious and magnificent energy the Americans constructed and

launched ship after ship to battle and perish against the Asiatic multitudes. All other affairs were subordinate

to this war, the whole population was presently living or dying for it. Presently, as I shall tell, the white men

found in the Butteridge machine a weapon that could meet and fight the flyingmachines of the Asiatic

The Asiatic invasion of America completely effaced the GermanAmerican conflict. It vanishes from history.

At first it had seemed to promise quite sufficient tragedy in itselfbeginning as it did in unforgettable

massacre. After the destruction of central New York all America had risen like one man, resolved to die a

thousand deaths rather than submit to Germany. The Germans grimly resolved upon beating the Americans

into submission and, following out the plans developed by the Prince, had seized Niagarain order to avail

themselves of its enormous powerworks; expelled all its inhabitants and made a desert of its environs as far

as Buffalo. They had also, directly Great Britain and France declare war, wrecked the country upon the

Canadian side for nearly ten miles inland. They began to bring up men and material from the fleet off the east

coast, stringing out to and fro like bees getting honey. It was then that the Asiatic forces appeared, and it was

in their attack upon this German base at Niagara that the airfleets of East and West first met and the greater

One conspicuous peculiarity of the early aerial fighting arose from the profound secrecy with which the

airships had been prepared. Each power had had but the dimmest inkling of the schemes of its rivals, and

even experiments with its own devices were limited by the needs of secrecy. None of the designers of airships

and aeroplanes had known clearly what their inventions might have to fight; many had not imagined they

would have to fight anything whatever in the air; and had planned them only for the dropping of explosives.

Such had been the German idea. The only weapon for fighting another airship with which the Franconian

fleet had been provided was the machine gun forward. Only after the fight over New York were the men

given short rifles with detonating bullets. Theoretically, the drachenflieger were to have been the fighting

weapon. They were declared to be aerial torpedoboats, and the aeronaut was supposed to swoop close to his

antagonist and cast his bombs as he whirled past. But indeed these contrivances were hopelessly unstable; not

onethird in any engagement succeeded in getting back to the mother airship. The rest were either smashed

The allied ChinoJapanese fleet made the same distinction as the Germans between airships and fighting

machines heavier than air, but the type in both cases was entirely different from the occidental models,

andit is eloquent of the vigour with which these great peoples took up and bettered the European methods

of scientific research in almost every particular the invention of Asiatic engineers. Chief among these, it is

worth remarking, was Mohini K. Chatterjee, a political exile who had formerly served in the BritishIndian

The German airship was fishshaped, with a blunted head; the Asiatic airship was also fishshaped, but not

so much on the lines of a cod or goby as of a ray or sole. It had a wide, flat underside, unbroken by windows

or any opening except along the middle line. Its cabins occupied its axis,, with a sort of bridge deck above,

and the gaschambers gave the whole affair the shape of a gipsy's hooped tent, except that it was much

flatter. The German airship was essentially a navigable balloon very much lighter than air; the Asiatic airship

was very little lighter than air and skimmed through it with much greater velocity if with considerably less

stability. They carried fore and aft guns, the latter much the larger, throwing inflammatory shells, and in

addition they had nests for riflemen on both the upper and the under side. Light as this armament was in

comparison with the smallest gunboat that ever sailed, it was sufficient for them to outfight as well as outfly

the German monster airships. In action they flew to get behind or over the Germans: they even dashed

underneath, avoiding only passing immediately beneath the magazine, and then as soon as they had crossed

let fly with their rear gun, and sent flares or oxygen shells into the antagonist's gaschambers.

It was not in their airships, but, as I have said, in their flyingmachines proper, that the strength of the

Asiatics lay. Next only to the Butteridge machine, these were certainly the most efficient heavierthanair

fliers that had ever appeared. They were the invention of a Japanese artist, and they differed in type extremely

from the boxkite quality of the German drachenflieger. They had curiously curved, flexible side wings,

more like BENT butterfly's wings than anything else, and made of a substance like celluloid and of brightly

painted silk, and they had a long hummingbird tail. At the forward corner of the wings were hooks, rather

like the claws of a bat, by which the machine could catch and hang and tear at the walls of an airship's

gaschamber. The solitary rider sat between the wings above a transverse explosive engine, an explosive

engine that differed in no essential particular from those in use in the light motor bicycles of the period.

Below was a single large wheel. The rider sat astride of a saddle, as in the Butteridge machine, and he carried

a large doubleedged twohanded sword, in addition to his explosivebullet firing rifle.

One sets down these particulars and compares the points of the American and German pattern of aeroplane

and navigable, but none of these facts were clearly known to any of those who fought in this monstrously

Each side went into action against it knew not what, under novel conditions and with apparatus that even

without hostile attacks was capable of producing the most disconcerting surprises. Schemes of action,

attempts at collective manoeuvring necessarily went to pieces directly the fight began, just as they did in

almost all the early ironclad battles of the previous century. Each captain then had to fall back upon

individual action and his own devices; one would see triumph in what another read as a cue for flight and

despair. It is as true of the Battle of Niagara as of the Battle of Lissa that it was not a battle but a bundle of "

To such a spectator as Bert it presented itself as a series of incidents, some immense, some trivial, but

collectively incoherent. He never had a sense of any plain issue joined, of any point struggled for and won or

lost. He saw tremendous things happen and in the end his world darkened to disaster and ruin.

He saw the battle from the ground, from Prospect Park and from Goat Island, whither he fled.

The Prince had resumed command of his fleet through wireless telegraphy long before the Zeppelin had

located his encampment in Labrador. By his direction the German airfleet, whose advance scouts had been

in contact with the Japanese over the Rocky Mountains, had concentrated upon Niagara and awaited his

arrival. He had rejoined his command early in the morning of the twelfth, and Bert had his first prospect of

the Gorge of Niagara while he was doing net drill outside the middle gaschamber at sunrise. The Zeppelin

was flying very high at the time, and far below he saw the water in the gorge marbled with froth and then

away to the west the great crescent of the Canadian Fall shining, flickering and foaming in the level sunlight

and sending up a deep, incessant thudding rumble to the sky. The airfleet was keeping station in an

enormous crescent, with its horns pointing southwestward, a long array of shining monsters with tails

rotating slowly and German ensigns now trailing from their bellies aft of their Marconi pendants.

Niagara city was still largely standing then, albeit its streets were empty of all life. Its bridges were intact; its

hotels and restaurants still flying flags and inviting sky signs; its powerstations running. But about it the

country on both sides of the gorge might have been swept by a colossal broom. Everything that could

possibly give cover to an attack upon the German position at Niagara had been levelled as ruthlessly as

machinery and explosives could contrive; houses blown up and burnt, woods burnt, fences and crops

destroyed. The monorails had been torn up, and the roads in particular cleared of all possibility of

concealment or shelter. Seen from above, the effect of this wreckage was grotesque. Young woods had been

destroyed wholesale by dragging wires, and the spoilt saplings, smashed or uprooted, lay in swathes like

corn after the sickle. Houses had an appearance of being flattened down by the pressure of a gigantic finger.

Much burning was still going on, and large areas had been reduced to patches of smouldering and sometimes

Here and there lay the debris of belated fugitives, carts, and dead bodies of horses and men; and where houses

had had watersupplies there were pools of water and running springs from the ruptured pipes. In unscorched

fields horses and cattle still fed peacefully. Beyond this desolated area the countryside was still standing, but

almost all the people had fled. Buffalo was on fire to an enormous extent, and there were no signs of any

efforts to grapple with the flames. Niagara city itself was being rapidly converted to the needs of a military

depot. A large number of skilled engineers had already been brought from the fleet and were busily at work

adapting the exterior industrial apparatus of the place to the purposes of an aeronautic park. They had made a

gas recharging station at the corner of the American Fall above the funicular railway, and they were, opening

up a much larger area to the south for the same purpose. Over the powerhouses and hotels and suchlike

The Zeppelin circled slowly over this scene twice while the Prince surveyed it from the swinging gallery; it

then rose towards the centre of the crescent and transferred the Prince and his suite, Kurt included, to the

Hohenzollern, which had been chosen as the flagship during the impending battle. They were swung up on a

small cable from the forward gallery, and the men of the Zeppelin manned the outer netting as the Prince and

his staff left them. The Zeppelin then came about, circled down and grounded in Prospect Park, in order to

land the wounded and take aboard explosives; for she had come to Labrador with her magazines empty, it

being uncertain what weight she might need to carry. She also replenished the hydrogen in one of her forward

Bert was detailed as a bearer and helped carry the wounded one by one into the nearest of the large hotels that

faced the Canadian shore. The hotel was quite empty except that there were two trained American nurses and

a negro porter, and three or four Germans awaiting them. Bert went with the Zeppelin's doctor into the main

street of the place, and they broke into a drug shop and obtained various things of which they stood in need.

As they returned they found an officer and two men making a rough inventory of the available material in the

various stores. Except for them the wide, main street of the town was quite deserted, the people had been

given three hours to clear out, and everybody, it seemed, had done so. At one corner a dead man lay against

the wallshot. Two or three dogs were visible up the empty vista, but towards its river end the passage of a

string of monorail ears broke the stillness and the silence. They were loaded with hose, and were passing to

Bert pushed a case of medicine balanced on a bicycle taken from an adjacent shop, to the hotel, and then he

was sent to load bombs into the Zeppelin magazine, a duty that called for elaborate care. From this job he was

presently called off by the captain of the Zeppelin, who sent him with a note to the officer in charge of the

AngloAmerican Power Company, for the field telephone had still to be adjusted. Bert received his

instructions in German, whose meaning he guessed, and saluted and took the note, not caring to betray his

ignorance of the language. He started off with a bright air of knowing his way and turned a corner or so, and

was only beginning to suspect that he did not know where he was going when his attention was recalled to

He looked up and found the view obstructed by the houses on either side of the street. He hesitated, and then

curiosity took him back towards the bank of the river. Here his view was inconvenienced by trees, and it was

with a start that he discovered the Zeppelin, which he knew had still a quarter of her magazines to fill, was

rising over Goat Island. She had not waited for her complement of ammunition. It occurred to him that he

was left behind. He ducked back among the trees and bushes until he felt secure from any afterthought on

the part of the Zeppelin's captain. Then his curiosity to see what the German airfleet faced overcame him,

From that point he had nearly a hemisphere of sky and got his first glimpse of the Asiatic airships low in the

They were far less impressive than the German ships. He could not judge the distance, and they flew

Bert stood there in the middle of the bridge, in a place that most people who knew it remembered as a place

populous with sightseers and excursionists, and he was the only human being in sight there. Above him, very

high in the heavens, the contending airfleets manoeuvred; below him the river seethed like a sluice towards

the American Fall. He was curiously dressed. His cheap blue serge trousers were thrust into German airship

rubber boots, and on his head he wore an aeronaut's white cap that was a trifle too large for him. He thrust

that back to reveal his staring little Cockney face, still scarred upon the brow. "Gaw!" he whispered.

Then at a certain point terror seized him and he took to his heels in the direction of Goat Island.

For a time after they were in sight of each other, neither fleet attempted to engage. The Germans numbered

sixtyseven great airships and they maintained the crescent formation at a height of nearly four thousand feet.

They kept a distance of about one and a half lengths, so that the horns of the crescent were nearly thirty miles

apart. Closely in tow of the airships of the extreme squadrons on either wing were about thirty drachenflieger

At first, only what was called the Southern fleet of the Asiatics was visible to him. It consisted of forty

airships, carrying all together nearly four hundred oneman flyingmachines upon their flanks, and for some

time it flew slowly and at a minimum distance of perhaps a dozen miles from the Germans, eastward across

their front. At first Bert could distinguish only the greater bulks, then he perceived the oneman machines as

a multitude of very small objects drifting like motes in the sunshine about and beneath the larger shapes.

Bert saw nothing then of the second fleet of the Asiatics, though probably that was coming into sight of the

The air was very still, the sky almost without a cloud, and the German fleet had risen to an immense height,

so that the airships seemed no longer of any considerable size. Both ends of their crescent showed plainly. As

they beat southward they passed slowly between Bert and the sunlight, and became black outlines of

themselves. The drachenflieger appeared as little flecks of black on either wing of this aerial Armada.

The two fleets seemed in no hurry to engage. The Asiatics went far away into the east, quickening their pace

and rising as they did so, and then tailed out into a long column and came flying back, rising towards the

German left. The squadrons of the latter came about, facing this oblique advance, and suddenly little

flickerings and a faint crepitating sound told that they had opened fire. For a time no effect was visible to the

watcher on the bridge. Then, like a handful of snowflakes, the drachenflieger swooped to the attack, and a

multitude of red specks whirled up to meet them. It was to Bert's sense not only enormously remote but

singularly inhuman. Not four hours since he had been on one of those very airships, and yet they seemed to

him now not gasbags carrying men, but strange sentient creatures that moved about and did things with a

purpose of their own. The flight of the Asiatic and German flyingmachines joined and dropped earthward,

became like a handful of white and red rose petals flung from a distant window, grew larger, until Bert could

see the overturned ones spinning through the air, and were hidden by great volumes of dark smoke that were

rising in the direction of Buffalo. For a time they all were hidden, then two or three white and a number of

red ones. rose again into the sky, like a swarm of big butterflies, and circled fighting and drove away out of

A heavy report recalled Bert's eyes to the zenith, and behold, the great crescent had lost its dressing and burst

into a disorderly long cloud of airships! One had dropped halfway down the sky. It was flaming fore and aft,

and even as Bert looked it turned over and fell, spinning over and over itself and vanished into the smoke of

Bert's mouth opened and shut, and he clutched tighter on the rail of the bridge. For some momentsthey

seemed long momentsthe two fleets remained without any further change flying obliquely towards each

other, and making what came to Bert's ears as a midget uproar. Then suddenly from either side airships began

dropping out of alignment, smitten by missiles he could neither see nor trace. The string of Asiatic ships

swung round and either charged into or over (it was difficult to say from below) the shattered line of the

Germans, who seemed to open out to give way to them. Some sort of manoeuvring began, but Bert could not

grasp its import. The left of the battle became a confused dance of airships. For some minutes up there the

two crossing lines of ships looked so close it seemed like a handtohand scuffle in the sky. Then they broke

up into groups and duels. The descent of German airships towards the lower sky increased. One of them

flared down and vanished far away in the north; two dropped with something twisted and crippled in their

movements; then a group of antagonists came down from the zenith in an eddying conflict, two Asiatics

against one German, and were presently joined by another, and drove away eastward all together with others

One Asiatic either rammed or collided with a still more gigantic German, and the two went spinning to

destruction together. The northern squadron of Asiatics came into the battle unnoted by Bert, except that the

multitude of ships above seemed presently increased. In a little while the fight was utter confusion, drifting

on the whole to the southwest against the wind. It became more and more a series of group encounters. Here

a huge German airship flamed earthward with a dozen flat Asiatic craft about her, crushing her every attempt

to recover. Here another hung with its screw fighting off the swordsman from a swarm of flyingmachines.

Here, again, an Asiatic aflame at either end swooped out of the battle. His attention went from incident to

incident in the vast clearness overhead; these conspicuous cases of destruction caught and held his mind; it

was only very slowly that any sort of scheme manifested itself between those nearer, more striking episodes.

The mass of the airships that eddied remotely above was, however, neither destroying nor destroyed. The

majority of them seemed to be going at full speed and circling upward for position, exchanging ineffectual

shots as they did so. Very little ramming was essayed after the first tragic downfall of rammer and rammed,

and what ever attempts at boarding were made were invisible to Bert. There seemed, however, a steady

attempt to isolate antagonists, to cut them off from their fellows and bear them down, causing a perpetual

sailing back and interlacing of these shoaling bulks. The greater numbers of the Asiatics and their swifter

heeling movements gave them the effect of persistently attacking the Germans. Overhead, and evidently

endeavouring to keep itself in touch with the works of Niagara, a body of German airships drew itself

together into a compact phalanx, and the Asiatics became more and more intent upon breaking this up. He

was grotesquely reminded of fish in a fishpond struggling for crumbs. He could see puny puffs of smoke

A flapping shadow passed for a moment between Bert and the sun and was followed by another. A whirring

of engines, click, clock, clitter clock, smote upon his ears. Instantly he forgot the zenith.

Perhaps a hundred yards above the water, out of the south, riding like Valkyries swiftly through the air on the

strange steeds the engineering of Europe had begotten upon the artistic inspiration of Japan, came a long

string of Asiatic swordsman. The wings flapped jerkily, click, block, clitter clock, and the machines drove up;

they spread and ceased, and the apparatus came soaring through the air. So they rose and fell and rose again.

They passed so closely overhead that Bert could hear their voices calling to one another. They swooped

towards Niagara city and landed one after another in a long line in a clear space before the hotel. But he did

not stay to watch them land. One yellow face had craned over and looked at him, and for one enigmatical

It was then the idea came to Bert that he was altogether too conspicuous in the middle of the bridge, and that

he took to his heels towards Goat Island. Thence, dodging about among the trees, with perhaps an excessive

When Bert's sense of security was sufficiently restored for him to watch the battle again, he perceived that a

brisk little fight was in progress between the Asiatic aeronauts and the German engineers for the possession

of Niagara city. It was the first time in the whole course of the war that he had seen anything resembling

fighting as he had studied it in the illustratedpapers of his youth. It seemed to him almost as though things

were coming right. He saw men carrying rifles and taking cover and running briskly from point to point in a

loose attacking formation. The first batch of aeronauts had probably been under the impression that the city

was deserted. They had grounded in the open near Prospect Park and approached the houses towards the

powerworks before they were disillusioned by a sudden fire. They had scattered back to the cover of a bank

near the waterit was too far for them to reach their machines again; they were lying and firing at the men

Then to their support came a second string of red flyingmachines driving up from the east. They rose up out

of the haze above the houses and came round in a long curve as if surveying the position below. The fire of

the Germans rose to a roar, and one of those soaring shapes gave an abrupt jerk backward and fell among the

houses. The others swooped down exactly like great birds upon the roof of the powerhouse. They caught

upon it, and from each sprang a nimble little figure and ran towards the parapet.

Other flapping birdshapes came into this affair, but Bert had not seen their coming. A staccato of shots came

over to him, reminding him of army manoeuvres, of newspaper descriptions of fights, of all that was entirely

correct in his conception of warfare. He saw quite a number of Germans running from the outlying houses

towards the powerhouse. Two fell. One lay still, but the other wriggled and made efforts for a time. The

hotel that was used as a hospital, and to which he had helped carry the wounded men from the Zeppelin

earlier in the day, suddenly ran up the Geneva flag. The town that had seemed so quiet had evidently been

concealing a considerable number of Germans, and they were now concentrating to hold the central

powerhouse. He wondered what ammunition they might have. More and more of the Asiatic

flyingmachines came into the conflict. They had disposed of the unfortunate German drachenflieger and

were now aiming at the incipient aeronautic park,the electric gas generators and repair stations which

formed the German base. Some,landed, and their aeronauts took cover and became energetic infantry

soldiers. Others hovered above the fight, their men ever and again firing shots down at some chance exposure

below. The firing came in paroxysms; now there would be a watchful lull and now a rapid tattoo of shots,

rising to a roar. Once or twice flying machines, as they circled warily, came right overhead, and for a time

Ever and again a larger thunder mingled with the rattle and reminded him of the grapple of airships far above,

Abruptly something dropped from the zenith; something like a barrel or a huge football.

CRASH! It smashed with an immense report. It had fallen among the grounded Asiatic aeroplanes that lay

among the turf and flowerbeds near the river. They flew in scraps and fragments, turf, trees, and gravel leapt

and fell; the aeronauts still lying along the canal bank were thrown about like sacks, catspaws flew across the

foaming water. All the windows of the hotel hospital that had been shiningly reflecting blue sky and airships

the moment before became vast black stars. Bang!a second followed. Bert looked up and was filled with a

sense of a number of monstrous bodies swooping down, coming down on the whole affair like a flight of

bellying blankets, like a string of vast dishcovers. The central tangle of the battle above was circling down

as if to come into touch with the powerhouse fight. He got a new effect of airships altogether, as vast things

coming down upon him, growing swiftly larger and larger and more overwhelming, until the houses over the

way seemed small, the American rapids narrow, the bridge flimsy, the combatants infinitesimal. As they

came down they became audible as a complex of shootings and vast creakings and groanings and beatings

and throbbings and shouts and shots. The foreshortened black eagles at the foreends of the Germans had an

Some of these fighting airships came within five hundred feet of the ground. Bert could see men on the lower

galleries of the Germans, firing rifles; could see Asiatics clinging to the ropes; saw one man in aluminium

diver's gear fall flashing headlong into the waters above Goat Island. For the first time he saw the Asiatic

airships closely. From this aspect they reminded him more than anything else of colossal snowshoes; they

had a curious patterning in black and white, in forms that reminded him of the engineturned cover of a

watch. They had no hanging galleries, but from little openings on the middle line peeped out men and the

muzzles of guns. So, driving in long, descending and ascending curves, these monsters wrestled and fought. It

was like clouds fighting, like puddings trying to assassinate each other. They whirled and circled about each

other, and for a time threw Goat Island and Niagara into a smoky twilight, through which the sunlight smote

in shafts and beams. They spread and closed and spread and grappled and drove round over the rapids, and

two miles away or more into Canada, and back over the Falls again. A German caught fire, and the whole

crowd broke away from her flare and rose about her dispersing, leaving her to drop towards Canada and blow

up as she dropped. Then with renewed uproar the others closed again. Once from the men in Niagara city

came a sound like an anthill cheering. Another German burnt, and one badly deflated by the prow of an

It became more and more evident that the Germans were getting the worst of the unequal fight. More and

more obviously were they being persecuted. Less and less did they seem to fight with any object other than

escape. The Asiatics swept by them and above them, ripped their bladders, set them alight, picked off their

dimly seen men in diving clothes, who struggled against fire and tear with fire extinguishers and silk ribbons

in the inner netting. They answered only with ineffectual shots. Thence the battle circled back over Niagara,

and then suddenly the Germans, as if at a preconcerted signal, broke and dispersed, going east, west, north,

and south, in open and confused flight. The Asiatics, as they realised this, rose to fly above them and after

them. Only one little knot of four Germans and perhaps a dozen Asiatics remained fighting about the

Round they swooped once again over the Canadian Fall, over the waste of waters eastward, until they were

distant and small, and then round and back, hurrying, bounding, swooping towards the one gaping spectator.

The whole struggling mass approached very swiftly, growing rapidly larger, and coming out black and

featureless against the afternoon sun and above the blinding welter of the Upper Rapids. It grew like a storm

cloud until once more it darkened the sky. The flat Asiatic airships kept high above the Germans and behind

them, and fired unanswered bullets into their gaschambers and upon their flanksthe oneman

flyingmachines hovered and alighted like a swarm of attacking bees. Nearer they came, and nearer, filling

the lower heaven. Two of the Germans swooped and rose again, but the Hohenzollern had suffered too much

for that. She lifted weakly, turned sharply as if to get out of the battle, burst into flames fore and aft, swept

down to the water, splashed into it obliquely, and rolled over and over and came down stream rolling and

smashing and writhing like a thing alive, halting and then coming on again, with her torn and bent propeller

still beating the air. The bursting flames spluttered out again in clouds of steam. It was a disaster gigantic in

its dimensions. She lay across the rapids like an island, like tall cliffs, tall cliffs that came rolling, smoking,

and crumpling, and collapsing, advancing with a sort of fluctuating rapidity upon Bert. One Asiatic

airshipit looked to Bert from below like three hundred yards of pavementwhirled back and circled two

or three times over that great overthrow, and half a dozen crimson flyingmachines danced for a moment like

great midges in the sunlight before they swept on after their fellows. The rest of the fight had already gone

over the island, a wild crescendo of shots and yells and smashing uproar. It was hidden from Bert now by the

trees of the island, and forgotten by him in the nearer spectacle of the huge advance of the defeated German

airship. Something fell with a mighty smashing and splintering of boughs unheeded behind him.

It seemed for a time that the Hohenzollern must needs break her back upon the Parting of the Waters, and

then for a time her propeller flopped and frothed in the river and thrust the mass of buckling, crumpled

wreckage towards the American shore. Then the sweep of the torrent that foamed down to the American Fall

caught her, and in another minute the immense mass of deflating wreckage, with flames spurting out in three

new places, had crashed against the bridge that joined Goat Island and Niagara city, and forced a long arm, as

it were, in a heaving tangle under the central span. Then the middle chambers blew up with a loud report, and

in another moment the bridge had given way and the main bulk of the airship, like some grotesque cripple in

rags, staggered, flapping and waving flambeaux to the crest of the Fall and hesitated there and vanished in a

Its detached foreend remained jammed against that little island, Green Island it used to be called, which

Bert followed this disaster from the Parting of the Waters to the bridge head. Then, regardless of cover,

regardless of the Asiatic airship hovering like a huge house roof without walls above the Suspension Bridge,

he sprinted along towards the north and came out for the first time upon that rocky point by Luna Island that

looks sheer down upon the American Fall. There he stood breathless amidst that eternal rush of sound,

Far below, and travelling rapidly down the gorge, whirled something like a huge empty sack. For him it

meantwhat did it not mean?the German airfleet, Kurt, the Prince, Europe, all things stable and

familiar, the forces that had brought him, the forces that had seemed indisputably victorious. And it went

down the rapids like an empty sack and left the visible world to Asia, to yellow people beyond Christendom,

Remote over Canada receded the rest of that conflict and vanished beyond the range of his vision....

The whack of a bullet on the rocks beside him reminded him that he was a visible object and wearing at least

portions of a German uniform. It drove him into the trees again, and for a time he dodged and dropped and

"Beaten," he whispered. "Beaten and done for... Chinese! Yellow chaps chasing 'em!"

At last he came to rest in a clump of bushes near a lockedup and deserted refreshment shed within view of

the American side. They made a sort of hole and harbour for him; they met completely overhead. He looked

across the rapids, but the firing had ceased now altogether and everything seemed quiet. The Asiatic

aeroplane had moved from its former position above the Suspension Bridge, was motionless now above

Niagara city, shadowing all that district about the powerhouse which had been the scene of the land fight.

The monster had an air of quiet and assured predominance, and from its stern it trailed, serene and

ornamental, a long streaming flag, the red, black, and yellow of the great alliance, the Sunrise and the

Dragon. Beyond, to the east, at a much higher level, hung a second consort, and Bert, presently gathering

courage, wriggled out and craned his neck to find another still airship against the sunset in the south.

The fighting, it seemed at first, was quite over in Niagara city, though a German flag was still flying from one

shattered house. A white sheet was hoisted above the powerhouse, and this remained flying all through the

events that followed. But presently came a sound of shots and then German soldiers running. They

disappeared among the houses, and then came two engineers in blue shirts and trousers hotly pursued by

three Japanese swordsman. The foremost of the two fugitives was a shapely man, and ran lightly and well;

the second was a sturdy little man, and rather fat. He ran comically in leaps and bounds, with his plump arms

bent up by his side and his head thrown back. The pursuers ran with uniforms and dark thin metal and leather

headdresses. The little man stumbled, and Bert gasped, realising a new horror in war.

The foremost swordsman won three strides on him and was near enough to slash at him and miss as he

A dozen yards they ran, and then the swordsman slashed again, and Bert could hear across the waters a little

sound like the moo of an elfin cow as the fat little man fell forward. Slash went the swordsman and slash at

something on the ground that tried to save itself with ineffectual hands. "Oh, I carn't!" cried Bert, near

The swordsman slashed a fourth time and went on as his fellows came up after the better runner. The

hindmost swordsman stopped and turned back. He had perceived some movement perhaps; but at any rate he

"Oooo!" groaned Bert at every slash, and shrank closer into the bushes and became very still. Presently

came a sound of shots from the town, and then everything was quiet, everything, even the hospital.

He saw presently little figures sheathing swords come out from the houses and walk to the debris of the

flyingmachines the bomb had destroyed. Others appeared wheeling undamaged aeroplanes upon their

wheels as men might wheel bicycles, and sprang into the saddles and flapped into the air. A string of three

airships appeared far away in the east and flew towards the zenith. The one that hung low above Niagara city

For a long time he watched the further happenings in Niagara city as a rabbit might watch a meet. He saw

men going from building to building, to set fire to them, as he presently realised, and he heard a series of dull

detonations from the wheel pit of the powerhouse. Some similar business went on among the works on the

Canadian side. Meanwhile more and more airships appeared, and many more flyingmachines, until at last it

seemed to him nearly a third of the Asiatic fleet had reassembled. He watched them from his bush, cramped

but immovable, watched them gather and range themselves and signal and pick up men, until at last they

sailed away towards the glowing sunset, going to the great Asiatic rendezvous, above the oil wells of

Cleveland. They dwindled and passed away, leaving him alone, so far as he could tell, the only living man in

a world of ruin and strange loneliness almost beyond describing. He watched them recede and vanish. He

It was far more than any personal desolation extremity that flooded his soul. It seemed to him indeed that this

He did not at first envisage his own plight in definite and comprehensible terms. Things happened to him so

much of late, his own efforts had counted for so little, that he had become passive and planless. His last

scheme had been to go round the coast of England as a desert dervish giving refined entertainment to his

fellowcreatures. Fate had quashed that. Fate had seen fit to direct him to other destinies, had hurried him

from point to point, and dropped him at last upon this little wedge of rock between the cataracts. It did not

instantly occur to him that now it was his turn to play. He had a singular feeling that all must end as a dream

ends, that presently surely he would be back in the world of Grubb and Edna and Bun Hill, that this roar, this

glittering presence of incessant water, would be drawn aside as a curtain is drawn aside after a holiday lantern

show, and old familiar, customary things reassume their sway. It would be interesting to tell people how he

had seen Niagara. And then Kurt's words came into his head: "People torn away from the people they care

for; homes smashed, creatures full of life and memories and peculiar little giftstorn to pieces, starved, and

He wondered, half incredulous, if that was in deed true. It was so hard to realise it. Out beyond there was it

possible that Tom and Jessica were also in some dire extremity? that the little greengrocer's shop was no

longer standing open, with Jessica serving respectfully, warming Tom's ear in sharp asides, or punctually

He tried to think what day of the week it was, and found he had lost his reckoning. Perhaps it was Sunday. If

so, were they going to church or, were they hiding, perhaps in bushes? What had happened to the landlord,

the butcher, and to Butteridge and all those people on Dymchurch beach? Something, he knew, had happened

to Londona bombardment. But who had bombarded? Were Tom and Jessica too being chased by strange

brown men with long bare swords and evil eyes? He thought of various possible aspects of affliction, but

presently one phase ousted all the others. Were they getting much to eat? The question haunted him, obsessed

It dawned upon him that a peculiar misery that oppressed him was not so much anxiety and patriotic sorrow

He reflected and turned his steps towards the little refreshment shed that stood near the end of the ruined

He strolled round it once or twice, and then attacked the shutters with his pocketknife, reinforced presently

by a wooden stake he found conveniently near. At last he got a shutter to give, and tore it back and stuck in

He got at the inside fastening of the shutter and had presently this establishment open for his exploration. He

found several sealed bottles of sterilized milk, much mineral water, two tins of biscuits and a crock of very

stale cakes, cigarettes in great quantity but very dry, some rather dry oranges, nuts, some tins of canned meat

and fruit, and plates and knives and forks and glasses sufficient for several score of people. There was also a

"Shan't starve," said Bert, "for a bit, anyhow." He sat on the vendor's seat and regaled himself with biscuits

"Quite restful," he muttered, munching and glancing about him restlessly, "after what I been through.

Wonder took possession of him. "Gaw!" he cried: "Wot a fight it's been! Smashing up the poor fellers!

'Eadlong! The airshipsthe fliers and all. I wonder what happened to the Zeppelin? ... And that chap

Some phantom of imperial solicitude floated through his mind. "Injia," he said....

After he had feasted, Bert lit a cigarette and sat meditative for a time. "Wonder where Grubb is?" he said; "I

He reverted to his own circumstances. "Dessay I shall 'ave to stop on this island for some time."

He tried to feel at his ease and secure, but presently the indefinable restlessness of the social animal in

solitude distressed him. He began to want to look over his shoulder, and, as a corrective, roused himself to

It was only very slowly that he began to realise the peculiarities of his position, to perceive that the breaking

down of the arch between Green Island and the mainland had cut him off completely from the world. Indeed

it was only when he came back to where the foreend of the Hohenzollern lay like a stranded ship, and was

contemplating the shattered bridge, that this dawned upon him. Even then it came with no sort of shock to his

mind, a fact among a number of other extraordinary and unmanageable facts. He stared at the shattered cabins

of the Hohenzollern and its widow's garment of dishevelled silk for a time, but without any idea of its

containing any living thing; it was all so twisted and smashed and entirely upside down. Then for a while he

gazed at the evening sky. A cloud haze was now appearing and not an airship was in sight. A swallow flew

Then for a time the rapids held his mind. "Roaring. It keeps on roaring and splashin' always and always.

He was chiefly conscious that a fortnight ago he had been in Bun Hill with no idea of travel in his mind, and

that now he was between the Falls of Niagara amidst the devastation and ruins of the greatest air fight in the

world, and that in the interval he had been across France, Belgium, Germany, England, Ireland, and a number

of other countries. It was an interesting thought and suitable for conversation, but of no great practical utility.

"Wonder 'ow I can get orf this?" he said. "Wonder if there is a way out? If not... rummy!"

Further reflection decided, "I believe I got myself in a bit of a 'ole coming over that bridge....

"Any'owgot me out of the way of them Japanesy chaps. Wouldn't 'ave taken 'em long to cut MY froat. No.

He resolved to return to the point of Luna Island. For a long time he stood without stirring, scrutinising the

Canadian shore and the wreckage of hotels and houses and the fallen trees of the Victoria Park, pink now in

the light of sundown. Not a human being was perceptible in that scene of headlong destruction. Then he came

back to the American side of the island, crossed close to the crumpled aluminium wreckage of the

Hohenzollern to Green Islet, and scrutinised the hopeless breach in the further bridge and the water that

boiled beneath it. Towards Buffalo there was still much smoke, and near the position of the Niagara railway

station the houses were burning vigorously. Everything was deserted now, everything was still. One little

abandoned thing lay on a transverse path between town and road, a crumpled heap of clothes with sprawling

"'Ave a look round," said Bert, and taking a path that ran through the middle of the island he presently

discovered the wreckage of the two Asiatic aeroplanes that had fallen out of the struggle that ended the

The machine had evidently dropped vertically and was badly knocked about amidst a lot of smashed branches

in a clump of trees. Its bent and broken wings and shattered stays sprawled amidst new splintered wood, and

its forepeak stuck into the ground. The aeronaut dangled weirdly head downward among the leaves and

branches some yards away, and Bert only discovered him as he turned from the aeroplane. In the dusky

evening light and stillnessfor the sun had gone now and the wind had altogether fallenthis inverted

yellow face was anything but a tranquilising object to discover suddenly a couple of yards away. A broken

branch had run clean through the man's thorax, and he hung, so stabbed, looking limp and absurd. In his hand

"Gaw!" he whispered, "I don' like dead bodies some'ow! I'd almost rather that chap was alive."

He would not go along the path athwart which the Chinaman hung. He felt he would rather not have trees

round him any more, and that it would be more comfortable to be quite close to the sociable splash and

He came upon the second aeroplane in a clear grassy space by the side of the streaming water, and it seemed

scarcely damaged at all. It looked as though it had floated down into a position of rest. It lay on its side with

one wing in the air. There was no aeronaut near it, dead or alive. There it lay abandoned, with the water

Bert remained a little aloof from it for a long time, looking into the gathering shadows among the trees, in the

expectation of another Chinaman alive or dead. Then very cautiously he approached the machine and stood

regarding its widespread vans, its big steering wheel and empty saddle. He did not venture to touch it.

He saw a few yards away, something bobbing about in an eddy that spun within a projecting head of rock. As

It held him. He told himself that it was the other aeronaut that had been shot in the fight and fallen out of the

saddle as he strove to land. He tried to go away, and then it occurred to him that he might get a branch or

something and push this rotating object out into the stream. That would leave him with only one dead body to

worry about. Perhaps he might get along with one. He hesitated and then with a certain emotion forced

himself to do this. He went towards the bushes and cut himself a wand and returned to the rocks and

clambered out to a corner between the eddy and the stream, By that time the sunset was over and the bats

He prodded the floating blueclad thing with his wand, failed, tried again successfully as it came round, and

as it went out into the stream it turned over, the light gleamed on golden hair andit was Kurt!

It was Kurt, white and dead and very calm. There was no mistaking him. There was still plenty of light for

that. The stream took him and he seemed to compose himself in its swift grip as one who stretches himself to

A feeling of infinite distress swept over Bert as the body swept out of sight towards the fall. "Kurt!" he cried,

Loneliness and desolation overwhelmed him. He gave way. He stood on the rock in the evening light,

weeping and wailing passionately like a child. It was as though some link that had held him to all these things

had broken and gone. He was afraid like a child in a lonely room, shamelessly afraid.

The twilight was closing about him. The trees were full now of strange shadows. All the things about him

became strange and unfamiliar with that subtle queerness one feels oftenest in dreams. "O God! I carn'

stand,this," he said, and crept back from the rocks to the grass and crouched down, and suddenly wild sorrow

for the death of Kurt, Kurt the brave, Kurt the kindly, came to his help and he broke from whimpering to

weeping. He ceased to crouch; he sprawled upon the grass and clenched an impotent fist.

"I done," he said, "I done. I've 'ad all I want, and more than I want. The world's all rot, and there ain't no

sense in it. The night's coming.... If 'E comes after me'E can't come after me'E can't! ...

"There ain't nothing to be afraid of reely. It's jest imagination. Poor old Kurthe thought it would happen.

Prevision like. 'E never gave me that letter or tole me who the lady was. It's like what 'e saidpeople tore

away from everything they belonged toeverywhere. Exactly like what 'e said.... 'Ere I am cast

awaythousands of miles from Edna or Grubb or any of my lotlike a plant tore up by the roots.... And

every war's been like this, only I 'adn't the sense to understand it. Always. All sorts of 'oles and corners chaps

'ave died in. And people 'adn't the sense to understand, 'adn't the sense to feel it and stop it. Thought war was

"Dear old Edna. She was a fair bit of all rightshe was. That time we 'ad a boat at Kingston ....

Suddenly, on the very verge of this heroic resolution, Bert became rigid with terror. Something was creeping

towards him through the grass. Something was creeping and halting and creeping again towards him through

the dim dark grass. The night was electrical with horror. For a time everything was still. Bert ceased to

It advanced suddenly upon him with a rush, with a little meawling cry and tail erect. It rubbed its head against

"Gaw, Pussy! 'ow you frightened me!" said Bert, with drops of perspiration on his brow.

He sat with his back to a tree stump all that night, holding the kitten in his arms. His mind was tired, and he

When he awoke, he was stiff but in better heart, and the kitten slept warmly and reassuringly inside his

He stroked the kitten, and the little creature woke up to excessive fondness and purring. "You want some

milk," said Bert. "That's what you want. And I could do with a bit of brekker too."

He yawned and stood up, with the kitten on his shoulder, and stared about him, recalling the circumstances of

He turned towards the trees, and was presently contemplating the dead aeronaut again. The kitten he held

companionably against his neck. The body was horrible, but not nearly so horrible as it had been at twilight,

and now the limbs were limper and the gun had slipped to the ground and lay half hidden in the grass.

"I suppose we ought to bury 'im, Kitty," said Bert, and looked helplessly at the rocky soil about him. "We got

It was some time before he could turn away and go on towards that provision shed. "Brekker first," he said,

"anyhow," stroking the kitten on his shoulder. She rubbed his cheek affectionately with her furry little face

and presently nibbled at his ear. "Wan' some milk, eh?" he said, and turned his back on the dead man as

He was puzzled to find the door of the shed open, though he had closed and latched it very carefully

overnight, and he found also some dirty plates he had not noticed before on the bench. He discovered that the

hinges of the tin locker were unscrewed and that it could be opened. He had not observed this overnight.

"Silly of me!" said Bert. "'Ere I was puzzlin' and whackin' away at the padlock, never noticing." It had been

used apparently as an icechest, but it contained nothing now but the remains of halfdozen boiled chickens,

some ambiguous substance that might once have been butter, and a singularly unappetising smell. He closed

He gave the kitten some milk in a dirty plate and sat watching its busy little tongue for a time. Then he was

moved to make an inventory of the provisions. There were six bottles of milk unopened and one opened,

sixty bottles of mineral water and a large stock of syrups, about two thousand cigarettes and upwards of a

hundred cigars, nine oranges, two unopened tins of corned beef and one opened, and five large tins California

peaches. He jotted it down on a piece of paper "'Ain't much solid food," he said. "StillA fortnight, say!

He gave the kitten a small second helping and a scrap of beef and then went down with the little creature

running after him, tail erect and in high spirits, to look at the remains of the Hohenzollern.

It had shifted in the night and seemed on the whole more firmly grounded on Green Island than before. From

it his eye went to the shattered bridge and then across to the still desolation of Niagara city. Nothing moved

over there but a number of crows. They were busy with the engineer he had seen cut down on the previous

"We got to get out of this some'ow, Kitty," he said. "That milk won't last forevernot at the rate you lap it."

He decided to make a careful exploration of the island. Presently he came to a locked gate labelled "Biddle

Stairs," and clambered over to discover a steep old wooden staircase leading down the face of the cliff amidst

a vast and increasing uproar of waters. He left the kitten above and descended these, and discovered with a

thrill of hope a path leading among the rocks at the foot of the roaring downrush of the Centre Fall. Perhaps

It led him only to the choking and deafening experience of the Cave of the Winds, and after he had spent a

quarter of an hour in a partially stupefied condition flattened between solid rock and nearly as solid waterfall,

he decided that this was after all no practicable route to Canada and retraced his steps. As he reascended the

Biddle Stairs, he heard what he decided at last must be a sort of echo, a sound of some one walking about on

the gravel paths above. When he got to the top, the place was as solitary as before.

Thence he made his way, with the kitten skirmishing along beside him in the grass, to a staircase that led to a

lump of projecting rock that enfiladed the huge green majesty of the Horseshoe Fall. He stood there for some

"You wouldn't think," he said at last, "there was so much water.... This roarin' and splashin', it gets on one's

nerves at last.... Sounds like people talking.... Sounds like people going about.... Sounds like anything you

He retired up the staircase again. "I s'pose I shall keep on goin' round this blessed island," he said drearily.

He found himself presently beside the less damaged Asiatic aeroplane again. He stared at it and the kitten

Advancing slowly towards him out from among the trees were two tall gaunt figures. They were blackened

and tattered and bandaged; the hindmost one limped and had his head swathed in white, but the foremost

one still carried himself as a Prince should do, for all that his left arm was in a sling and one side of his face

scalded a livid crimson. He was the Prince Karl Albert, the War Lord, the "German Alexander," and the man

behind him was the birdfaced man whose cabin had once been taken from him and given to Bert.

With that apparition began a new phase of GoatIsland in Bert's experience. He ceased to be a solitary

representative of humanity in a vast and violent and incomprehensible universe, and became once more a

social creature, a man in a world of other men. For an instant these two were terrible, then they seemed sweet

and desirable as brothers. They too were in this scrape with him, marooned and puzzled. He wanted

extremely to hear exactly what had happened to them. What mattered it if one was a Prince and both were

foreign soldiers, if neither perhaps had adequate English? His native Cockney freedom flowed too generously

for him to think of that, and surely the Asiatic fleets had purged all such trivial differences. "UlLO!" he said;

"It is the Englishman who brought us the Butteridge machine," said the birdfaced officer in German, and

then in a tone of horror, as Bert advanced, "Salute!" and again louder, "SALUTE!"

"Gaw!" said Bert, and stopped with a second comment under his breath. He stared and saluted awkwardly

and became at once a masked defensive thing with whom cooperation was impossible.

For a time these two perfected modern aristocrats stood regarding the difficult problem of the AngloSaxon

citizen, that ambiguous citizen who, obeying some mysterious law in his blood, would neither drill nor be a

democrat. Bert was by no means a beautiful object, but in some inexplicable way he looked resistant. He

wore his cheap suit of serge, now showing many signs of wear, and its loose fit made him seem sturdier than

he was; above his disengaging face was a white German cap that was altogether too big for him, and his

trousers were crumpled up his legs and their ends tucked into the rubber highlows of a deceased German

aeronaut. He looked an inferior, though by no means an easy inferior, and instinctively they hated him.

The Prince pointed to the flyingmachine and said something in broken English that Bert took for German

The Prince pointed again with his undamaged hand. "You verstehen dis drachenflieger?"

Bert began to comprehend the situation. He regarded the Asiatic machine. The habits of Bun Hill returned to

Bert reflected and scratched his cheek slowly. "I got to look at it," he replied.... "It's 'ad rough usage!"

He made a sound with his teeth he had also acquired from Grubb, put his hands in his trouser pockets, and

strolled back to the machine. Typically Grubb chewed something, but Bert could chew only imaginatively.

"Three days' work in this," he said, teething. For the first time it dawned on him that there were possibilities

in this machine. It was evident that the wing that lay on the ground was badly damaged. The three stays that

held it rigid had snapped across a ridge of rock and there was also a strong possibility of the engine being

badly damaged. The wing hook on that side was also askew, but probably that would not affect the flight.

Beyond that there probably wasn't much the matter. Bert scratched his cheek again and contemplated the

broad sunlit waste of the Upper Rapids. "We might make a job of this.... You leave it to me."

He surveyed it intently again, and the Prince and his officer watched him. In Bun Hill Bert and Grubb had

developed to a very high pitch among the hiring stock a method of repair by substituting; they substituted bits

of other machines. A machine that was too utterly and obviously done for even to proffer for hire, had

nevertheless still capital value. It became a sort of quarry for nuts and screws and wheels, bars and spokes,

chainlinks and the like; a mine of illfitting "parts" to replace the defects of machines still current. And back

"If I do mend it," said Bert, struck by a new thought, "none of us ain't to be trusted to fly it."

The Prince did not understand him and disregarded what he said. He pointed his gloved finger to the machine

and turned to the birdfaced officer with some remark in German. The officer answered and the Prince

responded with a sweeping gesture towards the sky. Then he spokeit seemed eloquently. Bert watched him

and guessed his meaning. "Much more likely to break your, neck," he said. "'Owever. 'Ere goes."

He began to pry about the saddle and engine of the drachenflieger in search for tools. Also he wanted some

black oily stuff for his hands and face. For the first rule in the art of repairing, as it was known to the firm of

Grubb and Smallways, was to get your hands and face thoroughly and conclusively blackened. Also he took

off his jacket and waistcoat and put his cap carefully to the back of his head in order to facilitate scratching.

The Prince and the officer seemed disposed to watch him, but he succeeded in making it clear to them that

this would inconvenience him and that he had to "puzzle out a bit" before he could get to work. They thought

him over, but his shop experience had given him something of the authoritative way of the expert with

common men. And at last they went away. Thereupon he went straight to the second aeroplane, got the

aeronaut's gun and ammunition and hid them in a clump of nettles close at hand. "That's all right," said Bert,

and then proceeded to a careful inspection of the debris of the wings in the trees. Then he went back to the

first aeroplane to compare the two. The Bun Hill method was quite possibly practicable if there was nothing

The Germans returned presently to find him already generously smutty and touching and testing knobs and

screws and levers with an expression of profound sagacity. When the birdfaced officer addressed a remark

Then he had an idea. "Dead chap back there wants burying," he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

With the appearance of these two men Bert's whole universe had changed again. A curtain fell before the

immense and terrible desolation that had overwhelmed him. He was in a world of three people, a minute

human world that nevertheless filled his brain with eager speculations and schemes and cunning ideas. What

were they thinking of? What did they think of him? What did they mean to do? A hundred busy threads

interlaced in his mind as he pottered studiously over the Asiatic aeroplane. New ideas came up like bubbles in

"Gaw!" he said suddenly. He had just appreciated as a special aspect of this irrational injustice of fate that

these two men were alive and that Kurt was dead. All the crew of the Hohenzollern were shot or burnt or

smashed or drowned, and these two lurking in the padded forward cabin had escaped.

"I suppose 'e thinks it's 'is bloomin' Star," he muttered, and found himself uncontrollably exasperated.

He stood up, facing round to the two men. They were standing side by side regarding him.

"'It's no good," he said, "starin' at me. You only put me out." And then seeing they did not understand, he

advanced towards them, wrench in hand. It occurred to him as he did so that the Prince was really a very big

and powerful and serenelooking person. But he said, nevertheless, pointing through the trees, "dead man!"

He had great difficulty in inducing them to inspect the dead Chinaman, and at last led them to him. Then they

made it evident that they proposed that he, as a common person below the rank of officer should have the sole

and undivided privilege of disposing of the body by dragging it to the water's edge. There was some heated

gesticulation, and at last the birdfaced officer abased himself to help. Together they dragged the limp and

now swollen Asiatic through the trees, and after a rest or sofor he trailed very heavilydumped him into

the westward rapid. Bert returned to his expert investigation of the flyingmachine at last with aching arms

and in a state of gloomy rebellion. "Brasted cheek!" he said. "One'd think I was one of 'is beastly German

And then he fell speculating what would happen when the flyingmachine, was repairedif it could be

The two Germans went away again, and after some reflection Bert removed several nuts, resumed his jacket

and vest, pocketed those nuts and his tools and hid the set of tools from the second aeroplane in the fork of a

tree. "Right O," he said, as he jumped down after the last of these precautions. The Prince and his companion

reappeared as he returned to the machine by the water's edge. The Prince surveyed his progress for a time,

and then went towards the Parting of the Waters and stood with folded arms gazing upstream in profound

thought. The birdfaced officer came up to Bert, heavy with a sentence in English.

When Bert got to the refreshment shed, he found all the food had vanished except one measured ration of

The kitten appeared from under the vendor's seat with an ingratiating purr. "Of course!" said Bert. "Why!

He accumulated wrath for a moment or so, then seized the plate in one hand, and the biscuits in another, and

went in search of the Prince, breathing vile words anent "grub" and his intimate interior. He approached

An entirely unsatisfactory altercation followed. Bert expounded the Bun Hill theory of the relations of grub to

efficiency in English, the birdfaced man replied with points about nations and discipline in German. The

Prince, having made an estimate of Bert's quality and physique, suddenly hectored. He gripped Bert by the

shoulder and shook him, making his pockets rattle, shouted something to him, and flung him struggling back.

He hit him as though he was a German private. Bert went back, white and scared, but resolved by all his

Cockney standards upon one thing. He was bound in honour to "go for" the Prince. "Gaw!" he gasped,

"Now," cried the Prince, "Vil you go?" and then catching the heroic gleam in Bert's eye, drew his sword.

The birdfaced officer intervened, saying something in German and pointing skyward.

Far away in the southwest appeared a Japanese airship coming fast toward them. Their conflict ended at that.

The Prince was first to grasp the situation and lead the retreat. All three scuttled like rabbits for the trees, and

ran to and for cover until they found a hollow in which the grass grew rank. There they all squatted within six

yards of one another. They sat in this place for a long time, up to their necks in the grass and watching

through the branches for the airship. Bert had dropped some of his corned beef, but he found the biscuits in

his hand and ate them quietly. The monster came nearly overhead and then went away to Niagara and

dropped beyond the powerworks. When it was near, they all kept silence, and then presently they fell into

an argument that was robbed perhaps of immediate explosive effect only by their failure to understand one

It was Bert began the talking and he talked on regardless of what they understood or failed to understand. But

"You want that machine done, he said first, "you better keep your 'ands off me!"

Then he expanded his idea and the spirit of speech took hold of him. "You think you got 'old of a chap you

can kick and 'it like you do your private soldiersyou're jolly well mistaken. See? I've 'ad about enough of

you and your antics. I been thinking you over, you and your war and your Empire and all the rot of it. Rot it

is! It's you Germans made all the trouble in Europe first and last. And all for nothin'. Jest silly prancing! Jest

because you've got the uniforms and flags! 'Ere I wasI didn't want to 'ave anything to do with you. I jest

didn't care a 'eng at all about you. Then you get 'old of mesteal me practicallyand 'ere I am, thousands of

miles away from 'ome and everything, and all your silly fleet smashed up to rags. And you want to go on

"Look at the mischief you done! Look at the way you smashed up New Yorkthe people you killed, the

"Dummer Kerl!"said the birdfaced man suddenly in a tone of concentrated malignancy, glaring under his

"That's German for silly ass!I know. But who's the silly ass 'im or me? When I was a kid, I used to read

penny dreadfuls about 'avin adventures and bein' a great c'mander and all that rot. I stowed it. But what's 'e

got in 'is head? Rot about Napoleon, rot about Alexander, rot about 'is blessed family and 'im and Gord and

David and all that. Any one who wasn't a dressedup silly fool of a Prince could 'ave told all this was goin' to

'appen. There was us in Europe all at sixes and sevens with our silly flags and our silly newspapers raggin' us

up against each other and keepin' us apart, and there was China, solid as a cheese, with millions and millions

of men only wantin' a bit of science and a bit of enterprise to be as good as all of us. You thought they

couldn't get at you. And then they got flyingmachines. And bif!'ere we are. Why, when they didn't go on

making guns and armies in China, we went and poked 'em up until they did. They 'AD to give us this lickin'

they've give us. We wouldn't be happy until they did, and as I say, 'ere we are!"

The birdfaced officer shouted to him to be quiet, and then began a conversation with the Prince.

"British citizen," said Bert. "You ain't obliged to listen, but I ain't obliged to shut up."

And for some time he continued his dissertation upon Imperialism, militarism, and international politics. But

their talking put him out, and for a time he was certainly merely repeating abusive terms, "prancin'

nincompoops" and the like, old terms and new. Then suddenly he remembered his essential grievance.

"'Owever, look 'ere'ere!the thing I started this talk about is where's that food there was in that shed?

He paused. They went on talking in German. He repeated his question. They disregarded him. He asked a

There fell a tense silence. For some seconds the three regarded one another. The Prince eyed Bert steadfastly,

and Bert quailed under his eye. Slowly the Prince rose to his feet and the birdfaced officer jerked up beside

The two Germans regarded him as he crouched there. Death for a moment seemed near.

"Gaw!" whispered Bert, and then uttered under his breath one single word of abuse. He sat crouched together

for perhaps three minutes, then he sprang to his feet and went off towards the Chinese aeronaut's gun hidden

There was no pretence after that moment that Bert was under the orders of the Prince or that he was going on

with the repairing of the flyingmachine. The two Germans took possession of that and set to work upon it.

Bert, with his new weapon went off to the neighbourhood of Terrapin Rock, and there sat down to examine it.

It was a short rifle with a big cartridge, and a nearly full magazine. He took out the cartridges carefully and

then tried the trigger and fittings until he felt sure he had the use of it. He reloaded carefully. Then he

remembered he was hungry and went off, gun under his arm, to hunt in and about the refreshment shed. He

had the sense to perceive that he must not show himself with the gun to the Prince and his companion. So

long as they thought him unarmed they would leave him alone, but there was no knowing what the

Napoleonic person might do if he saw Bert's weapon. Also he did not go near them because he knew that

within himself boiled a reservoir of rage and fear that he wanted to shoot these two men. He wanted to shoot

them, and he thought that to shoot them would be a quite horrible thing to do. The two sides of his

Near the shed the kitten turned up again, obviously keen for milk. This greatly enhanced his own angry sense

of hunger. He began to talk as he hunted about, and presently stood still, shouting insults. He talked of war

and pride and Imperialism. "Any other Prince but you would have died with his men and his ship!" he cried.

The two Germans at the machine heard his voice going ever and again amidst the clamour of the waters.

He was disposed for a time to sit in the refreshment shed waiting for them, but then it occurred to him that so

he might get them both at close quarters. He strolled off presently to the point of Luna Island to think the

It had seemed a comparatively simple one at first, but as he turned it over in his mind its possibilities

So far he had been going about with this gun under his arm, and a sense of lordly security in his mind, but

what if they saw the gun and decided to ambush him? Goat Island is nearly all cover, trees, rocks, thickets,

But it was a mistake to get right away from them. That suddenly became clear. He ought to keep them under

observation, ought to "scout" them. Then he would be able to see what they were doing, whether either of

them had a revolver, where they had hidden the food. He would be better able to determine what they meant

to do to him. If he didn't "scout" them, presently they would begin to "scout" him. This seemed so eminently

reasonable that he acted upon it forthwith. He thought over his costume and threw his collar and the telltale

aeronaut's white cap into the water far below. He turned his coat collar up to hide any gleam of his dirty shirt.

The tools and nuts in his pockets were disposed to clank, but he rearranged them and wrapped some letters

and his pockethandkerchief about them. He started off circumspectly and noiselessly, listening and peering

at every step. As he drew near his antagonists, much grunting and creaking served to locate them. He

discovered them engaged in what looked like a wrestling match with the Asiatic flyingmachine. Their coats

were off, their swords laid aside, they were working magnificently. Apparently they were turning it round and

were having a good deal of difficulty with the long tail among the trees. He dropped flat at the sight of them

and wriggled into a little hollow, and so lay watching their exertions. Ever and again, to pass the time, he

He found them quite interesting to watch, so interesting that at times he came near shouting to advise them.

He perceived that when they had the machine turned round, they would then be in immediate want of the nuts

and tools he carried. Then they would come after him. They would certainly conclude he had them or had

hidden them. Should he hide his gun and do a deal for food with these tools? He felt he would not be able to

part with the gun again now he had once felt its reassuring company. The kitten turned up again and made a

The sun clambered to midday, and once that morning he saw, though the Germans did not, an Asiatic airship

At last the flyingmachine was turned and stood poised on its wheel, with its hooks pointing up the Rapids.

The two officers wiped their faces, resumed jackets and swords, spoke and bore themselves like men who

congratulated themselves on a good laborious morning. Then they went off briskly towards the refreshment

shed, the Prince leading. Bert became active in pursuit; but he found it impossible to stalk them quickly

enough and silently enough to discover the hidingplace of the food. He found them, when he came into sight

of them again, seated with their backs against the shed, plates on knee, and a tin of corned beef and a plateful

of biscuits between them. They seemed in fairly good spirits, and once the Prince laughed. At this vision of

eating Bert's plans gave way. Fierce hunger carried him. He appeared before them suddenly at a distance of

The Prince hesitated, and then up went two pairs of hands. The gun had surprised them both completely.

"What nex'?" said Bert to himself. "'Orf stage, I suppose. That way," he said. "Go!"

The Prince obeyed with remarkable alacrity. When he reached the head of the clearing, he said something

quickly to the birdfaced man and they both, with an entire lack of dignity, RAN!

"Gord!" he cried with infinite vexation. "Why! I ought to 'ave took their swords! 'Ere!"

But the Germans were already out of sight, and no doubt taking cover among the trees. Bert fell back upon

imprecations, then he went up to the shed, cursorily examined the possibility of a flank attack, put his gun

handy, and set to work, with a convulsive listening pause before each mouthful on the Prince's plate of corned

beef. He had finished that up and handed its gleanings to the kitten and he was fallingto on the second

plateful, when the plate broke in his hand! He stared, with the fact slowly creeping upon him that an instant

before he had heard a crack among the thickets. Then he sprang to his feet, snatched up his gun in one hand

and the tin of corned beef in the other, and fled round the shed to the other side of the clearing. As he did so

He didn't stbp running until he was in what seemed to him a strongly defensible position near Luna Island.

"Wonder if they got two? If they 'aveGord! I'm done! "Where's the kitten? Finishin' up that corned beef, I

So it was that war began upon Goat Island. It lasted a day and a night, the longest day and the longest night in

Bert's life. He had to lie close and listen And watch. Also he had to scheme what he should do. It was clear

now that he had to kill these two men if he could, and that if they could, they would kill him. The prize was

first food and then the flyingmachine and the doubtful privilege of trying' to ride it. If one failed, one would

certainly be killed; if one succeeded, one would get away somewhere over there. For a time Bert tried to

imagine what it was like over there. His mind ran over possibilities, deserts, angry Americans, Japanese,

Was that voices? He realised that his attention was wandering. For a time all his senses were very alert. The

uproar of the Falls was very confusing, and it mixed in all sorts of sounds, like feet walking, like voices

"Silly great catarac'," said Bert. "There ain't no sense in it, fallin' and fallin'."

Would they go back to the flyingmachine? They couldn't do anything with it, because he had those nuts and

screws and the wrench and other tools. But suppose they found the second set of tools he had hidden in a

tree! He had hidden the things well, of course, but they MIGHT find them. One wasn't sure, of courseone

wasn't sure. He tried to remember just exactly how he had hidden those tools. He tried to persuade himself

they were certainly and surely hidden, but his memory began to play antics. Had he really left the handle of

Ssh! What was that? Some one stirring in those bushes? Up went an expectant muzzle. No! Where was the

The Germans would certainly miss and hunt about for the tools and nuts and screws he carried in his pockets;

that was clear., Then they would decide he had them and come for him. He had only to remain still under

cover, therefore, and he would get them. Was there any flaw in that? Would they take off more removable

parts of the flyingmachine and then lie up for him? No, they wouldn't do that, because they were two to one;

they would have no apprehension of his getting off in the flyingmachine, and no sound reason for supposing

he would approach it, and so they would do nothing to damage or disable it. That he decided was clear. But

suppose they lay up for him by the food. Well, that they wouldn't do, because they would know he had this

corned beef; there was enough in this can to last, with moderation, several days. Of course they might try to

He roused himself with a start. He had just grasped the real weakness of his position. He might go to sleep!

It needed but ten minutes under the suggestion of that idea, before he realised that he was going to sleep!

He rubbed his eyes and handled his gun. He had never before realised the intensely soporific effect of the

American sun, of the American air, the drowsy, sleepcompelling uproar of Niagara. Hitherto these things

If he had not eaten so much and eaten it so fast, he would not be so heavy. Are vegetarians always bright? ...

If he didn't do something, he would fall asleep, and if he fell asleep, it was ten to one they would find him

snoring, and finish him forthwith. If he sat motionless and noiseless, he would inevitably sleep. It was better,

he told himself, to take even the risks of attacking than that. This sleep trouble, he felt, was going to beat him,

must beat him in the end. They were all right; one could sleep and the other could watch. That, come to think

of it, was what they would always do; one would do anything they wanted done, the other would lie under

cover near at hand, ready to shoot. They might even trap him like that. One might act as a decoy.

That set him thinking of decoys. What a fool he had been to throw his cap away. It would have been

He found himself wishing for a drink. He settled that for a time by putting a pebble in his mouth. And then

It became clear to him he must attack. Like many great generals before him, he found his baggage, that is to

say his tin of corned beef, a serious impediment to mobility. At last he decided to put the beef loose in his

pocket and abandon the tin. It was not perhaps an ideal arrangement, but one must make sacrifices when one

is campaigning. He crawled perhaps ten yards, and then for a time the possibilities of the situation paralysed

The afternoon was still. The roar of the cataract simply threw up that immense stillness in relief. He was

doing his best to contrive the death of two better men than himself. Also they were doing their best to

He crawled, and halted listening, and crawled again until nightfall, and no doubt the German Alexander and

his lieutenant did the same. A large scale map of Goat Island marked with red and blue lines to show these

strategic movements would no doubt have displayed much interlacing, but as a matter of fact neither side saw

anything of the other throughout that agelong day of tedious alertness. Bert never knew how near he got to

them nor how far he kept from them. Night found him no longer sleepy, but athirst, and near the American

Fall. He was inspired by the idea that his antagonists might be in the wreckage of the Hohenzollern cabins

that was jammed against Green Island. He became enterprising, broke from any attempt to conceal himself,

and went across the little bridge at the double. He found nobody. It was his first visit to these huge fragments

of airships, and for a time he explored them curiously in the dim light. He discovered the forward cabin was

nearly intact, with its door slanting downward and a corner under water. He crept in, drank, and then was

He nodded towards morning and woke up to find it fully day. He breakfasted on corned beef and water, and

sat for a long time appreciative of the security of his position. At last he became enterprising and bold. He

would, he decided, settle this business forthwith, one way or the other. He was tired of all this crawling. He

set out in the morning sunshine, gun in hand, scarcely troubling to walk softly. He went round the

refreshment shed without finding any one, and then through the trees towards the flyingmachine. He came

upon the birdfaced man sitting on the ground with his back against a tree, bent up over his folded arms,

Bert stopped abruptly and stood perhaps fifteen yards away, gun in hand ready. Where was the Prince? Then,

sticking out at the side of the tree beyond, he saw a shoulder. Bert took five deliberate paces to the left. The

great man became visible, leaning up against the trunk, pistol in one hand and sword in the other, and

yawningyawning. You can't shoot a yawning man Bert found. He advanced upon his antagonist with his

gun levelled, some foolish fancy of "hands up" in his mind. The Prince became aware of him, the yawning

mouth shut like a trap and he stood stiffly up. Bert stopped, silent. For a moment the two regarded one

Had the Prince been a wise man he would, I suppose, have dodged behind the tree. Instead, he gave vent to a

shout, and raised pistol and sword. At that, like an automaton, Bert pulled his trigger.

It was his first experience of an oxygencontaining bullet. A great flame spurted from the middle of the

Prince, a blinding flare, and there came a thud like the firing of a gun. Something hot and wet struck Bert's

face. Then through a whirl of blinding smoke and steam he saw limbs and a collapsing, burst body fling

Bert was so astonished that he stood agape, and the birdfaced officer might have cut him to the earth

without a struggle. But instead the birdfaced officer was running away through the undergrowth, dodging as

he went. Bert roused himself to a brief ineffectual pursuit, but he had no stomach for further killing. He

returned to the mangled, scattered thing that had so recently been the great Prince Karl Albert. He surveyed

the scorched and splashed vegetation about it. He made some speculative identifications. He advanced

gingerly and picked up the hot revolver, to find all its chambers strained and burst. He became aware of a

cheerful and friendly presence. He was greatly shocked that one so young should see so frightful a scene.

He made three strides across the devastated area, captured the kitten neatly, and went his way towards the

For a time he fussed about the shed, and at last discovered the rest of the provisions hidden in the roof.

"Seems 'ard," he said, as he administered a saucerful of milk, "when you get three men in a 'ole like this, they

"Gaw!" he reflected, sitting on the counter and eating, "what a thing life is! 'Ere am I; I seen 'is picture, 'eard

'is name since I was a kid in frocks. Prince Karl Albert! And if any one 'ad tole me I was going to blow lim to

"That chap at Margit ought to 'ave tole me about it. All 'e tole me was that I got a weak chess.

"That other chap, 'e ain't going to do much. Wonder what I ought to do about 'im?"

He surveyed the trees with a keen blue eye and fingered the gun on his knee. "I don't like this killing, Kitty,"

he said. "It's like Kurt said about being blooded. Seems to me you got to be blooded young.... If that Prince

'ad come up to me and said, 'Shake 'ands!' I'd 'ave shook 'ands.... Now 'ere's that other chap, dodging about!

'E's got'is 'ead 'urt already, and there's something wrong with his leg. And burns. Golly! it isn't three weeks

ago I first set eyes on 'im, and then 'e was smart and set up'ands full of 'airbrushes and things, and

swearin' at me. A regular gentleman! Now 'e's 'arfway to a wild man. What am I to do with 'im? What the 'ell

am I to do with 'im? I can't leave 'im 'ave that flyingmachine; that's a bit too good, and if I don't kill 'im, 'e'll

"War's a silly gaim, Kitty. It's a silly gaim! We common peoplewe were fools. We thought those big

people knew what they were up toand they didn't. Look at that chap! 'E 'ad all Germany be'ind 'im, and

what 'as 'e made of it? Smeshin' and blunderin' and destroyin', and there 'e 'is! Jest a mess of blood and boots

and things! Jest an 'orrid splash! Prince Karl Albert! And all the men 'e led and the ships 'e 'ad, the airships,

and the dragonfliersall scattered like a paperchase between this 'ole and Germany. And fightin' going on

"I suppose I shall 'ave to kill that other chap. I suppose I must. But it ain't at all the sort of job I fancy, Kitty!"

For a time he hunted about the island amidst the uproar of the waterfall, looking for the wounded officer, and

at last he started him out of some bushes near the head of Biddle Stairs. But as he saw the bent and bandaged

figure in limping flight before him, he found his Cockney softness too much for him again; he could neither

shoot nor pursue. "I carn't," he said, "that's flat. I 'aven't the guts for it! 'E'll 'ave to go."

He never saw the birdfaced officer again, nor any further evidence of his presence. Towards evening he

grew fearful of ambushes and hunted vigorously for an hour or so, but in vain. He slept in a good defensible

position at the extremity of the rocky point that runs out to the Canadian Fall, and in the night he woke in

panic terror and fired his gun. But it was nothing. He slept no more that night. In the morning he became

curiously concerned for the vanished man, and hunted for him as one might for an erring brother.

"If I knew some German," he said, "I'd 'oller. It's jest not knowing German does it. You can't explain'"

He discovered, later, traces of an attempt to cross the gap in the broken bridge. A rope with a bolt attached

had been flung across and had caught in a fenestration of a projecting fragment of railing. The end of the rope

But the birdfaced officer was already rubbing shoulders with certain inert matter that had once been

Lieutenant Kurt and the Chinese aeronaut and a dead cow, and much other uncongenial company, in the huge

circle of the Whirlpool two and a quarter miles away. Never had that great gathering place, that incessant,

aimless, unprogressive hurry of waste and battered things, been so crowded with strange and melancholy

derelicts. Round they went and round, and every day brought its new contributions, luckless brutes, shattered

fragments of boat and flyingmachine, endless citizens from the cities upon the shores of the great lakes

above. Much came from Cleveland. It all gathered here, and whirled about indefinitely, and over it all

Bert spent two more days upon Goat Island, and finished all his provisions except the cigarettes and mineral

Even at last he did not so much go off upon it as get carried off. It had taken only an hour or so to substitute

wing stays from the second flyingmachine and to replace the nuts he had himself removed. The engine was

in working order, and differed only very simply and obviously from that of a contemporary motorbicycle.

The rest of the time was taken up by a vast musing and delaying and hesitation. Chiefly he saw himself

splashing into the rapids and whirling down them to the Fall, clutching and drowning, but also he had a

vision of being hopelessly in the air, going fast and unable to ground. His mind was too concentrated upon

the business of flying for him to think very much of what might happen to an indefinitespirited Cockney

without credential who arrived on an Asiatic flyingmachine amidst the warinfuriated population beyond.

He still had a lingering solicitude for the birdfaced officer. He had a haunting fancy he might be lying

disabled or badly smashed in some way in some nook or cranny of the Island; and it was only after a most

exhaustive search that he abandoned that distressing idea. "If I found 'im," he reasoned the while, "what could

I do wiv 'im? You can't blow a 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 social responsibility. "If I leave 'er, she'll starve....

Ought to catch mice for 'erself.... ARE there mice?... Birds? ... She's too young.... She's like me; she's a bit too

Finally he stuck her in his side pocket and she became greatly interested in the memories of corned beef she

found there. With her in his pocket, he seated himself in the saddle of the flyingmachine. Big, clumsy thing

it wasand not a bit like a bicycle. Still the working of it was fairly plain. You set the engine goingSO;

kicked yourself up until the wheel was vertical, SO; engaged the gyroscope, SO, and thenthenyou just

The big curved wings on either side flapped disconcertingly, flapped again' click, clock, click, 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 its first position. Click, clock, clitterclock, he was ising! The machine was

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 moment Bert, clutching and convulsive and rigid, with staring eyes and a face pale

as death, was flapping up above the Rapids, jerking to every jerk of the wings, and rising, rising.

There was no comparison in dignity and comfort between a flyingmachine and a balloon. Except in its

moments of descent, the balloon was a vehicle of faultless urbanity; this was a buck jumping mule, a mule

that jumped up and never came down again. Click, clock, click, clock; with each beat of the strangely shaped

wings it jumped Bert upward and caught him neatly again half a second later on the saddle. And while in

ballooning 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 was a wind that above all things sought to blind him, to force him to close his eyes. It

occurred to him presently to twist his knees and. legs inward and grip with them, or surely he would have

been bumped into two clumsy halves. And he was going up, a hundred yards high, two hundred, three

hundred, over the streaming, frothing wilderness of water belowup, up, up. That was all right, but how

presently would one go horizontally? He tried to think if these things did go horizontally. No! They flapped

up and then they soared down. For a time he would keep on flapping up. Tears streamed from his eyes. He

He was flapping up above the Upper Rapids towards Buffalo. It was at any rate a comfort that the Falls and

the wild swirl of waters below them were behind him. He was flying up straight. That he could see. How did

He was presently almost cool, and his eyes got more used to the rush of air, but he was getting very high,

very high. He tilted his head forwards and surveyed the country, blinking. He could see all over Buffalo, a

place with three great blackened scars of ruin, and hills and stretches beyond. He wondered if he was half a

mile high, or more. There were some people among some houses near a railway station between Niagara and

Buffalo, and then more people. They went like ants busily in and out of the houses. He saw two motor cars

gliding along the road towards Niagara city. Then far away in the south he saw a great Asiatic airship going

eastward. "Oh, Gord!" he said, and became earnest in his ineffectual attempts to alter his direction. But that

airship took no notice of him, and he continued to ascend convulsively. The world got more and more

extensive and maplike. Click, clock, clitterclock. Above him and very near to him now was a hazy stratum

He determined to disengage the wing clutch. He did so. The lever resisted his strength for a time, then over it

came, and instantly the tail of the machine cocked up and the wings became rigidly spread. Instantly

everything was swift and smooth and silent. He was gliding rapidly down the air against a wild gale of wind,

A little lever that had hitherto been obdurate now confessed itself mobile. He turned it over gently to the

right, and whiroo!the left wing had in some mysterious way given at its edge and he was sweeping round

and downward in an immense righthanded spiral. For some moments he experienced all the helpless

sensations of catastrophe. He restored the lever to its middle position with some difficulty, and the wings

He turned it to the left and had a sensation of being spun round backwards. "Too much!" he gasped.

He discovered that he was rushing down at a headlong pace towards a railway line and some factory

buildings. They appeared to be tearing up to him to devour him. He must have dropped all that height. For a

moment he had the ineffectual sensations of one whose bicycle bolts downhill. The ground had almost taken

him by surprise. "'Ere!" he cried; and then with a violent effort of all his being he got the beating engine at

work again and set the wings flapping. He swooped down and up and resumed his quivering and pulsating

He went high again, until he had a wide view of the pleasant upland country of western New York State, and

then made a long coast down, and so up again, and then a coast. Then as he came swooping a quarter of a

mile above a village he saw people running about, running awayevidently in relation to his hawklike

"Up!" he said, and attacked that lever again. It came over with remarkable docility, and suddenly the wings

seemed to give way in the middle. But the engine was still! It had stopped. He flung the lever back rather by

Much happened in a few seconds, but also his mind was quick, he thought very quickly. He couldn't get up

Swirroo! Crackle! He was gliding over the tops of the trees, ploughing through them, tumbling into a cloud of

green sharp leaves and black twigs. There was a sudden snapping, and he fell off the saddle forward, a thud

He was between a treestem and the saddle, with his leg over the steering lever and, so far as he could

realise, not hurt. He tried to alter his position and free his leg, and found himself slipping and dropping

through branches with everything giving way beneath him. He clutched and found himself in the lower

branches of a tree beneath the flyingmachine. The air was full of a pleasant resinous smell. He stared for a

moment motionless, and then very carefully clambered down branch by branch to the soft needlecovered

He rubbed his chin with his hand and meditated. "Blowed if I don't think I'm a rather lucky fellow!" he said,

surveying the pleasant sunbespattered ground under the trees. Then he became aware of a violent tumult at

his side. "Lord!" he said, "You must be 'arf smothered," and extracted the kitten from his

pockethandkerchief and pocket. She was twisted and crumpled and extremely glad to see the light again.

Her little tongue peeped between her teeth. He put her down, and she ran a dozen paces and shook herself and

"Nex'?" he said, looking about him, and then with a gesture of vexation, "Desh it! I ought to 'ave brought that

He had rested it against a tree when he had seated himself in the flyingmachine saddle.

He was puzzled for a time by the immense peacefulness in the quality of the world, and then he perceived

He had no very clear idea of what sort of people he might come upon in this country. It was, he knew,

America. Americans he had always understood were the citizens of a great and powerful nation, dry and

humorous in their manner, addicted to the use of the bowieknife and revolver, and in the habit of talking

through the nose like Norfolkshire, and saying "allow" and "reckon" and "calculate," after the manner of the

people who live on the New Forest side of Hampshire. Also they were very rich, had rockingchairs, and put

their feet at unusual altitudes, and they chewed tobacco, gum, and other substances, with untiring industry.

Commingled with them were cowboys, Red Indians, and comic, respectful niggers. This he had learnt from

the fiction in his public library. Beyond that he had learnt very little. He was not surprised therefore when he

He decided to abandon the shattered flyingmachine. He wandered through the trees for some time, and then

struck a road that seemed to his urban English eyes to be remarkably wide but not properly "made." Neither

hedge nor ditch nor curbed distinctive footpath separated it from the woods, and it went in that long easy

curve which distinguishes the tracks of an open continent. Ahead he saw a man carrying a gun under his arm,

a man in a soft black hat, a blue blouse, and black trousers, and with a broad roundfat face quite innocent of

The man regarded him, and more particularly his rubber boots, with sinister suspicion. Then he replied in a

strange outlandish tongue that was, as a matter of fact, Czech. He ended suddenly at the sight of Bert's blank

"Thenks," he, said as an afterthought. The man regarded his back for a moment, was struck with an idea,

began an abortive gesture, sighed, gave it up, and went on also with a depressed countenance.

Presently Bert came to a big wooden house standing casually among the trees. It looked a bleak, bare box of a

house to him, no creeper grew on it, 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 thirty yards away. The place seemed deserted. He

would have gone up to the door and rapped, but suddenly a big black dog appeared at the side and regarded

him. It was a huge heavyjawed dog of some unfamiliar breed, and it, wore a spikestudded collar. It did not

bark nor approach him, it just bristled quietly and emitted a single sound like a short, deep cough.

He stopped thirty paces away and stood peering about him among the trees. "If I 'aven't been and lef' that

Acute sorrow wrenched him for a time. The black dog came through the trees to get a better look at him and

"She'll do all right," he said presently, without conviction. But if it had not been for the black dog, he would

When he was out of sight of the house and the black dog, he went into the woods on the other side of the way

and emerged after an interval trimming a very tolerable cudgel with his pocketknife. Presently he saw an

attractivelooking rock by the track and picked it up and put it in his pocket. Then he came to three or four

houses, wooden like the last, each with an illpainted white verandah (that was his name for it) and all

standing in the same casual way upon the ground. Behind, through the woods, he saw pigstys and a rooting

black sow leading a brisk, adventurous family. A wildlooking woman with sloeblack eyes and dishevelled

black hair sat upon the steps of one of the houses nursing a baby, but at the sight of Bert she got up and went

inside, and he heard her bolting the door. Then a boy appeared among the pigstys, but he would not

The houses became more frequent down the road, and he passed two other extremely wild and dirtylooking

men without addressing them. One carried a gun and the other a hatchet, and they scrutinised him and his

cudgel scornfully. Then he struck a crossroad with a monorail at its side, and there was a notice board at

the comer with "Wait here for the cars." "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 of the country the service might be interrupted,

and as there seemed more houses to the right than the left he turned to the right. He passed an old negro.

Bert came to houses of the same detached, unwalled, wooden type, but adorned now with enamelled

advertisements partly in English and partly in Esperanto. Then he came to what he concluded was a grocer's

shop. It was the first house that professed the hospitality of an open door, and from within came a strangely

familiar sound. "Gaw!" he said searching in his pockets. "Why! I 'aven't wanted money for free weeks! I

wonder if IGrubb 'ad most of it. Ah!" He produced a handful of coins and regarded it; three pennies,

sixpence, and a shilling. "That's all right," he said, forgetting a very obvious consideration.

He approached the door, and as he did so a compactly built, greyfaced man 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."

"You can," said the American in a tone of confident encouragement, and led the way inside.

The shop seemed to him by his Bun Hill standards extremely roomy, well lit, and unencumbered. There was a

long counter to the left of him, with drawers and miscellaneous commodities ranged behind it, a number of

chairs, several tables, and two spittoons to the right, various barrels, cheeses, and bacon up the vista, and

beyond, a large archway leading to more space. A little group of men was assembled round one of the tables,

and a woman of perhaps fiveandthirty leant with her elbows on the counter. All the men were armed with

rifles, and the barrel of a gun peeped above the counter. They were all listening idly, inattentively, to a cheap,

metallictoned gramophone that occupied a table near at hand. From its brazen throat came words that gave

Bert a qualm of homesickness, that brought back in his memory a sunlit beach, a group of children,

A heavynecked man in a straw hat, who was chewing something, stopped the machine with a touch, and

"Can we give this gentleman anything to eat, mother, or can we not?" said the proprietor.

"He kin have what he likes?" said the woman at the counter, without moving, "right up from a cracker to a

square meal." She struggled with a yawn, 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' want to give mor'n a shillin'."

"Mor'n a shillin'," said Bert, with a sudden disagreeable realisation coming into his mind.

"Yes," said the proprietor, startled for a moment from his courtly bearing. "But what in hell is a shilling?"

Bert, trying to conceal his consternation, produced a coin. "That's a shilling," he said.

"He calls A store A shop," said the proprietor, "and he wants A meal for A shilling. May I ask you, sir, what

"Well," said the proprietor, and turned with a puzzled smile to the others. "Well!"

Bert selected one or two for reply. "You see," he said, "I been with the German airfleet. I got caught up by

"Yesfrom England. Way of Germany. I was in a great battle with them Asiatics, and I got lef' on a little

"I don' know what it was called. But any'ow I found a flyingmachine and made a sort of fly with it and got

Two men stood up with incredulous eyes on him. "Where's the flyingmachine?"they asked; "outside?"

Everybody got up and stood about him and talked confusingly. They wanted him to take them to the

"Look 'ere," said Bert, "I'll show youonly I 'aven't 'ad anything to eat since yestidayexcept mineral

A gaunt soldierlylooking young man with long lean legs in riding gaiters and a bandolier, who had hitherto

not spoken, intervened now on his behalf in a note of confident authority. "That's aw right," he said. "Give

him a feed, Mr. Loganfrom me. I want to hear more of that story of his. We'll see his machine afterwards.

If you ask me, I should say it's a remarkably interesting accident had dropped this gentleman here. I guess we

So Bert fell on his feet again, and sat eating cold meat and good bread and mustard and drinking very good

beer, and telling in the roughest outline and with the omissions and inaccuracies of statement natural to his

type of mind, the simple story of his adventures. He told how he and a "gentleman friend" had been visiting

the seaside for their health, how a "chep" came along in a balloon and fell out as he fell in, how he had drifted

to Franconia, how the Germans had seemed to mistake him for some one and had "took him prisoner" and

brought him to New York, how he had been to Labrador and back, how he had got to Goat Island and found

himself there alone. He omitted the matter of the Prince and the Butteridge aspect of the affair, not out of any

deep deceitfulness, but because he felt the inadequacy of his narrative powers. He wanted everything to seem

easy and natural and correct, to present himself as a trustworthy and understandable Englishman in a sound

mediocre position, to whom refreshment and accommodation might be given with freedom and confidence.

When his fragmentary story came to New York and the battle of Niagara, they suddenly produced

newspapers which had been lying about on the table, and began to check him and question him by these

vehement accounts. It became evident to him that his descent had revived and roused to flames again a

discussion, a topic, that had been burning continuously, that had smouldered only through sheer exhaustion of

material during the temporary diversion of the gramophone, a discussion that had drawn these men together,

rifle in hand, the one supreme topic of the whole world, the War and the methods of the War. He found any

question of his personality and his personal adventures falling into the background, found himself taken for

granted, and no more than a source of information. The ordinary affairs of life, the buying and selling of

everyday necessities, the cultivation of the ground, the tending of beasts, was going on as it were by force of

routine, as the common duties of life go on in a house whose master lies under the knife of some supreme

operation. The overruling interest was furnished by those great Asiatic airships that went upon incalculable

missions across the sky, the crimsonclad swordsmen who might come fluttering down demanding petrol, or

food, or news. These men were asking, all the continent was asking, "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 to be a central

After he had eaten and drunken his fill and sighed and stretched and told them how good the food seemed to

him, he lit a cigarette they gave him and led the way, with some doubts and trouble, to the flyingmachine

amidst the larches. It became manifest that the gaunt young man, whose name, it seemed, was Laurier, was a

leader both by position and natural aptitude. He knew the names and characters and capabilities of all the men

who were with him, and he set them to work at once with vigour and effect to secure this precious instrument

of war. They got the thing down to the ground deliberately and carefully, felling a couple of trees in the

process, and they built a wide flat roof of timbers and tree boughs to guard their precious find against its

chance discovery by any passing Asiatics. Long before evening they had an engineer from the next township

at work upon it, and they were casting lots among the seventeen picked men who wanted to take it for its first

flight. And Bert found his kitten and carried it back to Logan's store and handed it with earnest admonition to

Mrs. Logan. And it was reassuringly clear to him that in Mrs. Logan both he and the kitten had found a

Laurier was not only a masterful person and a wealthy property owner and employerhe was president, Bert

learnt with awe, of the Tanooda Canning Corporationbut he was popular and skilful in the arts of

popularity. In the evening quite a crowd of men gathered in the store and talked of the flyingmachine and of

the war that was tearing the world to pieces. And presently came a man on a bicycle with an illprinted

newspaper of a single sheet which acted like fuel in a blazing furnace of talk. It was nearly all American

news; the oldfashioned cables had fallen into disuse for some years, and the Marconi stations across the

ocean and along the Atlantic coastline seemed to have furnished particularly tempting points of attack.

Bert sat in the backgroundfor by this time they had gauged his personal quality pretty

completelylistening. Before his staggering mind passed strange vast images as they talked, of great issues

at a crisis, of nations in tumultuous march, of continents overthrown, of famine and destruction beyond

measure. Ever and again, in spite of his efforts to suppress them, certain personal impressions would scamper

across the weltering confusion, the horrible mess of the exploded Prince, the Chinese aeronaut upside down,

the limping and bandaged birdfaced officer blundering along in miserable and hopeless flight....

They spoke of fire and massacre, of cruelties and counter cruelties, of things that had been done to harmless

Asiatics by racemad men, of the wholesale burning and smashing up of towns, railway junctions, bridges, of

whole populations in hiding and exodus. "Every ship they've got is in the Pacific," he heard one man exclaim.

"Since the fighting began they can't have landed on the Pacific slope less than a million men. They've come

Slowly, broadly, invincibly, there grew upon Bert's mind realisation of the immense tragedy of humanity into

which his life was flowing; the appalling and universal nature of the epoch that had arrived; the conception of

an end to security and order and habit. The whole world was at war and it could not get back to peace, it

He had thought the things he had seen had been exceptional, conclusive things, that the besieging of New

York and the battle of the Atlantic were epochmaking events between long years of se curity. And they had

been but the first warning impacts of universal cataclysm. Each day destruction and hate and disaster grew,

the fissures widened between man and man, new regions of the fabric of civilisation crumbled and gave way.

Below, the armies grew and the people perished; above, the airships and aeroplanes fought and fled, raining

It is difficult perhaps for the broadminded and longperspectived reader to understand how incredible the

breaking down of the scientific civilisation seemed to those,who actually lived at this time, who in their own

persons went down in that debacle. Progress had marched as it seemed invincible about the earth, never now

to rest again. For three hundred years and more the long steadily accelerated diastole of Europeanised

civilisation had been in progress: towns had been multiplying, populations increasing, values rising, new

countries developing; thought, literature, knowledge unfolding and spreading. It seemed but a part of the

process that every year the instruments of war were vaster and more powerful, and that armies and explosives

Three hundred years of diastole, and then came the swift and unexpected systole, like the closing of a fist.

They could not think of it as anything but a jolt, a hitch, a mere oscillatory indication of the swiftness of their

progress. Collapse, though it happened all about them, remained incredible. Presently some falling 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 immense canopy of disaster. They turned

from one little aspect to another. What chiefly concerned them was defence against Asiatic raiders swooping

for petrol or to destroy weapons or communications. Everywhere levies were being formed at that time to

defend the plant of the railroads day and night in the hope that communication would speedily be restored.

The land war was still far away. A man with a flat voice distinguished himself by a display of knowledge and

cunning. He told them all with confidence just what had been wrong with the German drachenflieger and the

American aeroplanes, just what advantage the Japanese flyers possessed. He launched out into a romantic

description of the Butteridge machine and riveted Bert's attention. "I SEE that," said Bert, and was smitten

silent by a thought. The man with the flat voice talked on, without heeding him, of the strange irony of

Butteridge's death. At that Bert had a little twinge of reliefhe would never meet Butteridge again. It

"And his secret, sir, perished with him! When they came to look for the partsnone could find them. He had

"But couldn't he tell?" asked the man in the straw hat. "Did he die so suddenly as that?"

"That's right, said Laurier. "I remember a page about it in the Sunday American. At the time they said it was a

"Well, sir," said the flatvoiced man, "that fit of apoplexy at Dyrnchurch was the worst thingabsolutely the

worst thing that ever happened to the world. For if it had not been for the death of Mr. Butteridge"

"Not a soul. It's gone. His balloon, it appears, was lost at sea, with all the plans. Down it went, and they went

"With machines such as he made we could fight these Asiatic fliers on more than equal terms. We could

outfly and beat down those scarlet hummingbirds wherever they appeared. But it's gone, it's gone, and

there's no time to reinvent it now. We got to fight with what we gotand the odds are against us. THAT

Nobody regarded him. The man with the flat voice was opening a new branch of the subject.

He made clawing motions with his hands. "I say!" he exclaimed, "Mr. Laurier. Look 'ereI wantabout

Mr. Laurier, sitting on an adjacent table, with a magnificent gesture, arrested the discourse of the flatvoiced

Then the whole company realised that something was happening to Bert; either he was suffocating or going

"Look 'ere! I say! 'Old on a bit!" and trembling and eagerly unbuttoning himself.

He tore open his collar and opened vest and shirt. He plunged into his interior and for an instant it seemed he

was plucking forth his liver. Then as he struggled with buttons on his shoulder they perceived this flattened

horror was in fact a terribly dirty flannel chestprotector. In an other moment Bert, in a state of irregular

"These!" he gasped. "These are the plans!... You know! Mr. Butteridgehis machine ! What died! I was the

For some seconds every one was silent. They stared from these papers to Bert'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

They would all no doubt have been eager to hear Bert's story over again, but it was it this point that Laurier

He impounded the dispersing Butteridge plans with one comprehensive sweep of his arm, rescuing them even

from the expository fingermarks of the man with the flat voice, and handed them to Bert. "Put those back,

"Why, sir, we are going to find the President of these States and give these plans over to him. I decline to

"Logan," said Laurier, disregarding that feeble inqniry, "you must help us in this."

It seemed only a matter of a few minutes before Bert and Laurier and the storekeeper were examining a

number of bicycles that were stowed in the hinder room of the store. Bert didn't like any of them very much.

They had wood rims and an experience of wood rims in the English climate had taught him to hate them.

That, however, and one or two other objections to an immediate start were overruled by Laurier. "But where

IS the President?" Bert repeated as they stood behind Logan while he pumped up a deflated tyre.

Laurier looked down on him. "He is reported in the neighbourhood of Albanyout towards the Berkshire

Hills. He is moving from place to place and, as far as he can, organising the defence by telegraph and

telephones The Asiatic airfleet is trying to locate him. When they think they have located the seat of

government, they throw bombs. This inconveniences him, but so far they have not come within ten miles of

him. The Asiatic airfleet is at present scattered all over the Eastern States, seeking out and destroying

gasworks and whatever seems conducive to the building of airships or the transport of troops. Our

retaliatory measures are slight in the extreme. But with these machinesSir, this ride of ours will count

He came near to striking an attitude. "We shan't get to him tonight?" asked Bert.

"No, sir! There's been no transit by Tanooda for three days. It is no good waiting. We shall have to get on as

"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, and left his sentence unfinished.

He gave his attention to the more scientific packing of the chestprotector, for several of the plans flapped

For a week Bert led a life of mixed sensations. Amidst these fatigue in the legs predominated. Mostly he

rode, rode with Laurier's back inexorably ahead, through a land like a larger England, with bigger hills and

wider valleys, larger fields, wider roads, fewer hedges, and wooden houses with commodious piazzas. He

rode. Laurier made inquiries, Laurier chose the turnings, Laurier doubted, Laurier decided. Now it seemed

they were in telephonic touch with the President; now something had happened and he was lost again. But

always they had to go on, and always Bert rode. A tyre was deflated. Still he rode. He grew saddle sore.

Laurier declared that unimportant. Asiatic flying ships passed overhead, the two cyclists made a dash for

cover until the sky was clear. Once a red Asiatic flyingmachine came fluttering after them, so low they

could distinguish the aeronaut's head. He followed them for a mile. Now they came to regions of panic, now

to regions of destruction; here people were fighting for food, here they seemed hardly stirred from the

countryside routine. They spent a day in a deserted and damaged Albany. The Asiatics had descended and cut

every wire and made a cinderheap of the Junction, and our travellers pushed on eastward. They passed a

hundred halfheeded incidents, and always Bert was toiling after Laurier's indefatigable back....

Things struck upon Bert's attention and perplexed him, and then he passed on with unanswered questionings

He saw a large house on fire on a hillside to the right, and no man heeding it....

They came to a narrow railroad bridge and presently to a monorail train standing in the track on its safety

feet. It was a remarkably sumptuous train, the Last Word TransContinental Express, and the passengers

were all playing cards or sleeping or preparing a picnic meal on a grassy slope near at hand. They had been

At one point ten darkcomplexioned men were hanging in a string from the trees along the roadside. Bert

At one peacefullooking village where they stopped off to get Bert's tyre mended and found beer and

biscuits, they were approached by an extremely dirty little boy without boots, who spoke as follows:

"Dose guys done wase cartridges. Deyse hung him and dey pulled his legs. Deyse doin' all der Chinks dey

Neither Bert nor Laurier made any reply, and presently, after a little skilful expectoration, the young

gentleman was attracted by the appearance of two of his friends down the road and shuffled off, whooping

That afternoon they almost ran over a man shot through the body and partly decomposed, lying near the

middle of the road, just outside Albany. He must have been lying there for some days....

Beyond Albany they came upon a motor car with a tyre burst and a young woman sitting absolutely passive

beside the driver's seat. An old man was under the car trying to effect some impossible repairs. Beyond,

sitting with a rifle across his knees, with his back to the car, and staring into the woods, was a young man.

The old man crawled out at their approach and still on allfours accosted Bert and Laurier. The car had

broken down overnight. The old man, said he could not understand what was wrong, but he was trying to

puzzle it out. Neither he nor his soninlaw had any mechanical aptitude. They had been assured this was a

foolproof car. It was dangerous to have to stop in this place. The party had been attacked by tramps and had

had to fight. It was known they had provisions. He mentioned a great name in the world of finance. Would

Laurier and Bert stop and help him? He proposed it first hopefully, then urgently, at last in tears and terror.

"No!" said Laurier inexorable. "We must go on! We have something more than a woman to save. We have to

And at last they found the President hiding in a small saloon upon the outskirts of a place called Pinkerville

And now the whole fabric of civilisation was bending and giving, and dropping to pieces and melting in the

The stages of the swift and universal collapse of the financial and scientific civilisation with which the

twentieth century opened followed each other very swiftly, so swiftly that upon the foreshortened page of

historythey seem altogether to overlap. To begin with, one sees the world nearly at a maximum wealth and

prosperity. To its inhabitants indeed it seemed also at a maximum of security. When now in retrospect the

thoughtful observer surveys the intellectual history of this time, when one reads its surviving fragments of

literature, its scraps of political oratory, the few small voices that chance has selected out of a thousand

million utterances to speak to later days, the most striking thing of all this web of wisdom and error is surely

that hallucination of security. To men living in our present world state, orderly, scientific and secured,

nothing seems so precarious, so giddily dangerous, as the fabric of the social order with which the men of the

opening of the twentieth century were content. To us it seems that every institution and relationship was the

fruit of haphazard and tradition and the manifest sport of chance, their laws each made for some separate

occasion and having no relation to any future needs, their customs illogical, their education aimless and

wasteful. Their method of economic exploitation indeed impresses a trained and informed mind as the most

frantic and destructive scramble it is possible to conceive; their credit and monetary system resting on an

unsubstantial tradition of the worthiness of gold, seems a thing almost fantastically unstable. And they lived

in planless cities, for the most part dangerously congested; their rails and roads and population were

distributed over the earth in the wanton confusion ten thousand irrevelant considerations had made.

Yet they thought confidently that this was a secure and permanent progressive system, and on the strength of

some three hundred years of change and irregular improvement answered the doubter with, "Things always

But when we contrast the state of man in the opening of the twentieth century with the condition of any

previous period in his history, then perhaps we may begin to understand something of that blind confidence.

It was not so much a reasoned confidence as the inevitable consequence of sustained good fortune. By such

standards as they possessed, things HAD gone amazingly well for them. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say

that for the first time in history whole populations found themselves regularly supplied with more than

enough to eat, and the vital statistics of the time witness to an amelioration of hygienic conditions rapid

beyond all precedent, and to a vast development of intelligence and ability in all the arts that make life

wholesome. The level and quality of the average education had risen tremendously; and at the dawn of the

twentieth century comparatively few people in Western Europe or America were unable to read or write.

Never before had there been such reading masses. There was wide social security. A common man might

travel safely over threequarters of the habitable globe, could go round the earth at a cost of less than the

annual earnings of a skilled artisan. Compared with the liberality and comfort of the ordinary life of the time,

the order of the Roman Empire under the Antonines was local and limited. And every year, every month,

came some new increment to human achievement, a new country opened up, new mines, new scientific

For those three hundred years, indeed, the movement of the world seemed wholly beneficial to mankind. Men

said, indeed, that moral organisation was not keeping pace with physical progress, but few attached any

meaning to these phrases, the understanding of which lies at the basis of our present safety. Sustaining and

constructive forces did indeed for a time more than balance the malign drift of chance and the natural

The accidental balance on the side of Progress was far slighter and infinitely more complex and delicate in its

adjustments than the people of that time suspected; but that did not alter the fact that it was an effective

balance. They did not realise that this age of relative good fortune was an age of immense but temporary

opportunity for their kind. They complacently assumed a necessary progress towards which they had no

moral responsibility. They did not realise that this security of progress was a thing still to be wonor lost,

and that the time to win it was a time that passed. They went about their affairs energetically enough and yet

with a curious idleness towards those threatening things. No one troubled over the real dangers of mankind.

They, saw their armies and navies grow larger and more portentous; some of their ironclads at the last cost as

much as the whole annual expenditure upon advanced education; they accumulated explosives and the

machinery of destruction; they allowed their national traditions and jealousies to accumulate; they

contemplated a steady enhancement of race hostility as the races drew closer without. concern or

understanding, and they permitted the growth in their midst of an evilspirited press, mercenary, and

unscrupulous, incapable of good, and powerful for evil. The State had practically no control over the press at

all. Quite heedlessly they allowed thistouchpaper to lie at the door of their war magazine for any spark to

fire. The precedents of history were all one tale of the collapse of civilisations, the dangers of the time were

An idle question that, as idle as to ask could mankind have prevented the decay that turned Assyria and

Babylon to empty deserts or the slow decline and fall, the gradual social disorganisation, phase by phase, that

closed the chapter of the Empire of the West! They could not, because they did not, they had not the will to

arrest it. What mankind could achieve with a different will is a speculation as idle as it is magnificent. And

this was no slow decadence that came to the Europeanised world; those other civilisations rotted and

crumbled down, the Europeanised civilisation was, as it were, blown up. Within the space of five years it was

altogether disintegrated and destroyed. Up to the very eve of the War in the Air one sees a spacious spectacle

of incessant advance, a worldwide security, enormous areas with highly organised industry and settled

populations, gigantic cities spreading gigantically, the seas and oceans dotted with shipping, the land netted

with rails, and open ways. Then suddenly the German airfleets sweep across the scene, and we are in the

This story has already told of the swift rush upon New York of the first German airfleet and of the wild,

inevitable orgy of inconclusive destruction that ensued. Behind it a second airfleet was already swelling at

its gasometers when England and France and Spain and Italy showed their hands. None of these countries had

prepared for aeronautic warfare on the magnificent scale of the Germans, but each guarded secrets, each in a

measure was making ready, and a common dread of German vigour and that aggressive spirit Prince Karl

Albert embodied, had long been drawing these powers together in secret anticipation of some such attack.

This rendered their prompt cooperation possible, and they certainly cooperated promptly. The second

aerial power in Europe at this time was France; the British, nervous for their Asiatic empire, and sensible of

the immense moral effect of the airship upon halfeducated populations, had placed their aeronautic parks in

North India, and were able to play but a subordinate part in the European conflict. Still, even in England they

had nine or ten big navigables, twenty or thirty smaller ones, and a variety of experimental aeroplanes. Before

the fleet of Prince Karl Albert had crossed England, while Bert was still surveying Manchester in bird'seye

view, the diplomatic exchanges were going on that led to an attack upon Germany. A heterogeneous

collection of navigable balloons of all sizes and types gathered over the Bernese Oberland, crushed and burnt

the twentyfive Swiss airships' that unexpectedly resisted this concentration in the battle of the Alps, and

then, leaving the Alpine glaciers and valleys strewn with strange wreckage, divided into two fleets and set

itself to terrorise Berlin and destroy the Franconian Park, seeking to do this before the second airfleet could

Both over Berlin and Franconia the assailants with their modern explosives effected great damage before they

were driven off. In Franconia twelve fully distended and five partially filled and manned giants were able to

make head against and at last, with the help of a squadron of drachenflieger from Hamburg, defeat and pursue

the attack and to relieve Berlin, and the Germans were straining every nerve to get an overwhelming fleet in

the air, and were already raiding London and Paris when the advance fleets from the Asiatic airparks, the

first intimation of a new factor in the conflict, were reported from Burmah and Armenia.

Already the whole financial fabric of the world was staggering when that occurred. With the destruction of

the American fleet in the North Atlantic, and the smashing conflict that ended the naval existence of

Germany in the North Sea, with the burning and wrecking of billions of pounds' worth of property in the four

cardinal cities of the world, the fact of the hopeless costliness of war came home for the first time, came, like

a blow in the face, to the consciousness of mankind. Credit went down in a wild whirl of selling. Everywhere

appeared a phenomenon that had already in a mild degree manifested itself in preceding periods of panic; a

desire to SECURE AND HOARD GOLD before prices reached bottom. But now it spread like wildfire, it

became universal. Above was visible conflict and destruction; below something was happening far more

deadly and incurable to the flimsy fabric of finance and commercialism in which men had so blindly put their

trust. As the airships fought above, the visible gold supply of the world vanished below. An epidemic of

private cornering and universal distrust swept the world. In a few weeks, money, except for depreciated

paper, vanished into vaults, into holes, into the walls of houses, into ten million hidingplaces. Money

vanished, and at its disappearance trade and industry came to an end. The economic world staggered and fell

dead. It was like the stroke of some disease it was like the water vanishing out of the blood of a living

And as the credit system, that had been the living fortress of the scientific civilisation, reeled and fell upon

the millions it had held together in economic relationship, as these people, perplexed and helpless, faced this

marvel of credit utterly destroyed, the airships of Asia, countless and relentless, poured across the heavens,

swooped eastward to America and westward to Europe. The page of history becomes a long crescendo of

battle. The main body of the BritishIndian airfleet perished upon a pyre of blazing antagonists in Burmah;

the Germans were scattered in the great battle of the Carpathians; the vast peninsula of India burst into

insurrection and civil war from end to end, and from Gobi to Morocco rose the standards of the "Jehad." For

some weeks of warfare and destruction it seemed as though the Confederation of Eastern Asia must needs

conquer the world, and then the jerrybuilt "modern" civilisation of China too gave way under the strain. The

teeming and peaceful population of China had been "westernised" during the opening years of the twentieth

century with the deepest resentment and reluctance; they had been dragooned and disciplined under Japanese

and Europeaninfluence into an acquiescence with sanitary methods, police controls, military service, and

wholesale process of exploitation against which their whole tradition rebelled. Under the stresses of the war

their endurance reached the breaking point, the whole of China rose in incoherent revolt, and the practical

destruction of the central government at Pekin by a handful of British and German airships that had escaped

from the main battles rendered that revolt invincible. In Yokohama appeared barricades, the black flag and

So that a universal social collapse followed, as it were a logical consequence, upon worldwide war.

Wherever there were great populations, great masses of people found themselves without work, without

money, and unable to get food. Famine was in every workingclass quarter in the world within three weeks

of the beginning of the war. Within a month there was not a city anywhere in which the ordinary law and

social procedure had not been replaced by some form of emergency control, in which firearms and military

executions were not being used to keep order and prevent violence. And still in the poorer quarters, and in the

populous districts, and even here and there already among those who had been wealthy, famine spread.

So what historians have come to call the Phase of the Emergency Committees sprang from the opening phase

and from the phase of social collapse. Then followed a period of vehement and passionate conflict against

disintegration; everywhere the struggle to keep order and to keep fighting went on. And at the same time the

character of the war altered through the replacement of the huge gasfilled airships by flyingmachines as

the instruments of war. So soon as the big fleet engagements were over, the Asiatics endeavoured to establish

in close proximity to the more vulnerable points of the countries against which they were acting, fortified

centres from which flyingmachine raids could be made. For a time they had everything their own way in

this, and then, as this story has told, the lost secret of the Butteridge machine came to light, and the conflict

became equalized and less conclusive than ever. For these small flyingmachines, ineffectual for any large

expedition or conclusive attack, were horribly convenient for guerilla warfare, rapidly and cheaply made,

easily used, easily hidden. The design of them was hastily copied and printed in Pinkerville and scattered

broadcast over the United States and copies were sent to Europe, and there reproduced. Every man, every

town, every parish that could, was exhorted to make and use them. In a little while they were being

constructed not only by governments and local authorities, but by robber bands, by insurgent committees, by

every type of private person. The peculiar social destructiveness of the Butteridge machine lay in its complete

simplicity. It was nearly as simple as a motorbicycle. The broad outlines of the earlier stages of the war

disappeared under its influence, the spacious antagonism of nations and empires and races vanished in a

seething mass of detailed conflict. The world passed at a stride from a unity and simplicity broader than that

of the Roman Empire at its best, to as social fragmentation as complete as the robberbaron period of the

Middle Ages. But this time, for a long descent down gradual slopes of disintegration, comes a fall like a fall

over a cliff. Everywhere were men and women perceiving this and struggling desperately to keep as it were a

A fourth phase follows. Through the struggle against Chaos, in the wake of the Famine, came now another

old enemy of humanity the Pestilence, the Purple Death. But the war does not pause. The flags still fly.

Fresh airfleets rise, new forms of airship, and beneath their swooping struggles the world darkensscarcely

It is not within the design of this book to tell what further story, to tell how the War in the Air kept on

through the sheer inability of any authorities to meet and agree and end it, until every organised government

in the world was as shattered and broken as a heap of china beaten with a stick. With every week of those

terrible years history becomes more detailed and confused, more crowded and uncertain. Not without great

and heroic resistance was civilisation borne down. Out of the bitter social conflict below rose patriotic

associations, brotherhoods of order, city mayors, princes, provisional committees, trying to establish an order

below and to keep the sky above. The double effort destroyed them. And as the exhaustion of the mechanical

resources of civilisation clears the heavens of airships at last altogether, Anarchy, Famine and Pestilence are

discovered triumphant below. The great nations and empires have become but names in the mouths of men.

Everywhere there are ruins and unburied dead, and shrunken, yellowfaced survivors in a mortal apathy.

Here there are robbers, here vigilance committees, and here guerilla bands ruling patches of exhausted

territory, strange federations and brotherhoods form and dissolve, and religious fanaticisms begotten of

despair gleam in faminebright eyes. It is a universal dissolution. The fine order and welfare of the earth have

crumpled like an exploded bladder. In five short years the world and the scope of human life have undergone

a retrogressive change as great as that between the age of the Antonines and the Europe of the ninth

Across this sombre spectacle of disaster goes a minute and insignificant person for whom perhaps the readers

of this story have now some slight solicitude. Of him there remains to be told just one single and miraculous

thing. Through a world darkened and lost, through a civilisation in its death agony, our little Cockney errant

He got back across the Atlantic partly by means of an order from the President and partly through his own

good luck. He contrived to get himself aboard a British brig in the timber trade that put out from Boston

without cargo, chiefly, it would seem, because its captain had a vague idea of "getting home" to South

Shields. Bert was able to ship himself upon her mainly because of the seamanlike appearance of his rubber

boots. They had a long, eventful voyage; they were chased, or imagined themselves to be chased, for some

hours by an Asiatic ironclad, which was presently engaged by a British cruiser. The two ships fought for

three hours, circling and driving southward as they fought, until the twilight and the clouddrift of a rising

gale swallowed them up. A few days later Bert's ship lost her rudder and mainmast in a gale. The crew ran

out of food and subsisted on fish. They saw strange airships going eastward near the Azores and landed to

get provisions and repair the rudder at Teneriffe. There they found the town destroyed and two big liners,

with dead still aboard, sunken in the harbour. From there they got canned food and material for repairs, but

their operations were greatly impeded by the hostility of a band of men amidst the ruins of the town, who

At Mogador, they stayed and sent a boat ashore for water, and were nearly captured by an Arab ruse. Here

too they got the Purple Death aboard, and sailed with it incubating in their blood. The cook sickened first, and

then the mate, and presently every one was down and three in the forecastle were dead. It chanced to be calm

weather, and they drifted helplessly and indeed careless of their fate backwards towards the Equator. The

captain doctored them all with rum. Nine died all together, and of the four survivors none understood

navigation; when at last they took heart again and could handle a sail, they made a course by the stars roughly

northward and were already short of food once more when they fell in with a petroldriven ship from Rio to

Cardiff, shorthanded by reason of the Purple Death and glad to take them aboard. So at,last, after a year of

wandering Bert reached England. He landed in bright June weather, and found the Purple Death was there

The people were in a state of panic in Cardiff and many had fled to the hills, and directly the steamer came to

the harbour she was boarded and her residue of food impounded by some unauthenticated Provisional

Committee. Bert tramped through a country disorganised by pestilence, foodless, and shaken to the very base

of its immemorial order. He came near death and starvation many times, and once he was drawn into scenes

of violence that might have ended his career. But the Bert Smallways who tramped from Cardiff to London

vaguely "going home," vaguely seeking something of his own that had no tangible form but Edna, was a very

different person from the Desert Dervish who was swept out of England in Mr. Butteridge's balloon a year

before. He was brown and lean and enduring, steadyeyed and pestilencesalted, and his mouth, which had

once hung open, shut now like a steel trap. Across his brow ran a white scar that he had got in a fight on the

brig. In Cardiff he had felt the need of new clothes and a weapon, and had, by means that would have

shocked him a year ago, secured a flannel shirt, a corduroy suit, and a revolver and fifty cartridges from an

abandoned pawnbroker's. He also got some soap and had his first real wash for thirteen months in a stream

outside the town. The Vigilance bands that had at first shot plunderers very freely were now either entirely

dispersed by the plague, or busy between town and cemetery in a vain attempt to keep pace with it. He

prowled on the outskirts of the town for three or four days, starving, and then went back to join the Hospital

Corps for a week, and so fortified himself with a few square meals before he started eastward.

The Welsh and English countryside at that time presented the strangest mingling of the assurance and wealth

of the opening twentieth century with a sort of Dureresque medievalism. All the gear, the houses and

monorails, the farm hedges and power cables, the roads and pavements, the signposts and advertisements

of the former order were still for the most part intact. Bankruptcy, social collapse, famine, and pestilence had

done nothing to damage these, and it was only to the great capitals and ganglionic centres, as it were, of this

State, that positive destruction had come. Any one dropped suddenly into the country would have noticed

very little difference. He would have remarked first, perhaps, that all the hedges needed clipping, that the

roadside grass grew rank, that the roadtracks were unusually rainworn, and that the cottages by the wayside

seemed in many cases shut up, that a telephone wire had dropped here, and that a cart stood abandoned by the

wayside. But he would still find his hunger whetted by the bright assurance that Wilder's Canned Peaches

were excellent, or that there was nothing so good for the breakfast table as Gobble's Sausages. And then

suddenly would come the Dureresque element; the skeleton of a horse, or some crumpled mass of rags in the

ditch, with gaunt extended feet and a yellow, purpleblotched skin and face, or what had been a face, gaunt

and glaring and devastated. Then here would be a field that had been ploughed and not sown, and here a field

of corn carelessly trampled by beasts, and here a hoarding torn down across the road to make a fire.

Then presently he would meet a man or a woman, yellowfaced and probably negligently dressed and

armedprowling for food. These people would have the complexions and eyes and expressions of tramps or

criminals, and often the clothing of prosperous middleclass or upperclass people. Many of these would be

eager for news, and willing to give help and even scraps of queer meat, or crusts of grey and doughy bread, in

return for it. They would listen to Bert's story with avidity, and attempt to keep him with them for a day or so.

The virtual cessation of postal distribution and the collapse of all newspaper enterprise had left an immense

and aching gap in the mental life of this time. Men had suddenly lost sight of the ends of the earth and had

still to recover the rumourspreading habits of the Middle Ages. In their eyes, in their bearing, in their talk,

As Bert travelled from parish to parish, and from district to district, avoiding as far as possible those festering

centres of violence and despair, the larger towns, he found the condition of affairs varying widely. In one

parish he would find the large house burnt, the vicarage wrecked, evidently in violent conflict for some

suspected and perhaps imaginary store of food unburied dead everywhere, and the whole mechanism of the

community at a standstill. In another he would find organising forces stoutly at work, newlypainted notice

boards warning off vagrants, the roads and still cultivated fields policed by armed men, the pestilence under

control, even nursing going on, a store of food husbanded, the cattle and sheep well guarded, and a group of

two or three justices, the village doctor or a farmer, dominating the whole place; a reversion, in fact, to the

autonomous community of the fifteenth century. But at any time such a village would be liable to a raid of

Asiatics or Africans or suchlike airpirates, demanding petrol and alcohol or provisions. The price of its

Then the approach to the confused problems of some larger centre of population and the presence of a more

intricate conflict would be marked by roughly smeared notices of "Quarantine" or "Strangers Shot," or by a

string of decaying plunderers dangling from the telephone poles at the roadside. About Oxford big boards

were put on the roofs warning all air wanderers off with the single word, "Guns."

Taking their risks amidst these things, cyclists still kept abroad, and once or twice during Bert's long tramp

powerful motor cars containing masked and goggled figures went tearing past him. There were few police in

evidence, but ever and again squads of gaunt and tattered soldiercyclists would come drifting along, and

such encounters became more frequent as he got out of Wales into England. Amidst all this wreckage they

were still campaigning. He had had some idea of resorting to the workhouses for the night if hunger pressed

him too closely, but some of these were closed and others converted into temporary hospitals, and one he

came up to at twilight near a village in Gloucestershire stood with all its doors and windows open, silent as

the grave, and, as he found to his horror by stumbling along evilsmelling corridors, full of unburied dead.

From Gloucestershire Bert went northward to the British aeronautic park outside Birmingham, in the hope

that he might be taken on and given food, for there the Government, or at any rate the War Office, still

existed as an energetic fact, concentrated amidst collapse and social disaster upon the effort to keep the

British flag still flying in the air, and trying to brisk up mayor and mayor and magistrate and magistrate in a

new effort of organisation. They had brought together all the best of the surviving artisans from that region,

they had provisioned the park for a siege, and they were urgently building a larger type of Butteridge

machine. Bert could get no footing at this work: he was not sufficiently skilled, and he had drifted to Oxford

when the great fight occurred in which these works were finally wrecked. He saw something, but not very

much, of the battle from a place called Boar Hill. He saw the Asiatic squadron coming up across the hills to

the southwest, and he saw one of their airships circling southward again chased by two aeroplanes, the one

that was ultimately overtaken, wrecked and burnt at Edge Hill. But he never learnt the issue of the combat as

He crossed the Thames from Eton to Windsor and made his way round the south of London to Bun Hill, and

there he found his brother Tom, looking like some dark, defensive animal in the old shop, just recovering

from the Purple Death, and Jessica upstairs delirious, and, as it seemed to him, dying grimly. She raved of

sending out orders to customers, and scolded Tom perpetually lest he should be late with Mrs. Thompson's

potatoes and Mrs. Hopkins' cauliflower, though all business had long since ceased and Tom had developed a

quite uncanny skill in the snaring of rats and sparrows and the concealment of certain stores of cereals and

biscuits from plundered grocers' shops. Tom received his brother with a sort of guarded warmth.

"Lor!" he said, "it's Bert. I thought you'd be coming back some day, and I'm glad to see you. But I carn't arst

you to eat anything, because I 'aven't got anything to eat.... Where you been, Bert, all this time?"

Bert reassured his brother by a glimpse of a partly eaten swede, and was still telling his story in fragments

and parentheses, when he discovered behind the counter a yellow and forgotten note addressed to himself.

"What's this?" he said, and found it was a yearold note from Edna. "She came 'ere," said Tom, like one who

recalls a trivial thing, "arstin' for you and arstin' us to take 'er in. That was after the battle and settin' Clapham

Rise afire. I was for takin' 'er in, but Jessica wouldn't 'ave itand so she borrowed five shillings of me quiet

She had, Bert found. She had gone on, she said in her note, to an aunt and uncle who had a brickfield near

Horsham. And there at last, after another fortnight of adventurous journeying, Bert found her.

When Bert and Edna set eyes on one another, they stared and laughed foolishly, so changed they were, and so

"Oh! Bertie, boy!" she cried. "You've comeyou've come!" and put out her arms and staggered. "I told 'im.

But Edna was not married, and when presently Bert could get talk from her, she explained the task before

him. That little patch of lonely agricultural country had fallen under the power of a band of bullies led by a

chief called Bill Gore who had begun life as a butcher boy and developed into a prizefighter and a

professional sport. They had been organised by a local nobleman of former eminence upon the turf, but after

a time he had disappeared, no one quite knew how and Bill had succeeded to the leadership of the

countryside, and had developed his teacher's methods with considerable vigour. There had been a strain of

advanced philosophy about the local nobleman, and his mind ran to "improving the race" and producing the

OverMan, which in practice took the form of himself especially and his little band in moderation marrying

with some frequency. Bill followed up the idea with an enthusiasm that even trenched upon his popularity

with his followers. One day he had happened upon Edna tending her pigs, and had at once fallen awooing

with great urgency among the troughs of slush. Edna had made a gallant resistance, but he was still

vigorously about and extraordinarily impatient. He might, she said, come at any time, and she looked Bert in

the eyes. They were back already in the barbaric stage when a man must fight for his love.

And here one deplores the conflicts of truth with the chivalrous tradition. One would like to tell of Bert

sallying forth to challenge his rival, of a ring formed and a spirited encounter, and Bert by some miracle of

pluck and love and good fortune winning. But indeed nothing of the sort occurred. Instead, he reloaded his

revolver very carefully, and then sat in the best room of the cottage by the derelict brickfield, looking anxious

and perplexed, and listening to talk about Bill and his ways, and thinking, thinking. Then suddenly Edna's

aunt, with a thrill in her voice, announced the appearance of that individual. He was coming with two others

of his gang through the garden gate. Bert got up, put the woman aside, and looked out. They presented

remarkable figures. They wore a sort of uniform of red golfing jackets and white sweaters, football singlet,

and stockings and boots and each had let his fancy play about his headdress. Bill had a woman's hat full of

Bert sighed and stood up, deeply thoughtful, and Edna watched him, marvelling. The women stood quite still.

He left the window, and went out into the passage rather slowly, and with the careworn expression of a man

who gives his mind to a complex and uncertain business. "Edna!" he called, and when she came he opened

He asked very simply, and pointing to the foremost of the three, "That 'im? ... Sure?" ... and being told that it

was, shot his rival instantly and very accurately through the chest. He then shot Bill's best man much less

tidily in the head, and then shot at and winged the third man as he fled. The third gentleman yelped, and

Then Bert stood still meditating, with the pistol in his hand, and quite regardless of the women behind him.

It became evident to him that if he did not go into politics at once, he would be hanged as an assassin and

accordingly, and without a word to the women, he went down to the village publichouse he had passed an

hour before on his way to Edna, entered it from the rear, and confronted the little band of ambiguous roughs,

who were drinking in the taproom and discussing matrimony and Bill's affection in a facetious but envious

manner, with a casually held but carefully reloaded revolver, and an invitation to join what he called, I regret

to say, a "Vigilance Committee" under his direction. "It's wanted about 'ere, and some of us are gettin' it up."

He presented himself as one having friends outside, though indeed, he had no friends at all in the world but

There was a quick but entirely respectful discussion of the situation. They thought him a lunatic who had

tramped into, this neighbourhood ignorant of Bill. They desired to temporise until their leader came. Bill

"Bill's dead, I jest shot 'im," said Bert. "We don't need reckon with 'IM. 'E's shot, and a red'aired chap with a

squint, 'E'S shot. We've settled up all that. There ain't going to be no more Bill, ever. 'E'd got wrong ideas

Bill was perfunctorily buried, and Bert's Vigilance Committee (for so it continued to be called) reigned in his

That is the end of this story so far as Bert Smallways is concerned. We leave him with his Edna to become

squatters among the clay and oak thickets of the Weald, far away from the stream of events. From that time

forth life became a succession of peasant encounters, an affair of pigs and hens and small needs and little

economies and children, until Clapham and Bun Hill and all the life of the Scientific Age became to Bert no

more than the fading memory of a dream. He never knew how the War in the Air went on, nor whether it still

went on. There were rumours of airships going and coming, and of happenings Londonward. Once or twice

their shadows fell on him as he worked, but whence they came or whither they went he could not tell. Even

his desire to tell died out for want of food. At times came robbers and thieves, at times came diseases among

the beasts and shortness of food, once the country was worried by a pack of boarhounds he helped to kill; he

Accident and death came near them both ever and again and passed them by, and they loved and suffered and

were happy, and she bore him many childreneleven childrenone after the other, of whom only four

succumbed to the necessary hardships of their simple life. They lived and did well, as well was understood in

It happened that one bright summer's morning exactly thirty years after the launching of the first German

airfleet, an old man took a small boy to look for a missing hen through the ruins of Bun Hill and out towards

the splintered pinnacles of the Crystal Palace. He was not a very old man; he was, as a matter of fact, still

within a few weeks of sixtythree, but constant stooping over spades and forks and the carrying of roots and

manure, and exposure to the damps of life in the openair without a change of clothing, had bent him into the

form of a sickle. Moreover, he had lost most of his teeth and that had affected his digestion and through that

his skin and temper. In face and expression he was curiously like that old Thomas Smallways who had once

been coachman to Sir Peter Bone, and this was just as it should be, for he was Tom Smallways the son, who

formerly kept the little greengrocer's shop under the straddle of the monorail viaduct in the High Street of

Bun Hill. But now there were no greengrocer's shops, and Tom was living in one of the derelict villas hard

by that unoccupied building site that had been and was still the scene of his daily horticulture. He and his

wife lived upstairs, and in the drawing and dining rooms, which had each French windows opening on the

lawn, and all about the ground floor generally, Jessica, who was now a lean and lined and baldish but still

very efficient and energetic old woman, kept her three cows and a multitude of gawky hens. These two were

part of a little community of stragglers and returned fugitives, perhaps a hundred and fifty souls of them all

together, that had settled down to the new conditions of things after the Panic and Famine and Pestilence that

followed in the wake of the War. They had come back from strange refuges and hidingplaces and had

squatted down among the familiar houses and begun that hard struggle against nature for food which was

now the chief interest of their lives. They were by sheer preoccupation with that a peaceful people, more

particularly after Wilkes, the house agent, driven by some obsolete dream of acquisition, had been drowned

in the pool by the ruined gasworks for making inquiries into title and displaying a litigious turn of mind. (He

had not been murdered, you understand, but the people had carried an exemplary ducking ten minutes or so

This little community had returned from its original habits of suburban parasitism to what no doubt had been

the normal life of humanity for nearly immemorial years, a life of homely economies in the most intimate,

contact with cows and hens and patches of around, a life that breathes and exhales the scent of cows and finds

the need for stimulants satisfied by the activity of the bacteria and vermin it engenders. Such had been the life

of the European peasant from the dawn of history to the beginning of the Scientific Era, so it was the large

majority of the people of Asia and Africa had always been wont to live. For a time it had seemed that, by

virtue of machines, and scientific civilisation, Europe was to be lifted out of this perpetual round of animal

drudgery, and that America was to evade it very largely from the outset. And with the smash of the high and

dangerous and splendid edifice of mechanical civilisation that had arisen so marvellously, back to the land

The little communities, still haunted by ten thousand memories of a greater state, gathered and developed

almost tacitly a customary law and fell under the guidance of a medicine man or a priest. The world

rediscovered religion and the need of something to hold its communities together. At Bun Hill this function

was entrusted to on old Baptist minister. He taught a simple but adequate faith. In his teaching a good

principle called the Word fought perpetually against a diabolical female influence called the Scarlet Woman

and an evil being called Alcohol. This Alcohol had long since become a purely spiritualised conception

deprived of any element of material application; it had no relation to the occasional finds of whiskey and

wine in Londoners' cellars that gave Bun Hill its only holidays. He taught this doctrine on Sundays, and on

weekdays he was an amiable and kindly old man, distinguished by his quaint disposition to wash his hands,

and if possible his face, daily, and with a wonderful genius for cutting up pigs. He held his Sunday services in

the old church in the Beckenham Road, and then the countryside came out in a curious reminiscence of the

urban dress of Edwardian times. All the men without exception wore frock coats, top hats, and white shirts,

though many had no boots. Tom was particularly distinguished on these occasions because he wore a top hat

with gold lace about it and a green coat and trousers that he had found upon a skeleton in the basement of the

Urban and District Bank. The women, even Jessica, came in jackets and immense hats extravagantly trimmed

with artificial flowers and exotic birds' feather'sof which there were abundant supplies in the shops to the

northand the children (there were not many children, because a large proportion of the babies born in Bun

Hill died in a few days' time of inexplicable maladies) had similar clothes cut down to accommodate them;

That was the Sunday costume of the Bun Hill district, a curious and interesting survival of the genteel

traditions of the Scientific Age. On a weekday the folk were dingily and curiously hung about with dirty rags

of housecloth and scarlet flannel, sacking, curtain serge, and patches of old carpet, and went either

barefooted or on rude wooden sandals. These people, the reader must understand, were an urban population

sunken back to the state of a barbaric peasantry, and so without any of the simple arts a barbaric peasantry

would possess. In many ways they were curiously degenerate and incompetent. They had lost any idea of

making textiles, they could hardly make up clothes when they had material, and they were forced to plunder

All the simple arts they had ever known they had lost, and with the breakdown of modern drainage, modern

water supply, shopping, and the like, their civilised methods were useless. Their cooking was worse than

primitive. It was a feeble muddling with food over wood fires in rusty drawingroom fireplaces; for the

kitcheners burnt too much. Among them all no sense of baking or brewing or metalworking was to be

Their employment of sacking and suchlike coarse material for workaday clothing, and their habit of tying

it on with string and of thrusting wadding and straw inside it for warmth, gave these people an odd, "packed"

appearance, and as it was a weekday when Tom took his little nephew for the henseeking excursion, so it

"So you've really got to Bun Hill at last, Teddy," said old Tom, beginning to talk and slackening his pace so

soon as they were out of range of old Jessica. "You're the last of Bert's boys for me to see. Wat I've seen,

young Bert I've seen, Sissie and Matt, Tom what's called after me, and Peter. The traveller people brought

"They was all right," said Teddy. "and on the way near Leatherhead we saw a man riding on a bicycle."

"My word!" said Tom, "there ain't many of those about nowadays. Where was he going?"

"Said 'e was going to Dorking if the High Road was good enough. But I doubt if he got there. All about

Burford it was flooded. We came over the hill, unclewhat they call the Roman Road. That's high and safe."

"Don't know it," said old Tom. "But a bicycle! You're sure it was a bicycle? Had two wheels?"

"Why! I remember a time, Teddy, where there was bicycles no end, when you could stand just herethe

road was as smooth as a board thenand see twenty or thirty coming and going at the same time, bicycles

"Tearin' off to Brightonyou never seen Brighton, I expectit's down by the sea, used to be a moce

"But why?" "Lord knows why, Teddy. They did. Then you see that great thing there like a great big rusty nail

sticking up higher than all the houses, and that one yonder, and that, and how something's fell in between 'em

among the houses. They was parts of the monorail. They went down to Brighton too and all day and night

The little boy regarded the rusty evidences acrosss the narrow muddy ditch of cowdroppings that had once

been a High Street. He was clearly disposed to be sceptical, and yet there the ruins were! He grappled with

"All round 'ere, Teddy, there was people living in those 'ouses, and up the road more 'ouses and more people.

You'd 'ardly believe me, Teddy, but it's Bible truth. You can go on that way for ever and ever, and keep on

coming on 'ouses, more 'ouses, and more. There's no end to 'em. No end. They get bigger and bigger." His

You don't find 'ardly a man, you won't find nothing but dogs and cats after the rats until you get round by

Bromley and Beckenham, and there you find the Kentish men herding swine. (Nice rough lot they are too!) I

tell you that so long as the sun is up it's as still as the grave. I been about by dayorfen and orfen." He

"And all those 'ouses and streets and ways used to be full of people before the War in the Air and the Famine

and the Purple Death. They used to be full of people, Teddy, and then came a time when they was full of

corpses, when you couldn't go a mile that way before the stink of 'em drove you back. It was the Purple Death

'ad killed 'em every one. The cats and dogs and 'ens and vermin caught it. Everything and every one 'ad it.

Jest a few of us 'appened to live. I pulled through, and your aunt, though it made 'er lose 'er 'air. Why, you

find the skeletons in the 'ouses now. This way we been into all the 'ouses and took what we wanted and

buried moce of the people, but up that way, Norwood way, there's 'ouses with the glass in the windows still,

and the furniture not touchedall dusty and falling to piecesand the bones of the people lying, some in

bed, some about the 'ouse, jest as the Purple Death left 'em fiveandtwenty years ago. I went into oneme

and old Higgins las' yearand there was a room with books, Teddyyou know what I mean by books,

"Well, books all round, Teddy, 'undreds of books, beyondrhyme or reason, as the saying goes,

greenmouldy and dry. I was for leaven' 'em aloneI was never much for readingbut ole Higgins he must

"I looked, and there, Teddy, was a cullud picture, oh, so lovely! It was a picture of women and serpents in a

"It all fell to dus'. White dus'!" He became still more impressive. "We didn't touch no more of them books

For a long time both were silent. Then Tom, playing with a subject that attracted him with a fatal fascination,

"They tell tales," said old Tom. "They tell tales, but there ain't no believing 'em. I gets 'ome about sundown,

and keeps indoors, so I can't say nothing, can I? But there's them that thinks some things and them as thinks

others. I've 'eard it's unlucky to take clo'es off of 'em unless they got white bones. There's stories"

"Stories of moonlight nights and things walking about. But I take no stock in 'em. I keeps in bed. If you listen

"They say there's a 'og man in Beck'n'am what was lost in London three days and three nights. 'E went up

after whiskey to Cheapside, and lorst 'is way among the ruins and wandered. Three days and three nights 'e

wandered about and the streets kep' changing so's he couldn't get 'ome. If 'e 'adn't remembered some words

out of the Bible 'e might 'ave been there now. All day 'e went and all nightand all day long it was still. It

was as still as death all day long, until the sunset came and the twilight thickened, and then it began to rustle

"A sound of carts and 'orses there was, and a sound of cabs and omnibuses, and then a lot of whistling, shrill

whistles, whistles that froze 'is marrer. And directly the whistles began things begun to show, people in the

streets 'urrying, people in the 'ouses and shops busying themselves, moty cars in the streets, a sort of

moonlight in all the lamps and winders. People, I say, Teddy, but they wasn't people. They was the ghosts of

them that was overtook, the ghosts of them that used to crowd those streets. And they went past 'im and

through 'im and never 'eeded 'im, went by like fogs and vapours, Teddy. And sometimes they was cheerful

and sometimes they was 'orrible, 'orrible beyond words. And once 'e come to a place called Piccadilly, Teddy,

and there was lights blazing like daylight and ladies and gentlemen in splendid clo'es crowding the pavement,

and taxicabs follering along the road. And as 'e looked, they all went evilevil in the face, Teddy. And it

seemed to 'im SUDDENLY THEY SAW 'IM, and the women began to look at 'im and say things to

'im'orrible wicked things. One come very near 'im, Teddy, right up to 'im, and looked into 'is

faceclose. And she 'adn't got a face to look with, only a painted skull, and then 'e see; they was all painted

skulls. And one after another they crowded on 'im saying 'orrible things, and catchin' at 'im and threatenin'

"Then it was he remembered the words of Scripture and saved himself alive. 'The Lord is my 'Elper, 'e says,

'therefore I will fear nothing,' and straightaway there came a cockcrowing and the street was empty from

Teddy stared and caught at another question. "But who was the people," he asked, "who lived in all these

"Gent'men in business, people with moneyleastways we thought it was money till everything smashed up,

and then seemingly it was jes' paperall sorts. Why, there was 'undreds of thousands of them. There was

millions. I've seen that 'I Street there regular so's you couldn't walk along the pavements, shoppin' time, with

"Bort 'em in shops like I used to 'ave. I'll show you the place, Teddy, if we go back. People nowadays 'aven't

no idee of a shopno idee. Plateglass windersit's all Greek to them. Why, I've 'ad as much as a ton and a

'arf of petaties to 'andle all at one time. You'd open your eyes till they dropped out to see jes' what I used to

'ave in my shop. Baskets of pears 'eaped up, marrers, apples and pears, d'licious great nuts." His voice became

"Fruits they was. Sweet, juicy, d'licious fruits. Foreign fruits. They brought 'em from Spain and N' York and

places. In ships and things. They brought 'em to me from all over the world, and I sold 'em in my shop. _I_

sold 'em, Teddy! me what goes about now with you, dressed up in old sacks and looking for lost 'ens. People

used to come into my shop, great beautiful ladies like you'd 'ardly dream of now, dressed up to the nines, and

say, 'Well, Mr. Smallways, what you got 'smorning?' and I'd say, 'Well, I got some very nice C'nadian apples,

'or p'raps I got custed marrers. See? And they'd buy 'em. Right off they'd say, 'Send me some up.' Lord! what

a life that was. The business of it, the bussel, the smart things you saw, moty cars going by, kerridges, people,

organgrinders, German bands. Always something going pastalways. If it wasn't for those empty 'ouses,

"It was a smashup," said old Tom. "Everything was going right until they started that War. Everything was

going like clockwork. Everybody was busy and everybody was 'appy and everybody got a good square meal

He met incredulous eyes. "Everybody," he said firmly. "If you couldn't get it anywhere else, you could get it

in the workhuss, a nice 'ot bowl of soup called skilly, and bread better'n any one knows 'ow to make now,

Teddy marvelled, but said nothing. It made him feel deep longings that he found it wisest to fight down.

For a time the old man resigned himself to the pleasures of gustatory reminiscence. His lips moved. "Pickled

Sammin!" he whispered, "an' vinegar.... Dutch cheese, BEER! A pipe of terbakker."

"There was the War. The War was the beginning of it. The War banged and flummocked about, but it didn't

really KILL many people. But it upset things. They came and set fire to London and burnt and sank all the

ships there used to be in the Thames we could see the smoke and steam for weeksand they threw a

bomb into the Crystal Palace and made a bustup, and broke down the rail lines and things like that. But as

for killin' people, it was just accidental if they did. They killed each other more. There was a great fight all

hereabout one day, Teddyup in the air. Great things bigger than fifty 'ouses, bigger than the Crystal

Palacebigger, bigger than anything, flying about up in the air and whacking at each other and dead men

fallin' off 'em. T'riffic! But, it wasn't so much the people they killed as the business they stopped. There

wasn't any business doin', Teddy, there wasn't any money about, and nothin' to buy if you 'ad it."

"I'm tellin' you, Teddy," said the old man. "It was the stoppin' of business come next. Suddenly there didn't

seem to be any money. There was chequesthey was a bit of paper written on, and they was jes' as good as

moneyjes' as good if they come from customers you knew. Then all of a sudden they wasn't. I was left

with three of 'em and two I'd given' change. Then it got about that fivepun' notes were no good, and then the

silver sort of went off. Gold you 'couldn't get for love oranything. The banks in London 'ad got it, and the

banks was all smashed up. Everybody went bankrup'. Everybody was thrown out of work. Everybody!"

He paused, and scrutinised his hearer. The small boy's intelligent face expressed hopeless perplexity.

"That's 'ow it 'appened," said old Tom. He sought for some means of expression. "It was like stoppin' a

clock," he said. "Things were quiet for a bit, deadly quiet, except for the airships fighting about in the sky,

and then people begun to get excited. I remember my lars' customer, the very lars' customer that ever I 'ad. He

was a Mr. Moses Gluckstein, a city gent and very pleasant and fond of sparrowgrass and chokes, and 'e cut

in there 'adn't been no customers for daysand began to talk very fast, offerin' me for anything I 'ad,

anything, petaties or anything, its weight in gold. 'E said it was a little speculation 'e wanted to try. 'E said it

was a sort of bet reely, and very likely 'e'd lose; but never mind that, 'e wanted to try. 'E always 'ad been a

gambler, 'e said. 'E said I'd only got to weigh it out and 'e'd give me 'is cheque right away. Well, that led to a

bit of a argument, perfect respectful it was, but a argument about whether a cheque was still good, and while

'e was explaining there come by a lot of these here unemployed with a great banner they 'ad for every one to

readevery one could read those days'We want Food.' Three or four of 'em suddenly turns and comes into

"'No, I says, 'not to sell. I wish I 'ad. But if I 'ad, I'm afraid I couldn't let you have it. This gent, 'e's been

"'What's 'e been offerin' you?' says a great big chap with a 'atchet; 'what's 'e been offerin you?' I 'ad to tell.

"'Boys,' 'e said, ''ere's another feenancier!' and they took 'im out there and then, and 'ung 'im on a lam'pose

down the street. 'E never lifted a finger to resist. After I tole on 'im 'e never said a word...."

"Why! I saw free pigstealers 'ung before I was six," said Teddy. "Father took me because of my birfday

"Well, you never saw noone killed by a moty car, any'ow," said old Tom after a moment of chagrin. "And

"Nor won't. Nor won't. You'll never see the things I've seen, never. Not if you live to be a 'undred... Well, as I

was saying, that's how the Famine and Riotin' began. Then there was strikes and Socialism, things I never did

'old with, worse and worse. There was fightin' and shootin' down, and burnin' and plundering. They broke up

the banks up in London and got the gold, But they couldn't make food out of gold. 'Ow did WE get on? Well,

we kep' quiet. We didn't interfere with noone and noone didn't interfere with us. We 'ad some old 'tatoes

about, but mocely we lived on rats. Ours was a old 'ouse, full of rats, and the famine never seemed to bother

'em. Orfen we got a rat. Orfen. But moce of the people who lived hereabouts was too tender stummicked for

rats. Didn't seem to fancy 'em. They'd been used to all sorts of fallals, and they didn't take to 'onest feeding,

"It was the famine began to kill people. Even before the Purple Death came along they was dying like flies at

the end of the summer. 'Ow I remember it all! I was one of the first to 'ave it. I was out, seein' if I mightn't get

'old of a cat or somethin', and then I went round to my bit of ground to see whether I couldn't get up some

young turnips I'd forgot, and I was took something awful. You've no idee the pain, Teddyit doubled me up

pretty near. I jes' lay down by 'at there corner, and your aunt come along to look for me and dragged me 'ome

"I'd never 'ave got better if it 'adn't been for your aunt. 'Tom,' she says to me, 'you got to get well,' and I 'AD

to. Then SHE sickened. She sickened but there ain't much dyin' about your aunt. 'Lor!' she says, 'as if I'd

leave you to go muddlin' along alone!' That's what she says. She's got a tongue, 'as your aunt.

But it took 'er 'air offand arst though I might, she's never cared for the wig I got 'erorf the old lady what

"Well, this 'ere Purple Death,it jes' wiped people out, Teddy. You couldn't bury 'em. And it took the dogs

and the cats too, and the rats and 'orses. At last every house and garden was full of dead bodies. London way,

you couldn't go for the smell of there, and we 'ad to move out of the 'I street into that villa we got. And all the

water run short that way. The drains and underground tunnels took it. Gor' knows where the Purple Death

come from; some say one thing and some another. Some said it come from eatin' rats and some from eatin'

nothin'. Some say the Asiatics brought it from some 'I place, Thibet, I think, where it never did nobody much

'arm. All I know is it come after the Famine. And the Famine come after the Penic and the Penic come after

"Lord knows if it's ended, boy," said old Tom. "Lord knows if it's ended. There's been travellers through

'erethere was a chap only two summers agosay it's goin' on still. They say there's bands of people up

north who keep on with it and people in Germany and China and 'Merica and places. 'E said they still got

flyingmachines and gas and things. But we 'aven't seen nothin' in the air now for seven years, and nobody

'asn't come nigh of us. Last we saw was a crumpled sort of airship going awayover there. It was a

littleishsized thing and lopsided, as though it 'ad something the matter with it."

He pointed, and came to a stop at a gap in the fence, the vestiges of the old fence from which, in the company

of his neighbour Mr. Stringer the milkman, he had once watched the South of England Aero Club's Saturday

afternoon ascents. Dim memories, it may be, of that particular afternoon returned to him.

"There, down there, where all that rus' looks so red and bright, that's the gasworks."

"Oh, a hairy sort of nothin' what you put in balloons to make 'em go up. And you used to burn it till the

The little boy tried vainly to imagine gas on the basis of these particulars. Then his thoughts reverted to a

"Obstinacy. Everybody was getting 'urt, but everybody was 'urtin' and everybody was 'ighspirited and

patriotic, and so they smeshed up things instead. They jes' went on smeshin'. And afterwards they jes' got

"It didn't ought to 'ave begun," said old Tom, "But people was proud. People was ladydaish and uppish

and proud. Too much meat and drink they 'ad. Give innot them! And after a bit nobody arst 'em to give in.

He sucked his old gums thoughtfully, and his gaze strayed away across the valley to where the shattered glass

of the Crystal Palace glittered in the sun. A dim large sense of waste and irrevocable lost opportunities

pervaded his mind. He repeated his ultimate judgment upon all these things, obstinately, slowly, and

He said it simplysomebody somewhere ought to have stopped something, but who or how or why were all