War in the Air — 24 -- Ch 10, Parts 3-5
3 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 crimson-clad 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 and independent thing.
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 flying-machine 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 congenial soul.
Laurier was not only a masterful person and a wealthy property owner and employer--he was president, Bert learnt with awe, of the Tanooda Canning Corporation--but 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 flying-machine and of the war that was tearing the world to pieces.
And presently came a man on a bicycle with an ill-printed newspaper of a single sheet which acted like fuel in a blazing furnace of talk.
It was nearly all American news; the old-fashioned 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.
But such news it was.
Bert sat in the background--for by this time they had gauged his personal quality pretty completely--listening.
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 bird-faced 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 race-mad 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 to stay in these States, and they will--living or dead.
” 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 might never recover peace.
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 epoch-making events between long years of security.
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 destruction.
It is difficult perhaps for the broad-minded and long-perspectived 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 outgrew all other growing things....
Three hundred years of diastole, and then came the swift and unexpected systole, like the closing of a fist.
They could not understand it was systole.
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 relief--he would never meet Butteridge again.
It appeared Butteridge had died suddenly, very suddenly.
“And his secret, sir, perished with him!
When they came to look for the parts--none could find them.
He had hidden them all too well.
” “But couldn't he tell?
” asked the man in the straw hat.
“Did he die so suddenly as that?
” “Struck down, sir.
Rage and apoplexy.
At a place called Dymchurch in England.
” “That's right,” said Laurier.
“I remember a page about it in the Sunday American.
At the time they said it was a German spy had stolen his balloon.
” “Well, sir,” said the flat-voiced man, “that fit of apoplexy at Dyrnchurch was the worst thing--absolutely the worst thing that ever happened to the world.
For if it had not been for the death of Mr. Butteridge--” “No one knows his secret?
” “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 it.
” Pause.
“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 humming-birds 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 got--and the odds are against us.
THAT won't stop us fightin'.
No!
but just think of it!
” Bert was trembling violently.
He cleared his throat hoarsely.
“I say,” he said, “look here, I--” Nobody regarded him.
The man with the flat voice was opening a new branch of the subject.
“I allow--” he began.
Bert became violently excited.
He stood up.
He made clawing motions with his hands.
“I say!
” he exclaimed, “Mr. Laurier.
Look 'ere--I want--about that Butteridge machine--.
” Mr. Laurier, sitting on an adjacent table, with a magnificent gesture, arrested the discourse of the flat-voiced man.
“What's HE saying?
” said he.
Then the whole company realised that something was happening to Bert;
either he was suffocating or going mad.
He was spluttering.
“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 chest-protector.
In another moment Bert, in a state of irregular decolletage, was standing over the table displaying a sheaf of papers.
“These!
” he gasped.
“These are the plans!...
You know!
Mr. Butteridge--his machine!
What died!
I was the chap that went off in that balloon!
” 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 any more!
” 4 They would all no doubt have been eager to hear Bert's story over again, but it was at this point that Laurier showed his quality.
“No, SIR,” he said, and slid from off his table.
He impounded the dispersing Butteridge plans with one comprehensive sweep of his arm, rescuing them even from the expository finger-marks of the man with the flat voice, and handed them to Bert.
“Put those back,” he said, “where you had 'em.
We have a journey before us.
” Bert took them.
“Whar?
” said the man in the straw hat.
“Why, sir, we are going to find the President of these States and give these plans over to him.
I decline to believe, sir, we are too late.
” “Where is the President?
” asked Bert weakly in that pause that followed.
“Logan,” said Laurier, disregarding that feeble inquiry, “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 Albany--out towards the Berkshire Hills.
He is moving from place to place and, as far as he can, organising the defence by telegraph and telephone.
The Asiatic air-fleet 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 air-fleet is at present scattered all over the Eastern States, seeking out and destroying gas-works 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 machines--Sir, this ride of ours will count among the historical rides of the world!
” He came near to striking an attitude.
“We shan't get to him to-night?
” asked Bert.
“No, sir!
” said Laurier.
“We shall have to ride some days, sure!
” “And suppose we can't get a lift on a train--or anything?
” “No, sir!
There's been no transit by Tanooda for three days.
It is no good waiting.
We shall have to get on as well as we can.
” “Startin' now?
” “Starting now!
” “But 'ow about--We shan't be able to do much to-night.
” “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 chest-protector, for several of the plans flapped beyond his vest.
5 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 flying-machine 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 cinder-heap of the Junction, and our travellers pushed on eastward.
They passed a hundred half-heeded 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 fading from his mind.
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 mono-rail train standing in the track on its safety feet.
It was a remarkably sumptuous train, the Last Word Trans-Continental 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 there six days....
At one point ten dark-complexioned men were hanging in a string from the trees along the roadside.
Bert wondered why....
At one peaceful-looking 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:-- “Deyse been hanging a Chink in dose woods!
” “Hanging a Chinaman?
” said Laurier.
“Sure.
Der sleuths got him rubberin' der rail-road sheds!
” “Oh!
” “Dose guys done wase cartridges.
Deyse hung him and dey pulled his legs.
Deyse doin' all der Chinks dey can fine dat weh!
Dey ain't takin' no risks.
All der Chinks dey can fine.
” 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 weirdly....
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 all-fours 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 son-in-law had any mechanical aptitude.
They had been assured this was a fool-proof 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 save America!
” The girl never stirred.
And once they passed a madman singing.
And at last they found the President hiding in a small saloon upon the outskirts of a place called Pinkerville on the Hudson, and gave the plans of the Butteridge machine into his hands.
CHAPTER XI. THE GREAT COLLAPSE
