Note: Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive. See
https://archive.org/details/raidofdoverroman00ford
THE RAID OF DOVER:
A Romance Of The Reign Of Woman:
A.D. 1940.
by
The Author of "A Time of Terror," "The Devil's
Peepshow," &c.
"If that Old England fall
Which Nelson left so great----"
LORD TENNYSON.
London: King, Sell, & Olding, Limited,
27, Chancery Lane, W.C.
Portsmouth: Holbrook & Son, Limited.
1910.
AUTHOR'S NOTE.
_While this Forecast in Fiction has been running as a Serial,
the writer has realised that in some respects it may be open to
misconstruction. Patriotism, not pessimism, is its real keynote._
"This England never did, nor never shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,
But when it first did help to wound itself."
_That is the crux. England is being wounded by Englishmen; and the
events imagined in this story are only a concrete example of the
possibilities foreshadowed by Mr. Balfour (Jan. 24th, 1910) in the
following words:--_
"If the pressure of public opinion is not effected, then I tell you
with all solemnity that there are difficulties and perils before this
country which neither we nor our fathers nor our grand-fathers nor our
great-grand-fathers have ever yet had to face, and that before many
years are out there will be a Nemesis for this manifest and scandalous
folly in saving money just at the wrong time, in refusing to carry out
a plain duty."
_The history of the rise and fall of nations is only the story of Cause
and Effect. Given concomitant causes (1)--the unchecked blight of
Socialism, (2) the Revolt of Woman on "democratic lines," (3) weakened
Maritime Power--and the Effect is only too likely to be that England
will "lie at the proud foot of a conqueror." Let it be hoped that
the British people will remove the causes and prevent the otherwise
probable result._
_It must not be supposed that the writer identifies himself with the
views expressed by any of his characters on the subject of Woman or
Votes for Women. On the contrary, he thinks that women have been
treated with small tact and much harshness. But we already have
abundant evidence of the dangerous result of giving the franchise
to hundreds of thousands of uneducated men; and if, even short of
universal suffrage, the vote should be granted to the other sex on what
Mr. Asquith calls "democratic lines," it would mean that hundreds of
thousands of uneducated women might join hands with the existing forces
of enfranchised Socialism. That way madness lies, and the end of the
British Empire, "which peril Heaven forfend!"_
_The story is, in some sort, a sequel to "A Time of Terror," in which
the sign of the Spider may be taken as a reminder of the fabled Kraken.
The Kraken, in turn, may be taken to symbolise the German Fleet, "a
sea monster of vast size said to have been seen off the Coast of
Norway." Oddly enough, Pliny speaks of such a monster in the Straits of
Gibraltar,--which blocked the entrance of ships._
CONTENTS.
PROLOGUE.
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE LOST LEADER i.
II. A PRISONER OF THE MAHDI v.
THE RAID OF DOVER.
I. HOW NICHOLAS JARDINE ROSE 1
II. HOW ENGLAND FELL 6
III. ABOARD THE AIRSHIP 13
IV. THE STAR OF LIFE 21
V. A THREEFOLD PLEDGE 25
VI. THE REVOLT OF WOMAN 33
VII. THE PRICE OF POWER 44
VIII. WARDLAW'S WORKS 51
IX. THE LOOSENED GRIP 59
X. ZENOBIA'S DREAM 66
XI. THE NEW AMAZONS 82
XII. A SECRET AND A THUNDERBOLT 94
XIII. THE RAID OF THE EAGLES 104
XIV. THE FIGHT FOR THE FORT 114
XV. IN THE HEART OF THE HILL 122
XVI. SIGNS AND WONDERS 134
XVII. HOW THE RAID FAILED 142
XVIII. THE WRECK OF THE AIRSHIP 152
XIX. THE COUP D'ÉTAT? 164
XX. LINKED LIVES 172
XXI. THE WRATH OF SUL 179
PROLOGUE.
CHAPTER I.
THE LOST LEADER.
Wilson Renshaw, the most brilliant member of the House of Commons,
was on the verge of a complete breakdown at the end of the memorable
Session of 1930, a session in which the marshalled forces of Socialism,
allied with the insurgent women of England, had almost, but not quite,
swept the board.
The Vacation of that year had brought a truce in the fiercest
Parliamentary campaign known to modern times, and Renshaw, under the
peremptory advice of medical specialists, left England for a prolonged
holiday.
He went to Egypt, recruited his health at Cairo, and then, in pursuance
of a long-cherished wish, set out by a circuitous route for Khartum.
With the exception of Jerusalem, the Nubian capital was regarded by the
young English statesman as the most sacred spot on earth, sanctified,
as it was, by the blood of General Gordon, a Christian soldier, who, to
the indelible disgrace of the political clique then in power, had been
left unsupported in the midst of his blood-thirsty enemies, until it
was too late to rescue him.
That for which Gordon had paved the way; that which Kitchener and
Macdonald had gallantly achieved, in these latter days political
sentimentalists, Englishmen of parochial mind, had gradually undone.
Egypt, brought to a pitch of high prosperity under the civil
administration of Lord Cromer, had been gradually allowed to lapse back
into native hands. There had been no absolute evacuation at the date
of Renshaw's arrival in the country, but the British garrison had been
reduced to insignificant proportions.
But Renshaw did not come back! He had vanished from the ken of
civilization--swallowed up as effectually in the Nubian desert as
when the earth had opened and swallowed up Dathan and covered the
congregation of Abiram. The history of Egypt and the Soudan, written
in blood at the period in question, only accorded with that written
in ink, in advance of the event, by those who in the first decade of
the twentieth century foresaw the outcome of Little Englandism all the
world over. The native movement--the strength of which the dominant
party in Parliament had chosen to ignore--manifested itself in scenes
of sudden and overwhelming violence, while at the same time the Holy
War, preached by a Mahdi in whose existence great numbers of people
had refused to believe, claimed as sacrificial victims nearly every
white-skinned man throughout the length and breadth of the Soudan.
The caravan with which Renshaw was travelling fell into the hands of
the Mahdi's adherents, betrayed by a treacherous guide, who then spread
the news--anticipating what he had every reason to believe would really
happen--of the death of The White Kaffir, as a consequence of the
resistance he had offered to a band of "True Believers." The news was
received in England with grief and lamentation by those who esteemed
Renshaw, appreciated his talents, and knew how essential were his
services if the aims of the Socialist-Labour Leader, Nicholas Jardine,
and his party were to be defeated. But the public in general saw in the
disappearance of the rising statesman the almost inevitable result of a
rash enterprise. It came to be regarded only as an incidental episode
in the wholesale upheaval of which India, Egypt, and other lands once
dominated by the British sceptre soon became the scene.
All this had happened ten years and more before the critical events
of 1940. From time to time during that period little-credited reports
reached England concerning a certain white prisoner in the hands of
the Mahdi, who was believed by some to be none other than Renshaw,
the missing man. But, except with a few, these rumours carried little
weight. It was not the first time that tales of that sort had reached
home after the disappearance of well-known men in remote regions of the
Dark Continent. Many, recalling the explorations of Dr. Livingstone,
and Stanley's expedition for the rescue of Emin Pasha, said that when
Renshaw was found and brought home they would believe that he was
alive--and not before.
Meanwhile, in England, Nicholas Jardine carried everything before
him. The Constitutional Party, leaderless and disorganized, seemed
to sink into helpless apathy, and right and left the rapid shrinkage
of the British Empire bore witness to the ruinous success of new and
revolutionary parties in the State. Sometimes, in the House of Commons,
old followers of the Labour Leader's missing rival asked questions,
which, for the moment, attracted marked attention and, in some minds,
roused most sinister suspicions. Had the President received any
information that tended to confirm the rumour that Mr. Renshaw was
still living and undergoing the tortures of a barbarous imprisonment?
Was it a fact that, after a specified date, the Government, or any
members of it, had been notified, not only that Mr. Renshaw was alive,
but that on payment of a ransom he might be restored to his country?
Had any confidential information been received from certain oriental
visitors who, from time to time, had come to this country? Was it, or
was it not, a fact that certain periodical payments of large amount had
been made out of secret service funds in relation to Mr. Renshaw and
his alleged imprisonment?
These searching questions were evaded in the usual Parliamentary
manner, and it was observed that never was President Jardine--such was
his official title as chief of the new Council of State--so black and
taciturn as when this suggestive topic was from time to time revived in
Parliament.
CHAPTER II.
A PRISONER OF THE MAHDI.
Through all those dreadful years Wilson Renshaw lived--lived day and
night the tortured life of a white man at the mercy of the black. Year
after year the iron entered his soul, even as the Mahdi's fetters ate
into his swollen and bleeding limbs.
There were others who suffered with him in the barbaric prison-house.
What he endured was no less, no more, than they were made to bear.
Happy indeed were those whom death released from misery and anguish
that tongue could never tell, nor pen describe. Hell itself, as
pictured by maddest brain of the most fiendish fanatic, could not have
shown greater resources in the way of physical and mental torture.
The Black Hole of Calcutta lacked many of the special horrors of the
inner den in which the prophet's prisoners were herded during all the
awful hours of night. The bloodstained walls of the Tower of London,
if walls could speak, whispering of the rack, the thumbscrew, and the
boot, might tell indeed of sharper anguish, sooner over. The secret
history of the Spanish Inquisition, if published, would reveal not less
ingenuity--perhaps greater, in the refined subtleties of cruelty. But
the prison at Khartum excelled them all at least in one respect--the
prolongation of the agony inflicted.
Not for weeks or months, but for years, if life endured, the prisoner
had to suffer. Wearing three sets of shackles, with an iron ring round
his neck, to which was attached a heavy chain, Renshaw--the White
Kaffir--the man of culture and social ease in London, but here the
reviled unbeliever, when night came was thrust into a stone-walled room
measuring some thirty feet each way. A large pillar, supporting the
roof, reduced the space available. Two prisoners, in chains, were dying
of smallpox in a corner; some thirty others, suffering from various
diseases, lay about the floor, which reeked with filth and swarmed with
vermin. A compound stench, sickening and over-powering, assailed the
nostrils, and every moment this increased as more prisoners, and yet
more, were driven in for the night. The groans of the sick, the screams
of the mad, the curses of others as they fought fiercely for places
against one or another of the walls, blended in awful tumult as the
door was closed upon the darkness within. Yet again and again that door
was opened, and more prisoners were crowded in; until, at last, they
fought and bit and raved even for standing room.
Night after night, for nearly four years, Renshaw, the man of delicate
fibre and refined training, the son of Western civilization, lived
through such scenes as these, amid incidental horrors of bestiality
that cannot be set down. When the uproar in the prison attained
exceptional violence, the guards threw back the doors, and lashed with
their hide-whips at the heads and faces of the nearest prisoners, and
every time that this occurred some of them, struggling to move back,
fell to the ground, and were trampled under foot.
Renshaw was the only white prisoner among the Soudanese and Egyptians
who thus endured the tender mercies of the Prophet--the Prophet for
whom, it was said, the Angels had fought and would fight again, until
every follower of the Cross accepted the Koran of Mahommed. For, like
many of the greatest crimes that stain the annals of mankind, this
prison discipline, in theory, was designed to benefit the souls of the
captives. The White Kaffir, as an unbeliever, a dog and an outcast, was
a special object of the Mahdi's solicitation. Only let him believe and
his fetters should be struck off, or, at least, some of them. He had
but to cry aloud in fervent faith, "There is but one God, and Mahommed
is his Prophet!"
But it was a cry that never passed the lips of Wilson Renshaw. The lash
was tried again and again. Fifteen to twenty lashes at first; then a
hundred; then a hundred and fifty. But still the bleeding lips in which
the white man's teeth were biting in his anguish would not blaspheme.
"Will you not cry out?" the gaoler asked. "Dog of a Christian, are thy
head and heart of stone?" No answer; and again and yet again the lash
descended.
If only death would come, kind death to end this pain of mutilated
flesh; this still sharper pain of degradation and humiliation! But
death came not. Courage, indomitable pride of race, a godlike quality
of patience, armed the White Kaffir to endure the slings and arrows of
his dreadful fate. Death he would welcome with a sigh of gladness, but
these barbarians should never, never break his spirit.
At last the rigour of his sufferings was abated. Out of the mists of
what seemed an interminable period of delirium, he awoke to a change
of his treatment that caused him much surprise. No longer was he to be
half starved. At night he was allowed to sleep alone in a rough, dark
hut in a corner of the prison compound. Each day he was permitted,
though still fettered, to go down to the river, on the banks of which
the prison was placed, and wash in the waters of the Nile. From all
of these changes it became apparent that his life, and not his death,
was now desired. The motive for the change he had yet to realize. A
whisper here and there, a chance word from his gaolers, with sundry
indications, fugitive and various, at length convinced him that this
amelioration of his fate could have but one sinister explanation, and
one inspiring motive. If not the Mahdi himself, then some of the more
covetous of his leading followers must be drawing payment from some
mysterious source, a subsidy for holding him secure, here under the
burning African sun, remote and cut off from all chance of rescue or
escape.
Yet escapes were planned, for even among these barbarous people there
were a few who felt compassion for the hapless condition of the White
Kaffir; and when it began to be rumoured that he was a man of high
consideration in his native country, others, moved by cupidity and
the prospect of a great reward, found means of letting Renshaw know
that, _on conditions_, they were willing to secure him at least a
chance of freedom. But every plan fell through. The Mahdi's spies
were everywhere, and those who fell under suspicion of seeking to
aid Renshaw to break free from his captivity received a punishment
so terrible that he shrank from listening to any further offer of
assistance.
Presently his condition underwent yet further betterment. He became a
prisoner at large--though still fettered and still closely watched.
Employment he had none, save the performance of a few menial offices.
Books he had none, save Al-Koran, the volume containing the religious,
social, commercial, military, and legal code of Islam. But here, in
the heart of this dreadful land, among the dark people of the Dark
Continent, he now learned to look upon the book of life itself from
a new and startling standpoint. Before him was unfolded a new and
terrible chapter of history in the making, a chapter which revealed the
slow marshalling of millions of the dark-skinned races, eager to wrest
dominion and supremacy from the white-skinned masters of the world.
THE RAID OF DOVER.
CHAPTER I.
HOW NICHOLAS JARDINE ROSE.
The fall of England synchronised with the rise of Nicholas
Jardine--first Labour Prime Minister of this ancient realm. When he
married it was considered by his wife's relations that she had married
beneath her! It fell out thus. In the neighbourhood of Walsall an
accomplished young governess had found employment in the family of
a wealthy solicitor, who was largely interested in the ironworks of
the district. Her employer was conservative in his profession and
radical in his politics. He took the chair from time to time at public
meetings, and liked his family to be present on those occasions as a
sort of domestic entourage, to bear witness to the eloquence of his
orations. On one of these occasions a swarthy young engineer made
a speech which quite eclipsed that of the chairman. He carried the
meeting with him, raising enthusiasm and admiration to a remarkable
height, and storming, among other things, the heart of the clever young
governess.
The young orator was not unconscious of the interest he excited. Bright
eyes told their tale, and the whole-hearted applause that greeted his
rhetorical flourishes could not escape attention at close quarters.
Fair and refined in face, with fine, wavy light hair, the girl
afforded a striking contrast to this forceful, dark-skinned man of the
people; but they were drawn to each other by those magnetic sympathies
which carry wireless messages from heart to heart. It would be too much
to say that he fell in love with her at first sight. Had they never met
again, mutual first impressions might have worn off; but they did meet
again, and yet again. Coming to her employer's house on some political
business, young Jardine encountered the girl in the hall, and she
frankly gave him her hand--blushingly and with a word or two of thanks
for the speech which had seemed to her so eloquent. After that, in the
grimy streets of Walsall and in various public places, the acquaintance
ripened, until one winter day, outside the town, she startled him with
an unusually earnest "good-bye." The children she had taught were going
away to school; she, too, was going away--whither she knew not.
"Don't go," he said, slowly; "don't go. Stay and marry me."
She was almost alone in the world, and shuddering at the grey prospect
of her life. Besides, she loved him, or at least believed she did.
Within a month they were married at the registrar's office. Nicholas
Jardine did not hold with any church or chapel observances. After the
banal ceremony of the civil law, he took his bride to London for a
week. Then they returned to Walsall. His means were of the scantiest;
they lived in a little five-roomed house, with endless tenements of
the same mean type and miserable material stretching right and left.
The conditions of life, after the first glamour faded, were dreary
and soul-subduing. All the women in Warwick Road knew or wanted to
know their neighbour's business; all resented 'uppish' airs on the
part of any particular resident. They were of the ordinary type, those
neighbours, kindly, slatternly, given to gossip. Mrs. Jardine was not,
and did not look like, one of them. She was sincerely desirous of
doing her duty in that drab state of life in which she found herself,
but she wholly failed to please her neighbours, whose quarrels she
heard through the miserable plaster walls, or witnessed from over the
road. Worse than that, she found with dismay, as time went on, that she
did not wholly please her husband. She was conscious of a gloomy sense
of disappointment on his part; and she, though bravely resisting the
growing feeling, knew in her heart that disillusionment had fallen upon
herself. The recurrent coarseness of the man's ideas and expressions
jarred upon her nerves. His way of eating, sleeping, and carrying
himself, in their cramped domestic circle, constantly offended her
fastidious tastes.
When their child was born life went better; and all the time Jardine
himself, though rather grudgingly, had been improving under the
refining but unobstrusive influence of his cultured wife. One thing, at
least, they had in common: a love of reading. Most of the money that
could be spared in those days went in book buying. It was a time of
education for the husband, and a time of disenchantment for the wife.
She drooped amid their grey surroundings. The summers were sad, for the
Black Country is no paradise even in the time of flowers. Everywhere
the sombre industries of the place asserted themselves, and in the
gloomy winters short dark days seemed to be always giving place to long
dreary nights, hideously illumined by the lurid furnaces that glowed on
every side.
Jardine himself was as strong as the steel with which he had so much to
do in the local works in which he found employment. But his wife found
herself less and less able to stand up against the adverse influences
of their environment. It came upon him with a shock that she had grown
strangely fragile. Great God in heaven!--men call upon the name of God
even when they profess to be agnostics--could she be going to die?
Her great fear was for the future of the child; and her chief hope
that the passionate devotion of Jardine to the little girl would be a
redeeming influence in his own life and character. Both of them, from
the first, took what care they could that their daughter should not
grow up quite like the other children of the Walsall back streets.
Their precautions helped to make them unpopular, and "that little Obie
Jardine," as the Warwick Road ladies called Zenobia, was consequently
compelled to hear many caustic remarks concerning the airs and graces
that "some people" were supposed to give themselves.
Good fortune and advancement came to Nicholas Jardine too late for
his wife to share in them. The once bright eyes were closed for ever
before the Trade Union of which he was secretary put him forward as a
Parliamentary candidate. The swing of the Labour pendulum carried him
in, and Jardine, M.P., and his little daughter moved to London. They
found lodgings in Guildford Place, opposite the Foundling Hospital.
The child was happier now, and the memory of the mother faded year by
year. Life grew more cheerful and interesting for both of them as time
went on. Members of Parliament and wire-pullers of the Labour party
came to the lodgings and filled the sitting-room with smoke and noisy
conversation. Zenobia listened and inwardly digested what she heard.
Sundays were the dullest days. She often felt that she would like to
go to service in the Foundling Chapel, but that was tacitly forbidden.
Religion was ignored by Mr. Jardine, and among the books he had brought
up from Walsall, and those he had since bought, neither Bible nor
Prayer Book found a place.
Jardine had other things to think of. He was going forward rapidly,
and busy--in the world of politics--fighting Mr. Renshaw in the House
of Commons. When the old Labour leader in the House of Commons had
a paralytic seizure, the member for Walsall was chosen, though not
without opposition, to fill the vacant place.
There were millions of voters behind him now; Nicholas Jardine had
become a power. At last the popular wave carried him into the foremost
position in the State. The resolute Republican mechanic of miry Walsall
actually became the foremost man in what for centuries had been the
greatest Empire in the world.
Before that great step in promotion was obtained, Jardine had removed
from London to the riverside house, in which he still resided, when
a certain young Linton Herrick came from Canada and stayed with his
uncle--Jardine's next door neighbour.
According to the new Constitution, the Government held office for five
years. The end of that term was now approaching, and every adult man
and woman in the land would shortly have the opportunity of voting for
his retention in office or for replacing him with a successor, man
or woman. He talked much with his daughter of the struggle that was
coming, as it had been his custom to do for years. She was his only
companion, the only object of his affections, the one domestic interest
in his life.