YACHTING IN THE AIR
While Lawrence’s hand was being dressed by one of the assistant
surgeons, he had an opportunity of observing how perfect were the
appointments of the operating room to which he had been taken. The
orderlies and nurses moving about were all dressed in spotless white
gowns and caps. The doctor and those assisting him in cleaning and
dressing the slight flesh-wound which had been inflicted looked at their
patient through holes in a cap that completely covered their heads and
faces. Every appliance was provided for perfect cleanliness and
sanitation, and the apparatus was on hand to permit of any operation of
modern surgery, no matter how complicated.
From where he sat, he could see into another room exactly similar where
James was having the injury to his leg attended to with the same
scrupulous care; and he had passed, as he was brought in, a long room
which he was told was one of the surgical wards, and where he had seen
several men on hospital cots. The surgical wards, he was further
informed, were on the starboard side of the ship, and not connected in
any way with the sick bay which lay over on the port side.
With his great love for ships and machinery, Lawrence was impatient to
get away and make a tour of inspection of this strange craft upon which
he had embarked; but while he was waiting he occupied himself in his
usual fashion by giving vent to his high spirits and making a joke out
of everything.
“Well, Doc,” he remarked to the surgeon, “you certainly have got one
nifty little butcher shop, but I want to tell you, before one of those
Ku-Klux throw me down and slap the gas bag in my face, that I have no
adenoids, and that my appendix was cut out by an Arabian doctor who
threw a handful of sand into me to stop the bleeding. If you would like
to study German sausages, though, there is a pile of it down there on
the roof.” And even he shuddered as he recalled that awful carnage.
A bright-looking chap, dressed in the smart uniform of a steward on a
gentleman’s yacht, appeared at the door, but was not allowed to come in
by Lawrence’s aseptic guardians. He had been sent down by Edestone to
inquire as to the condition of the wounded, and to announce to Lawrence
that if he felt well enough to join him, dinner would be ready as soon
as he was. He begged, the messenger said, that Mr. Stuyvesant would go
directly to his room and dress, and allow him to have the pleasure of
showing him over the ship after dinner. If he would let the
quarter-master’s department have his measure, he would be fitted out.
Wild horses could not have restrained Lawrence from such an invitation,
much less a little scratch on the hand; and his injury having been
dressed by this time, he was about to set out with the messenger, when
James appealed to him from the next room, begging to be allowed to look
after his master’s clothes.
“Beg pardon, sir,” he urged, showing his embarrassment at not being able
to stand, “but I am the only one who knows how Mr. Edestone likes his
dinner clothes laid out, and his whole evening will be spoiled without
me, sir. I only ask to be allowed to break in the new man, sir, as
starting right in laying out a gentleman’s clothes is half the battle,
sir.”
“Don’t you think, you have had enough of a battle for one day, you dear
old fighting fossil?” asked Lawrence in a tone of real affection, for
there is nothing which draws men together, regardless of rank, more
quickly than to fight on the same side, and he could not help but admire
the cool manner in which the valet had borne himself under fire.
“Thank you, sir, but mightn’t I be allowed to see to his bath, sir? A
drop of hot water in it turns his stomach for a week. Just let me do
that, and I will come straight back to these very kind persons.” He
glanced about at the men of science with the condescending manner of the
English upper servant in dealing with the shopkeeper class.
But Lawrence shook his head. “I’m sorry, James, but--” he bowed low to
the grinning circle of doctors and nurses, and assumed his most
grandiloquent air--“you are now in the hands of the only acknowledged
ruling class of the twentieth century, who hold you with a grip of
steel, but whose touch is as gentle as a mother’s kiss. So get out your
knitting, Old Socks; you are doomed.”
He turned with a laugh and a new impersonation to the surgeon as he left
the room.
“Thank you, Doc. You’ve cert’nly been kind to me, a poor working
girl. Just send the bill to Mr. Edestone. He is my greatest gentleman
friend.”
In his room, which was reached by an elevator, he found the ship’s
tailor waiting for him; but after this functionary had taken his measure
and gone, he had an opportunity to look around.
He was in a room, he found, a parlour or sitting-room, about fifteen by
twenty, neatly but handsomely furnished, and suggesting to him in its
general appearance the owner’s apartments on the largest and most
perfectly equipped yachts. There was this difference, however, that
nothing about it indicated that it was ever off an even keel. There
were no racks or other contrivances to suggest that it was prepared to
turn in any direction at an angle of forty-five degrees, and which to
the land-lubber causes qualms even while the ship is still tied to the
dock.
It might indeed have been a handsome living-room in a bachelor’s
apartment, but for the windows, which at the first glance seemed to be
of the ordinary French casement form, running down to the floor, and
looking as if they might open out onto a balcony; but to his surprise,
he found, when he pulled aside the heavy curtains, that they looked into
a perfectly blank white wall about two inches from the glass.
Adjoining the living-room was a bedroom furnished in similar style with
the same sort of windows, and beyond, Lawrence found as attractive a
bath-room as ever welcomed an American millionaire after a hot day in
his office, or a game of polo.
After a boiling tub and a freezing shower, in the pink of condition--and
nothing else--he went back into the bedroom.
“Now what,” he had wondered, “will the Fairy Godmother have for me in
the way of a union suit, and a pair of jumpers?”
But he had not wondered very hard. He found, as he knew he would, for he
had yachted with Edestone before, a complete outfit, not forgetting the
cocktail, which was standing on the table as quietly and innocently as
if it had always been there, although in reality it had just been placed
there by a man who, with years of experience in listening to the sounds
that come from a gentleman’s bathroom, had timed its arrival to the
second.
Nor was it one of those cocktails that are poured from a bottle, and
served hot out of a silver-snouted shaker on a sloppy waiter, but a
masterpiece from the hands of an artist, who took pride in his
handiwork.
With the modesty of a chorus girl with a good figure on a “first night,”
he toasted the valet with much ceremony.
Soon he was dressed in the mess jacket of a petty officer, and putting a
yachting cap jauntily on his head, he went out to seek his friend. The
valet told him he would find Mr. Edestone in the breakfast room, and he
was shown thither by an officer who was waiting for him.
As he passed along, he could not divest himself of the idea that he was
on board Edestone’s yacht, the _Storm Queen_ again, only that everything
here was on a larger scale. The breakfast room, he discovered, was on
the same deck but farther forward, and was reached by passing through a
large room furnished as a general living-room.
Edestone came forward to greet him with a rather melancholy expression
on his face. He was dressed in a yachtsman’s dinner jacket which fitted
him perfectly, and with his bandaged head, he looked more than ever the
sea lord. His rank of Captain was shown by the stripes on his arm.
The room was, as one would expect Edestone to have in his New York or
country house, simple but handsome.
He had just been giving some orders about the windows which were of the
same form and size as those Lawrence had remarked in his own room, and
like them opened against a wall; but at Lawrence’s appearance, he
interrupted these instructions.
“I am glad to see you aboard.” He presented his hand, which Lawrence
took with his left. “I had looked forward to your first trip with me
with so much pleasure. But how different it is from the way I had
pictured it. I cannot get Fred, Stanton, or my two sailors out of my
mind.”
Lawrence’s own face saddened, but for Edestone’s sake he endeavoured to
speak philosophically.
“The fortunes of war, old man. Why grieve? You certainly were not to
blame.”
For a moment there was silence between them; then Edestone, as if
attempting to shake off his gloomy reflections, struck a lighter note.
“How do you like being a pirate, Lawrence?” he smiled.
“Great! The dream of my life, with you for a captain!”
So they sat down to dinner. The men attending to their wants moved about
unheard and almost unseen in the shadow outside the circle of soft light
which fell only on the table. The room was filled with an indescribable
aroma of comfort and good cheer. A newly-lighted fire crackled on the
hearth, for it had suddenly become quite cold. Indeed, it was with
difficulty Lawrence could realize that but a few hours before they had
been in the midst of battle and sudden death, and that, as they sat,
down there five times the height of the Eiffel Tower below them was the
Embassy from which they were still removing the dead, or aiding the
dying.
As he looked at Edestone with his sad, brooding eyes, he felt all at
once as if his friend had been taken away from him, and had been lifted
to a place so exalted, that for the life of him, he could not have taken
the liberty of speaking until he was first addressed.
The dinner went on, and though the food was delightful and the wines
perfect, both men merely toyed with what was on their plates, while
Lawrence gulped his champagne as if he were trying to get its effect
quickly in order to throw off this strange new diffidence and restraint
which he now felt in the presence of his oldest and dearest friend.
He tried to imagine that they two were cruising alone on the _Storm
Queen_, as they had so often done, and that this was just one of many
evenings that they had spent in this way together; but
Where was the lap of the water at her side,
Or the pounding of the launch as she rode at her boom?
The groan of the anchor as she swung with the tide,
Or the blowing off steam, which demanded more room?
All was perfectly quiet. If there were storage batteries on board, they
had been charged. There was no shovelling of coal; no shrieking and
banging of doors in the boiler room, nor banking of fires. The only
thing that remained true to tradition was the ship’s bell. It had just
sounded out five bells.
The silence was at last broken by Edestone; but, although he spoke, it
was more as if he were merely letting his pensive thoughts run on.
“How different this has been from the way I had planned it. How
different, too, has been your home-coming, old man--for the _Storm
Queen_ was like home to you in the old days.”
But Lawrence by this time was beginning to feel the effects of
champagne, and was certain that unless he very soon did something to
lift the pall that had fallen on them, he himself would be dissolved in
tears.
“I don’t know what your plan was,” he said; “but don’t you worry about
my home-coming. The thing that ought to worry you is my leave-taking.
The L. P. M. has got the _Storm Queen_ beat a mile, and I am booked for
life. And, by the way, what is my rank on this ship? My old position of
room clerk on the _Storm Queen_ won’t go here, as I don’t suppose you
intend to have any ‘cuties’ on board, not even for the New London week.”
“No.” Edestone consented at last to smile. “I am afraid, Lawrence,
those days are all over for me. My little house of cards has fallen
about me, and I have serious work before me, if I wish to build it up
again. I have been thinking, and thinking very hard. From the moment
that I saw poor Fred roll down the stairs of the Embassy, I knew that my
first plan had failed. When Germany discovers that the United States is
not back of me, she will apologize, and you know how quickly our present
Administration will accept the apology, and how quickly they will
disclaim any responsibility for my acts, if it means a fight?”
Lawrence nodded.
“Germany,” went on Edestone, “will then call on all the neutral nations
to join her in bringing me, an outlaw, to earth. This will give her a
common cause with them, and she will hope in that way to strengthen her
position relative to the Allies. She does not know my relationship with
England, but she will undoubtedly declare that I am one of the means
England is using to subjugate the world.”
“And is there nothing you can do?” asked Lawrence.
“My last and only hope is that tomorrow, after they have realized the
uselessness of opposing me, they will listen to a proposition of
peace--without honour, from their old standard; but with great honour,
from the standard that I intend to establish. I propose to send what is
practically an ultimatum; and that is, that if they do not immediately
open negotiations looking toward peace, I will sink every German
battleship that floats, and destroy every factory in which guns,
explosives, or any of the munitions of war are manufactured.”
“Me for the junk business,” exclaimed Lawrence with an inspiration. “Oh,
you Krupps!”
But Edestone paid no heed to the frivolous interruption. “It is my
intention,” he continued, “to give sufficient notice, so that if they
are willing to admit my supremacy, there need be no loss of life.”
He halted, as an officer had just come in, and was standing after
saluting, waiting for Edestone to stop speaking.
“The look-outs report, sir, that there are several Taubes climbing up
toward us. What are your orders, sir?”
“Close everything down, except one of these.” Edestone pointed to a
window. “Expose no lights.”
After the man had retired, he said to one of the servants in the room:
“Put out the lights, and bring us two cloaks.”
When the lights had been put out, Lawrence saw for the first time that
during dinner the solid cubes of steel, the size of the windows, had
noiselessly rolled back, leaving a square aperture or passage-way
through the six-foot thickness of the armour-plate, and forming a sort
of _loggia_ into which they stepped. It was a beautiful night, and
through the clear, rarefied atmosphere the stars seemed to Lawrence
brighter than he had ever seen them before, while down below them he
could just see the lights of Berlin.
The explosions of the motors of the Taubes could be plainly heard, but
as yet nothing could be seen of them.
“What do you suppose those mosquitoes expect to do against us with their
pop-guns and tomato cans?” asked Lawrence.
“I do not know.” Edestone shook his head. “Perhaps they are just coming
up to look us over. They will keep out of sight, and as they may not
know that we are protected on top, will perhaps try to drop one of their
tomato cans on us. That is, if they can get close enough. I hardly think
that they will risk a miss, and drop bombs on their own capital, so long
as the Only One Who Seems To Count In Germany is in the midst of his
beloved people.”
The Taubes could be heard on all sides, as if they were climbing in
great circles around the Little Peace Maker. There seemed to be at least
a dozen of them, although owing to the confusion of sounds as they
crossed and re-crossed, it was impossible to count them.
At last, though, when judging by the noise they were about on the same
level as the ship, Edestone turned to an officer who was standing by
him.
“Tell Commander Anderson to load all of the big guns with a full charge
of black powder only, and fire them all off at the same time.
“And, Lawrence,” he advised his friend, “when you hear a bell ringing,
stand on your toes, open your mouth, stick your fingers in your ears,
and if you’ve never been in Hell before, prepare yourself for a shock.”
Hardly had he gotten the words out of his mouth, when bells began
ringing all over the ship. In just exactly one minute, Lawrence thought
he had been blown into bits, as he was lifted and thrown from side to
side against the steel walls of the passage. The noise was so great that
his ears seemed unable to record it, and it was made known to him by the
air pressure which seemed to be crushing him to death. The rush of air
down his throat was choking him, while his very insides seemed to be
turning over and over in their effort to escape. A dizziness and nausea
followed, and he had to lean against his friend, trying to catch his
breath in the thick, black smoke with which they were enveloped.
“This is Hell all right,” he managed to gasp.
“That is the worst you will ever get,” said Edestone. “It was noise that
I was after, and black powder makes it. Your experience would not have
been half so bad had the guns been loaded or had I used smokeless.”
The ship which had trembled from stem to stern under the tremendous
concussion was floating now as quietly as a toy balloon, while the wind
was rolling up and pushing before it a great cloud of smoke which
obscured the sky. On all sides there was perfect stillness, broken only
now and again by the last explosion of gas caught in the cylinders of
the Taubes by the sudden stoppage of the engines. The airmen were
volplaning to earth as fast and as silently as they could.
“Well, that ought to hold them for a while,” commented Lawrence in a
tone which showed that he was almost himself again.
“And make them a little bit more amenable to reason in the morning,”
added Edestone, and he laughed, for action with him always drove away
the blue devils.
“With that settled, too, we will just have time before turning in, to
inspect my quarters,” he continued. “Tomorrow I will introduce you to
‘Specs’ and Captain Lee, and you can go with them at eleven o’clock on
their tour of official inspection. They will show you the fire drill,
the life-balloon drill, the gun drill, the kitchen, and the cows. But
now I want you to see a different side of the ship. We will look at my
quarters, then at my guest rooms, and finally at my royal suite or state
apartments as I call them.”
He then took Lawrence through room after room, which were arranged in
the form of a horseshoe, starting on the port side with his breakfast
room, and working around to the starboard side with its opening toward
the stern of the ship.
On the port side were Edestone’s apartments--living-room, library,
or den, bedroom, dressing-room, bath-room, and gymnasium. On the
starboard were a number of guest rooms arranged in suites of parlour,
bedroom, and bath, while at the crown of the arch was a large dining-room
in which fifty persons could sit down to dinner comfortably.
The centre of the horseshoe was the large room through which he had
passed, and like the general meeting room of a large country house was
filled with all known kinds of games--instruments and devices to amuse
that most unfortunate class of human beings who have no resources within
themselves, and must play some foolish game, or do some foolish puzzle
in order to get through the life which seems to hang so heavily on their
hands.
From this they passed to a lower deck about amidships, to a room about
eighty feet by one hundred and twenty feet, which extended the full
width of the ship and up three decks. At one end of this large and
handsome room was a raised platform arranged like the Speaker’s desk in
the House of Representatives at Washington with the desks at lower
levels for stenographers, clerks, and attendants, while around the room
in concentric circles were large comfortable seats and desks, also like
a Senate Chamber, only more luxurious in appointments, as though it were
to receive a more distinguished body of men than the Senate of the
United States, if that were possible.
“This,” said Edestone, “is where I intend to hold my Peace Conference,
and when you see the names of the distinguished men who are to sit here,
and the apartments that I have arranged for them and their suites, you
will perhaps be glad to take your old position of room clerk.”
Then after showing his companion through these magnificent “royal
suites,” as he called them, all furnished and equipped in the most
sumptuous fashion, he suggested that they had better turn in.
“We will hope and pray for the best in the morning,” he said, as he bade
Lawrence good-night.