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THE WORLD PERIL OF 1910
BY
GEORGE GRIFFITH
AUTHOR OF
"THE ANGEL OF THE REVOLUTION," "A CONQUEST OF FORTUNE,"
"A MAYFAIR MAGICIAN," "HIS BETTER HALF," ETC. ETC.
LONDON
F. V. WHITE & CO. LTD.
14, BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C.
1907
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
PROLOGUE--A RACE FOR A WOMAN 1
I. A MOMENTOUS EXPERIMENT 9
II. NORAH'S GOOD-BYE 17
III. SEEN UNDER THE MOON 24
IV. THE SHADOW OF THE TERROR 31
V. A GLIMPSE OF THE DOOM 37
VI. THE NOTE OF WAR 47
VII. CAUGHT! 55
VIII. FIRST BLOOD 63
IX. THE "FLYING FISH" APPEARS 72
X. FIRST BLOWS FROM THE AIR 79
XI. THE TRAGEDY OF THE TWO SQUADRONS 88
XII. HOW LONDON TOOK THE NEWS 98
XIII. A CRIME AND A MISTAKE 106
XIV. THE EVE OF BATTLE 115
XV. THE STRIFE OF GIANTS 123
XVI. HOW THE FRENCH LANDED AT PORTSMOUTH 132
XVII. AWAY FROM THE WARPATH 143
XVIII. A GLIMPSE OF THE PERIL 151
XIX. A CHANGE OF SCENE 160
XX. THE NIGHT OF TERROR BEGINS-- 167
XXI. --AND ENDS 176
XXII. DISASTER 182
XXIII. THE OTHER CAMPAIGN BEGINS 189
XXIV. TOM BOWCOCK--PITMAN 195
XXV. PREPARING FOR ACTION 201
XXVI. THE FIRST BOMBARDMENT OF LONDON 208
XXVII. LENNARD'S ULTIMATUM 215
XXVIII. CONCERNING ASTRONOMY AND OYSTERS 223
XXIX. THE LION WAKES 231
XXX. MR PARMENTER SAYS 239
XXXI. JOHN CASTELLAN'S THREAT 247
XXXII. A VIGIL IN THE NIGHT 254
XXXIII. MR PARMENTER RETURNS 261
XXXIV. THE "AURIOLE" 268
XXXV. THE "AURIOLE" HOISTS THE WHITE ENSIGN 273
XXXVI. A PARLEY AT ALDERSHOT 281
XXXVII. THE VERDICT OF SCIENCE 288
XXXVIII. WAITING FOR DOOM 295
XXXIX. THE LAST FIGHT 298
EPILOGUE--"AND ON EARTH, PEACE!" 305
THE WORLD PERIL OF 1910
PROLOGUE
A RACE FOR A WOMAN
In Clifden, the chief coast town of Connemara, there is a house at the
end of a triangle which the two streets of the town form, the front
windows of which look straight down the beautiful harbour and bay, whose
waters stretch out beyond the islands which are scattered along the
coast and, with the many submerged reefs, make the entrance so
difficult.
In the first-floor double-windowed room of this house, furnished as a
bed-sitting room, there was a man sitting at a writing-table--not an
ordinary writing-table, but one the dimensions of which were more suited
to the needs of an architect or an engineer than to those of a writer.
In the middle of the table was a large drawing-desk, and on it was
pinned a sheet of cartridge paper, which was almost covered with
portions of designs.
In one corner there was what might be the conception of an engine
designed for a destroyer or a submarine. In another corner there was a
sketch of something that looked like a lighthouse, and over against this
the design of what might have been a lantern. The top left-hand corner
of the sheet was merely a blur of curved lines and shadings and
cross-lines, running at a hundred different angles which no one, save
the man who had drawn them, could understand the meaning of.
In the middle of the sheet there was a very carefully-outlined drawing
in hard pencil of a craft which was different from anything that had
ever sailed upon the waters or below them, or, for the matter of that,
above them.
To the right hand there was a rough, but absolutely accurate, copy of
this same craft leaving the water and flying into the air, and just
underneath this a tiny sketch of a flying fish doing the same thing.
The man sitting before the drawing-board was an Irishman. He was one of
those men with the strong, crisp hair, black brows and deep brown eyes,
straight, strong nose almost in a line with his forehead, thin, nervous
lips and pointed jaw, strong at the angles but weak at the point, which
come only from one descent.
Nearly four hundred years before, one of the ships of the great Armada
had been wrecked on Achill Island, about twenty miles from where he sat.
Half a dozen or so of the crew had been saved, and one of these was a
Spanish gentleman, captain of Arquebusiers who, drenched and bedraggled
as he was when the half-wild Irish fishermen got him out of the water,
still looked what he was, a Hidalgo of Spain. He had been nursed back to
health and strength in a miserable mud and turf-walled cottage, and,
broken in fortune--for he was one of the many gentlemen of Spain who had
risked their all on the fortunes of King Philip and the Great Armada,
and lost--he refused to go back to his own country a beaten man.
And meanwhile he had fallen in love with the daughter of his nurse, the
wife of the fisherman who had taken him more than half dead out of the
raging Atlantic surf.
No man ever knew who he was, save that he was a gentleman, a Spaniard,
and a Catholic. But when he returned to the perfection of physical and
mental health, and had married the grey-eyed, dark-browed girl, who had
seemed to him during his long hours of sickness the guardian angel who
had brought him back across the line which marks the frontier between
life and death, he developed an extraordinary talent in boat-building,
which was the real origin of the wonderful sea-worthiness of small
craft which to this day brave, almost with impunity, the terrible seas
which, after an unbroken run of almost two thousand miles, burst upon
the rock-bound, island-fenced coast of Connemara.
The man at the table was the descendant in the sixth generation of the
unknown Spanish Hidalgo, who nearly four hundred years before had said
in reply to a question as to what his name was:
"Juan de Castillano."
As the generations had passed, the name, as usual, had got modified, and
this man's name was John Castellan.
"I think that will about do for the present," he said, getting up from
the table and throwing his pencil down. "I've got it almost perfect
now;" and then as he bent down again over the table, and looked over
every line of his drawings, "Yes, it's about all there. I wonder what my
Lords of the British Admiralty would give to know what that means. Well,
God save Ireland, they shall some day!"
He unpinned the paper from the board, rolled it up, and put it into the
top drawer of an old oak cabinet, which one would hardly have expected
to find in such a room as that, and locked the drawer with a key on his
keychain. Then he took his cap from a peg on the door, and his gun from
the corner beside it, and went out.
There are three ways out of Clifden to the west, one to the southward
takes you over the old bridge, which arches the narrow rock-walled
gorge, which gathers up the waters of the river after they have had
their frolic over the rocks above. The other is a continuation of the
main street, and this, as it approaches the harbour, where you may now
see boats built on the pattern which John Castellan's ancestor had
designed, divides into two roads, one leading along the shore of the
bay, and the other, rough, stony, and ill-kept, takes you above the
coast-guard station, and leads to nowhere but the Atlantic Ocean.
Between these two roads lies in what was once a park, but which is now a
wilderness, Clifden Castle. Castle in Irish means country house, and
all over the south and west of Ireland you may find such houses as this
with doors screwed up, windows covered with planks, roofs and eaves
stripped of the lead and slates which once protected them from the
storms which rise up from the Atlantic, and burst in wind and rain, snow
and sleet over Connemara, long ago taken away to sell by the bankrupt
heirs of those who ruined themselves, mortgaged and sold every acre of
ground and every stick and stone they owned to maintain what they called
the dignity of their families at the Vice-Regal Court in Dublin.
John Castellan took the lower road, looking for duck. The old house had
been the home of his grandfather, but he had never lived in it. The ruin
had come in his father's time, before he had learned to walk. He looked
at it as he passed, and his teeth clenched and his brows came together
in a straight line.
Almost at the same moment that he left his house an Englishman came out
of the Railway Hotel. He also had a gun over his shoulder, and he took
the upper road. These two men, who were to meet for the first time that
day, were destined to decide the fate of the world between them.
As John Castellan walked past the ruined distillery, which overlooks the
beach on which the fishing boats are drawn up, he saw a couple of duck
flying seaward. He quickened his pace, and walked on until he turned the
bend of the road, at which on the right-hand side a path leads up to a
gate in the old wall, which still guards the ragged domains of Clifden
Castle. A few hundred yards away there is a little peninsula, on which
stands a house built somewhat in bungalow fashion. The curve of the
peninsula turns to the eastward, and makes a tiny bay of almost crescent
shape. In this the pair of duck settled.
John Castellan picked up a stone from the road, and threw it into the
water. As the birds rose his gun went up. His right barrel banged and
the duck fell. The drake flew landward: he fired his left barrel and
missed. Then came a bang from the upper road, and the drake dropped.
The Englishman had killed it with a wire cartridge in his choked left
barrel.
"I wonder who the devil did that!" said Castellan, as he saw the bird
fall. "It was eighty yards if it was an inch, and that's a good gun with
a good man behind it."
The Englishman left the road to pick up the bird and then went down the
steep, stony hillside towards the shore of the silver-mouthed bay in the
hope of getting another shot farther on, for the birds were now
beginning to come over; and so it came about that he and the Irishman
met within a few yards of each other, one on either side of a low spit
of sand and shingle.
"That was a fine shot you killed the drake with," said the Irishman,
looking at the bird he was carrying by the legs in his left hand.
"A good gun, and a wire cartridge, I fancy, were mainly responsible for
his death," laughed the Englishman. "See you've got the other."
"Yes, and missed yours," said the Irishman.
The other recognised the tone as that of a man to whom failure, even in
the most insignificant matter, was hateful, and he saw a quick gleam in
his eyes which he remembered afterwards under very different
circumstances.
But it so happened that the rivalry between them which was hereafter to
have such momentous consequences was to be manifested there and then in
a fashion much more serious than the hitting or missing of a brace of
wild fowl.
Out on the smooth waters of the bay, about a quarter of a mile from the
spit on which they stood, there were two boats. One was a light skiff,
in which a girl, clad in white jersey and white flannel skirt, with a
white Tam o' Shanter pinned on her head, was sculling leisurely towards
the town. From the swing of her body, the poise of her head and
shoulders, and the smoothness with which her sculls dropped in the water
and left it, it was plain that she was a perfect mistress of the art;
wherefore the two men looked at her, and admired.
The other craft was an ordinary rowing boat, manned by three lads out
for a spree. There was no one steering and the oars were going in and
out of the water with a total disregard of time. The result was that her
course was anything but a straight line. The girl's sculls made no
noise, and the youths were talking and laughing loudly.
Suddenly the boat veered sharply towards the skiff. The Englishman put
his hands to his mouth, and yelled with all the strength of his lungs.
"Look out, you idiots, keep off shore!"
But it was too late. The long, steady strokes were sending the skiff
pretty fast through the smooth water. The boat swerved again, hit the
skiff about midway between the stem and the rowlocks, and the next
moment the sculler was in the water. In the same moment two guns and two
ducks were flung to the ground, two jackets were torn off, two pairs of
shoes kicked away, and two men splashed into the water. Meanwhile the
sculler had dropped quietly out of the sinking skiff, and after a glance
at the two heads, one fair and the other dark, ploughing towards her,
turned on her side and began to swim slowly in their direction so as to
lessen the distance as much as possible.
The boys, horrified at what they had done, made such a frantic effort to
go to the rescue, that one of them caught a very bad crab; so bad,
indeed that the consequent roll of the boat sent him headlong into the
water; and so the two others, one of whom was his elder brother, perhaps
naturally left the girl to her fate, and devoted their energies to
saving their companion.
Both John Castellan and the Englishman were good swimmers, and the race
was a very close thing. Still, four hundred yards with most of your
clothes on is a task calculated to try the strongest swimmer, and,
although the student had swum almost since he could walk, his muscles
were not quite in such good form as those of the ex-athlete of
Cambridge who, six months before, had won the Thames Swimming Club
Half-mile Handicap from scratch.
Using side stroke and breast-stroke alternately they went at it almost
stroke for stroke about half a dozen yards apart, and until they were
within thirty yards or so of the third swimmer, they were practically
neck and neck, though Castellan had the advantage of what might be
called the inside track. In other words he was a little nearer to the
girl than the Englishman.
When circumstances permitted they looked at each other, but, of course,
neither of them was fool enough to waste his breath in speech. Still,
each clearly understood that the other was going to get the girl first
if he could.
So the tenth yard from the prize was reached, and then the Englishman
shook his head up an inch, filled his lungs, rolled on to his side, and
made a spurt with the reserve of strength which he had kept for the
purpose. Inch by inch he drew ahead obliquely across Castellan's course
and, less than a yard in front of him, he put his right hand under the
girl's right side.
A lovely face, beautiful even though it was splashed all over with wet
strands of dark chestnut hair, turned towards him; a pair of big blue
eyes which shone in spite of the salt water which made them blink,
looked at him; and, after a cough, a very sweet voice with just a
suspicion of Boston accent in it, said:
"Thank you so much! It was real good of you! I can swim, but I don't
think I could have got there with all these things on, and so I reckon I
owe you two gentlemen my life."
Castellan had swum round, and they took her under the arms to give her a
rest. The two boys left in the boat had managed to get an oar out to
their comrade just in time, and then haul him into the boat, which was
now about fifty yards away; so as soon as the girl had got her breath
they swam with her to the boat, and lifted her hands on to the gunwale.
"If you wouldn't mind, sir, picking up those oars," said the
Englishman, "I will get the young lady into the boat, and then we can
row back."
Castellan gave him another look which said as plainly as words: "Well, I
suppose she's your prize for the present," and swam off for the oars.
With the eager help of the boys, who were now very frightened and very
penitent, the Englishman soon had the girl in the boat; and so it came
about that an adventure which might well have deprived America of one of
her most beautiful and brilliant heiresses, resulted in nothing more
than a ducking for two men and one girl, a wet, but somehow not
altogether unpleasant walk, and a slight chill from which she had quite
recovered the next morning.
The after consequences of that race for the rescue were of course, quite
another matter.
CHAPTER I
A MOMENTOUS EXPERIMENT
On the first day of July, 1908, a scene which was destined to become
historic took place in the great Lecture Theatre in the Imperial College
at Potsdam. It was just a year and a few days after the swimming race
between John Castellan and the Englishman in Clifden Bay.
There were four people present. The doors were locked and guarded by two
sentries outside. The German Emperor, Count Herold von Steinitz,
Chancellor of the Empire, Field-Marshal Count Friedrich von Moltke,
grandson of the great Organiser of Victory, and John Castellan, were
standing round a great glass tank, twenty-five feet long, and fifteen
broad, supported on a series of trestles. The tank was filled with water
up to within about six inches of the upper edge. The depth was ten feet.
A dozen models of battleships, cruisers and torpedo craft were floating
on the surface of the water. Five feet under the surface, a grey,
fish-shaped craft with tail and fins, almost exactly resembling those of
a flying fish, was darting about, now jumping forward like a cat
pouncing on a bird, now drawing back, and then suddenly coming to a
standstill. Another moment, it sank to the bottom, and lay there as if
it had been a wreck. The next it darted up to the surface, cruised about
in swift curves, turning in and out about the models, but touching none.
Every now and then John Castellan went to a little table in the corner
of the room, on which there was a machine something like a typewriter,
and touched two or three of the keys. There was no visible connection
between them--the machine and the tank--but the little grey shape in
the water responded instantly to the touch of every key.
"That, I hope, will be enough to prove to your Majesty that as submarine
the _Flying Fish_ is quite under control. Of course the real _Flying
Fish_ will be controlled inside, not from outside."
"There is no doubt about the control," said the Kaiser. "It is
marvellous, and I think the Chancellor and the Field Marshal will agree
with me in that."
"Wonderful," said the Chancellor.
"A miracle," said the Field Marshal, "if it can only be realised."
"There is no doubt about that, gentlemen," said Castellan, going back to
the machine. "Which of the models would your Majesty like to see
destroyed first?"
The Kaiser pointed to the model of a battleship which was a very good
imitation of one of the most up-to-date British battleships.
"We will take that one first," he said.
Castellan smiled, and began to play the keys. The grey shape of the
_Flying Fish_ dropped to the bottom of the tank, rose, and seemed all at
once to become endowed with human reason, or a likeness of it, which was
so horrible that even the Kaiser and his two chiefs could hardly repress
a shudder. It rose very slowly, circled among the floating models about
two feet under the surface and then, like an animal smelling out its
prey, it made a dart at the ship which the Kaiser had indicated, and
struck it from underneath. They saw a green flash stream through the
water, and the next moment the model had crumbled to pieces and sank.
"Donner-Wetter!" exclaimed the Chancellor, forgetting in his wonder that
he was in the presence of His Majesty, "that is wonderful, horrible!"
"Can there be anything too horrible for the enemies of the Fatherland,
Herr Kanztler," said the Kaiser, looking across the tank at him, with a
glint in his eyes, which no man in Germany cares to see.
"I must ask pardon, your Majesty," replied the Chancellor. "I was
astonished, indeed, almost frightened--frightened, if your Majesty will
allow me to say so, for the sake of Humanity, if such an awful invention
as that becomes realised."
"And what is your opinion, Field Marshal?" asked the Kaiser with a
laugh.
"A most excellent invention, your Majesty, provided always that it
belongs to the Fatherland."
"Exactly," said the Kaiser. "As that very intelligent American officer,
Admiral Mahan, has told us, the sea-power is world-power, and there you
have sea-power; but that is not the limit of the capabilities of Mr
Castellan's invention, according to the specifications which I have
read, and on the strength of which I have asked him to give us this
demonstration of its powers. He calls it, as you know, the _Flying
Fish_. So far you have seen it as a fish. Now, Mr Castellan, perhaps you
will be kind enough to let us see it fly."
"With pleasure, your Majesty," replied the Irishman, "but, in case of
accident, I must ask you and the Chancellor and the Field Marshal to
stand against the wall by the door there. With your Majesty's
permission, I am now going to destroy the rest of the fleet."
"The rest of the fleet!" exclaimed the Field Marshal. "It is
impossible."
"We shall see, Feldherr!" laughed the Kaiser. "Meanwhile, suppose we
come out of the danger zone."
The three greatest men in Germany, and perhaps on the Continent of
Europe, lined up with their backs to the wall at the farther end of the
room from the tank, and the Irishman sat down to his machine. The keys
began to click rapidly, and they began to feel a tenseness in the air of
the room. After a few seconds they would not have been surprised if they
had seen a flash of lightning pass over their heads. The _Flying Fish_
had sunk to the bottom of the tank, and backed into one of the corners.
The keys of the machine clicked louder and faster. Her nose tilted
upwards to an angle of about sixty degrees. The six-bladed propeller at
her stem whirled round in the water like the flurry of a whale's fluke
in its death agony. Her side-fins inclined upwards, and, like a flash,
she leapt from the water, and began to circle round the room.
The Kaiser shut his teeth hard and watched. The Chancellor opened his
mouth as if he was going to say something, and shut it again. The Field
Marshal stroked his moustache slowly, and followed the strange shape
fluttering about the room. It circled twice round the tank, and then
crossed it. A sharp click came from the machine, something fell from the
body of the _Flying Fish_ into the tank. There was a dull sound of a
smothered explosion. For a moment the very water itself seemed aflame,
then it boiled up into a mass of seething foam. Every one of the models
was overwhelmed and engulfed at the same moment. Castellan got up from
the machine, caught the _Flying Fish_ in his hand, as it dropped towards
the water, took it to the Kaiser, and said:
"Is your Majesty convinced? It is quite harmless now."
"God's thunder, yes!" said the War Lord of Germany, taking hold of the
model. "It is almost superhuman."
"Yes," said the Chancellor, "it is damnable!"
"I," said the Field Marshal, drily, "think it's admirable, always
supposing that Mr Castellan is prepared to place this mysterious
invention at the disposal of his Majesty."
"Yes," said the Kaiser, leaning with his back against the door, "that
is, of course, the first proposition to be considered. What are your
terms, Mr Castellan?"
Castellan looked at the three men all armed. The Chancellor and the
Field Marshal wore their swords, and the Kaiser had a revolver in his
hip pocket. The Chancellor and the Field Marshal straightened up as the
Kaiser spoke, and their hands moved instinctively towards their sword
hilts. The Kaiser looked at the model of the _Flying Fish_ in his hand.
His face was, as usual, like a mask. He saw nothing, thought of nothing.
For the moment he was not a man: he was just the incarnation of an
idea.
"Field Marshal, you are a soldier," said Castellan, "and I see that your
hand has gone to your sword-hilt. Swords, of course, are the emblems of
military rank, but there is no use for them now."
"What do you mean, sir?" exclaimed the Count, clapping his right hand on
the hilt. After what he had seen he honestly believed that this Irishman
was a wizard of science who ought not to be trusted in the same room
with the Kaiser. Castellan went back to his machine and said:
"Draw your sword, sir, and see."
And then the keys began to click.
The Field Marshal's sword flashed out of the sheath. A second later the
Chancellor's did the same, and the Kaiser's right hand went back towards
his hip pocket.
Castellan got up and said:
"Your Majesty has a revolver. Be good enough, as you value your own
safety, to unload it, and throw the cartridges out of the window."
"But why?" exclaimed the Kaiser, pulling a Mauser repeating pistol out
of his hip-pocket. "Who are you, that you should give orders to me?"
"Only a man, your Majesty," replied Castellan, with a bow and a smile;
"a man who could explode every cartridge in that pistol of yours at once
before you had time to fire a shot. You have seen what has happened
already."
William the Second had seen enough. He walked to one of the windows
opening on the enclosed gardens, threw it open, dropped the pistol out,
and said:
"Now, let us have the proof of what you say."
"In a moment, your Majesty," replied Castellan, going back to his
machine, and beginning to work the keys rapidly. "I am here, an unarmed
man; let their Excellencies, the Chancellor and the Field Marshal,
attack me with their swords if they can. I am not joking. I am staking
my life on the success or failure of this experiment."
"Does your Majesty consent?" said the Field Marshal, raising his sword.
"There could be no better test," replied the Kaiser. "Mr Castellan makes
an experiment on which he stakes his life; we are making an experiment
on which we stake the welfare of the German Empire, and, perhaps, the
fate of the world. If he is willing, I am."
"And I am ready," replied Castellan, working the keys faster and faster
as he spoke, and looking at the two swords as carelessly as if they had
been a couple of walking sticks.
The sword points advanced towards him; the keys of the machine clicked
faster and faster. The atmosphere of the room became tenser and tenser;
the Kaiser leaned back against the door with his arms folded. When the
points were within three feet of Castellan's head, the steel began to
gleam with a bluish green light. The Chancellor and the Field Marshal
stopped; they saw sparkles of blue flame running along the sword blades.
Then came paralysis! the swords dropped from their hands, and they
staggered back.
"Great God, this is too much," gasped the Chancellor. "The man is
impregnable. It is too much, your Majesty. I fought through the war of
'70 and '71, but I surrender to this; this is not human."
"I beg your pardon, Excellency," said Castellan, getting up from the
machine, and picking the two swords from the floor, "it is quite human,
only a little science that the majority of humanity does not happen to
know. Your swords, gentlemen," and he presented the hilts to them.
"Bravo!" exclaimed the Kaiser, "well done! You have beaten the two best
soldiers in the German Empire, and you have done it like a gentleman.
But you are not altogether an Irishman, are you, Mr Castellan?"
"No, sir, I am a Spaniard as well. The earliest ancestor that I know
commanded the _Santiago_, wrecked on Achill Island, when the Armada came
south from the Pentland Firth. The rest of me is Irish. I need hardly
say more. That is why I am here now."
The Kaiser looked at the Chancellor and the Field Marshal, and they
looked back at him, and in a moment the situation--the crisis upon which
the fate of the world might depend--was decided. It was not a time when
men who are men talk. A few moments of silence passed; the four men
looking at each other with eyes that had the destinies of nations in the
brains behind them. Then the Kaiser took three swift strides towards
Castellan, held out his hand, and said in a voice which had an unwonted
note of respect in it:
"Sir, you have convinced me. Henceforth you are Director of the Naval
and Military operations of the German Empire, subject, of course, to the
conditions which will be arranged by myself and those who are entrusted
with the tactical and strategical developments of such plan of campaign
as I may decide to carry out on sea and land. And now, to put it
rudely--brutally, if you like, your price?"
Castellan took the Kaiser's hand in a strong, nervous grip, and said:
"I shall not state my price in money, your Majesty. I am not working for
money, but you will understand that I cannot convert what I have shown
you to-day into the fighting reality. Only a nation can do that. It will
cost ten millions of marks, at least, to--well, to so far develop this
experiment that no fleet save your Majesty's shall sail the seas, and
that no armies save yours shall without your consent march over the
battlefields of the world's Armageddon."
"Make it twenty millions, fifty millions," laughed the Kaiser, "and it
will be cheap at the price. What do you think, Herr Kantzler and
Feldherr?"
"Under the present circumstances of the other monarchies of Europe, your
Majesty," replied the Chancellor, "it would be cheap at a hundred
millions, especially with reference to a certain fleet, which appears to
be making the ocean its own country."
"Quite so," said the Field Marshal. "If what we have seen to-day can be
realised it would not be necessary to pump out the North Sea in order to
invade England."
"Or to get back again," laughed the Kaiser. "I think that is what your
grandfather said, didn't he?"
"Yes, your Majesty. He found eight ways of getting into England, but he
hadn't thought of one of getting out again."
Since the days of the Prophets no man had ever uttered more prophetic
words than Friedrich Helmuth von Moltke spoke then, all unconsciously.
But in the days to come they were fulfilled in such fashion that only
one man in all the world had ever dreamed of, and that was the man who
had beaten John Castellan by a yard in the swimming race for the rescue
of that American girl from drowning.