Waldron left Virginia to recover, as he knew she would, and hurried
again to the tower to rush his garrison. The answer came at once:
“The men are on the way, sir.”
They were! Ten thousand cavalrymen with guidons streaming from their
lances! A thousand automobiles were sweeping with them in companies of
twenty--each machine packed with sturdy infantrymen, their battle
standards flying from speeding cars.
The first division of cavalry which Angela had summoned rescued Billy’s
hard pressed men, wiped out his opponents, and reached the shelter of
the porte-cochère before Waldron’s guard inside realized their presence.
Supposing the Imperial troops had answered the summons the big doors
were opened. The entrance was forced before Waldron saw they wore the
felt hats of the United States Army.
He slammed the massive doors of the library, dragged Virginia through
another exit and reached the upper story by the rear stairway.
The Captain held the lower floor. Waldron’s guard with their rifles and
automatics commanded the landings of the two stairs. Vassar found his
men holding a council of war when he leaped from his car and entered the
blood-stained doorway of the banquet hall.
Vassar had just formed his men in solid mass to rush the stairway and
batter in the door above, when the big elevator shot down the shaft,
showing Waldron with Virginia under guard. In a flash he recalled that
the entrance from the Drive passed through the hill to this shaft. If
Waldron could reach the pier he might yet escape on his yacht.
Vassar rushed to the window and looked toward the river.
The yacht lay beside the wharf, her portholes gleaming, her funnels
belching flame and smoke. The engineer had gotten the signal. He was
using oil to force the steam.
With a fierce cry of rage Vassar called to Billy and a dozen men leaped
after them.
They reached the foot of the hill as Waldron emerged from the tunnel to
dash across the fifty-yard space that separated him from the Drive. The
yacht was but a hundred yards beyond the road.
The Governor-General formed a hollow square with his faithful
guard--Virginia a prisoner within their circle of steel.
Waldron shouted to his men:
“A fortune and a title for every man who fights his way to the water’s
edge!”
The guard fired a volley at Vassar’s approaching men and dashed for the
roadway at the moment Angela rounded the curve, riding furiously at the
head of a company of the Daughters of Jael.
The white-robed girl riders charged straight for their foes. Waldron,
taken completely by surprise, raised his automatic to kill Virginia. His
finger was pressing the trigger when Angela swept close, thrust a
revolver into his face, fired and circled to fire again.
The Governor-General crumpled in his tracks and his men surrendered.
Virginia threw herself into Vassar’s arms.
“I fear I have failed, my love!”
“Your army has not failed, dear heart!” he answered. “You have lifted a
fallen nation from the dust!”
It was true.
A hundred cities ran red with blood--but day dawned with the flag of
freedom flying from every staff save in Norfolk and Boston.
In both those important ports the plot had been betrayed, hundreds of
suspected women arrested and imprisoned. The serious part of it was in
these two harbors were stationed four huge dreadnaughts and forty
submarines with accompanying hydroplanes.
In New York the insurrection had swept all before it. The crews of the
submarines were wiped out. Of all who had gathered at the dance and
banquet halls--Angela’s work had been perfect--not a sailor from the
fleet set foot again on their decks. Our boys, dressed in their
uniforms, had captured every ship before day--hand to hand, muscle
against muscle, with six inches of cold steel!
The aviation corps had been practically wiped out. Their machines were
circling the skies at dawn passing the signals to our commanders. Every
arsenal fell and every ammunition factory.
When the sun rose on the harbor of New York the Stars and Stripes flew
from every ship and every fort and an army of five hundred thousand men,
half of them with the best rifles in their hands and big guns lumbering
in their lines, were mobilizing under General Wood to capture Boston and
Norfolk.
The battles that followed were brief, bloody and glorious in their end.
Norfolk they abandoned and their fleet was concentrated on Boston.
The Imperial Army and Navy fought with reckless
[Illustration: “Angela swept close ... fired and circled to fire
again”]
bravery, but the end was sure. They were outnumbered now, two to one.
Their submarines stayed with superhuman courage and sent six battleships
with five thousand of our bravest men to their graves before they went
down.
The captains of the dreadnaughts, when they saw the end had come, swung
their prows into the teeth of our fleet and sank with colors flying.
On the day our army marched into Boston with bands playing “The Star
Spangled Banner,” three hundred thousand Bostonians stood in silence and
tears and watched them pass the old State House, along Columbus Avenue,
up Tremont Street and through Beacon to the steps of the Capitol. There
they stood for hours and sang
“My Country, ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of Liberty,
Of thee I sing.”
The President and his Cabinet, released from Fort Warren, reviewed our
victorious fleet the following day.
There were no vulgar cheers. Their souls were stirred to greater depths.
When the triumphal procession swung past the old Armory on the East Side
of New York, Virginia Holland, with Zonia and Marya, rode at the head of
a division of fifty thousand Daughters of Jael. The orderly outrider on
her left was a slender Italian mother, on whose breast was pinned a tiny
blood-stained flag of the Republic.
* * * * *
Congress met in December. The Senate used the East Room of the Executive
Mansion, the House of Representatives met in the Belasco Theater. These
two buildings stood intact.
John Vassar was elected speaker of the House without a dissenting voice.
His bride from her seat in the gallery watched through tear-dimmed eyes
as he took his seat on the dais, and two wistful girls, with smiling
faces, sat beside her.
The first bill for consideration was passed without debate in just the
time it took to call the roll--the bill which Vassar had introduced five
years before--providing for a mobile army of citizen soldiers of a
million men with heavy artillery and perfect equipment.
The cost of our defeat and humiliation with two years of slavery had
been more than thirty billions of the wealth of the people. This
fabulous sum could have been saved by a paltry half billion invested in
a navy.
Taught wisdom at last in the school of defeat, a mighty nation lifted
her head and girded her loins for a glorious future.
* * * * *
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
Virginia hestitated=> Virginia hesitated {pg 81}
upset Vassar’s equanamity=> upset Vassar’s equanimity {pg 91}
shook the boy ficercely=> shook the boy fiercely {pg 136}
crush Amercan democracy=> crush American democracy {pg 166}
Emperor of Austra-Hungary=> Emperor of Austria-Hungary {pg 180}
hugh column of water=> huge column of water {pg 226}
care whch way=> care which way {pg 241}
his word clanking=> his sword clanking {pg 290}
over Zonia’s soulders=> over Zonia’s shoulders {pg 290}
A A fleet=> A fleet {pg 312}