GERMANS IN PALL MALL
Germany had some 854,000 tons at Emden—53 capital ships—which the
British sought to blockade and contain, lying in a long curve beyond
Borkum (the island that lies before Emden).
The British were the 1st and 2nd Divisions, consisting of all newest
battleships with their affiliated cruisers, destroyers, dépôt-ships,
and with them half the French 1st battle-squadron, all under the
Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Sir Richard Ramsay, borne in the _Lion_.
But this idea of containing had not lasted three days when it changed
into the keenest eagerness to draw to a battle—firstly because it
was realised that the Germans were awaiting the to-be-purchased
Japanese ships, said to be “coming round the Cape,” and then because
of the mobilising of three _corps d’armée_ upon Larrelt, and of an
accumulation of troopships and war _matériel_ under the guns of
Wilhelmshaven (connected with Emden and Borkum by the Ems-Jahde Canal).
Now, Emden had not always been a naval station—for capital ships; nor
Larrelt a garrison-town. The dredging of the Emden fairway, and the
establishment of vast barracks at Larrelt had been costly; hence that
spot had long been looked to by us as the base of “invasion”; and
now “invasion” was bitter in the bread and beer, and dreadful in the
dreams, of Britain.
The danger was probably not so acute as was assumed: for, as a matter
of fact, trouble was in the German Admiral-Stab in those very days at
the message from the East that—the “purchased” fleet seemed to have
vanished somehow! for ever since a steamer of the Yusen Kaisha fleet
had sighted it in trouble in a typhoon near the Kiu-Kiu reefs, no
report of them! Vanished!—that mass. On which there are indications
that doubt and hesitation entered into the counsellors of Germany.
But there had really been an awful Autumn storm in the China Sea; and
two days afterwards Europe seemed to have caught it. Then began “the
great gale.”
During two days the sun went out, the heavens, as it were, tinted with
inks; and the blockading vessels, with seas breaking through casemates
and screen-doors, fled from the face of a tempest that fell upon them
at eighty-five miles an hour; while chill trembling fell upon Britain
with the instinct that now was the German chance while a pitched battle
on the sea was an impossibility.
A King’s-messenger coming wild with tidings in the Ostend mail-boat was
lost within sight of Dover, where the breakwater and Admiralty Pier
were under water, large storm-doors were washed down, offices wrecked
on the Main Pier, ships fouled and ashore in the Naval Harbour.
It fell upon the _Asahel_ half-way to Emden, and the Prince, after a
defiant fight, had to fly S. by W. half a night with the sea on his
port quarter. Life-lines rigged for the seamen to secure equipment
could not save two blue-jackets from being washed overboard, so swung
were the feet between deep and steep, and only two of the boats were
not torn from their davits.
Meantime, no one in the _Asahel_ was asleep, since tons of water were
washing even over engine-room hatchways down into the engine-depths,
the seamen’s mess awash, water in the wardroom, in the wireless room,
in the Prince’s cabin, having plunged down through a broken scuttle and
wardroom funnel, so that she seemed as much within the sea as on it.
The Prince, sitting on a narrow end of a lashed trunk, his brow-bandage
spotted with blood, his shins bare, was swinging his head about over
a concertina, playing “Onward, Christian Soldiers” to the legion of
dæmons that seemed careering with shrieks through the rayless air.
This was what _he_ called fine weather, and a delightful night.
But as he rocked and rollicked there in his solitary cabin, things
blacker than the night were in the back of his mind, for he understood
that doom was hanging over the land of his love.
And the instant he could dare to turn back, on that murky daybreak of
the 23rd, he turned the _Asahel’s_ bow to the mountains, seeking his
fleet.
But the day was only a less dense land of night—no observations to be
taken, no certainty even of his position.
He staggered up the outside of his tripod-mast (the tripod-tubes could
not be climbed inside, they were so slight and light—but high), and,
riding there, he clung on long, one-handed, with a troubled brow,
frowning over the sea which swung and flung him, his hair stretched
between his head and the wind, and in his bosom a boding that the feet
of foreigners were even then _en route_ to violate the pride of that
island that had proved herself the rightful ruler of rulers.
Now, he could act in the situation almost as he chose, for he had long
been a sort of institution apart in the Service, having come to be
looked upon as something of a free-lance, his two ships were so unique,
and so due to his pressure upon the Construction Department.
They had cost the country only £2,400,000; and men had said: “Well, to
humour him ... he is a Prince.”
His _Asahel_ was under 2000 tons, without torpedo-tubes, unarmoured,
without armoured deck, but of powerful scantling, strongly braced,
to carry two 20·6-inch (unarmoured) wire-guns of 50 calibres on
turn-tables, one for’ard, one aft—to be fired one at a time! since one
took and shook her like a tempestuous stepmother.
Besides, she had four (unarmoured) 4-inch quick-firers in _échelon_
pairs amidships for mosquito-attack, a little balloon gun, and a little
Maxim.
Her “captain,” having seen no other ship on the sea, near ten o’clock
came to a decision, and wirelessed to the _Blunderbus_—to learn that
the _Blunderbus_ was steering south, practically under water, fifty
miles from the English coast, and now somewhere in latitude 55°,
opposite Sunderland. The _Asahel_ pricked off eight points to port to
seek her.
It was about three minutes afterwards that the Prince said to a
boy-servant at his cabin-door: “Here—_hist_—tell me if you hear
anything.” He caught the boy’s arm, and they listened, lurching,
clinging. But the boy shook his head.
“_Now!—hist!_” the Prince hissed.
“Is it gun-fire, Sir?”
“You heard?”
“It struck me I did hear something like thunder somewhere.”
“Go through the ship and ask.”
Only 3 of 120 had heard anything, yet gun-fire was actually going on to
the north-east, where a German battle-squadron was destroying a flock
of ten “Tribal” class destroyers and two scouts, the _Adventure_ and
_Boadicea_—all the twenty-eight warships having found themselves mixed
up together on a sudden; and astern of the squadron were discernible in
the murk some nine to twelve liners.
The destroyers made no attempt to fly—it was too late; the scouts
attempted, but some of a crowd of quick-fire shell (which mostly shot
the sky or the sea-bottom) disabled the two little cruisers.
The ten decided to sell their lives dearly; and a fleet of twenty-five
torpedoes went piercing the swell, kept tolerably steady by their
gyroscope-pull, while an exclamatory racket of pop-guns from the boats
and of 4, 6, 8-inch shot from the giants, as the two fleets tore
through each other, was shrieked by the winds far over the North Sea.
But there were many more shots than torpedoes, the British all sank,
the little _Boadicea_ moving ten seconds on a mountain-summit, her bow
perpendicular, two funnels showing, two hidden in the sea; and with her
went down into dark water the 27,000 tons of the thundering _Aegir_,
which the billows bounded upon and devoured when her propellers were
blown away; and always near her at the sea-bottom will be the _Kaiser
Karl der Grosse_, which graciously raised and exposed her port bottom
to a torpedo as it posted near, and was opened beneath her boilers;
and down into dark water went two of the troopships with six thousand
infantrymen, born without a caul.
It was this brief affray that faintly reached the ear on the _Asahel_;
and an hour later there was another, unheard by her, far south.
The enemy, in fact, guessing the English more or less demobilised by
the gale, were slipping across in the gloom in three groups by three
_routes_, to rendezvous in the latitude of Hornsea: thence to effect
a landing wherever coast-defence was least effective, the moment the
condition of the sea should permit.
Then, after the landing, to fight for a clear sea—for the _Mauretania_
lesson had been rapidly analysed and learned in Germany: and now their
hope was mutual destruction in one great struggle after invasion, thus
to secure to the invading troops communication with their base.
As for the British third and fourth lines of defence round the
coasts—old battleships, destroyers, submarines, coast-guns—these,
alert, but scattered, would hardly be formidable to such a mass of
metal.
However, at eleven that night the _Asahel_ spied two of the three
groups just effecting a junction 90 miles E. by N. of Hornsea.
She knew where she was now and could just wireless the _Blunderbus_ to
come, though the apparatus had been put out of gear by the gale. The
_Blunderbus_ answered, but only one of the _Asahel’s_ other messages
was answered—by a scout, and the sound of the dope told that it came
from far.
She lay now nine miles from the outermost details of the converging
Germans, forging slow, and, herself hidden, could see them fairly well,
for although something of a gale still gunned its gusts, the sea had
quieted, and the sky, wild that night with flying vapours, was alight
with constellations which sailed like a navy gliding, gliding, the
half-moon their flag-ship guiding them.
The Prince thought: “They are waiting for others.”
And he thought: “To-morrow! Will God make the sun rise bright for
England?”
All that night his eyes did not shut. He watched that host as a
famished wolf watches food which is just beyond his jaw.
Meantime, the _Asahel’s_ three lights were out, and thrice in the
night, shy as a fowl, she was in flight from scouts of the enemy,
coming in or out.
It had happened so that all the world-burden had fallen upon his one
back, and he had to handle it: but to tackle a navy! He knew that one
half-a-shell would finish the _Asahel_; and he knew that she was a
nearly useless thing if much mist was on the sea.
The gale seemed to have cleared the sea of craft—not a tramp, not a
smack, to be seen; and even when day broke he did not know what to do.
To await the _Blunderbus_? To seek the fleet? To venture to lose touch
with the armada in order to warn the shore? No wireless! His aching
head sweated with the care and weight of it; and though Brockweir boys
never “prayed,” thinking that irreligious, he, oppressed to passion as
day began to break, dropped down in his cabin, crying out: “Guidance!”
After this he watched the sun come, watched fifteen ships join the
armada, seven of them warships with quite a battered aspect, like ships
after a battle, looked at the saluting of the colours, breakfasted,
attended “prayers,” ordered a ration of grog for the ratings: and now,
though pale, pale, an uplifting spirit was in his feet, a pride in his
eyes, and in his blood a sense which his mother blent in him that the
sea was his dominion.
The day had come quite bright and clear! the wind no longer
particularly strong! the _Asahel_ rolling through less than three
degrees! and the band brabbling “Rule Britannia!”
She watched the Germans roll themselves in smoke, form into column of
divisions—two endless lines ahead, sixteen cables apart—and set out at
the speed of their slowest detail for England.
And she stood still, and watched.
But she was busy—her guns cast loose, their crews raising shells by
dredger-hoists from magazines, her chief engineer down in the deeps
seeing to his steam-power, his air-compressor for quick reversing,
the Prince and his little staff up in their control seeing to their
range-clock, their long-based 18-ft. range-finder: and suddenly the
_Asahel_, which could be at her top speed within six seconds, sprang
and ran the sea.
The smokes stooped at her funnels like the ears of the deer which he
lowers, shying, as his feet fly into fleetness (her central shaft was
oil-driven—a Diessel 2-cycle—her wing-shafts turbine-driven, with
oil-fuel); and like the galloping stag she was gone.
Hope at this hour was high in the heart of Grand-Admiral von Grad as
to the outcome of the expedition, no scout of his in sight, no scout
of the British, for he had sunk or dodged all the “whiskers” of the
maid British body; and he was looking over the brightness of the sea
that played blue-and-white in the aisle between the two processions
of ships steaming gallantly beneath their flags that streamed on the
breeze—captain’s pennant, rear-admiral’s flag, vice-admiral’s, and
astern the German ensign, the Eagle screaming with greed, his talons
sharp.
This was “the Event!”—Invasion—so often toasted with hochs! in
officers’ mess or Service-club; and it was to be like this—something
like a holiday! a gala of flags on a glad morning after storm—almost
too good to be true, yet true.
True—till the _Kaiser_ burst into turbulence beneath the
Grand-Admiral’s heels, he in a whirligig hurtling thirty yards toward
the firmament in the midst of a midnight of smoke, his dark and tragic
chariot.
For a shot (weighing 1988 lbs.) had entered her from 18,000 yards to
northward, where nothing of the _Asahel_ was visible to the glass but a
misty thing that might be a smack’s mast; and to the _Asahel_ herself
nothing but the upper works of the battleships was visible.
Hence for fifteen seconds the enemy could only think that the _Kaiser_
had exploded spontaneously; until the _Blücher_, too, broke into
smoking before their stare: and then their conscience smote them.
Think of a bell tolling once every fifteen seconds—four doleful times a
minute—a passing-bell that tolls for you before you are gone, and, as
it tolls, you go: so did the _Asahel’s_ two guns go, one every thirty
seconds in turn and turn—like scurrility and banter bandied betwixt
Jove and Jehovah, and before the tremblement of merriment could finish
in her ribs at the ribaldry of Jove, Jehovah joked and shook her.
She had, in fact, a special type of breech-block and obturator which
made her guns capable of very rapid handling, the opening of the
breech-mechanism by hand occupying less than five seconds through
the power of toggle-levers; her shells and cordite, moreover, were
separately raised; her gun-layers cooler than men in the fury of
a fight—for she was not a fighter, but an executioner; their ears
were deeply protected; and as the gun-sights were adjusted from
the control-position by a little electric motor that drove the
hydraulic-engine valve (transmitting both range and deflection), the
gun-layer had merely to keep the gun on the target, and fire it.
Also, the error of her range-finder was only 39 yards in 18,000, so
that four out of five shells struck. And some that fell short still
struck: for they had caps with little slots in them all round, through
which slots bits of tin-plate dropped down (by their own gravity), and
these acted as planes, as the shell flew, so that, if it struck the
sea, it neither ricochetted, nor was refracted by the water density.
These little planes—a Chinnery contrivance—were said, moreover, to
lessen wind-influence and to affect that “pendulum motion” of shells.
Now, the wind had been too gusty for aeroplane scouting; none of the
armada’s scouting ships had so far reported the _Asahel_; and, as
her structure had been kept quite dark from the spies, her sudden
shells so whelmed the armada with wonderment, that three German ships
had been death-struck, and that pea-soup hull of the _Cesarewitch_
was flurriedly sinking, before ever the Admiral Second-in-Command
could signal order-of-battle, and a battle-squadron of eight started
northward after a swarm of destroyers to silence those two disastrous
wraths.
At the same moment the air began to grow populous with aeroplanes
popping aloft, and guns had begun to growl in crowds.
The _Asahel_ did not fly: went on her westward way following the main
body of the enemy, steadily sending it bales of cordite, while her
three hydro-planes bounded down her bow-rails, and went mounting in
spirals as narrow as aeroplanes may, climbing to protect her from the
flying flock.
During which, mortality and arson were so actively harvesting among
the armada, that soon another squadron was starting northward;
and within three minutes practically the whole force was evolving
northward—forming, as they evolved, such a throng, that it was almost
impossible for the _Asahel’s_ bombs not to tumble upon something;
so that, in the press, an 11-inch shell of the manœuvring _Elsass_
smashed up one of the 3-gun turrets of the _Dante Alighieri_ near: for
an _Asahel_ shell had entered the _Elsass_ under-water, at which she
coughed consumptively a cough which rent her frame, and red was her
hæmorrhage, her armoured deck tearing lengthways like cardboard which
one tears, several of her bulkheads riddled, flame breaking out in two
places on her gun-deck, whereat she, like a distracted creature, who,
starting from dreams, fires out right and left with fist and foot at
friend and foe alike, fired her loaded guns among the crowd round her.
What was the _rationale_ of those “armoured decks” and “bulkheads”
in those ships it is at this date impossible to say. They were very
heavy, and death to the ship’s speed—the deck some 3 inches thick, the
bulkheads some 10—but much too thin to resist gun-fire, just offering
sufficient resistance to explode shells to the best advantage, so that
they would have been better made of tin, wood, or compressed paper. The
_Asahel’s_ packages that she posted made light of them.
Packages like trunks—deferred action shells, with adapted fuses to
explode after penetration, thick-walled like the _obus alourdi_, and
cased in aluminium to lessen erosion, so that the “life” of the two
guns was as high as 180 rounds: she had only to keep out of harm’s way,
and keep on firing, to make that day a date for ages.
Gossip has said that one of those shells made a hole eight feet across
right through the cruiser _Gnaisenau_, and, coming out on the other
side with a downward deflection, struck the big _Helgoland_, which,
smartly smacked on her bottom, clamoured flammivomitant.
But now the _Asahel_ is in flight northward: for at the second of two
spent shells which crashed upon her deck without bursting, but smashing
five limbs by their mass, she, shy as a bird, turns tail, and now is
hurling only end-on fire from her stern-gun.
“But we are going right for the _Blunderbus_, if God send her,” the
Prince called out, though none of his party caught it, for now the air
of the North Sea was in such a state of wave-agitation at the guttural
going-off of guns, as if the globe had been tumbled into some boiling
pot that bustlingly boiled with bubblings and bumpings, boxing with
hubbub the squealing car; and as he stood looking abroad with his palms
on his ribs, the wind caught a laugh out of his mouth: for now all the
south heaven was already red as with the fires of ten thousand pyres
rising, as dreadfully red as the death-day of Nature, and the ocean’s
floor a cemetery of flames.
“And surely,” he thought, “this firing must be audible over all the
North Sea, over all the coast! Help must come!”
At that moment, looking over the spiked rim of the control, he saw
a man who had dropped from the clouds stab his bowels upon the bow
ensign-staff, while an aeroplane rained down with bombs and another man
some yards to starboard; and aloft he saw a swarm, and war in the air,
and bombs falling here and there, and his balloon-gun potting at the
planes in vain.
But the _Asahel_ was (theoretically) in no danger from aeroplanes,
not only because her own three, climbing direct from her, had the
higher position, but because, with her speed and theirs, there was as
little likelihood of their striking her as of her striking them. Her
balloon-gun, in fact, proved a useless tool in practice.
But, beside aeroplanes, there came tearing in her wake a navy of
destroyers, high stems trailing low trains of hull through furrows of
froth; and although she easily distanced them, even as, one by one, she
sank them, they kept her “on the run,” and from dealing so effectively
as previously with the _Dreadnoughts_.
She was, in fact, made to co-operate with the _Blunderbus_; and the
_Blunderbus_ was away.
But she had not been nine minutes in flight when a wild cheer reached
to the men in the skies from the men on her deck: yonder, hardly seven
hundred yards off on her starboard bow was the _Blunderbus_ ploughing.
The glasses had not seen her until now! she was so low in the water,
foamless owing to her slowness—and painted sea-blue.
Moreover, there were only two objects on her deck, both sea-blue—a low
conning-tower, and a low column which carried some searchlights, with
a little stick on it for flagstaff. She had no funnels (oil-driven),
no mast, no superstructure, no deck-guns, even her boats being between
decks at the sea-level.
As they dashed past each other, the _Asahel_ dipped ensign, and
signalled to the _Blunderbus_: “England.”
And the _Blunderbus_ signalled back: “England.”
And each went her way, the _Asahel_ flying, firing, the _Blunderbus_
silent, advancing.
Until, in ten minutes, she was amid the throng of destroyers, almost
before they had marked her: and harshly with a snarl she sank them, and
passed on.
In three minutes more all between her and her horizon were battleships
battering at her, she at them.
Now, their biggest guns were considerably the bigger, hers being all
Woolwich-type 9·2-inchers near the sea-level: so it was only a question
of time which sank first, she or they.
But her armour was not only so thick that no shell in existence could
pierce it at 2000 yards, if it had been smooth armour, but it was not
smooth armour, she had the appearance of a hedgehog, horrid all over
with spears and nipples, like a cavern of stalactites, so that instead
of being pierced by a shell, she pierced the shell; and only protracted
smashing at some one square yard of her could hole her.
And, though but little bigger than an ordinary super-Dreadnought, her
displacement was 48,000 tons, so great was her draught: she being
equally thick all over, even her upper deck being one bulk of rough
Krupp 19·5 inches thick, like a district of spikey ice in Iceland, and
her conning-tower a box 76 inches thick.
She was instantly deluged under shells.
Three of the huge _Thüringens_, and two of the _Nassaus_ (18,000),
were all at one moment within 2000 yards of her, and these together
sent forty shells from forward and aft turrets, and from two of their
central turrets placed at the four corners of citadels.
But, even so near, she was not very distinguishable from the sea;
and her own fire-delivery was pretty rapid—three rounds per gun per
minute—guns that were protected by traps that dropped automatically
after explosion, and then rose a moment for the shot to pass, and
dropped, like quick-winking lids, the guns themselves having little
range of movement, her rudder playing a part in their aiming. She was,
in fact, fought wholly from the conning-tower, from which also she was
steered, her steering-gear all under armour, and her rudder of such a
tonnage that three Schneider torpedoes with charges of 331 lb., could
not shatter it all.
Also, since she was made for a _mêlée_ and hand-to-hand hell-play, a
steady stream of torpedoes went speeding out from her numerous tubes.
And it was quick work, and stern work, and showery work, all Germany
shouting, all England grinning in the grimness of a three-minutes’
struggle for the government of a globe.
Like razors the rain of shells shaved her of her spikes and nipples,
and it was next a question of picking a way through her thickness
inch by inch, for she was impregnable else everywhere, except in her
propellers.
And while they made her white, soaping her with foam to razor her
whiskers, she razored their flesh, and made them red.
Half a salvo of her port guns transformed the starboard side of the
_Nassau_ into scrap-iron cracked and rent from end to end; in five
minutes a conflagration was raging within the great _Ostfriesland_,
aspiring high like a spire out of her chart-house top; yonder limped
the _Thüringen_ like one knee-sick; and the _Moltke_ with solitary
oratory away yonder to the north was prophesying dolorously of her
death, with one _Asahel_ and several _Blunderbus_ poison-pills rumbling
in her belly; so that after six minutes it was quite a fresh bunch of
the enemy which the _Blunderbus_ was bludgeoning to the sea-bottom.
Even when a hole was bored into her starboard quarter she did not sink,
as the shot chanced not to smash the walls of the compartment into
which the water washed, though her bulkheads were only one-eighth inch
thick; and six minutes afterwards, when at last a wave swept over her
desert esplanade of deck, and she lurched and gurgled like a world, and
was gone, it was at an _Asahel_ portmanteau of cordite which had come
and crashed through and through her.
For the _Asahel’s_ two guns, grown hoarse in the throat, were throwing
now less effectively; and the _Asahel_ herself, slowly sinking, was
being kept afloat by her pumps—a boxful of aeroplane bombs, by very bad
luck, having tumbled about and hulled her, blowing down her mast among
other things, injuring all the control-party, killing three gun-layers.
But she had still most of her speed, and was now following northward
a flock of troopships which, a long way inland, were stealing north
before turning east for Germany: for, out of sight to the south, two
British squadrons which had come up were now engaging the relics of the
enemy.
And in the latitude of Flamboro’ Head, at ten past eleven o’clock, the
Prince, who had afresh broken his broken arm in the crash of the mast,
suddenly recommenced the attack, the land-troops being convoyed now
only by the cruisers _Fürst Bismarck_, _Yorck_, and _Roon_.
Soon after eleven-thirty the _Fürst Bismarck_ sank, the _Yorck_ stood
motionless, and the little _Roon_ struck her flag.
The _Asahel_, on which a pole-mast had now been rigged, then signalled
the crowd of troopships and liners southward, and, shepherding the
32 of them, was not permitted to sink until she had come up with the
British.
It was only when taken into the _Lion_ flag-ship, that the Prince heard
of the _Blunderbus’s_ fate, and shook the hand of her captain and of
some of her 680 (seven had been wounded).
He then heard also of a terrible brief battle between the two fleets,
disastrous to both, the enemy seeking to break away and escape
eastward, with a success of probably seven capital ships only.
The business of putting prize crews into the liners, into three
captured ships-of-war, and three mine-sweepers with trawls, now went
forward, the sea lying fairly quiet, though a stiff sea-wind still
swept it, and the sun sunny above.
At three in the afternoon the crowd started southward for the
Thames-mouth.
And during the next two days London saw that spectacle which she had so
dreaded, Prussian troops pouring through London: but prisoners.
Troop after troop, regiment on regiment, all day long, streaming
through the teeming streets to the stations for the prisons, all London
on its pavements, at its windows, patiently seeing it through, in
wonderful weather like spring.
There seemed no end to them!—grand gallants some of them, regiments
of giants, shining helmets of the 17th and 3rd (West Prussia and
Brandenburg), Bismarck cuirassiers, uhlans—Prussian, Russian—curious
uniforms of troops in ruby robes flowing loose (Turkomans),
with sapper battalions, and specimens of Terek cavalry, and
horse-grenadiers garbed in laces and epaulettes, the rainbow
variegations of Russian regiments.
And since there are hours in which our country bounds to the very plane
of greatness, never a bravo from all those crowds of spectators was
raised to break their hearts, as they silently passed, unfortunate but
haughty, through silently haughty lines. Only the bells of Britain
could not be kept from breaking into melody, telling one to the other
of it; and the name of God was in many mouths.
When the Crown-Prince, a prisoner from the _Fürst Bismarck_, had the
taste to say in our Prince’s car on the way from Limehouse that the
victory had been won by the weather, our Prince is said to have made
the answer: “Nothing more fickle than weather, Your Imperial Highness;
but you may rely upon it for being always on the side of this island.”
Even at the Prince’s passage the streets hardly cheered; a few flowers
struck him; men bent their heads, and stood dumb.
When a king, a prince, a duke even, is not absolutely beneath humanity
the people tend to consider him a man of ability; if he is that, they
consider him a great man; if great, they regard him as godlike. And so
now.
On first learning the news of the Battle of the North Sea, the Queen
had run into a room of the King at Windsor, and dropping her forehead
upon him, had called out “_Oh!_” and broken down into sobbings, as who
should say, “Here is the money which long since you lent me, which I
now pay back in full, with interest.”
Those were her lordly days, in which she stalked exalted on air, her
eyes alight. To hear these bells she had lived and endeavoured.
But all in her bliss was one bitter bit: and an uglier tone of
malignity now envenomed her against the girl who mingled alegar in her
glass of gladness, and rendered imperfect her crowning hour.
From thoughts of that girl she would turn to lavish pettings upon the
Princess Elizabeth; who, however, was in no pretty mood just now.
Wildly in love with the Prince, the Princess had always disliked him
in a sort of patriotic spite and jealousy; and, never letting him out
of her thoughts, she was always either dreaming amorously of him, or
speaking slightingly of his alleged admirableness.
Seeing him now bring her brother a prisoner, a venom of tenfold love
and of tenfold enmity poisoned all her nature to a nest of snakes.
Nor was she solitary in this morbid and, in fact, mad passion for the
Prince of Wales, considering the singular epidemic of love-sickness
which suddenly broke out among girls shortly after the North Sea
event, infecting high society and low alike, _débutantes_, milliners,
resulting within one month in four suicides. One poor Margaret, a
Norfolk farmer’s daughter, after going haggard with her love-hunger,
drugged herself with hedge hemlock, and was discovered dead and at rest
in a bed of bay, with her “Teddy’s” photograph under her face—and there
were others.
Meantime, the nation named him “saviour,” called him both darling
and father of his country, and, demanding the waiving of ceremony,
clamoured for his elevation to flag-rank.
He was also at once appointed a member of the Permanent Committee of
National Safety.
“But,” said the then Duke of Norfolk, an unkempt little gentleman
with a beard teeming with micro-organisms, to the then Marquess of
Tullibardine in a Pall Mall club that night of the Prince’s coming, “it
might have been better for our lot if the Germans had come.”
Whereat the Marquess—a young man who stood every inch a lord, tall,
left arm akimbo, right leg cocked, lifted his finger to utter something
prophetic, but checked himself.
In truth, the aristocracy, as a caste, had long distrusted the Prince,
did not quite like all this idolisation of him, and looked forward with
dismay to the day when a King who was a scientist and a thinker should
come to the Throne.