CHAPTER XXV

It was a sullen evening in mid-August, following a breathless day and

an angry sunset that had shed a copper-colored glow above a bank of

cloud. The great windows of the drawing-room of the Channel House were

flung open wide, and on the terrace beneath the starless heaven sat the

little group of intimates, which now included the placid lady of the

little Kilburn house. Walter Herold, who had returned from Switzerland

tanned and strong, told his adventures to Sir Oliver and Dr. Ransome,

while John and Stella, a little way apart, listened idly. Lady Blount

and Miss Lindon murmured irrelevances concerning the curates of long

ago and the present price of beef. They had many points at which the

curves of their natures touched, such as mathematicians, with unique

spasm of romance, call points of osculation.

But for the voices all was still. From below, at the base of the cliff,

came the lazy lapping of the sea against the rocks. Outside the glow of

light cast by the illuminated drawing-room the world was pitch black.

The air grew more and more oppressive.

“I think there’s going to be thunder,” said Lady Blount.

“I hope not,” said Miss Lindon. “I know John thinks it foolish, but I’m

terribly afraid of thunder.”

“So does Sir Oliver; but I don’t care. Whenever there’s a

thunder-storm, I go up to my room and put my head under the bedclothes

until it’s over.”

“Now isn’t that remarkable, my dear,” said Miss Lindon--“I do exactly

the same! I draw down the blinds, and hide scissors away in a drawer,

and throw a woolen shawl over the steel fender, and then I put my head

under the blankets. My Aunt Margery, I remember, invariably used to

go and sit in the coal-cellar. But she was a strong-minded woman, and

would put her foot on a black beetle as soon as look at it. I hope I’m

fond of most of God’s creatures, but a black beetle frightens me out of

my wits.”

“What do you think of thunder-storms, Stella?” John asked, knocking the

ashes out of his pipe.

“I’m rather frightened,” she confessed. “Not because I think they’ll

hurt me.” She paused and sighed. “I never could understand them.”

“What do you mean by understanding a thunder-storm?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “You either understand things or you

don’t.”

Herold broke in to spare her further explanation. “There was

a splendid one the week before last in the mountains--a real

_Walpurgisnacht_. It seemed as though hell had broken loose.”

He described it in his vivid way. The elderly ladies looked at the

glimmer of white shirt-front and the glowing cigarette-end by which

alone he was revealed, and wondered at the heroical, or, as it seemed

in the unconfessed depths of their souls, the God-defying qualities of

male humanity. A few resounding splashes fell from the sky. The party

rose hurriedly.

“Gad! we’re in for it,” cried Sir Oliver. “Let us get indoors.”

A flash of lightning rent the southern sky, and a clap of thunder broke

over the channel, and the rain came down like a waterspout. In the

drawing-room Lady Blount put her hand before her eyes.

“You must all forgive me. I can’t stand it. I must go up-stairs.

Besides, it’s late, very near bed-time. My dear Miss Lindon, shall we

go?”

The two old ladies, after hasty good nights, retired to the protection

of their respective bedclothes. A great wind arose and swept through

the room, blowing over a vase of flowers on the piano. Dr. Ransome,

who happened to be standing near, mopped up the water with his

handkerchief. Herold sprang to the window and shut it. Stella was by

his side. Another flash sped through the blackness, and the thunder

followed. They drew near together and waited for the next.

Sir Oliver hospitably pushed John and the old doctor toward the

drawing-room door. “There are drinks in the library. It’ll be cozier

there, on the other side of the house, away from this confounded

racket. Come along, Walter. Stella darling, you had better go to bed.

It’s the best place for little girls in a thunder-storm.”

She turned, the breadth of the drawing-room separating Walter Herold

and herself from the others.

“I’ll stay up a little longer and look at it, dear Excellency,” she

said, with a smile. “I’ll come into the library later and tell you all

good night.”

At this announcement, and Stellamaris’s announcements had ever been

sovereign decrees, John and Dr. Ransome, standing by the open door,

obeyed the courteous wave of Sir Oliver’s hand. The old man waited for

Herold, who advanced a pace or two.

“I suppose you’re dying for whisky and soda,” said Stella, resignedly.

He stopped short. “Not in the least. I would far rather look at

this,”--he flung a hand toward the window,--“if you would let me.”

“Only for five minutes, Favorite dear; then I’ll send you away.”

Sir Oliver went out, shutting the door behind him. Herold and

Stellamaris were alone in the spacious room. There came another flash

and the thunder peal, and the rain spattered hard on the stone terrace.

“Why shouldn’t we sit down?” he asked, and drew a small settee to the

window.

She stood, expectant of the lightning. It came and lit up a suddenly

tempestuous sea. With her eyes straining at the blackness, she said in

a low voice:

“Turn out the lights. This is all that matters.”

He went to the door, snapped the electric switches, and the darkness

was so absolute that he waited for the next flash to see his way across

the room. They sat down together side by side. A flash of vehement and

reiterated radiance revealed a God’s wrath of spindrift scattered from

mountainous waves that tossed in the middle distance the three-masted

skeleton of a ship, and blasted the chalk-cliffed promontory to the

west into a leprous tongue. They watched in silence for a long, long

time. Save for the lightning, pitch blackness enveloped them. The rain

swished heavily against the windows, and the surf roared on the rocks

below. After a livid revelation of elemental welter and the deafening

crash of cataclysm, she clutched his arm. When the peal had rolled away

into an angry rumble, he whispered:

“Are you frightened?”

“No,” she replied, also below her breath, “not frightened. It excites

me, it makes me feel, it makes me think. I seem to be understanding

things I never understood before. Don’t let us speak.”

To remove impression of rebuke, her hand slid down his arm, found his

hand, and held it. Neither spoke. After a while he scanned her face

by the lightning. It was set, as though she saw a vision, her eyes

gleaming, her lips parted. At the thunderclap her grasp involuntarily

tightened. Again and again her face was startlingly visible. Herold’s

mind went back down the years. He had seen that rapt expression times

without number when she lay by the window of her sea-chamber and looked

out into the mysteries of sea and sky; and times without number she

had held his hand while her spirit, as he had loved fantastically to

believe, went forth to dance with her sisters of the foam or to walk

secure through the gates of the sunset. And he had loved to believe,

too, that his own spirit, in some blind, attendant way, though lagging

far behind, followed hers over the borders of the Land That Never Was.

Sensitive to her moods, he felt now a strange excitement. She had

become once more the Stellamaris of the cloudless and mystical years.

The sea that had rejected her had again claimed her for its own, and

was delivering into her keeping mysteries such as it had withheld from

her even then; for she had found no message in the war of elements,

mysteries deep and magnificent. He returned her tense pressure, and

followed her spirit out into the vastness.

The storm grew fiercer. Every few moments spasms of livid daylight rent

the darkness and dazzlingly illuminated the eager faces of the pair,

the window-jambs and transoms, the terrace, the howling waste beyond,

the skeleton ship tossing grimly, the promontory, the pitch black of

the sky; and the thunder burst in awful detonations over their heads.

Unconsciously and instinctively Stellamaris had drawn nearer to him,

and her arm rested against his. After a long time, in the stillness of

the dark, he spoke like one in a dream:

“The terrible splendor of life, that is the secret--the terrible

splendor.”

She awoke almost with a shock, and, turning round, shook him by the

lapel of his coat.

“How did you know, Walter? How did you know?”

Her voice quavered; he felt that she was trembling. A flash showed

her straining her eyes into his face. They waited for the thunderclap

during a second of intensity.

“What?” he asked.

“Those words. Those very words had just come to me, the meaning of

everything. The terrible splendor of life. How did you know?”

“It was our souls that were going together through the storm.”

She released him, and withdrew a little.

“Did you know all that I was thinking?”

“Or all that the sea was telling you?”

“Did you feel that, too?” she asked breathlessly.

“I think so,” he replied.

“It was strange,” she said. “I hardly knew that I was here. I

seemed to be away in the midst of it all, but I don’t think I lost

consciousness. I had adventures--curious adventures.” She paused

abruptly, then she continued: “They seemed to be definite then, but

they are all a blur now. It was a kind of battle between man and evil

forces, and I think I felt a voice speaking through it, and saying that

the splendor of man would never be subdued; and the impression I’ve got

is, that I saw something, whether it was a shape or a scene I don’t

know, but something great and grand and fierce and heroic, and the

voice told me it was life. The only thing I have clear is the words,

‘the terrible splendor of life,’ the words you plucked out of me.”

“It is the great secret,” he said.

“Yes.”

There was another silence. The storm began to pass gradually away. The

lightning became rarer, and the intervals longer between flash and

thunder.

“It is beginning to be clear,” she said at last. “All that has troubled

me. All that you guessed I was feeling, and that I told you of only

when you compelled me. You have been right. Once--do you remember?--you

said that if I saw God through the beauty and the vanity of the world

all would be well.”

“I ought to have told you to see Him through the pain of the world,”

said Herold.

“You have told me that, in other words, ever since; and I was deaf.”

“Not I, dear,” said Herold.

“Yes, you. Now I understand.” She drew a deep breath. “Now I

understand. It’s like an open book. That woman--Unity--wait,” she

paused, and put her two hands to her head in the darkness. “I have a

glimmer of a memory--it’s so illusive. It seems that I saw Unity just

now. I understand all that she was, all that she meant.” A flash showed

the sea. “Yes, I was out there,” she cried excitedly, and pointed.

“Just out there.” Darkness engulfed them. “I forget,” she faltered, “I

forget.”

“But the sea has taken you back at last, Stellamaris,” said Herold.

She seized his hand and held it during the peal. Then she cried in a

tone of sudden terror:

“Walter!”

“Yes?”

“What you said--your prophesy--the comfort of the sea--the deeper

meaning--”

He leaped to his feet.

“Don’t think anything more of it. They were just foolish words to

comfort you. You and I seem to have been on the Edge of Beyond and

looked over, and we’re not quite normal. We must get down now to

practical things. I’m just what I always was, dear, a fantastic person

who rode with you into fairy-land. I am still. Nothing more.”

“Are you quite sure?” suddenly asked a deep voice out of the blackness

of the room.

Stella with a little cry of fright sprang to Herold for protection.

For a second or two they were still. In their exaltation the question

seemed to come from some vast depth of the abysm of time. Their hearts

beat fast, and they clung together, listening, and there was not a

sound. Then the lightning played its dancing daylight about the room,

and they saw John Risca standing by the door. They sprang apart.

In another moment the room was flooded with electric light. The

drawing-room, for all its beauty, looked mean and unimportant. The

lights showed up glaringly an old Florentine tapestry over the

chimney-piece. It seemed to have singularly little relation to life. It

jarred impertinently.

“I came in to find Walter,” said John; “I didn’t think Stella was still

up. It’s late. You didn’t hear me. I’m sorry I inadvertently overheard.”

“There’s nothing, my dear John, that you could not have heard,” said

Herold.

John came forward in his lumbering way.

“I know that, Walter.”

For a minute or two no one spoke. The three stood stock-still, their

hearts thumping. Outside, the rain fell pitilessly on the flags of the

terrace, and the waning storm flashed and growled. John’s burning eyes

looked at Herold beneath heavy, knitted brows. At last he said:

“You love Stella. You have loved her always. You never told me.”

“That is not so,” said Herold. “You have found us in a foolishly false

position. A thunder-storm is an emotional piece of business. My old

intimacy with Stella has its privileges. I’ll leave you. Stella will

speak for herself.”

John stretched out a detaining arm. “No, my friend; stay. We three must

have a talk together. It was bound to come sooner or later. Let it be

now.”

He spoke quietly, with dignity and authority.

“There is nothing for us to talk about,” said Herold,--Stellamaris

stood clutching the back of an arm-chair, and looking from one man to

the other,--“the words you overheard ought to tell you that. And in

answer to your question, I can say that I am quite sure.”

“You lie,” said John, quietly. “You lie out of the loyalty of your

heart--” he raised his great hand to check the other’s outburst--“God

Almighty in Heaven knows I’m not accusing you. If ever man had deep and

devoted and unselfish love from another, I’ve had it from you. And I

have it still. It’s a matter not of reproach, but of reparation.”

“Don’t you think,” said Herold, “we might continue this extraordinary

conversation in the library--by ourselves?”

“No,” said John in the obstinate tone that Herold had known for many

years. “You and I are two men, and Stella is a woman, and a hell-mess

just like that--” he pointed to the tempest--“has upset our lives. It’s

time to put them to rights again.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Herold. “It’s a pity you

have chosen to-night. Things are a bit abnormal. Let us go to bed and

talk to-morrow, if you like, in the light of common sense.”

John folded his arms. “I’m going to talk to-night. I want you calmly to

consider the position.”

“I do,” said Herold. “Stop,”--as John was about to interrupt,--“let me

speak.”

“Yes,” said Stella, breaking silence for the first time; “let Walter

speak.”

But she stood apart, fascinated by this strange duel, as her primitive

ancestress might have done when two males fought for her with

flint-headed axes.

“What I feel as regards Stella is neither here nor there. I’ve never

told her that I loved her. I’ve never told you. Both you and she

have told me that you loved each other. That was enough for me. I

joined with Unity in seeking to remove the obstacle in the path of

your happiness. If Unity had not forestalled me, I--well, God knows

what I should have done! I left you asleep that evening, and went,

half crazy, to the flat, and there I found what I found. But, anyhow,

Unity committed murder and suicide to set the two of you free. If you

want strong, blatant words, there you have them. A girl, one of God’s

chosen, has laid down her life for the two of you.” He stood between

them and threw up his hands. “Take each other. It is a sacrament.”

Stella, her arms still on the back of the chair, hung her head and

stared downward. John cast a quick glance at her and then, a thing

which he rarely did, drew his great frame up to its full height and

challenged his friend.

“If you don’t love her, she loves you. I know.”

Herold said:

“You two belong to each other.”

“Then Stella must decide,” said John.

She threw out a flutter of delicate fingers and covered her face. “No,

no!” she gasped.

The lightning flickered mildly in the well-lit room, and the eventual

thunder reverberated in distant anger.

John again came close to Herold. “This may be an extraordinary

conversation, but it has to be. If Stella loved me, do you think she

would stand like that?”

Stella dropped to her knees, her face and arms huddled against the

chair.

“My dear old man, I’ve learned many things of late. I can’t tell you

exactly. I’m not good at that sort of thing. But Unity has been too big

for me.”

Stella raised a white face.

“What do you mean? Say exactly what you mean.”

“I mean--oh, God knows what I mean.” He strode blindly across the

room, returned, and faced the two, still near together. “Can’t you

understand?” he cried, with a wide gesture. “I’m infinitesimal sand

beneath that child’s feet. I’m a blind mole in comparison with her

transcendent vision. I’m in the dust. Oh, God!” He turned away.

Stella rose, and, clasping hands to her bosom, went to him.

“Belovedest, for Heaven’s sake what is the end of all this?”

He halted and took her hands.

“Not shadows, not lies. Once I thought--indeed, I knew--you loved

me. That was when you were an ignorant child. You loved some one you

thought was me. Now your eyes are opened. You have passed through

flames. Knowledge has come to you. You see me as I am, and your love

has gone. I know, too, what I am. Unity has taught me. You can’t--you

don’t love me, Stella. That I know. I’ve known it ever since that day

when we put her into her grave.”

Herold came between them imploringly. “My dear man--my dear

fellow--what is the use of this wild talk? You two love each other.

Unity gave her life for the two of you. If you two don’t come together,

it’s all overwhelming, blasting irony. I couldn’t believe in God after

it. It would be hellishly cynical. Stella, in God’s name, tell him that

you are bound by Unity’s sacrifice--that you love him and will marry

him and make his life happy!”

Stella, very pale, looked at John. “If you want me, I will marry you,”

she said in a clear voice.

John waved her aside. “I will not take you, my dear,” said he.

Spurned sex winced involuntarily.

“If you have stopped caring for me--”

“I stopped caring? I? Merciful God, I’ve never loved you so much. But

you love a better man. What’s the good of saying the same things over

and over again? But I’ll tell you this, both of you, that if Unity had

not given her life, and if I had been free, I should have fought for

you and had you despite everything. That’s my accursed nature. But

Unity has not died in vain, and it’s because of that child’s death, the

beauty and heroism of it, that I’m able to stand here and tear my heart

out and throw it away. Don’t make any mistake,”--he turned fiercely on

Herold,--“it’s not I who am giving her up. It’s Unity.”

“Very well,” said Herold. “Let us put it at that. It’s your point of

view. You also force me to speak. It would be grotesque to keep silence

any longer. Yes, I do love her. She is the beginning and end of life

to me. If she had lain on her back all her days, I should never have

married another woman. There! You have it now.”

The two men’s eyes held each other for a space. Stellamaris looked

at the pair with a fearful admiration. They were men. Herold she had

divined and known long ago; this, on his part, was only the supreme

fulfilment of promise. But John Risca, who had passed through the

illusion and disillusion of her soul, stood before her in new strength,

a great and moving figure.

At last John drew a deep breath, turned to Stellamaris very gently, and

smiled.

“And you?”

The smile sent swift pain through her heart. She made a step or two,

and fell sobbing on his breast.

“O Belovedest, I am sorry! You have guessed right. Forgive me!”

He caressed the bowed head tenderly for an instant, then releasing

himself, he clapped his hand on Herold’s shoulder and shook it with

rough affection.

“I’m going to bed,” said he. He moved to the door. There he paused to

nod a good night; but at sight of them both looking sadly at him he

walked back a couple of paces.

“Don’t worry about me. I’m at peace with myself for the first time for

years. There’s lots of happiness in the world left.” He smiled again.

“Enough for the three of us--and for Unity.”

He left them, and went to bed in the room which Stellamaris had

furnished for him long ago, and fell into the sleep of the man who

has found rest at last in the calm and certain knowledge of spiritual

things. Unity had not died in vain. And Stellamaris, sitting once more

by Herold’s side in the wide bay of the window, and talking with him in

a hushed voice of the wondrous things that had come to pass, knew that

John Risca had spoken a great truth. It had been God’s will that so

should the terrible splendor of the world be made manifest.

Herold asked for the million-billionth time in the history of mankind:

“When did you first find that you loved me?”

She replied, perhaps more truly than most maidens:

“There was never a time when I didn’t love you. I mean--I don’t

quite know what I mean,” she said confusedly. “You see, I’ve lived

a strange life, dear,” she went on. “You seem to have been a part

of me ever since I can remember what is worth remembering. You have

always understood things that went on inside me almost before I could

tell them to you. I always wanted you to explain foolishnesses that I

couldn’t speak of to any one else.”

“That’s very beautiful,” Herold interrupted, “but love is a different

matter. When did the real love come to you?”

“I think it was that morning in the garden when you almost whipped me,”

said Stella. She started an inch or two away from him. “And I’m sure

you knew it,” she said.

And he remembered, as he had often remembered in his great struggle,

her eyes, turning from agates to diamonds and her words, “Do you love

me like that?”

“Heaven knows, Stellamaris dear; I did not mean to betray myself.”

She laughed the enigmatic laugh of a woman’s contentment, and Herold

was too wise to ask why.

They spoke of deepest things. “There is something I must tell you,”

said he, “which up to now I have had to keep secret, and it is right

that you should know.”

And he told her the story of Unity and himself--the revolver, their

talk of the evil woman, their parting words, his crazed adventure

through the sunny streets.

She listened, her body leaning forward, her hands clasped on her knee.

When he had finished, she sat without change of attitude.

“You did that so that another man could marry the woman you loved.

Unity did that so that the man she loved could marry another woman.

John came in to-night to sacrifice himself and give us both happiness.

The three of you have done terrible and splendid things. I am the only

one of us four who has done nothing.”

Herold rose, took a nervous pace or two. What she said needed more than

a lover’s sophistical reassurance. He could speak a thousand words of

comfort; but he knew that her soul required a supreme answer, a clue to

the dark labyrinth through which she had worked. What could he say? He

looked through the window, and suddenly saw that which to him was an

inspiration. He threw the folding-doors wide. It had stopped raining

long ago, though neither had noticed.

“Come out on the terrace,” said he.

She followed him into the gusty air. The sea still roared resentfully

at the late disturbance of its quiet. The southwest wind that had

brought up the storm had driven the great rack of black cloud above the

horizon, and there below the rack was a band of dark but cloudless sky,

and in it one star hung serene. Herold pointed to it.

“What have you done, dear?” His voice broke in a catch of exultation,

and his usually nimble wit failed to grasp the lunatic falsity of the

analogy. “You have done what that has done--come through the storm pure

and steadfast.”

“Not I, dear,” she said, “but my faith in the God we breathe.”

“No; you yourself.” He put his arm around her, and all his love spoke.

“You. The living mystery of beauty that is you.” He whispered into her

lips. “You--Stellamaris--Star of the Sea.”

THE END

[Illustration]

THE END OF THE BIG JOB

HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT AND HUMAN NATURE ON THE CANAL ZONE,--INCLUDING A

CONVERSATION WITH COLONEL GOETHALS

BY FARNHAM BISHOP

The chauffeur of the railroad-motor shook his head.

“The observation-platform’s been taken down, sir, and the track leading

to it torn up. That part of the bank’s ready to go out any minute. You

can get a good view of the cut, though, from the Y. M. C. A. Building.”

When, in 1906, Uncle Sam put up this building in Culebra, and

officially christened it an “I. C. C. Club-house,” because it was the

Government, and not the Y. M. C. A., that was paying the shot, he

placed it at some little distance from the cut. But in August, 1912,

the club-house was very near the cut,--nineteen inches nearer than

its own concrete foundation-piers,--and if it had not been lifted and

braced with heavy timbers, it would long ago have gone tobogganing down

the bank. As I walked through the reading-room, it moved and creaked

like a wicker basket with the shock of a heavy blast; but the other

men in the room did not raise their eyes from their magazines. From

the back porch I looked down into the Culebra Cut, a wider, deeper cut

that had completely swallowed up the one I knew well in 1910. Then the

fifty-odd giant steam-shovels had been scattered over the nine miles

from Bas Obispo to Pedro Miguel; now I saw them concentrated in and

about the deep gulch between Gold Hill and Contractor’s Hill for the

last battle of the long campaign. From here to where the dike at Bas

Obispo keeps out the rising waters of Gatun Lake they are taking up

the construction tracks, and the rank jungle-grass grows thick on the

bottom of the finished, empty canal.

Between Gold Hill, advance-guard of the Andes, and Contractor’s Hill,

southernmost point of the Rockies, lies the deepest part of the cut,

and the nearer the big steam-shovels dig down to grade, the harder it

is to haul away their spoil. Double-engined and coupled together, the

dirt trains climb the steep grade in pairs. First come two straining,

spouting Moguls, then a string of loaded “Lidgerwood flats,” like a

hill on wheels; then a third locomotive, a string of swaying, clanking

“Oliver dumps,” their side-chains jingling like artillery-harness;

and last a fourth locomotive, detached, which, with the air of an

enthusiastic small boy, comes running up behind to help push. The

marbled mass of steam and soft-coal smoke takes strange colors in the

tropic sunlight, then shreds away, revealing a patch of vividly blue

sky, a palm, and a lone steam-shovel eating away the top of a slide on

the edge of the opposite bank.

Whenever a fresh slide begins to break down the bank of the Panama

Canal, Colonel Goethals, like the Duchess in “Alice in Wonderland,”

cries, “Off with its head!” Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of

slides, both curable by decapitation. The first is a mass of soft

clay, resting on a sloping ledge of rock, made slippery by seeping

rain-water. When dug away at the bottom, the whole hillside begins to

slip down, usually with the deliberation of a glacier, but often with

the rush of an avalanche. The second kind of slide is caused by the

collapse of a stratum of rock under the weight resting upon it. Some

of the hard volcanic material in the cut, laboriously blasted out

with dynamite, crumbles into dust on exposure to the air. This failure

of the foundations causes a lateral pressure against the bottom of

the cut, sometimes heaving it up fifteen or twenty feet. In either

case, the remedy is to lighten the load on the top of the bank, often

aggravated by the presence of an old French dump-heap. Now that the

famous Cucaracha (Cockroach) Slide, that began to plague De Lesseps

in 1885, and increased until forty-seven acres were in motion, is

nearly, or quite, at rest, the two largest slides are the ones that

have at last swallowed up the Culebra club-house, and the even larger

landslide on the opposite bank. Between them, since 1907, they have

involved the movement of nearly seven million cubic yards of earth and

rock. A few days after my visit, a notice was posted at the door of the

club-house, warning all who entered the building that they did so at

their own risk, and workmen began to tear it down, and the bank where

the observation-platform used to stand, a few hundred yards away, “went

out” with a rush, to the tune of 900,000 cubic yards.

But Colonel Goethals is not worrying about the slides. He said to me:

“Altogether between nineteen and twenty million cubic yards will have

been brought into the canal prism by slides before the completion of

the work. About 5,915,000 cubic yards of this extra material was taken

out during the year ending July, 1912, or more than thirty-three per

cent. of the total excavation for that year. Less than 4,000,000 cubic

yards of slides remain to be accounted for.”

“Have these slides proved the impossibility of a sea-level canal here?”

I asked.

“Absolutely,” he replied.

“Will new slides continue to develop after the water has been turned

into the cut?”

“Two things will tend to minimize that tendency,” he replied. “First,

there will be no more shaking of the ground by blasting; second, the

forty-five feet of water in the channel will exert a pressure on the

banks of thirty-one tons per running foot of canal. Any earth brought

into the cut then could be easily taken out by dredges.

“The last steam-shovel should be taken out of the cut, and all

remaining rock broken up by blasting in the dry, by July 1, 1913. Then

the dike at Bas Obispo will be blown up, and the water from Gatun Lake

will flow into the cut and through Pedro Miguel Lock into Miraflores

Lake. The dredge _Corozal_, now working at sea-level at the Pacific end

of the canal, will then be brought up through the Miraflores and Pedro

Miguel locks, and put to work in the cut.”

Prominent among the few ornaments of Colonel Goethals’s bare,

barrack-like office is a framed photograph of the _Corozal_, the

largest ladder-dredge in the world. Each bucket of her endless chain

lifts two cubic yards at a time. She was built in Renfrew, Scotland,

in 1911, by a firm that thirty years ago made several smaller dredges

for the De Lesseps Company. After rusting for a quarter of a century in

tropical tidal-swamps, most of these, floated and cleaned, are still

doing good work. Their honest craftsmanship impelled the purchase of

the _Corozal_. Virtually like all the floating equipment at the Pacific

end of the canal, she was brought round South America under her own

steam. Her name is that of the first railroad station out of Panama

City, and, literally translated, means “Merry-go-round.”

“There will always remain a certain amount of dredging to be done in

the two entrances, at Balboa and in Limon Bay,” the colonel continued.

“And to keep Gatun Lake clear of silt and wreckage brought down by the

Chagres River?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. “There will be several miles of dead water at the

upper end of the lake above Bas Obispo, where it will settle before

reaching the channel.”

“The canal will be informally opened, Colonel, in September, 1913?” I

asked.

“I expect to put the first ship through then; and if one can go, any

number can. The range-lights, buoys, and other aids to navigation will

all be placed and in working order. Less than ten per cent. either of

the total excavation or of the concrete-laying in the locks remains

to be done. At the present rate of speed, both will be finished, and

all the gates and machinery for the east locks installed by September,

1912.”

The locks of the Panama Canal are in two sets, side by side, like the

two tracks of a railroad, so that ships can cross in both directions

simultaneously. As at this point the Pacific lies almost due south of

the Atlantic,--which is why it was called by the Spaniards the South

Sea,--the east locks are those on the left, or South American, side of

one going from the Caribbean to the Gulf of Panama.

“When will everything be finished and ready for the formal opening?” I

asked.

“I cannot say for certain. If the steelwork and towing-locomotives are

delivered when promised, the west gates will be finished by the end

of 1914. To operate those on the Pacific side, a transmission-line

must be built from the spillway power-plant at Gatun to Miraflores. In

the meanwhile one set of gates can be operated by local power-houses.

Eventually the power generated by the surplus water running through

the spillway of the Gatun Dam will generate enough electricity to run

all the lock machinery, the Panama Railroad, and the machine-shops at

Balboa, besides illuminating the lighthouses, the employees’ quarters,

and the search-lights of the coast defenses.”

“Will the coast defenses be ready for use as soon as the canal?” I

asked.

“Yes, if Congress appropriates the money to bring down the guns. We’ll

have the emplacements built, and everything else ready for them. Of

course a strong garrison should be maintained here. The strength of

the details guarding the different locks is a matter to be determined

by the General Staff. There is no danger of a lock’s being disabled by

a solitary spy with a bomb. All the essential machinery is in duplicate

or triplicate.”

“Then the popular idea of the Gatun Dam’s being blown up by one man

with a suitcaseful of dynamite is--”

“Absurd. The only way that an enemy could let the water out of Gatun

Lake would be to blow up the gates of the spillway, and that would

require a large number of men, with plenty of time and explosives.”

“Now that the Canal Bill has passed, Colonel, you can begin to organize

the operating-force?”

“Yes,” he replied. “As only one thousand Americans will be needed,

and there are six times that many here now in the construction-force,

the permanent organization will be a picked body of experienced men.

There will also be about fifteen hundred West Indian Negroes to serve

as helpers in the machine-shops, pass hawsers, and clean up about the

locks. The bulk of the operating-force will be quartered at Balboa, and

the lock-tenders at Pedro Miguel and Gatun.”

[Illustration: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF ONE OF THE NINETY-TWO PANAMA

“BULL-WHEELS”

This wheel was invented by Mr. Edward Schildhauer of the Isthmian Canal

Commission. The wheel revolves horizontally and thrusts out from the

side of each lock-wall a long steel arm that opens and closes one of

the huge lock-gates. These gates are of the “miter” pattern, so called

because, when closed, they make a blunt wedge pointing up-stream, like

the slope of a bishop’s miter. Observe the curved and hollowed recesses

in the lock-walls into which the open gates fold back, like the blades

of a knife into the handle. There are, of course, two “bull-wheels”:

one for each of the gates.]

“Have the lessons learned in building the canal brought about any more

useful inventions, like the well-known track-shifting machine?” I asked.

“H-m. One of the cranemen has patented a trip for emptying the bucket

of a steam-shovel by steam instead of by hand. We’re using it on all

the large shovels. Then there is the new lock-gate machinery; you will

find the inventor up-stairs in this building. Remember, if you write

anything about it, you must give him full credit.”

That is the colonel’s way, to insist on fair treatment for every man

under him. He is not only the boss, but the hero, the big brother, the

father confessor, of every man on the job. Stories innumerable are told

about him, and even rough sagas are sung in his praise.

Have they canned you on the run?

Tell the Colonel;

Tell the tale of what they’ve done

To the Colonel.

Is the commissary bad?

Tell the Colonel.

If you tell him, he’ll be glad,

Will the Colonel.

Pass your sorrows and your woes

To the Colonel;

He will understand, he knows,

Does the Colonel.[7]

Speak his name among a group of employees, and immediately each will

begin to tell of his experience with “Uncle George.”

“I was sittin’ in the cab, waitin’ to pull a string of dirt cars out of

the borrow-pit at Gatun, when who comes a-hikin’ along the track but

the Old Man. ‘Can you give me a drink of water?’ he says, and I draws

him one from the cooler on the engine. He takes a swallow and says,

‘This is pretty warm for ice-water.’

“‘Yes, sir,’ I says, ‘we’re supposed to have ten pounds a day to put in

it, but we’re not gettin’ more’n one.’ The colonel just hands back the

cup and walks away, but, say, next mornin’ I drew an iceberg.”

A second man broke in:

“Yes, and somebody else got stung for that little graft, you can

bet your pants. Remember that foreman at Peter Magill [Orthodox

pronunciation of Pedro Miguel] who made his gang of Gallegos come

across every pay-day? They picked one of the bunch who could handle the

English to go up to Culebra, for a hablar [talk] with Uncle George.

Zing! Mr. Foreman’s job dropped out from under him, and he dropped

through, and the job swung back, and he wasn’t on it. He’s out making

roads now with the rest of the chain-gang.”

“The day after I hit the isthmus in 1907,” put in a third man, “I got a

cablegram from home, saying my wife was dead. And they wouldn’t let me

go back to look after my babies; turned me down cold when I asked for a

passage north, and all I had was my job here, and pay-day a month away.

I heard there was a new chief engineer at Culebra, and I put it up to

him. The colonel he signed a paper, and said:

“‘I’ve had too many letters from wives in the States whose husbands are

down here neglecting their families. I’m glad to meet one of the other

kind. Show Mr. Smith this, and he’ll give you a passage. Bring your

family down with you, and I’ll give you a married-quarters.’”

Colonel Goethals is no longer the handsome, smooth-faced boy officer

in full-dress uniform, shown in the well-known photograph taken when

he was “the new chief engineer.” His latest portrait, here published

for the first time, shows how the heavy responsibilities of the last

five years have left their mark on him. His is a splendidly virile

face, strong, kindly, and vigorously intellectual. He is appropriately

shown in citizen’s clothes, for, except on the most formal occasions,

he never wears his uniform. It was with the greatest difficulty that he

was persuaded to sit for this picture, and he absolutely refuses to let

himself be photographed at work either in his office or in the field.

“No,” said “Old Bill” May, chief clerk and Cerberus of the outer

office, “the colonel isn’t one of those fellows who keep the

photographer waiting till they can have a lot of extra papers brought

in and dumped all over the desk, so folks can see how busy they are.

Nobody’s got a camera into his room yet, and I’d hate to be caught

trying it. Maybe you think you’re going to get a snap-shot of him

to-morrow when he takes you over the Gatun Dam; but you ain’t.”

[Illustration: From a photograph, copyright, by Pach

COLONEL GOETHALS]

And Old Bill May was right. When the morning express from Panama City

stopped at Culebra, Colonel Goethals swung nimbly aboard and greeted

our party as follows:

“Good morning. I’m sorry, but I can’t go to Gatun with you to-day;

there’s a dock gone out at Balboa. Colonel Sibert will show you over

Gatun. Good morning, good morning!”

Through the car window we saw him spring into a trim little

railroad-motor, which slid clanging and whistling through the crowd at

the station, and was half a mile down the track to Balboa before our

train had started again for Gatun.

We traveled a curiously zigzag path, now on the old line of the Panama

Railroad, now on the new. Ever since the first canoe-load of Peruvian

gold was floated down from Cruces to the sea, nearly four hundred years

ago, the valley of the Chagres has been the pathway of the isthmus.

The Panama Railroad of the 1850’s, the days of lignum-vitæ ties,

wood-burning locomotives, and twenty per cent. dividends, followed the

banks and killed the river trade. To-day the rapidly rising waters

of Gatun Lake have driven the railroad to higher ground to the east

between Gatun and Bas Obispo. From that point the new permanent way

was to have been carried through the cut on a berm, or shelf, on the

east bank, ten feet above the water’s edge. It was a picturesque plan,

but was reluctantly abandoned because of the danger from slides. So

that part of the relocation has been built with great labor through

the hills to the east of the cut, and is now finished and in use for

freight. Not, however, for passengers, for the existing towns in the

central division are all on the wrong side of the cut. Our train

left Panama City on the old line, switched to the new at Corozal,

crossed the cut on a temporary trestle near Pedro Miguel, and ran

through Culebra and Empire, where in five years the macadamized and

electric-lighted streets will be covered with second-growth jungle,

to the busy railroad town of Gorgona, where the lake water will soon

be lapping over the floors of the machine-shops. Here a coal-burning

locomotive--oil-burners are the rule for passenger-traffic on the

Panama Railroad--was attached to the rear of the train, to the disgust

of the tourists on the observation-platform of the parlor-car. The

train then ran backward up the other arm of the Y, across the dike at

Bas Obispo to the new steel bridge across the Chagres at Gamboa, not

far below ancient Cruces.

[Illustration: A RELIEF-MAP OF THE PANAMA CANAL FROM THE ATLANTIC TO

THE PACIFIC]

The rest of the way to Gatun ran through country marked on the map as

part of Gatun Lake, but covered to-day with virgin jungle. Only in

the channel and the anchorage-basin above the locks has the bottom

been cleared of vegetation; elsewhere the finished “lake” will be one

tangle of deadwood. Now near at hand, now miles away in the valley,

the yellow line against the dark green shows where the rising water

is drowning out the jungle. In a remarkably short time the leaves and

small branches drop off, leaving the dead trunks gray and bare. The

cocoanut-palms hold out the longest. The railroad runs high above the

lake, on the solidest kind of stone embankments, containing millions of

cubic yards of rock from the Culebra Cut. Probably the best-built fifty

miles of road-bed in the Western Hemisphere is the relocated Panama

Railroad.

[Illustration: From a photograph by Marine, Panama

ONE OF THE OLD CANAL DREDGES BUILT BY THE SCOTCH, LEFT BY THE FRENCH,

AND REPAIRED AND USED BY THE AMERICANS]

[Illustration: A STEAM-SHOVEL LOADING ROCKS IN THE CULEBRA CUT]

Neat little concrete lighthouses, rising incongruously out of the

forest, mark the approach to Gatun. Here is the key-point of the

canal. From the northwest corner of the veranda round Colonel Sibert’s

office, the whole scheme of things leaps to the eye. Four miles to the

north lies Limon Bay, with the Caribbean beyond, the long breakwater

stretching out from Toro Point on the left, to make the open roadstead

a safe harbor, and on the right the new docks of Cristobal, the

American-owned port of Colon. What looks like an over-fed dreadnought

guarding the entrance is the sea-going suction-dredge _Caribbean_ at

work on the four miles of canal that run under the bay to deep water.

The next four miles of all-but-finished sea-level canal, up which

ships will sail to Gatun; the profile of the three great locks that

will lift them eighty-five feet; the beginning of the broad lake, over

which they will sail at that level to Bas Obispo and through the cut,

and then down through Pedro Miguel and Miraflores locks to sea-level

on the Pacific side, can here be seen and comprehended with a turn of

the head. From east and west the hills that inclose the valley of the

Chagres close in to the gap, little more than a mile wide, now filled

by the Gatun Dam.

[Illustration: THE ADMINISTRATION BUILDING AT CULEBRA

Colonel Goethals’s office is in this building.]

[Illustration: THE ANCON BASE-BALL PARK

From a photograph taken on July 4, 1912.]

You must not think of the Gatun Dam as an ordinary dam, a high, thin

wall holding back a body of water, but as an artificial continuation

of the gently sloping hills it joins together. In cross-section it

resembles the most obtuse of triangles. A cow could walk over it

anywhere, and find fairly good pasturage by the way; for coarse,

thick-stemmed grass springs up wherever the surface is left undisturbed

for a few days. By the time the canal is opened, so quickly is bare

earth overgrown in the tropics, those seeing the dam for the first time

from the deck of a steamer will have the greatest difficulty telling

where it begins and the hills end.

We rode in a railroad-motor along one of the several railroad tracks on

the broad crest of the dam; its sides sloped down to a quarter of a

mile away on each side. Halting the car about a hundred feet from the

edge of the spillway, Colonel Sibert pointed directly down at the mass

beneath our feet, and said:

“Eighty or so feet below us lies the site of old Gatun. Morgan and his

buccaneers spent their first night there on their way up the Chagres

to the sack of old Panama, and it was a famous stopping-place for

travelers in the days of the Forty-niners. When we began work here in

1907 there was an island in the river, with a village of fifty thatched

huts and a church on it. Now the village is over back of us, and big

enough to need three separate fire companies; and the island’s gone,

and the river’s gone, and there’s where the railroad used to run along

its bank.”

The colonel pointed to where the tops of a few old telegraph-poles made

a straight line across the surface of the lake.

“And the river, Colonel, where have you put that?” we asked.

“Here.” He led the way to the edge of the spillway, the concrete-lined

artificial channel, larger than the original river-bed and hewn through

a natural hill of living rock, that carries off the surplus water of

Gatun Lake. Last rainy season a certain photographer took a snap-shot

of the spillway from down-stream during a flood, and impudently sold

it to a magazine as a picture of the finished canal, “with the water

turned in!”

“Colonel, could a fish from the Caribbean swim up that mill-race and

cross over to the Pacific?”

“I think so, and so does Colonel Goethals. The only question is, Could

a saltwater fish live through the thirty-four miles of fresh water in

the lakes and the cut?

“As fast as we want the water to back up against the big dam, we keep

raising that semicircular concrete dam down there in the spillway.

Those openings you see are being fitted with steel gates, and no matter

how hard it may rain up in the hills, we’ll always have enough gates to

open and let the water through without any danger of its washing over

the crest. Now we’ll cross the bridge over the spillway to the other

end of the dam, and then run back and go over the locks.”

The elaborate concrete-laying plant at Gatun, which cost over a million

dollars to erect here in the wilderness, has nearly finished its mighty

task. The tall steel towers, which stand in pairs on each side of the

lock-pit and hold aloft the cableways along which traveling-cranes

carry the skips of freshly mixed concrete to the forms and return

them empty to the little electric cars that go hurrying back to the

mixing-house for more, have been moved down to the lower end of the

third and lowest lock. By the time this article appears in print they

will probably have been taken down and sold for scrap.

[Illustration: RESULTS OF A TYPICAL ROCK SLIDE IN THE CULEBRA CUT]

[Illustration: BLASTING FORTY FEET BELOW SEA-LEVEL BEHIND A DIKE

The entrance and intersection of the American and French canals.]

A concrete and timber bulkhead, the nearest approach to an

orthodox-looking dam a layman can find at Gatun, keeps the water of

the sea-level canal out of the lock-chambers. Directly in front of it

float three or four high-decked craft that look for all the world like

old-time Mississippi River packets. All they seem to lack are a few

roustabouts and a gilt trotting-horse between the tall smoke-stacks. As

a matter of fact, they are dredges, with living-quarters for the crews.

Across the channel behind them, shutting them off from the sea, is a

solid-looking clay dike.

“Colonel,” we asked, “how did you put those boats into that

mud-puddle,--fly them or jump them over?”

“The dipper-dredge cut the way in, and the suction-dredge closed it

behind them. That dike keeps them from being disturbed by the rise and

fall of the tide. A great part of the canal between here and Limon Bay

was excavated in the dry by steam-shovels working behind dikes forty

feet below sea-level; but that was in rock. The stuff these dredges are

pumping out is prehistoric sea-bottom--soft, black ooze that runs like

oil. A big slide of it started due north toward Limon Bay, swung round

to the east, and then due south, went three quarters round the compass,

and half-way up the lowest lock-pit. We had to force it out by building

the permanent lock-walls right into it, section by section--shoved it

out by sheer weight.”

[Illustration: A VIEW (LOOKING NORTH) OF THE UPPER GUARD GATES OF THE

PEDRO MIGUEL LOCK]

“Is there anything like that under the Gatun Dam?” we asked.

“No, this mud is nearly three quarters of a mile north of it. The

entire dam rests on the solidest kind of clay, and the locks are built

on a ledge of sandstone, except the north approach wall. That will

have to be built on piers driven down through the mud to bed-rock. The

approach wall is the continuation of the dividing-wall between the two

sets of locks, which projects into what we call the forebay, where

ships must come to a stop and make fast to the electric locomotives

that will tow them through the locks.

“These towing-locomotives,” continued Colonel Sibert, leading us to the

top of the nearest lock-wall up a broad, well-proportioned stairway

cast in one piece with the rest of the structure, “will be equipped

with winches and slip-drums, so that they can tighten or slacken the

hawsers, a flexibility that is going to save breaking a lot of line.

Four locomotives will take charge of each large ship, two forward and

two aft. When they reach those archways carrying the tracks from one

level to another, one pair will take the weight of the ship, while the

others will climb up to the level above by this rack-rail.”

Between the two ordinary rails of the towing-track, neatly embedded

in the concrete top of the lock-wall, was a third rail, broad and

strong and indented for the teeth of a mighty cog-wheel. With isthmian

thoroughness, these depressions are made self-draining, lest rain-water

accumulate and breed fever-carrying mosquitos. There is a tragedy

connected with the third, or return-track, of the towing-railroad,

which runs down the middle of the center wall. It had to be there, and

so did the range-light that will guide ships across the lake into the

upper forebay of the locks. So they stuck that dignified lighthouse

up on four bandy legs, like a mangrove on its roots; and when the Art

Commission come down from Washington and see it, they will say unkind

things of the engineers.

They are building the control-house, the nerve center of all the

delicate, ponderous machinery at Gatun, at the lower end of the

uppermost lock, where half a dozen operators can oversee and control

everything. The control-board will be like a flat-topped table desk,

with a model of the locks in low relief, the gates, large valves, and

all important machinery shown in miniature, and moving in unison with

the main machines. The switches which control the different units will

be interlocked in such a manner that the operator cannot move the

wrong machine. This switch will stretch a chain across the path of a

runaway ship; that will open or close a valve in one of the three great

culverts (each as large as the Pennsylvania Railroad tunnels under the

Hudson River), and so empty or fill a lock; a third will swing round

and drop into place the emergency dam that would hold the water in the

lake were every gate and guard-gate swept away. If the control-house

itself were destroyed, the machines could be operated in detail.

[Illustration: PICTURESQUE RUINS IN PANAMA]

One man has succeeded in making a true picture of the gates of the

Gatun Locks--Mr. Pennell.[8] I shall only ask you to imagine the blind

walls of two six-story office-buildings swinging open on hinges,

like the front of a doll’s house. This miracle is accomplished by a

device called the “Bullwheel,” the invention of an employee of the

Isthmian Canal Commission, Mr. Edward Schildhauer. A ponderous wheel,

revolving horizontally, thrusts out through the side of the lock-wall

a long steel arm that opens and closes one of the massive gates as

easily as one could a bedroom door. These gates are of what is known

as the “mitering-pattern,” making, when closed, a blunt wedge pointing

up-stream, like a beaver dam. Mr. Schildhauer is also the inventor of a

“miter-locking machine,” which bears a strong family resemblance to the

large purple land-crab of the isthmus. One of these machines squats on

the top of every gate, and, grasping a pin on the opposite leaf, holds

both tightly together.

The fact that the three locks of the Atlantic division of the Panama

Canal are together in one place has attracted the attention of the

world to Gatun, to the disadvantage of the equally good work done at

Miraflores and Pedro Miguel, and the quiet, efficient civil engineer

under whom it has been done. Mr. S. B. Williamson, C.E. Of him they

tell a story, one of the few that deal with the pre-isthmian days of

Colonel Goethals.

Mr. Williamson was working under the colonel on some irrigation-project

in the southwest. One morning his chief discovered him shoveling away

a gravel-bank with his own hands among a gang of common laborers. The

colonel took his subordinate roundly to task. Mr. Williamson blushed,

stammered, and finally admitted:

“There was a bit of a slide, sir, and the men were afraid to go back

into the pit until I showed them there was no danger.”

The colonel apologized, and has kept Mr. Williamson by him ever since.

It is a good illustration of the spirit of Colonel Goethals and his

men--the men who have put through the big job.

[7] “Panama Roughneck Ballads.”

[8] See “Building the Panama Canal,”--a group of eight lithographs

made by Mr. Pennell for this magazine,--in ~The Century~ for

August, 1912.

[Illustration: Drawn by W. M. Berger

“HE OPENED HIS EYES IN SOME FAINT DISTRESS ... AND BLINKED THROUGH HIS

GOGGLES” (SEE PAGE 284)]

THE SIREN OF THE AIR

BY ALLAN UPDEGRAFF

When his barograph marked twelve thousand feet, Reese pushed the

yoke of his warping-wheel forward a few inches, and gave a slight

inclination to the foot-bar of the rudder. The monoplane, which

had been climbing up into the wind so sharply as to remain almost

motionless as far as horizontal progress was concerned, settled to a

level keel and began to describe a wide circle, gracefully lifting its

outside and lowering its inside wing like a bird when it turns. From

behind the trailing edge of the lowered wing, its driver looked down on

the creeping expanse of earth two miles below.

The hangars and pylons and crowded stands of the aviation-field were

pressed together, made small, blurred, as though seen through the wrong

end of a misted telescope. The broad field itself seemed not larger

than a lady’s handkerchief; it was almost lost in the blur of villages,

boulevards, railroad-tracks, and tree-clumps of the level Long Island

country. To north and south, as the great bird swept steadily on its

arc, appeared expanses, smooth and polished like metal--the Atlantic

and the Sound. Shapes like beetles represented ships.

“It might be Lilliput,” said Reese, aloud, bending his helmeted head

over the inch-wide rim of aluminium that separated him from space.

The strangeness of sheer height and aloofness had written awe on his

face. He lifted his eyes from the Atlantic to the curved walls of sky,

dark blue with the thinness of the air, dazzling like steel with the

resplendence of untempered sunshine, which curved downward all around

him. He was as though suspended in the monstrous metal reflector of a

monstrous electric light; dizzying, blazing distance was all around

him. “God!” he muttered; “isn’t this--” There was a catch of awe and

rapture in his voice--“isn’t this tremendous! And lonely! A man on a

mountain-peak wouldn’t be half so much alone.”

Behind the glass of his goggles his wide, hazel-colored eyes shone

with a dull excitement, like that following the first exhilaration of

champagne. His rapid ascent, the thin, icy air, the powerful hum of the

muffled motor, the blazing sunshine, the voice and fingers of the wind,

the sweep of his winged machine obeying the circular blur that showed

the tractor’s power at its head, the invisible supporting strength that

thrilled along the steel nerves of the great bird into his hands--all

these new and strong forces registered themselves on the brain of

the man, doubled the time of his heart-beats, made him quiver more

with excitement than with the cold that suggested itself despite his

furs. There was no fear on his keen face; rather exultation, triumph,

delight in the presence of danger. A strong swimmer might have struck

out toward sirens on their rocks with such an expression of eager,

abandoned joy.

“‘They shall mount up with wings as eagles!’” he chanted somewhat

wildly, glad of the sound of his voice in the strange emptiness and

silence of the place. His eyes wandered along the dazzling, blue-black

horizon to a blazing mass of snow-like mist that was forming on the

seaward side. “I wish I could go to sleep--like a frigate-bird on the

wing,” he finished inconsequently.

He had got little sleep the night before, the nearness of his first

real flight, his first unattended trip toward the sun, had been too

poignant. From his first lesson in “grass-cutting,” with an instructor

in the seat behind him, he had dreamed of this; height and distance

allured him as by some affinity with his nature, with the very blood in

his veins. His privateer ancestors of 1812, his balloonist great-uncle,

his grandfather who had been a naval officer, had bequeathed him their

love of free spaces and adventure. The care of his father, a well-to-do

professor in a technical school, to bring the boy up to the teaching

profession had not survived young Reese’s first sight of an aëroplane.

The professor bowed to the inevitable; John Faraday Reese gave up

higher mathematics to adventure on the highways of the sky.

As the machine completed its three-mile circle and came once more up

into the wind, Reese straightened it out again, and pulled back a

little on the yoke that worked the big double elevator in the tail.

The great wings turned upward again, soaring. Playing the controls as

instinctively as though the machine had been a part of him, the driver

kept his eyes on the lethargic needle of the barograph. From beneath

drooping eyelids he watched it crawl upward over the lined paper strip.

Twelve thousand five hundred, twelve thousand seven hundred fifty,

thirteen thousand, thirteen thousand two hundred feet.

Despite the sharp angle at which the big bird poised, the ascent

was growing more gradual; the thinned air offered less grip for the

tractor, less support for the wings. To increase the power of the

motor, Reese cut out the muffler. The rapid musketry of the exhaust

broke out, strangely sharpened and clamorous in the attenuated air.

With something like a shudder, he threw over the lever that muffled the

engine. His nerves were on edge; the strange sound hurt. The barograph

marked thirteen thousand six hundred feet.

Still they climbed, enveloped in a blaze of sunshine that was to the

tempered sunlight of the earth’s surface as diamonds to glass. Despite

the zero air, Reese’s temples inside his padded leather helmet were

bathed in sweat. He was panting, and fine, red lines appeared on the

smarting surface of his eyeballs. Below the mask of his goggles his

face was drawn into deep, straining lines of exultant determination.

“Up we go!” he shouted. His voice seemed smothered in a vacuum, but he

disregarded the strangeness. “Sixteen thousand and a world’s record, or

bust!”

He glanced again over the quivering rim of the car. A fine white mist,

a mist that gave back the blazing sunshine like cloth of spun-glass,

had shut out the earth. It was as though a cover had been put over

the mouth of the tremendous reflector inside of which he was buzzing

upward, smaller than a midge in the globe of an arclight. The very air

seemed to turn to flames and ice. A great wave of melancholy gathered,

rose, and broke over him; he was alone in an inhuman world that blazed

and swayed, that burned and froze, that had no stability, that allowed

him air only in searing little gasps.

“Nevertheless,” he muttered, biting at his hardened

nether-lip--“nevertheless, up we go!”

He closed his eyes for a moment to get rid of a slight vertigo caused

directly by the glare of the aluminium hood that covered the engine.

Colored blotches of light danced before his eyeballs, and the rushing

of the icy wind rang on his brain like faint voices. He could hear the

feverish whispering of the blood in the tympans of his ears, like a

magnified replica of the sound that sometimes comes just before sleep.

He felt sleepy.

“Sixteen thousand!” he muttered to himself, crushing down his dizziness

and languor. “Sixteen thousand! Sixteen thousand feet!”

“No, twenty thousand!” The voice was singularly musical, thin, and

clear.

“Yes, twenty thousand!” In the thrill of determination that the voice

gave him, he momentarily overlooked the queerness of its presence.

“Twenty thousand feet high!”

“Higher than even the condor dares!”

He opened his eyes in some faint distress and perplexity of mind, and

blinked through his goggles. In the forward seat, turned three quarters

toward him, was a woman, a girl. He could hardly make her out at first,

for the dazzle of the aluminium hood was just beyond her, and she was

dressed all in white--white, knitted wool and some close, white fur

that was almost as dazzling as the aluminium itself. A white, knitted

cap was pulled down over her head; a few strands of hair, blazing with

the sun’s own color, lay along the snow-white oval of her face.

“I didn’t know--I had the two-seater,” he remarked dazedly. His voice

was thin and whistling; he raised it to make himself heard above

the hum of the motor and screw. “I thought I took out the one-place

machine; I’m out for altitude, you know.”

Her eyes, blue-black and flashing like the sky, regarded him with a

little look of questioning; her mouth’s faint scarlet line turned down

a trifle at the ends, suggesting polite surprise.

“I don’t mean to intimate that I’m not delighted to have you along,”

he assured her warmly. “I merely forgot; it’s the first time I’ve been

anywhere near as high as this, and it makes me feel slightly dippy,

not bad enough to make me be afraid of losing control, of course, but

still--not just right.”

“You look--magnificent.” Her voice left a ringing echo in his ears.

“Oh, I feel all right, aside from the fact that I can’t remember

engaging a passenger for this trip.”

“That’s not worth worrying about now,” she assured him, smiling in a

dim, dangerous way into his eyes. “What does the barograph read?”

He had to bend down close to read the dial. “Fifteen thousand three

hundred,” he said with a stray air, and lifted his head to stare at

her. “I’ll not cut out the muffler until we stop rising; the exhaust

makes a ghastly clatter up here. It jabbers like the ghost of itself.”

“I love it; it sounds--high,” she said, and again he was thrilled

by the weird music of her voice. It allured, it inspired like a

bugle-note, and yet there was a chilling something in it. It reminded

him of the “ice-crackle,” that peculiar trilling reverberation from the

expanding of thin, new ice on the skating lakes of his boyhood. One

glided along over the thin, glass-clear surface, one saw the steel-blue

water just beneath, one heard the sudden silvery “_Kr-r-r-ring!_” of

the ice-crackle, and one put his whole soul into speed.

He stared at her, racking his benumbed wits to remember her place on

his passenger-list. Like most of the new pilots, he was accustomed to

earn an honest penny now and then by taking up persons with the desire

and the necessary fifty dollars. She frankly yielded herself to his

inspection; she turned farther around in her seat and smiled at him.

“You don’t remember me?”

“No; that’s astounding, but true.”

She was exquisite, perfect in every line, beautiful with the abstract

beauty of an idealist painter’s work. An artist might have called her

a “pure type”; there was no little trick of outline or coloring to

give personality, character, to the flawless symmetry of her face.

She seemed less a real woman than some ideal created to embody an

idea: she might have stood for “Purity,” or, perhaps better, “Danger.”

Her beauty lost nothing by its impersonality; to Reese’s sun-dazzled

eyes, at least it was all the more poignant. The faint scarlet of her

lips, the scintillating blue-black of her eyes, the flashing gold of

her hair, and the sheer radiant white of all the rest of her allured,

intoxicated, astounded. He breathed quickly for reasons other than the

thinness of the air. She was unhuman, almost superhuman, for sheer

perfection of line and color.

“Well, you have been staring at me for some time,” she said without the

slightest show of self-consciousness. “Do you like me?”

“Yes, wonderfully,” he declared, as calmly frank as she herself was.

“And you don’t remember ever meeting me before?”

He shook his head.

“If you’d recall the circumstances. The lessened atmospheric pressure

up here makes my head feel as big and empty as a balloon.”

“Oh, it makes no difference; acquaintances begin only when they get

interesting, anyway. How you stare! What are you thinking about me now?”

He had been casting about for words, a metaphor, to describe her; in

his youth he had made metaphors, boy’s way, to put into verses.

“I was thinking that you are like this height,” he cried, bending

toward her over the yoke of the warping-wheel. The great bird

lurched drunkenly, and he threw over the wheel to bring it back into

equilibrium. He laughed, made reckless by the answering light in her

eyes, and let it lurch in the other direction like a swooping eagle.

“Yes, you are like height. You are beautiful, you allure, you call to

all a man’s manhood and daring; and yet there is something in your look

that makes me tremble, as though you were a blade pointing at my heart.

Come, we’re three miles above conventions; you won’t mind if I worship

you a little? For you are wonderful and beautiful--beyond belief.”

“Why, and so are you. Or is it only this dizzy loneliness that makes us

think so?”

“Who are you?” he demanded. “I knew I’d engaged to take up several

women this week, but no one like you. Who are you? Give me a name to

call you by. Tell me who you are.”

“Why, only your poor feminine passenger,” she laughed, bending toward

him. One lithe arm and hand, gantleted nearly to the elbow in close,

white, glistening fur, lay along the aluminium edge of the car. “As for

my name, how do you like Alta?”

“Good! I remember just enough Latin to appreciate it. Alta--High!

Well--” He threw back his head recklessly--“I’m out for altitude!”

“Perhaps you’ll attain it. Only keep your elevator-flaps well lifted!”

He threw back the yoke with a laugh. In bending toward her he had

permitted the machine to gain the level once more. The great bird

slanted upward at an abrupt angle, and poised, quivering.

“You are brave!” she cried. Her level eyes dared him, her lips provoked

and promised. He closed his eyes for a moment, made giddy by her

radiance and by the blaze of the untempered sun on the aluminium hood

just beyond her. The reflection surrounded her with an aura like white

flames.

Instinctively he eased off the dangerous lift of the wings; he had no

need to look at the needle of the level-indicator to know that the

machine was threatening to slide backward into the abyss.

“Why do you shut your eyes, height-seeker?” she demanded. “Are you

afraid? What does the barograph read now?”

“Sixteen thousand three hundred,” he said shortly. “A record, I

believe; but what of it? No, I’m not afraid,” he added, stiffening his

neck and fixing his bloodshot gaze on her untroubled eyes and dangerous

lips; “I’m not even afraid of you. It’s you who’d better be afraid of

me. Do you know we were ready to drop backward a minute ago?”

“I felt it. It was superb. We must have gained two hundred feet in that

one tremendous lift. And yet I think--you were afraid.”

The blood rushed into his face; flames leaped up in his eyes.

“Perhaps I can prove I wasn’t by letting go the controls and coming

over there to you. We’d be together for as long as it took us to drop

three miles, anyway. Shall I?”

“Oh, brave words--and true! I believe you would. Now you are a demigod

by the look on your mouth and eyes; you are man no longer! So, Spirit,

send us upward once more till we poise over the abyss! Height and the

spirit of adventure! Throw back the yoke with a laugh, as you did

before.”

“Yes. And if I do?”

“What! A price?”

“Yes!”

“It is right. Well--when the barograph marks twenty thousand feet, I

will come and sit at your knees!”

“It is what I had on the tip of my tongue to ask,” he shouted, wild

with exaltation. “Good; and block the rudder-bar! We will go down on

the warp alone--a proper finish. Down twenty thousand feet, with the

rudder blocked!”

“Yes. Is it a bargain?”

“A bargain!” he shouted, and turned his face up into the candent dome

of sky and laughed aloud. His arms jerked the yoke of the elevator back

until the wheel touched his breast; the machine leaped upward like a

diver, soared, poised trembling. He threw back the lever that cut out

the muffler. The exhaust broke out in a weird salvo like sharpened

rifle-shots. He eased off the precipitate angle until they had gained

way once more, and again threw the elevator up to its highest limit.

They bounded upward, swaying, clattering, whistling through the

knife-edged wind. And all the while she smiled into his face.

He no longer noticed the barograph; he saw only her untroubled gaze

of inspiration and allurement. A thin trickle of scarlet started from

both his nostrils; his blackened lips gaped for breath; his bulging,

bloodshot eyes left her only to glare over the powers at his command.

He was all resolve and eagerness; he was determination incarnate. He

shot one hand forward, ungloved, to adjust the carbureter, which was

beginning to fail for lack of air. He threw back and forth the lever

that put extra pressure on the gasolene tank. With demoniacal abandon

he worked the hand-pump that jetted oil on the flying bearings of the

engine.

“Do-er! Accomplisher!” He started at her voice. The reflection of his

own exaltation was on her; her face quivered, yearned toward him. With

a steady, sinuous movement she drew herself backward over the low

back-rest of her seat, and crept back under the curved yoke that held

the warping-wheel. She sat up, sidewise, near him, lifted her face

slowly until it curved backward like a flower on the fair, white stem

of her throat, and offered him the curved, scarlet miracle of her lips.

As he bent toward her the sky became black. As from the depths of a

dream he heard her voice chanting:

“The ages dreamed of this that you have done.”

Her voice was like a softened, hundred-toned ice-crackle. He trembled

in his coma, and then relaxed as for a long fall in sleep. The voice

went on:

“The Chaldeans sculptured wings on their man-gods and on their sacred

bulls.

“The Greeks made their dream articulate in the myth of Dædalus and

Icarus.

“Leonardo da Vinci laid aside the brush that made the Mona Lisa to

grope for the realization of this dream that we have made real.

“To fly, to spread wings on the impalpable air, and soar, to follow the

way of an eagle in the air.

“To skim the invisible columns of the sky--are not men become as gods

now in very truth?

“You have dreamed true, Spirit--Spirit of Dreams and High Emprise; you

are all men who aspire.

“How beautiful you are in the torture of accomplishment! The very

chords on your throat are lute-strings to sing of victory.

“The blood from your nostrils is a libation to the jealous powers that

you have trampled underfoot.

“Beautiful, wonderful, holy--my lover, whom I love!”

He was suddenly aware of a great rush of wind and of the delirious,

gripping sensation of falling. Drunk with her voice and beauty, he

had forgotten warping-wheel, rudder-bar, elevator-yoke, everything.

The cutting air roused him; frantically he threw the elevator down,

drawing her head backward before the yoke to his breast. The great bird

shuddered, and swung dizzily to one side. He remembered that she was

blocking the rudder-bar; painfully, ineffectually, as in a dream, he

warped down the lower wing, biting his lips in an agony of helplessness.

“Why struggle further? You have attained--you have attained!” he heard

her siren’s voice chanting in his ears; her lithe arms sprang to meet

each other about his neck. “Kiss me--kiss me, Spirit!” she cried, with

her icy cheek pressed to his. “I am height!”

He threw her off.

“No,” he shouted, struggling to keep his eyes open and his hands on the

wheel, “you are mad--we are both mad! Don’t you understand? This is

death!”

“Kiss me!” she repeated in her voice of ice and silver. “How wonderful

is this death! Where are your arms, Spirit? Am I not beautiful? Look at

me!”

Her breath enveloped him, numbing him, filling him with a Lethean

languor; but still, with all the strength of his instinct and training,

he struggled to bring the machine back under his command. Despite her

presence, he managed to get his feet on the rudder-bar. They whirled

downward, listing so far that he felt the grip of the straps that bound

him to his seat. He worked the controls, holding her away from him with

elbows and knees. They dashed into a blinding mist, beginning to circle

at last, and he threw all his remaining power into a desperate attempt

to warp the wings back into equilibrium. At the same time he forced

the rudder-bar over to turn the machine in the direction away from the

lowered side.

The great bird righted, and began to swoop as lightly as a descending

gull. He cut out the engine. “There!” he bellowed, crazy with triumph

and with the sudden increase of oxygen in his starved lungs. “I’ve

saved you despite yourself! Your idea was all very romantic--” His head

whirled again as she lifted herself in his arms.

“You were afraid,” she whispered, catching his face to her

breast--“afraid! Your fear was greater than your love--of me!”

“You don’t understand; you don’t--this is how--I am afraid!” he

concluded in a sudden deathlike abandon; and lifted his arms from the

wheel to hold her to him. He felt the ineffable, keen sweetness of

her lips on his. Then consciousness went like a blown-out candle. The

perfectly balanced monoplane continued its slow, even swoop toward the

earth.

Some one shook him by the arm. He was sitting in the cockpit of the

machine, his hands dangling limp over the sides. A corn-field was

about him; his dazed eyes made out the low, green month-old stalks all

about. Several men were standing beside him, and others, a great crowd

it seemed, were hurrying toward him.

“Asleep! By the great horn spoon, he was asleep!” said a man at his

right hand. “Came down too fast, youngster. How high’d you get, anyway?”

Slowly he made out the features of one of the officials of the

aviation-field, one of the men who had verified his barograph before

he started out for altitude. The man raised himself up by the little

iron step on the side of the car, leaned over to look at the barograph,

and began to bellow wildly at the crowd. “Twenty thousand! It must

be wrong. But even if it’s a few hundred out, even if it’s a few

thousand--whoop-la! He’s done it! The kid’s done it! A record!”

“But where--where--” stammered Reese, stupidly. He sat and stared

before him like a man just awakened from a dream.

The aluminium hood came close up against the steering-yoke; there was

no forward seat, not even room enough for a cat: it _was_ the one-place

machine.

[Illustration]

GLORY SHALL FOLLOW GLORY

BY CHARLES HANSON TOWNE

I

Keats died--who knows?--in the wild bloom of youth,

And learned all truth,

That “Adonais” might be sadly sung;

That through the halls of heaven, from Shelley’s tongue,

That royal dirge

Might thrill and surge

Deathlessly young.

Perhaps a poet passed

That one might tell at last

In this immortal song his beauty and glory,

Chant his lament,

For shining days soon spent,

In a great glowing story.

II

Does Love thus go

(Whither we do not know),

That one may sing the grandeur of Love’s name?

That one who felt his fire and his flame

May stand in adoration at his pall,

And in a song supreme, majestical,

Voice the eternal wonder of the dead?

Ere Love has fled,

Silent are we before his face divine;

But when the lamps are wasted,

And the last cup is tasted,

And strong Death sets her crown upon his head,

There is a singer who must sing Love’s praise,

Record his dreams and days,

And keep the light forever before his shrine.

LORDS SPIRITUAL IN JERUSALEM

BY THOMAS E. GREEN

Author of “The Green Flag of the Prophet,” etc.

WITH PHOTOGRAPHS, COPYRIGHT, BY THE AUTHOR

They were changing the guard at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in

Jerusalem, the sacred place for which the Crusaders marched and fought,

the shrine toward which the feet of pious pilgrims have turned for

nearly twenty centuries. It was done quietly, and with no feature to

attract attention, or emphasize the shame that made a guard necessary.

In a moment the old guard of six soldiers and the young Turkish officer

had gone, and on a raised platform, just within the door, the new guard

were making themselves comfortable, lighting their cigarettes, and

chatting in low, soft voices.

I had asked the officer before the relief arrived if the guard was

actually needed. “Not often,” he replied. “But one can never tell. In

the last disturbance a monk was killed. I tell you true! I saw him

lying there at the foot of the steps.”

He flicked the ash from his cigarette, and shrugged a very square pair

of shoulders significantly.

“Killed!” I said, “why and how?”

“Monsieur wonders, but he does not know these people. Observe,

Monsieur, that the stair beyond the door has eighteen steps. All but

the lowest one belong to the Latins; the bottom one and the pavement

belong to the Greeks. Each morning the steps must be swept. The Latins

sweep down to the last one, and there they must leave the dirt, until

the Greeks sweep it off and bear it away. Generally the two come

together, and so the work is done. But on that fatal day, when the

Latin had swept the dirt upon the lowest step, no Greek was there.

So lest the dirt should blow back again where he had cleaned, he,

little thinking, swept it off, and was bearing it away. Then came the

Greek, and, seeing him, snatched both broom and basket from him, with

upbraiding words. Their loud voices soon reached their fellows, and

in a moment a score or more were pushing and wrestling across the

pavement. Nor were good solid blows lacking. Somehow in the tumult a

Greek monk was pushed over, and, falling against the edge of a stone

step, broke his neck, and so died, while they all knelt and prayed for

his soul. Since then there has been no actual trouble, but we keep a

constant guard posted here at the door. I am of Islam, effendi--the

faith of my fathers. We garrison the Tower of David.”

Multitudes of people were passing in and out of the venerable portal,

singly and in groups, sometimes in companies. They surely must have

come from the ends of the earth, young and old, rich and poor, pilgrim

and tourist, to stand or kneel beside the holiest tomb in Christendom.

Just within the entrance is the Stone of Anointing, the ancient one

covered by a more modern stone, worn smooth with the touch of countless

lips. Above it hangs a row of lamps, of various shapes and colors,

but always burning. These lamps offer a key to the strange conditions

within this ancient fane, for part of them belong to the Armenians,

part to the Latins, the rest to the Greeks and the Copts.

Wherever you go, you find the same confusing conflict over jealously

guarded rights, for every sect of Oriental Christendom is represented

and claims some part in the ownership of the Church of the Holy

Sepulcher. Not the church alone, but the whole city, and its environs,

including Bethlehem, Bethany, Gethsemane, and every real or fabled spot

of sanctity, are in the guardianship of one or the other of the many

creeds.

Jerusalem is the “City of Peace,” but no city on earth has such a

tumult of devotion, such a confusion of worship. In many ways it is

essential that there should be all of the great substantial hospices,

capable of sheltering and caring for the multitude of pilgrims who

still, as in the ancient days, come from afar to worship in Jerusalem.

They come from every nation in Europe, mostly in comparative poverty,

making their toilsome way by personal exertion and sacrifice. The

roads leading from seaports are thronged with pilgrims, trudging their

dusty way, sleeping beside the highway or in rude shelters erected for

them, all with their faces set steadfastly toward Jerusalem. For these

there must be rest and shelter and food, for which reason in the Holy

City, and at neighboring shrines huge caravansaries are sustained by

the various national churches. More elaborate buildings, like modern

hotels, exist for those who come upon a pious pilgrimage with ample

means.

Schools exist for the young, taught by monks and nuns. There are

communities of pious widows, whose wealth has erected for them pleasant

homes in the Holy City. There are colonies--Protestant, Jewish,

Catholic--actuated by some idea, often chimerical, sometimes simple and

tinged with pure devotion. The members live as a religious family, each

doing some share of labor, and enjoying some share of the result. There

are also modern churches, magnificent ones, built within a decade or

two, either as memorials, or for some missionary purpose. The Jewish

community is constantly increasing, many of them looking for the speedy

coming of their Messiah, and most of them brought hither by benevolent

schemes for the colonization of Palestine by its ancient people. Over

all this jumble of things ancient and modern floats the crescent flag;

and above, on the height of Mt. Moriah, stands the marvelous mosque,

where the Moslem, bows himself toward Mecca, and worships his God.

During my stay in Jerusalem it occurred to me that it would be

interesting to seek out the various heads of all these various creeds.

Fortune was kind, for sooner or later I found them all, and bore away

photographs showing the faces of a unique set of Lords Spiritual,

probably the most varied in belief and personality to be found in

the world. Together they stand for the Christian history of twenty

centuries; and in a city of probably sixty thousand souls, they all

have a following, and play a part in its life.

Eldest in occupancy, and claiming priority from the fact that they are

the descendants of those who listened to the teaching of the Apostles

themselves, are the Syrians, the ancient stock of Palestine. They are

few in number, but possess the ancient Convent of St. Mark, and the

tombs of Nicodemus and of Joseph of Arimathea. They are ruled by His

Beatitude Abighatios II, the Syrian Patriarch of Jerusalem.

The Greek Church rests its claim to authority upon the fact that

Constantine, the first Christian emperor, gave Rome the go-by when

his victory over Licinius made him master of the empire, and built

his capital on the Bosphorus, calling it Constantinople. The later

Greek (in which the New Testament was written) was the language of

the Eastern Empire. During the early centuries the language and the

learning of the Christian Church was Greek, and the great fathers and

teachers of the early centuries were theirs. St. Helena, Constantine’s

mother, discovered, so tradition says, the true cross, and the cavity

from which it was taken is reverently shown to-day, hard by the

sepulcher. Most of the sacred places owe their preservation and their

defense to the Greeks, who are far in advance of all other Christian

sects in their Holy Land possessions and influence.

The Greek Patriarch, His Beatitude Damianos, is a grave, dignified

man of great learning. Fourteen bishops are subject to him, and

they control twenty-one monasteries within and about Jerusalem. The

superior of the Holy Sepulcher, Monseigneur Optimus Patlafeki, ranks

next to the Patriarch. He is Lord Chancellor to the Greek Patriarch,

and administrator of the vast wealth (both that which daily comes

from gifts and fees, and the collection of rentals), invested in real

estate and buildings. A shrewd and careful diplomat, he stands close to

the powers that be in the rule of the Holy City. He and the venerable

Patriarch alone know what treasure the Greek Church possesses.

It is a peculiar fact that the Greeks form but a small part of the

Greek Church, or, more properly, of the Holy Orthodox Church. Counting

all the Slavonic peoples who belong to the orthodox, still a full four

fifths are Russian. The conversion of the mighty empire of the north

came as late as ~A.D.~ 989, when Vladimir married the sister of the

Emperor Basil, and chose the Greek in preference to the Roman form of

religion. The people were baptized almost as a nation, and no other

nation has remained more loyal to the faith. To-day more pilgrims come

to Jerusalem from the land of the Czar than from any other nation.

Literally by shiploads, in caravans of hundreds, they come to worship

at the holy places. There are many large and spacious establishments

where the pilgrims are sheltered, and their management and operations

require the oversight of a capable man. The Holy Synod therefore

maintains an Archimandrite, who, without interfering in the least with

the Patriarch, looks after the detail of things Russian, and a capable

man is His Excellency Monseigneur Leonidouff.

[Illustration: MUSA EFFENDI SHABIK, MOSLEM GRAND CADI OF JERUSALEM]

The Latins, whose Hospice is one of the most imposing, and who have

built churches, monasteries, convents, schools, and a magnificent

modern hospital, number about three thousand, and have for their

patriarch, His Excellency Monseigneur Philippe Camassei, one of the

most learned of all the throng of dignitaries. The Latins are the

natural opponents of the Greeks, and since the anathemas exchanged

in the year 1054, each sect has claimed independent authority and

priority. Nowhere else is the great schism between the East and the

West so evident as in Jerusalem.

[Illustration: MONSEIGNEUR JIRYES DOMAT, MARONITE SUPERIOR]

The woes and persecutions of the Armenians at the hands of their Moslem

rulers have been makers of history for centuries. Armenia has great

prestige as a Christian nation. A little before Rome was converted to

the faith, Armenia, under the teaching of Gregory “the Illuminator,”

had become the first Christian kingdom. Next to the Greek Church, it

is to-day the most important in the East. In Jerusalem they have a

great church and monastery on Mt. Zion. Their permanent following is

not large--not more than eight hundred--but thousands of pilgrims come

yearly to tarry awhile in the sacred places.

[Illustration: HIS BEATITUDE ABIGHATIOS II, SYRIAN PATRIARCH OF

JERUSALEM]

[Illustration: HIS BEATITUDE DAMIANOS, GREEK PATRIARCH OF JERUSALEM]

Their patriarch is His Beatitude Izimerlian, and they keep the shrine

and tomb of St. James, whom Herod slew with the sword.

The Copts are an echo of far-away Egypt, where in the early centuries

they were the dominant Christian force. Alexandria was one of the

first great Christian capitals, and her patriarch and bishops were

potent forces in the early church councils. Chief among them was St.

Athanasius, who at the first General Council battled against the

“iota,” the single letter that made or unmade the definition of the

divinity of Christ. In Egypt to-day the Copts are looked upon as

by far the most intellectual and capable of the mixed and tangled

population. The Copts have no colony in Jerusalem, except for a few men

engaged in banking or other commercial pursuits. However, multitudes

of Copts come from Egypt at the times of the great festivals, and

shelter and oversight are necessary for their protection. They have

three monasteries, one being close beside the Church of the Holy

Sepulcher. Here lives their bishop, His Eminence Thimethos, and from

his household are furnished daily two priests whose high and singular

dignity it is to be shut up in the great church each night, to keep

watch beside the Holy Sepulcher.

Away to the south, beyond the cataracts of the Nile, preserved through

long ages by its desert sands, lies the remains of one of the oldest

relics of civilization, Abyssinia (wrongly associated with the ancient

Sheba, now known to have been located in southwest Arabia, and whose

queen came to Jerusalem to see King Solomon’s splendor and glory). In

~A.D.~ 338, St. Athanasius appointed a bishop for the Abyssinians, who

had received Christianity, so the legends say, from two sailors cast

upon their coasts. Through the march of fifteen centuries Christianity

has endured there, though in a debased form, contaminated by ancient

heresies, and absorbing much from Judaism. Their patriarch is always

a Coptic monk appointed and consecrated by the Patriarch of Egypt. In

Jerusalem they maintain a large monastery and convent, where devout men

and women spend their lives. They have recently built a new chapel,

which is the seat of their abbot, Monseigneur Mahsanto.

[Illustration: MONSEIGNEUR LEONIDOUFF, THE RUSSIAN ARCHIMANDRITE IN

JERUSALEM]

[Illustration: MONSEIGNEUR OPTIMUS PATLAFEKI, SUPERIOR OF THE HOLY

SEPULCHER]

[Illustration: HIS EMINENCE ZACHARIAS BEN-ABBAS]