1
Bert spent two more days upon Goat Island, and finished all his
provisions except the cigarettes and mineral water, before he brought
himself to try the Asiatic flying-machine.
Even at last he did not so much go off upon it as get carried off. It
had taken only an hour or so to substitute wing stays from the second
flying-machine and to replace the nuts he had himself removed. The
engine was in working order, and differed only very simply and obviously
from that of a contemporary motor-bicycle. The rest of the time was
taken up by a vast musing and delaying and hesitation. Chiefly he saw
himself splashing into the rapids and whirling down them to the Fall,
clutching and drowning, but also he had a vision of being hopelessly in
the air, going fast and unable to ground. His mind was too concentrated
upon the business of flying for him to think very much of what might
happen to an indefinite-spirited Cockney without credential who arrived
on an Asiatic flying-machine amidst the war-infuriated population
beyond.
He still had a lingering solicitude for the bird-faced officer. He had
a haunting fancy he might be lying disabled or badly smashed in some
way in some nook or cranny of the Island; and it was only after a most
exhaustive search that he abandoned that distressing idea. “If I found
'im,” he reasoned the while, “what could I do wiv 'im? You can't blow
a chap's brains out when 'e's down. And I don' see 'ow else I can 'elp
'im.”
Then the kitten bothered his highly developed sense of social
responsibility. “If I leave 'er, she'll starve.... Ought to catch mice
for 'erself.... ARE there mice?... Birds?... She's too young.... She's
like me; she's a bit too civilised.”
Finally he stuck her in his side pocket and she became greatly
interested in the memories of corned beef she found there. With her in
his pocket, he seated himself in the saddle of the flying-machine. Big,
clumsy thing it was--and not a bit like a bicycle. Still the working of
it was fairly plain. You set the engine going--SO; kicked yourself
up until the wheel was vertical, SO; engaged the gyroscope, SO, and
then--then--you just pulled up this lever.
Rather stiff it was, but suddenly it came over--
The big curved wings on either side flapped disconcertingly, flapped
again' click, clock, click, clock, clitter-clock!
Stop! The thing was heading for the water; its wheel was in the water.
Bert groaned from his heart and struggled to restore the lever to its
first position. Click, clock, clitter-clock, he was rising! The machine
was lifting its dripping wheel out of the eddies, and he was going up!
There was no stopping now, no good in stopping now. In another moment
Bert, clutching and convulsive and rigid, with staring eyes and a face
pale as death, was flapping up above the Rapids, jerking to every jerk
of the wings, and rising, rising.
There was no comparison in dignity and comfort between a flying-machine
and a balloon. Except in its moments of descent, the balloon was a
vehicle of faultless urbanity; this was a buck-jumping mule, a mule that
jumped up and never came down again. Click, clock, click, clock; with
each beat of the strangely shaped wings it jumped Bert upward and
caught him neatly again half a second later on the saddle. And while in
ballooning there is no wind, since the balloon is a part of the wind,
flying is a wild perpetual creation of and plunging into wind. It was
a wind that above all things sought to blind him, to force him to close
his eyes. It occurred to him presently to twist his knees and legs
inward and grip with them, or surely he would have been bumped into two
clumsy halves. And he was going up, a hundred yards high, two hundred,
three hundred, over the streaming, frothing wilderness of water
below--up, up, up. That was all right, but how presently would one go
horizontally? He tried to think if these things did go horizontally. No!
They flapped up and then they soared down. For a time he would keep
on flapping up. Tears streamed from his eyes. He wiped them with one
temerariously disengaged hand.
Was it better to risk a fall over land or over water--such water?
He was flapping up above the Upper Rapids towards Buffalo. It was at any
rate a comfort that the Falls and the wild swirl of waters below them
were behind him. He was flying up straight. That he could see. How did
one turn?
He was presently almost cool, and his eyes got more used to the rush
of air, but he was getting very high, very high. He tilted his head
forwards and surveyed the country, blinking. He could see all over
Buffalo, a place with three great blackened scars of ruin, and hills and
stretches beyond. He wondered if he was half a mile high, or more.
There were some people among some houses near a railway station between
Niagara and Buffalo, and then more people. They went like ants busily
in and out of the houses. He saw two motor cars gliding along the road
towards Niagara city. Then far away in the south he saw a great Asiatic
airship going eastward. “Oh, Gord!” he said, and became earnest in his
ineffectual attempts to alter his direction. But that airship took no
notice of him, and he continued to ascend convulsively. The world got
more and more extensive and maplike. Click, clock, clitter-clock. Above
him and very near to him now was a hazy stratum of cloud.
He determined to disengage the wing clutch. He did so. The lever
resisted his strength for a time, then over it came, and instantly
the tail of the machine cocked up and the wings became rigidly spread.
Instantly everything was swift and smooth and silent. He was
gliding rapidly down the air against a wild gale of wind, his eyes
three-quarters shut.
A little lever that had hitherto been obdurate now confessed itself
mobile. He turned it over gently to the right, and whiroo!--the left
wing had in some mysterious way given at its edge and he was sweeping
round and downward in an immense right-handed spiral. For some moments
he experienced all the helpless sensations of catastrophe. He restored
the lever to its middle position with some difficulty, and the wings
were equalised again.
He turned it to the left and had a sensation of being spun round
backwards. “Too much!” he gasped.
He discovered that he was rushing down at a headlong pace towards a
railway line and some factory buildings. They appeared to be tearing up
to him to devour him. He must have dropped all that height. For a moment
he had the ineffectual sensations of one whose bicycle bolts downhill.
The ground had almost taken him by surprise. “'Ere!” he cried; and then
with a violent effort of all his being he got the beating engine at work
again and set the wings flapping. He swooped down and up and resumed his
quivering and pulsating ascent of the air.
He went high again, until he had a wide view of the pleasant upland
country of western New York State, and then made a long coast down, and
so up again, and then a coast. Then as he came swooping a quarter of
a mile above a village he saw people running about, running
away--evidently in relation to his hawk-like passage. He got an idea
that he had been shot at.
“Up!” he said, and attacked that lever again. It came over with
remarkable docility, and suddenly the wings seemed to give way in the
middle. But the engine was still! It had stopped. He flung the lever
back rather by instinct than design. What to do?
Much happened in a few seconds, but also his mind was quick, he thought
very quickly. He couldn't get up again, he was gliding down the air; he
would have to hit something.
He was travelling at the rate of perhaps thirty miles an hour down,
down.
That plantation of larches looked the softest thing--mossy almost!
Could he get it? He gave himself to the steering. Round to the
right--left!
Swirroo! Crackle! He was gliding over the tops of the trees, ploughing
through them, tumbling into a cloud of green sharp leaves and black
twigs. There was a sudden snapping, and he fell off the saddle forward,
a thud and a crashing of branches. Some twigs hit him smartly in the
face....
He was between a tree-stem and the saddle, with his leg over the
steering lever and, so far as he could realise, not hurt. He tried to
alter his position and free his leg, and found himself slipping and
dropping through branches with everything giving way beneath him. He
clutched and found himself in the lower branches of a tree beneath the
flying-machine. The air was full of a pleasant resinous smell. He stared
for a moment motionless, and then very carefully clambered down branch
by branch to the soft needle-covered ground below.
“Good business,” he said, looking up at the bent and tilted kite-wings
above.
“I dropped soft!”
He rubbed his chin with his hand and meditated. “Blowed if I don't
think I'm a rather lucky fellow!” he said, surveying the pleasant
sun-bespattered ground under the trees. Then he became aware of
a violent tumult at his side. “Lord!” he said, “You must be 'arf
smothered,” and extracted the kitten from his pocket-handkerchief and
pocket. She was twisted and crumpled and extremely glad to see the light
again. Her little tongue peeped between her teeth. He put her down, and
she ran a dozen paces and shook herself and stretched and sat up and
began to wash.
“Nex'?” he said, looking about him, and then with a gesture of vexation,
“Desh it! I ought to 'ave brought that gun!”
He had rested it against a tree when he had seated himself in the
flying-machine saddle.
He was puzzled for a time by the immense peacefulness in the quality of
the world, and then he perceived that the roar of the cataract was no
longer in his ears.
2
He had no very clear idea of what sort of people he might come upon
in this country. It was, he knew, America. Americans he had always
understood were the citizens of a great and powerful nation, dry and
humorous in their manner, addicted to the use of the bowie-knife
and revolver, and in the habit of talking through the nose like
Norfolkshire, and saying “allow” and “reckon” and “calculate,” after the
manner of the people who live on the New Forest side of Hampshire. Also
they were very rich, had rocking-chairs, and put their feet at unusual
altitudes, and they chewed tobacco, gum, and other substances, with
untiring industry. Commingled with them were cowboys, Red Indians, and
comic, respectful niggers. This he had learnt from the fiction in
his public library. Beyond that he had learnt very little. He was not
surprised therefore when he met armed men.
He decided to abandon the shattered flying-machine. He wandered through
the trees for some time, and then struck a road that seemed to his urban
English eyes to be remarkably wide but not properly “made.” Neither
hedge nor ditch nor curbed distinctive footpath separated it from the
woods, and it went in that long easy curve which distinguishes the
tracks of an open continent. Ahead he saw a man carrying a gun under his
arm, a man in a soft black hat, a blue blouse, and black trousers,
and with a broad round-fat face quite innocent of goatee. This person
regarded him askance and heard him speak with a start.
“Can you tell me whereabouts I am at all?” asked Bert.
The man regarded him, and more particularly his rubber boots, with
sinister suspicion. Then he replied in a strange outlandish tongue
that was, as a matter of fact, Czech. He ended suddenly at the sight of
Bert's blank face with “Don't spik English.”
“Oh!” said Bert. He reflected gravely for a moment, and then went his
way.
“Thenks,” he, said as an afterthought. The man regarded his back for a
moment, was struck with an idea, began an abortive gesture, sighed, gave
it up, and went on also with a depressed countenance.
Presently Bert came to a big wooden house standing casually among the
trees. It looked a bleak, bare box of a house to him, no creeper grew on
it, no hedge nor wall nor fence parted it off from the woods about it.
He stopped before the steps that led up to the door, perhaps thirty
yards away. The place seemed deserted. He would have gone up to the
door and rapped, but suddenly a big black dog appeared at the side and
regarded him. It was a huge heavy-jawed dog of some unfamiliar breed,
and it, wore a spike-studded collar. It did not bark nor approach him,
it just bristled quietly and emitted a single sound like a short, deep
cough.
Bert hesitated and went on.
He stopped thirty paces away and stood peering about him among the
trees. “If I 'aven't been and lef' that kitten,” he said.
Acute sorrow wrenched him for a time. The black dog came through the
trees to get a better look at him and coughed that well-bred cough
again. Bert resumed the road.
“She'll do all right,” he said.... “She'll catch things.
“She'll do all right,” he said presently, without conviction. But if it
had not been for the black dog, he would have gone back.
When he was out of sight of the house and the black dog, he went into
the woods on the other side of the way and emerged after an interval
trimming a very tolerable cudgel with his pocket-knife. Presently he saw
an attractive-looking rock by the track and picked it up and put it in
his pocket. Then he came to three or four houses, wooden like the last,
each with an ill-painted white verandah (that was his name for it) and
all standing in the same casual way upon the ground. Behind, through
the woods, he saw pig-stys and a rooting black sow leading a brisk,
adventurous family. A wild-looking woman with sloe-black eyes and
dishevelled black hair sat upon the steps of one of the houses nursing a
baby, but at the sight of Bert she got up and went inside, and he heard
her bolting the door. Then a boy appeared among the pig-stys, but he
would not understand Bert's hail.
“I suppose it is America!” said Bert.
The houses became more frequent down the road, and he passed two other
extremely wild and dirty-looking men without addressing them. One
carried a gun and the other a hatchet, and they scrutinised him and his
cudgel scornfully. Then he struck a cross-road with a mono-rail at its
side, and there was a notice board at the corner with “Wait here for the
cars.” “That's all right, any'ow,” said Bert. “Wonder 'ow long I should
'ave to wait?” It occurred to him that in the present disturbed state of
the country the service might be interrupted, and as there seemed more
houses to the right than the left he turned to the right. He passed an
old negro. “'Ullo!” said Bert. “Goo' morning!”
“Good day, sah!” said the old negro, in a voice of almost incredible
richness.
“What's the name of this place?” asked Bert.
“Tanooda, sah!” said the negro.
“Thenks!” said Bert.
“Thank YOU, sah!” said the negro, overwhelmingly.
Bert came to houses of the same detached, unwalled, wooden type, but
adorned now with enamelled advertisements partly in English and partly
in Esperanto. Then he came to what he concluded was a grocer's shop. It
was the first house that professed the hospitality of an open door, and
from within came a strangely familiar sound. “Gaw!” he said searching
in his pockets. “Why! I 'aven't wanted money for free weeks! I wonder
if I--Grubb 'ad most of it. Ah!” He produced a handful of coins and
regarded it; three pennies, sixpence, and a shilling. “That's all
right,” he said, forgetting a very obvious consideration.
He approached the door, and as he did so a compactly built, grey-faced
man in shirt sleeves appeared in it and scrutinised him and his cudgel.
“Mornin',” said Bert. “Can I get anything to eat 'r drink in this shop?”
The man in the door replied, thank Heaven, in clear, good American.
“This, sir, is not A shop, it is A store.”
“Oh!” said Bert, and then, “Well, can I get anything to eat?”
“You can,” said the American in a tone of confident encouragement, and
led the way inside.
The shop seemed to him by his Bun Hill standards extremely roomy, well
lit, and unencumbered. There was a long counter to the left of him,
with drawers and miscellaneous commodities ranged behind it, a number of
chairs, several tables, and two spittoons to the right, various barrels,
cheeses, and bacon up the vista, and beyond, a large archway leading to
more space. A little group of men was assembled round one of the tables,
and a woman of perhaps five-and-thirty leant with her elbows on the
counter. All the men were armed with rifles, and the barrel of a gun
peeped above the counter. They were all listening idly, inattentively,
to a cheap, metallic-toned gramophone that occupied a table near at
hand. From its brazen throat came words that gave Bert a qualm of
homesickness, that brought back in his memory a sunlit beach, a group of
children, red-painted bicycles, Grubb, and an approaching balloon:--
“Ting-a-ling-a-ting-a-ling-a-ting-a ling-a-tang... What Price Hair-pins
Now?”
A heavy-necked man in a straw hat, who was chewing something, stopped
the machine with a touch, and they all turned their eyes on Bert. And
all their eyes were tired eyes.
“Can we give this gentleman anything to eat, mother, or can we not?”
said the proprietor.
“He kin have what he likes?” said the woman at the counter, without
moving, “right up from a cracker to a square meal.” She struggled with a
yawn, after the manner of one who has been up all night.
“I want a meal,” said Bert, “but I 'aven't very much money. I don' want
to give mor'n a shillin'.”
“Mor'n a WHAT?” said the proprietor, sharply.
“Mor'n a shillin',” said Bert, with a sudden disagreeable realisation
coming into his mind.
“Yes,” said the proprietor, startled for a moment from his courtly
bearing. “But what in hell is a shilling?”
“He means a quarter,” said a wise-looking, lank young man in riding
gaiters.
Bert, trying to conceal his consternation, produced a coin. “That's a
shilling,” he said.
“He calls A store A shop,” said the proprietor, “and he wants A meal for
A shilling. May I ask you, sir, what part of America you hail from?”
Bert replaced the shilling in his pocket as he spoke, “Niagara,” he
said.
“And when did you leave Niagara?”
“'Bout an hour ago.”
“Well,” said the proprietor, and turned with a puzzled smile to the
others. “Well!”
They asked various questions simultaneously.
Bert selected one or two for reply. “You see,” he said, “I been with
the German air-fleet. I got caught up by them, sort of by accident, and
brought over here.”
“From England?”
“Yes--from England. Way of Germany. I was in a great battle with them
Asiatics, and I got lef' on a little island between the Falls.”
“Goat Island?”
“I don' know what it was called. But any'ow I found a flying-machine and
made a sort of fly with it and got here.”
Two men stood up with incredulous eyes on him. “Where's the
flying-machine?” they asked; “outside?”
“It's back in the woods here--'bout arf a mile away.”
“Is it good?” said a thick-lipped man with a scar.
“I come down rather a smash--.”
Everybody got up and stood about him and talked confusingly. They wanted
him to take them to the flying-machine at once.
“Look 'ere,” said Bert, “I'll show you--only I 'aven't 'ad anything to
eat since yestiday--except mineral water.”
A gaunt soldierly-looking young man with long lean legs in riding
gaiters and a bandolier, who had hitherto not spoken, intervened now on
his behalf in a note of confident authority. “That's aw right,” he said.
“Give him a feed, Mr. Logan--from me. I want to hear more of that story
of his. We'll see his machine afterwards. If you ask me, I should say
it's a remarkably interesting accident had dropped this gentleman here.
I guess we requisition that flying-machine--if we find it--for local
defence.”
3
So Bert fell on his feet again, and sat eating cold meat and good bread
and mustard and drinking very good beer, and telling in the roughest
outline and with the omissions and inaccuracies of statement natural to
his type of mind, the simple story of his adventures. He told how he and
a “gentleman friend” had been visiting the seaside for their health, how
a “chep” came along in a balloon and fell out as he fell in, how he had
drifted to Franconia, how the Germans had seemed to mistake him for some
one and had “took him prisoner” and brought him to New York, how he
had been to Labrador and back, how he had got to Goat Island and
found himself there alone. He omitted the matter of the Prince and the
Butteridge aspect of the affair, not out of any deep deceitfulness,
but because he felt the inadequacy of his narrative powers. He wanted
everything to seem easy and natural and correct, to present himself as a
trustworthy and understandable Englishman in a sound mediocre position,
to whom refreshment and accommodation might be given with freedom and
confidence. When his fragmentary story came to New York and the battle
of Niagara, they suddenly produced newspapers which had been lying about
on the table, and began to check him and question him by these vehement
accounts. It became evident to him that his descent had revived and
roused to flames again a discussion, a topic, that had been burning
continuously, that had smouldered only through sheer exhaustion of
material during the temporary diversion of the gramophone, a discussion
that had drawn these men together, rifle in hand, the one supreme topic
of the whole world, the War and the methods of the War. He found any
question of his personality and his personal adventures falling into the
background, found himself taken for granted, and no more than a source
of information. The ordinary affairs of life, the buying and selling
of everyday necessities, the cultivation of the ground, the tending
of beasts, was going on as it were by force of routine, as the common
duties of life go on in a house whose master lies under the knife of
some supreme operation. The overruling interest was furnished by those
great Asiatic airships that went upon incalculable missions across the
sky, the crimson-clad swordsmen who might come fluttering down demanding
petrol, or food, or news. These men were asking, all the continent was
asking, “What are we to do? What can we try? How can we get at them?”
Bert fell into his place as an item, ceased even in his own thoughts to
be a central and independent thing.
After he had eaten and drunken his fill and sighed and stretched and
told them how good the food seemed to him, he lit a cigarette they gave
him and led the way, with some doubts and trouble, to the flying-machine
amidst the larches. It became manifest that the gaunt young man, whose
name, it seemed, was Laurier, was a leader both by position and natural
aptitude. He knew the names and characters and capabilities of all the
men who were with him, and he set them to work at once with vigour and
effect to secure this precious instrument of war. They got the thing
down to the ground deliberately and carefully, felling a couple of trees
in the process, and they built a wide flat roof of timbers and tree
boughs to guard their precious find against its chance discovery by any
passing Asiatics. Long before evening they had an engineer from the next
township at work upon it, and they were casting lots among the seventeen
picked men who wanted to take it for its first flight. And Bert found
his kitten and carried it back to Logan's store and handed it with
earnest admonition to Mrs. Logan. And it was reassuringly clear to him
that in Mrs. Logan both he and the kitten had found a congenial soul.
Laurier was not only a masterful person and a wealthy property owner and
employer--he was president, Bert learnt with awe, of the Tanooda Canning
Corporation--but he was popular and skilful in the arts of popularity.
In the evening quite a crowd of men gathered in the store and talked of
the flying-machine and of the war that was tearing the world to pieces.
And presently came a man on a bicycle with an ill-printed newspaper of a
single sheet which acted like fuel in a blazing furnace of talk. It
was nearly all American news; the old-fashioned cables had fallen into
disuse for some years, and the Marconi stations across the ocean and
along the Atlantic coastline seemed to have furnished particularly
tempting points of attack.
But such news it was.
Bert sat in the background--for by this time they had gauged his
personal quality pretty completely--listening. Before his staggering
mind passed strange vast images as they talked, of great issues at a
crisis, of nations in tumultuous march, of continents overthrown, of
famine and destruction beyond measure. Ever and again, in spite of his
efforts to suppress them, certain personal impressions would scamper
across the weltering confusion, the horrible mess of the exploded
Prince, the Chinese aeronaut upside down, the limping and bandaged
bird-faced officer blundering along in miserable and hopeless flight....
They spoke of fire and massacre, of cruelties and counter cruelties, of
things that had been done to harmless Asiatics by race-mad men, of the
wholesale burning and smashing up of towns, railway junctions, bridges,
of whole populations in hiding and exodus. “Every ship they've got is in
the Pacific,” he heard one man exclaim. “Since the fighting began they
can't have landed on the Pacific slope less than a million men. They've
come to stay in these States, and they will--living or dead.”
Slowly, broadly, invincibly, there grew upon Bert's mind realisation
of the immense tragedy of humanity into which his life was flowing;
the appalling and universal nature of the epoch that had arrived; the
conception of an end to security and order and habit. The whole world
was at war and it could not get back to peace, it might never recover
peace.
He had thought the things he had seen had been exceptional, conclusive
things, that the besieging of New York and the battle of the Atlantic
were epoch-making events between long years of security. And they had
been but the first warning impacts of universal cataclysm. Each day
destruction and hate and disaster grew, the fissures widened between
man and man, new regions of the fabric of civilisation crumbled and gave
way. Below, the armies grew and the people perished; above, the airships
and aeroplanes fought and fled, raining destruction.
It is difficult perhaps for the broad-minded and long-perspectived
reader to understand how incredible the breaking down of the scientific
civilisation seemed to those who actually lived at this time, who in
their own persons went down in that debacle. Progress had marched as it
seemed invincible about the earth, never now to rest again. For three
hundred years and more the long steadily accelerated diastole of
Europeanised civilisation had been in progress: towns had been
multiplying, populations increasing, values rising, new countries
developing; thought, literature, knowledge unfolding and spreading. It
seemed but a part of the process that every year the instruments of war
were vaster and more powerful, and that armies and explosives outgrew
all other growing things....
Three hundred years of diastole, and then came the swift and unexpected
systole, like the closing of a fist. They could not understand it was
systole.
They could not think of it as anything but a jolt, a hitch, a mere
oscillatory indication of the swiftness of their progress. Collapse,
though it happened all about them, remained incredible. Presently some
falling mass smote them down, or the ground opened beneath their feet.
They died incredulous....
These men in the store made a minute, remote group under this immense
canopy of disaster. They turned from one little aspect to another. What
chiefly concerned them was defence against Asiatic raiders swooping for
petrol or to destroy weapons or communications. Everywhere levies were
being formed at that time to defend the plant of the railroads day and
night in the hope that communication would speedily be restored. The
land war was still far away. A man with a flat voice distinguished
himself by a display of knowledge and cunning. He told them all with
confidence just what had been wrong with the German drachenflieger
and the American aeroplanes, just what advantage the Japanese flyers
possessed. He launched out into a romantic description of the Butteridge
machine and riveted Bert's attention. “I SEE that,” said Bert, and was
smitten silent by a thought. The man with the flat voice talked on,
without heeding him, of the strange irony of Butteridge's death. At
that Bert had a little twinge of relief--he would never meet Butteridge
again. It appeared Butteridge had died suddenly, very suddenly.
“And his secret, sir, perished with him! When they came to look for the
parts--none could find them. He had hidden them all too well.”
“But couldn't he tell?” asked the man in the straw hat. “Did he die so
suddenly as that?”
“Struck down, sir. Rage and apoplexy. At a place called Dymchurch in
England.”
“That's right,” said Laurier. “I remember a page about it in the Sunday
American. At the time they said it was a German spy had stolen his
balloon.”
“Well, sir,” said the flat-voiced man, “that fit of apoplexy at
Dyrnchurch was the worst thing--absolutely the worst thing that ever
happened to the world. For if it had not been for the death of Mr.
Butteridge--”
“No one knows his secret?”
“Not a soul. It's gone. His balloon, it appears, was lost at sea, with
all the plans. Down it went, and they went with it.”
Pause.
“With machines such as he made we could fight these Asiatic fliers
on more than equal terms. We could outfly and beat down those scarlet
humming-birds wherever they appeared. But it's gone, it's gone, and
there's no time to reinvent it now. We got to fight with what we
got--and the odds are against us. THAT won't stop us fightin'. No! but
just think of it!”
Bert was trembling violently. He cleared his throat hoarsely.
“I say,” he said, “look here, I--”
Nobody regarded him. The man with the flat voice was opening a new
branch of the subject.
“I allow--” he began.
Bert became violently excited. He stood up.
He made clawing motions with his hands. “I say!” he exclaimed, “Mr.
Laurier. Look 'ere--I want--about that Butteridge machine--.”
Mr. Laurier, sitting on an adjacent table, with a magnificent gesture,
arrested the discourse of the flat-voiced man. “What's HE saying?” said
he.
Then the whole company realised that something was happening to Bert;
either he was suffocating or going mad. He was spluttering.
“Look 'ere! I say! 'Old on a bit!” and trembling and eagerly unbuttoning
himself.
He tore open his collar and opened vest and shirt. He plunged into his
interior and for an instant it seemed he was plucking forth his liver.
Then as he struggled with buttons on his shoulder they perceived this
flattened horror was in fact a terribly dirty flannel chest-protector.
In another moment Bert, in a state of irregular decolletage, was
standing over the table displaying a sheaf of papers.
“These!” he gasped. “These are the plans!... You know! Mr.
Butteridge--his machine! What died! I was the chap that went off in that
balloon!”
For some seconds every one was silent. They stared from these papers to
Bert's white face and blazing eyes, and back to the papers on the table.
Nobody moved. Then the man with the flat voice spoke.
“Irony!” he said, with a note of satisfaction. “Real rightdown Irony!
When it's too late to think of making 'em any more!”
4
They would all no doubt have been eager to hear Bert's story over again,
but it was at this point that Laurier showed his quality. “No, SIR,” he
said, and slid from off his table.
He impounded the dispersing Butteridge plans with one comprehensive
sweep of his arm, rescuing them even from the expository finger-marks of
the man with the flat voice, and handed them to Bert. “Put those back,”
he said, “where you had 'em. We have a journey before us.”
Bert took them.
“Whar?” said the man in the straw hat.
“Why, sir, we are going to find the President of these States and give
these plans over to him. I decline to believe, sir, we are too late.”
“Where is the President?” asked Bert weakly in that pause that followed.
“Logan,” said Laurier, disregarding that feeble inquiry, “you must help
us in this.”
It seemed only a matter of a few minutes before Bert and Laurier and the
storekeeper were examining a number of bicycles that were stowed in the
hinder room of the store. Bert didn't like any of them very much. They
had wood rims and an experience of wood rims in the English climate had
taught him to hate them. That, however, and one or two other objections
to an immediate start were overruled by Laurier. “But where IS the
President?” Bert repeated as they stood behind Logan while he pumped up
a deflated tyre.
Laurier looked down on him. “He is reported in the neighbourhood of
Albany--out towards the Berkshire Hills. He is moving from place to
place and, as far as he can, organising the defence by telegraph and
telephone. The Asiatic air-fleet is trying to locate him. When they
think they have located the seat of government, they throw bombs. This
inconveniences him, but so far they have not come within ten miles of
him. The Asiatic air-fleet is at present scattered all over the
Eastern States, seeking out and destroying gas-works and whatever seems
conducive to the building of airships or the transport of troops.
Our retaliatory measures are slight in the extreme. But with these
machines--Sir, this ride of ours will count among the historical rides
of the world!”
He came near to striking an attitude. “We shan't get to him to-night?”
asked Bert.
“No, sir!” said Laurier. “We shall have to ride some days, sure!”
“And suppose we can't get a lift on a train--or anything?”
“No, sir! There's been no transit by Tanooda for three days. It is no
good waiting. We shall have to get on as well as we can.”
“Startin' now?”
“Starting now!”
“But 'ow about--We shan't be able to do much to-night.”
“May as well ride till we're fagged and sleep then. So much clear gain.
Our road is eastward.”
“Of course,” began Bert, with memories of the dawn upon Goat Island, and
left his sentence unfinished.
He gave his attention to the more scientific packing of the
chest-protector, for several of the plans flapped beyond his vest.
5
For a week Bert led a life of mixed sensations. Amidst these fatigue
in the legs predominated. Mostly he rode, rode with Laurier's back
inexorably ahead, through a land like a larger England, with bigger
hills and wider valleys, larger fields, wider roads, fewer hedges, and
wooden houses with commodious piazzas. He rode. Laurier made inquiries,
Laurier chose the turnings, Laurier doubted, Laurier decided. Now it
seemed they were in telephonic touch with the President; now something
had happened and he was lost again. But always they had to go on, and
always Bert rode. A tyre was deflated. Still he rode. He grew saddle
sore. Laurier declared that unimportant. Asiatic flying ships passed
overhead, the two cyclists made a dash for cover until the sky was
clear. Once a red Asiatic flying-machine came fluttering after them, so
low they could distinguish the aeronaut's head. He followed them for a
mile. Now they came to regions of panic, now to regions of destruction;
here people were fighting for food, here they seemed hardly stirred
from the countryside routine. They spent a day in a deserted and
damaged Albany. The Asiatics had descended and cut every wire and made a
cinder-heap of the Junction, and our travellers pushed on eastward.
They passed a hundred half-heeded incidents, and always Bert was toiling
after Laurier's indefatigable back....
Things struck upon Bert's attention and perplexed him, and then he
passed on with unanswered questionings fading from his mind.
He saw a large house on fire on a hillside to the right, and no man
heeding it....
They came to a narrow railroad bridge and presently to a mono-rail train
standing in the track on its safety feet. It was a remarkably sumptuous
train, the Last Word Trans-Continental Express, and the passengers were
all playing cards or sleeping or preparing a picnic meal on a grassy
slope near at hand. They had been there six days....
At one point ten dark-complexioned men were hanging in a string from the
trees along the roadside. Bert wondered why....
At one peaceful-looking village where they stopped off to get Bert's
tyre mended and found beer and biscuits, they were approached by an
extremely dirty little boy without boots, who spoke as follows:--
“Deyse been hanging a Chink in dose woods!”
“Hanging a Chinaman?” said Laurier.
“Sure. Der sleuths got him rubberin' der rail-road sheds!”
“Oh!”
“Dose guys done wase cartridges. Deyse hung him and dey pulled his legs.
Deyse doin' all der Chinks dey can fine dat weh! Dey ain't takin' no
risks. All der Chinks dey can fine.”
Neither Bert nor Laurier made any reply, and presently, after a
little skilful expectoration, the young gentleman was attracted by
the appearance of two of his friends down the road and shuffled off,
whooping weirdly....
That afternoon they almost ran over a man shot through the body and
partly decomposed, lying near the middle of the road, just outside
Albany. He must have been lying there for some days....
Beyond Albany they came upon a motor car with a tyre burst and a young
woman sitting absolutely passive beside the driver's seat. An old man
was under the car trying to effect some impossible repairs. Beyond,
sitting with a rifle across his knees, with his back to the car, and
staring into the woods, was a young man.
The old man crawled out at their approach and still on all-fours
accosted Bert and Laurier. The car had broken down overnight. The old
man, said he could not understand what was wrong, but he was trying
to puzzle it out. Neither he nor his son-in-law had any mechanical
aptitude. They had been assured this was a fool-proof car. It was
dangerous to have to stop in this place. The party had been attacked
by tramps and had had to fight. It was known they had provisions. He
mentioned a great name in the world of finance. Would Laurier and Bert
stop and help him? He proposed it first hopefully, then urgently, at
last in tears and terror.
“No!” said Laurier inexorable. “We must go on! We have something more
than a woman to save. We have to save America!”
The girl never stirred.
And once they passed a madman singing.
And at last they found the President hiding in a small saloon upon the
outskirts of a place called Pinkerville on the Hudson, and gave the
plans of the Butteridge machine into his hands.