AN ENVOY OF DELIVERANCE.
From the time that the Tsar had received the conditional declaration
of war from the President of the Anglo-Saxon Federation in America to
nightfall on the 29th of November, when the surrender of the capital
of the British Empire was considered to be a matter of a few days
only, the Commander-in-Chief of the forces of the League was
absolutely in the dark, not only as to the actual intentions of the
Terrorists, if they had any, but also as to the doings of his allies
in America.
According to the stipulations arranged between himself and the
confidential agent of the American Government, the blockading
flotilla of dynamite cruisers ought to have sailed from America as
soon as the cypher message containing the news of the battle of Dover
reached New York. The message had been duly sent _viâ_ Queenstown and
New York, and had been acknowledged in the usual way, but no definite
reply had come to it, and a month had elapsed without the appearance
of the promised squadron. The explanation of this will be readily
guessed. The American end of the Queenstown cable had been
reconnected with Washington, but it was under the absolute control of
Tremayne, who permitted no one to use it save himself.
Other messages had been sent to which no reply had been received, and
a swift French cruiser, which had been launched at Brest since the
battle of Dover, had been dispatched across the Atlantic to discover
the reason of this strange silence. She had gone, but she had never
returned. The Atlantic highway appeared to be barred by some
invisible force. No vessels came from the westward, and those which
started from the east were never heard of again.
His Majesty had treated the summons of the President of the
Federation with silent contempt, just as such a victorious autocrat
might have been expected to do. True, he knew the terrific power
wielded by the Terrorists through their aërial fleet, and he had an
uncomfortable conviction, which refused to be entirely stifled, that
in the days to come he would have to reckon with them and it.
But that a member of the Terrorist Brotherhood could by any possible
means have placed himself at the head of any body of men sufficiently
numerous or well-disciplined to make them a force to be seriously
reckoned with in military warfare, his Majesty had never for a moment
believed.
And, more than this, however disquieting might be the uncertainty due
to the ominous silence on the other side of the Atlantic, and the
non-arrival of the expected fleet, there stood the great and
significant fact that the army of the League had been permitted,
without molestation either from the Terrorists or the Federation in
whose name they had presumed to declare war upon him, not only to
destroy what remained of the British fleet, but to completely invest
the very capital of Anglo-Saxondom itself.
All this had been done; the sacred soil of Britain itself had been
violated by the invading hosts; the army of defence had been slowly,
and at a tremendous sacrifice of life on both sides, forced back from
line after line, and position after position, into the city itself;
his batteries were raining their hail of shot and shell from the
heights round London, and his aerostats were hurling ruin from the
sky upon the crowded millions locked up in the beleaguered space; and
yet the man who had presumed to tell him that the hour in which he
set foot on British soil would be the last of his Empire, had done
absolutely nothing to interrupt the march of conquest.
From this it will be seen that Alexander Romanoff was at least as
completely in the dark as to the possible course of the events of the
near future as was the King of England himself, shut up in his
capital, and cut off from all communication from the rest of the
world.
On the morning of the 29th of November there was held at the Prime
Minister's rooms in Downing Street a Cabinet Council, presided over
by the King in person. After the Council had remained for about an
hour in earnest consultation, a stranger was admitted to the room in
which they were sitting.
The reader would have recognised him in a moment as Maurice Colston,
otherwise Alexis Mazanoff, for he was dressed almost exactly as he
had been on that memorable night, just thirteen months before, when
he made the acquaintance of Richard Arnold on the Thames Embankment.
Well-dressed, well-fed, and perfectly at ease, he entered the Council
Chamber without any aggressive assumption, but still with the quiet
confidence of a man who knows that he is practically master of the
situation. How he had even got into London, beleaguered as it was on
every side in such fashion that no one could get out of it without
being seen and shot by the besiegers, was a mystery; but how he could
have in his possession, as he had, a despatch dated thirty-six hours
previously in New York was a still deeper mystery; and upon neither
of these points did he make the slightest attempt to enlighten the
members of the British Cabinet.
All that he said was that he was the bearer of a message from the
President of the Anglo-Saxon Federation in America, and that he was
instructed to return that night to New York with such answer as the
British Government might think fit to make to it. It was this message
that had been the subject of the deliberations of the Council before
his admission, and its net effect was as follows.
It was now practically certain, indeed proved to demonstration, that
the forces at the command of the British Government were not capable
of coping with those brought against them by the commanders of the
League, and that therefore Britain, if left to her own resources,
must inevitably succumb, and submit to such terms as her conquerors
might think fit to impose upon her. The choice before the British
Government thus lay between surrender to her foreign enemies, whose
objects were well known to be dismemberment of the Empire and the
reduction of Great Britain to the rank of a third-class Power,--to
say nothing of the payment of a war indemnity which could not fail to
be paralysing,--and the consent of those who controlled the destinies
of the mother country to accept a Federation of the whole Anglo-Saxon
race, to waive the merely national idea in favour of the racial one,
and to permit the Executive Council of the Federation to assume those
governmental functions which were exercised at present by the King
and the British Houses of Parliament.
In a word, the choice lay between conquest by a league of foreign
powers and the merging of Britain into the Federation of the
English-speaking peoples of the world.
If the former choice were taken, the only prospect possible under the
condition of things was a possibly enormous sacrifice of human life
on the side of both Britain and its enemies, a gigantic loss in
money, the crippling of British trade and commerce, and then a
possible, nay probable, social revolution to which the message
distinctly pointed.
If the latter choice were taken, the forces of the Federation would
be at once brought into the field against those of the League, the
siege of London would be raised, the power of the invaders would be
effectually broken for ever, and the stigma of conquest finally wiped
away.
It is only just to record the fact that in this supreme crisis of
British history the man who most strongly insisted upon the
acceptance of the terms which he had previously, as he now confessed
in the most manly and outspoken fashion, rejected in ignorance of the
true situation of affairs, was the man who believed that he would
lose a crown by accepting them.
When the Ambassador of the Federation had been presented to the
Council, the King rose in his place and handed to him with his own
hands a sealed letter, saying as he did so--
"Mr. Mazanoff, I am still to a great extent in ignorance as to the
inexplicable combination of events which has made it necessary for me
to return this affirmative answer to the message of which you are the
bearer. I am, however, fully aware that the Earl of Alanmere, whose
name I have seen at the foot of this document with the most profound
astonishment, is in a position to do what he says.
"The course of events has been exactly that which he predicted. I
know, too, that whatever causes may have led him to unite himself to
those known as the Terrorists, he is an English nobleman, and a man
to whom falsehood or bad faith is absolutely impossible. In your
marvellous aërial fleet I know also that he wields the only power
capable of being successfully opposed to those terrible machines
which had wrought such havoc upon the fleets and armies, not only of
Britain, but of Europe.
"To a certain extent this is a surrender, but I feel that it will be
better to surrender the destinies of Britain into the hands of her
own blood and kindred than to the tender mercies of her alien
enemies. My own personal feelings must weigh as nothing in the
balance where the fate, not only of this country, but perhaps of the
whole world, is now poised.
"After all, the first duty of a Constitutional King is not to himself
and his dynasty, but to his country and his people, and therefore I
feel that it will be better for me and mine to be citizens of a free
Federation of the English-speaking peoples, and of the nations to
which Britain has given birth, than the titular sovereign and Royal
family of a conquered country, holding the mockery of royalty on the
sufferance of their conquerors.
"Tell Lord Alanmere from me that I now accept the terms he has
offered as President of the Anglo-Saxon Federation, first, because at
all hazards I would see Britain delivered from her enemies; and,
secondly, because I have chosen rather to be an English gentleman
without a crown, than to wear a crown which after all would only be
gift from my conquerors."
Edward VII. spoke with visible emotion, but with a dignity which even
Mazanoff, little and all as he respected the name of king, felt
himself compelled to recognise and respect. He took the letter with a
bow that was more one of reverence than of courtesy, and as he put it
into his breast-pocket of his coat he said--
"The President will receive your Majesty's reply with as genuine
pleasure and satisfaction as I shall give it to him. Though I am a
Russian without a drop of English blood in my veins, I have always
looked upon the British race as the real bulwark of freedom, and I
rejoice that the King of England has not permitted either tradition
or personal feeling to stand in the way of the last triumph of the
Anglo-Saxon race.
"As long as the English language is spoken your Majesty's name will
be held in greater honour for this sacrifice which you make to-day,
than will that of any other English king for the greatest triumph of
arms ever achieved in the history of your country.
"I must now take my leave, for I must be in New York to-morrow night.
I have your word that I shall not be watched or followed after I
leave here. Hold the city for six days more at all costs, and on the
seventh at the latest the siege shall be raised and the enemies of
Britain destroyed in their own entrenchments."
So saying, the envoy of the Federation bowed once more to the King
and the astonished members of his Council, and was escorted to the
door.
Once in the street he strode away rapidly through Parliament Street
and the Strand, then up Drury Lane, until he reached the door of a
mean-looking house in a squalid court, and entering this with a
latch-key, disappeared.
Three hours later a Russian soldier of the line, wearing an almost
imperceptible knot of red ribbon in one of the button-holes of his
tunic, passed through the Russian lines on Hampstead Heath
unchallenged by the sentries, and made his way northward to Northaw
Wood, which he reached soon after nightfall.
Within half an hour the _Ithuriel_ rose from the midst of a thick
clump of trees like a grey shadow rising into the night, and darted
southward and upward at such a speed that the keenest eyes must soon
have lost sight of her from the earth.
She passed over the beleaguered city at a height of nearly ten
thousand feet, and then swept sharply round to the eastward. She
stopped immediately over the lights of Sheerness, and descended to
within a thousand feet of the dock, in which could be seen the
detachment of the French submarine vessels lying waiting to be sent
on their next errand of destruction.
As soon as those on board her had made out the dock clearly she
ascended a thousand feet and went about half a mile to the southward.
From that position she poured a rapid hail of shells into the dock,
which was instantly transformed into a cavity vomiting green flame
and fragments of iron and human bodies. In five minutes nothing was
left of the dock or its contents but a churned-up swamp of muddy
water and shattered stonework.
Then, her errand so far accomplished, the air-ship sped away to the
south-westward, and within an hour she had destroyed in like fashion
the submarine squadron in the Government dock at Portsmouth, and was
winging her way westward to New York with the reply of the King of
England to the President of the Federation.