THE EVE OF ARMAGEDDON.
When the news of the destruction of the two divisions of the
submarine squadron reached the headquarters of the League on the
night of the 29th, it would have been difficult to say whether anger
or consternation most prevailed among the leaders. A council of war
was hurriedly summoned to discuss an event which it was impossible to
look upon as anything less than a calamity.
The destruction which had been wrought was of itself disastrous
enough, for it deprived the League of the chief means by which it had
destroyed the British fleet and kept command of the sea. But even
more terrible than the actual destruction was the unexpected
suddenness with which the blow had been delivered.
For five months, that is to say, from the recapture of the _Lucifer_
at Aberdeen, the Tsar and his coadjutors had seen nothing of the
operations of the Terrorists; and now, without a moment's warning,
this apparently omnipresent and yet almost invisible force had struck
once more with irresistible effect, and instantly vanished back into
the mystery out of which it had come.
Who could tell when the next blow would fall, or in what shape the
next assault would be delivered? In the presence of such enemies,
invisible and unreachable, the commanders of the League, to their
rage and disgust, felt themselves, on the eve of their supreme
victory, as impotent as a man armed with a sword would have felt in
front of a Gatling gun.
Consternation naturally led to divided councils. The French and
Italian commanders were for an immediate general assault on London at
all hazards, and the enforcement of terms of surrender at the point
of the sword. The Tsar, on the other hand, insisted on the pursuance
of the original policy of reduction by starvation, as he rightly
considered that, great as the attacking force was, it would be
practically swamped amidst the infuriated millions of the besieged,
and that, even if the assault were successful, the loss of life would
be so enormous that the conquest of the rest of Britain--which in
such a case would almost certainly rise to a man--would be next door
to impossible.
He, however, so far yielded as to agree to send a message to the King
of England to arrange terms of surrender, if possible at once, in
order to save further bloodshed, and then, if these terms were
rejected, to prepare for a general assault on the seventh day from
then.
These terms were accepted as a compromise, and the next morning the
bombardment ceased both from the land batteries and the air. At
daybreak on the 30th an envoy left the Tsar's headquarters in one of
the war-balloons, flying a flag of truce, and descended in Hyde Park.
He was received by the King in Council at Buckingham Palace, and,
after a lengthy deliberation, an answer was returned to the effect
that on condition the bombardment ceased for the time being, London
would be surrendered at noon on the 6th of December if no help had by
that time arrived from the other cities of Britain. These terms,
after considerable opposition from General le Gallifet and General
Cosensz, the Italian Commander-in-Chief, were adopted and ratified at
noon that day, almost at the very moment that Alexis Mazanoff was
presenting the reply of the King of England to the President of the
Federation in New York.
As the relief expedition had been fully decided upon, whether the
British Government recognised the Federation or not, everything was
in readiness for an immediate start as soon as the _Ithuriel_ brought
definite news as to the acceptation or rejection of the President's
second offer. For the last seven weeks the ten dockyards of the east
coast of America, and at Halifax in Nova Scotia, had been thronged
with shipping, and swarming with workmen and sailors.
All the vessels which had been swept off the Atlantic by the
war-storm, and which were of sufficient size and speed to take part
in the expedition, had been collected at these eleven ports. Whole
fleets of liners of half a dozen different nationalities, which had
been laid up since the establishment of the blockade, were now lying
alongside the quays, taking in vast quantities of wheat and
miscellaneous food-stuffs, which were being poured into their holds
from the glutted markets of America and Canada. Every one of these
vessels was fitted up as a troopship, and by the time all
arrangements were complete, more than a thousand vessels, carrying on
an average twelve hundred men each, were ready to take the sea.
In addition to these there was a fleet of warships as yet unscathed
by shot or shell, consisting of thirty battleships, a hundred and ten
cruisers, and the flotilla of dynamite cruisers which had been
constructed by the late Government at the expense of the capitalist
Ring. There were no less than two hundred of these strange but
terribly destructive craft, the lineal descendants of the _Vesuvius_,
which, as the naval reader will remember, was commissioned in 1890.
They were double-hulled vessels built on the whale-back plan, and the
compartments between the inner and outer hull could be wholly or
partially filled with water. When they were entirely filled the hull
sank below the surface, leaving nothing as a mark to an enemy save a
platform standing ten feet above the water. This platform,
constructed throughout of 6-inch nickel-steel, was of oval shape, a
hundred feet long and thirty broad in its greatest diameter, and
carried the heavily armoured wheel-house and conning-tower, two
funnels, six ventilators, and two huge pneumatic guns, each
seventy-five feet long, working on pivots nearly amidships. These
weapons, with an air-charge of three hundred atmospheres, would throw
four hundred pounds of dynamite to a distance of three miles with
such accuracy that the projectile would invariably fall within a
space of twenty feet square. The guns could be discharged once a
minute, and could thus hurl 48,000 lbs. of dynamite an hour upon a
hostile fleet or fortifications.
Each cruiser also carried two under-water torpedo tubes ahead and two
astern. The funnels emitted no smoke, but merely supplied draught to
the petroleum furnaces, which burned with practically no waste, and
developed a head of steam which drove the long submerged hulls
through the water at a rate of thirty-two knots, or more than
thirty-six miles an hour.
Such was the enormous naval armament, manned by nearly a hundred
thousand men, which hoisted the Federation flag at one o'clock on the
afternoon of the 30th of November, when orders were telegraphed north
and south from Washington to get ready for sea. Two hours later the
vast flotilla of warships and transports had cleared American waters,
and was converging towards a point indicated by the intersection of
the 41st parallel of latitude with the 40th meridian of longitude.
At this ocean rendezvous the divisions of the fleet and its convoys
met and shaped their course for the mouth of the English Channel.
They proceeded in column of line abreast three deep, headed by the
dynamite cruisers, after which came the other warships which had
formed the American Navy, and after these again came the troopships
and transports properly protected by cruisers on their flanks and in
their rear.
The commander of every warship and transport had the most minute
instructions as to how he was to act on reaching British waters, and
what these were will become apparent in due course. The weather was
fairly good for the time of year, and, as there was but little danger
of collision on the now deserted waters of the Atlantic, the whole
flotilla kept at full speed all the way. As, however, its speed was
necessarily limited by that of its slowest steamer until the scene of
action was reached, it was after midnight on the 5th of December when
its various detachments had reached their appointed stations on the
English coast.
At the entrance of the English Channel and St. George's Channel a few
scouting cruisers, flying French, Russian, and Italian colours, had
been run down and sunk by the dynamite cruisers. Strict orders had
been given by Tremayne to destroy everything flying a hostile flag,
and not to permit any news to be taken to England of the approach of
the flotilla. The Federation was waging a war, not merely of conquest
and revenge, but of extermination, and no more mercy was to be shown
to its enemies than they had shown in their march of victory from one
end of Europe to the other.
While the Federation fleet had been crossing the Atlantic, other
events no less important had been taking place in England and
Scotland. The hitherto apparently inert mass of the population had
suddenly awakened out of its lethargy. In town and country alike men
forsook their daily avocations as if by one consent. As in America,
artisans, pitmen, clerks, and tradesmen were suddenly transformed
into soldiers, who drilled, first in squads of ten, and then in
hundreds and thousands, and finally in tens of thousands, all
uniformed alike in rough grey breeches and tunics, with a knot of red
ribbon in the button-hole, and all armed with rifle, bayonet, and
revolver, which they seemed to handle with a strange and ominous
familiarity.
All the railway traffic over the island was stopped, and the
rolling-stock collected at the great stations along the lines to
London, and at the same time all the telegraph wires communicating
with the south and east were cut. As day after day passed, signs of
an intense but strongly suppressed excitement became more and more
visible all over the provinces, and especially in the great towns and
cities.
In London very much the same thing had happened. Hundreds of
thousands of civilians vanished during that seven days of anxious
waiting for the hour of deliverance, and in their place sprang up
orderly regiments of grey-clad soldiers, who saw the red knot in each
other's button-holes, and welcomed each other as comrades unknown
before.
To the surprise of the commanders of the regular army, orders had
been issued by the King that all possible assistance was to be
rendered to these strange legions, which had thus so suddenly sprang
into existence; and the result was that when the sun set on the 5th
of December, the twenty-first day of the total blockade of London,
the beleaguered space contained over two millions of armed men,
hungering both for food and vengeance, who, like the five millions of
their fellow-countrymen outside London, were waiting for a sign from
the sky to fling themselves upon the entrapped and unsuspecting
invader.
That night countless eyes were upturned throughout the length and
breadth of Britain to the dun pall of wintry cloud that overspread
the land. Yet so far, so perfect was the discipline of this gigantic
host, not a sign of overt hostile movement had been made, and the
commanders of the armies of the League looked forward with exulting
confidence to the moment, now only a few hours distant, when the
capital of the British Empire, cut off from all help, should be
surrendered into their hands in accordance with the terms agreed
upon.
When night fell the _Ithuriel_ was floating four thousand feet above
Aberdeen. Arnold and Natasha, wrapped in warm furs, were standing on
deck impatiently watching the sun sinking down over the sea of clouds
which lay between them and the earth.
"There it goes at last!" exclaimed Natasha, as the last of the level
beams shot across the cloud-sea and the rim of the pale disc sank
below the surface of the vapoury ocean. "The time that we have waited
and worked for so long has come at last. This is the eve of
Armageddon! Who would think it, floating up here above the clouds and
beneath those cold, calmly shining stars! And yet the fate of the
whole world is trembling in the balance, and the doings of the next
twenty-four hours will settle the destiny of mankind for generations
to come. The hour of the Revolution has struck at last"--
"And therefore it is time that the Angel of the Revolution should
give the last signal with her own hand!" said Arnold, seized with a
sudden fancy, "Come, you shall start the dynamo yourself."
"Yes I will, and, I hope, kindle a flame that shall purge the earth
of tyranny and oppression for ever. Richard, what must my father be
thinking of just now down yonder in the cabin?"
"I dare not even guess. To-morrow or the next day will be the day of
reckoning, and then God help those of whom he demands payment, for
they will need it. The vials of wrath are full, and before long the
oppressors of the earth will have drained them to the dregs. Come, it
is time we went down."
They descended together to the engine-room, and meanwhile the
air-ship sank through the clouds until the lights of Aberdeen lay
about a thousand feet below. A lens of red glass had been fitted to
the searchlight of the _Ithuriel_, and all that was necessary was to
connect the forward engine with the dynamo.
Arnold put Natasha's hand on a little lever. As she took hold of it
she thought with a shudder of the mighty forces of destruction which
her next movement would let loose. Then she thought of all that those
nearest and dearest to her had suffered at the hands of Russian
despotism, and of all the nameless horrors of the rule whose
death-signal she was about to give.
As she did so her grip tightened on the lever, and when Arnold,
having given his orders to the head engineer as to speed and course,
put his hand on her shoulder and said, "Now!" she pulled it back with
a sharp, determined motion, and the next instant a broad fan of
blood-red light shot over the _Ithuriel's_ bows.
At the same moment the air-ship's propellers began to spin round, and
then with the flood of red light streaming in front of her, she
headed southward at full speed towards Edinburgh. The signal flashed
over the Scottish capital, and then the _Ithuriel_ swerved round to
the westward.
Half an hour later Glasgow saw it, and then away she sped southward
across the Border to Carlisle; and so through the long December night
she flew hither and thither, eastward and westward, flashing the red
battle-signal over field and village and town; and wherever it shone
armed men sprang up like the fruit of the fabled dragon's teeth,
companies were mustered in streets and squares and fields and marched
to railway stations; and soon long trains, one after another in
endless succession, got into motion, all moving towards the south and
east, all converging upon London.
Last of all, after it had made a swift circuit of northern and
central and western England, the red light swept along the south
coast, and then swerved northward again till it flashed thrice over
London, and then it vanished into the darkness of the hour before the
dawn of Armageddon.
Since the ever-memorable night of Thursday the 29th of July 1588,
three hundred and sixteen years before, when "The beacon blazed upon
the roof of Edgcumbe's lofty Hall," and the answering fires sprang up
"From Eddystone to Berwick bounds, from Lynn to Milford Bay," to tell
that the Spanish Armada was in sight, there had been no such night in
England, nor had men ever dreamed that there should be.
But great as had been the deeds done by the heroes of the sixteenth
century with the pigmy means at their command, they were but the
merest child's play to the awful storm of devastation which, in a few
hours, was to burst over southern England. Then it was England
against Spain; now it was Anglo-Saxondom against the world; and the
conquering race of earth, armed with the most terrific powers of
destruction that human wit had ever devised, was rising in its wrath,
millions strong, to wipe out the stain of invasion from the sacred
soil of the motherland of the Anglo-Saxon nations.