CHAPTER XLII.
THE EVE OF ARMAGEDDON.
When the news of the destruction of the two divisions of thesubmarine squadron reached the headquarters of the League on thenight of the 29th, it would have been difficult to say whether angeror consternation most prevailed among the leaders. A council of warwas hurriedly summoned to discuss an event which it was impossible tolook upon as anything less than a calamity.
The destruction which had been wrought was of itself disastrousenough, for it deprived the League of the chief means by which it haddestroyed the British fleet and kept command of the sea. But evenmore terrible than the actual destruction was the unexpectedsuddenness 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 theoperations of the Terrorists; and now, without a moment's warning,this apparently omnipresent and yet almost invisible force had struckonce more with irresistible effect, and instantly vanished back intothe mystery out of which it had come.
Who could tell when the next blow would fall, or in what shape thenext assault would be delivered? In the presence of such enemies,invisible and unreachable, the commanders of the League, to theirrage and disgust, felt themselves, on the eve of their supremevictory, as impotent as a man armed with a sword would have felt infront of a Gatling gun.
Consternation naturally led to divided councils. The French andItalian commanders were for an immediate general assault on London atall hazards, and the enforcement of terms of surrender at the pointof the sword. The Tsar, on the other hand, insisted on the pursuanceof the original policy of reduction by starvation, as he rightlyconsidered that, great as the attacking force was, it would bepractically swamped amidst the infuriated millions of the besieged,and that, even if the assault were successful, the loss of life wouldbe so enormous that the conquest of the rest of Britain--which insuch a case would almost certainly rise to a man--would be next doorto impossible.
He, however, so far yielded as to agree to send a message to the Kingof England to arrange terms of surrender, if possible at once, inorder to save further bloodshed, and then, if these terms wererejected, to prepare for a general assault on the seventh day fromthen.
These terms were accepted as a compromise, and the next morning thebombardment ceased both from the land batteries and the air. Atdaybreak on the 30th an envoy left the Tsar's headquarters in one ofthe 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 effectthat on condition the bombardment ceased for the time being, Londonwould be surrendered at noon on the 6th of December if no help had bythat time arrived from the other cities of Britain. These terms,after considerable opposition from General le Gallifet and GeneralCosensz, the Italian Commander-in-Chief, were adopted and ratified atnoon that day, almost at the very moment that Alexis Mazanoff waspresenting the reply of the King of England to the President of theFederation in New York.
As the relief expedition had been fully decided upon, whether theBritish Government recognised the Federation or not, everything wasin readiness for an immediate start as soon as the _Ithuriel_ broughtdefinite news as to the acceptation or rejection of the President'ssecond offer. For the last seven weeks the ten dockyards of the eastcoast of America, and at Halifax in Nova Scotia, had been throngedwith shipping, and swarming with workmen and sailors.
All the vessels which had been swept off the Atlantic by thewar-storm, and which were of sufficient size and speed to take partin the expedition, had been collected at these eleven ports. Wholefleets of liners of half a dozen different nationalities, which hadbeen laid up since the establishment of the blockade, were now lyingalongside the quays, taking in vast quantities of wheat andmiscellaneous food-stuffs, which were being poured into their holdsfrom the glutted markets of America and Canada. Every one of thesevessels was fitted up as a troopship, and by the time allarrangements were complete, more than a thousand vessels, carrying onan average twelve hundred men each, were ready to take the sea.
In addition to these there was a fleet of warships as yet unscathedby shot or shell, consisting of thirty battleships, a hundred and tencruisers, and the flotilla of dynamite cruisers which had beenconstructed by the late Government at the expense of the capitalistRing. There were no less than two hundred of these strange butterribly 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 thecompartments between the inner and outer hull could be wholly orpartially filled with water. When they were entirely filled the hullsank below the surface, leaving nothing as a mark to an enemy save aplatform standing ten feet above the water. This platform,constructed throughout of 6-inch nickel-steel, was of oval shape, ahundred feet long and thirty broad in its greatest diameter, andcarried the heavily armoured wheel-house and conning-tower, twofunnels, six ventilators, and two huge pneumatic guns, eachseventy-five feet long, working on pivots nearly amidships. Theseweapons, with an air-charge of three hundred atmospheres, would throwfour hundred pounds of dynamite to a distance of three miles withsuch accuracy that the projectile would invariably fall within aspace of twenty feet square. The guns could be discharged once aminute, and could thus hurl 48,000 lbs. of dynamite an hour upon ahostile fleet or fortifications.
Each cruiser also carried two under-water torpedo tubes ahead and twoastern. The funnels emitted no smoke, but merely supplied draught tothe petroleum furnaces, which burned with practically no waste, anddeveloped a head of steam which drove the long submerged hullsthrough the water at a rate of thirty-two knots, or more thanthirty-six miles an hour.
Such was the enormous naval armament, manned by nearly a hundredthousand men, which hoisted the Federation flag at one o'clock on theafternoon of the 30th of November, when orders were telegraphed northand south from Washington to get ready for sea. Two hours later thevast flotilla of warships and transports had cleared American waters,and was converging towards a point indicated by the intersection ofthe 41st parallel of latitude with the 40th meridian of longitude.
At this ocean rendezvous the divisions of the fleet and its convoysmet and shaped their course for the mouth of the English Channel.They proceeded in column of line abreast three deep, headed by thedynamite cruisers, after which came the other warships which hadformed the American Navy, and after these again came the troopshipsand transports properly protected by cruisers on their flanks and intheir rear.
The commander of every warship and transport had the most minuteinstructions as to how he was to act on reaching British waters, andwhat these were will become apparent in due course. The weather wasfairly good for the time of year, and, as there was but little dangerof collision on the now deserted waters of the Atlantic, the wholeflotilla kept at full speed all the way. As, however, its speed wasnecessarily limited by that of its slowest steamer until the scene ofaction was reached, it was after midnight on the 5th of December whenits various detachments had reached their appointed stations on theEnglish coast.
At the entrance of the English Channel and St. George's Channel a fewscouting cruisers, flying French, Russian, and Italian colours, hadbeen run down and sunk by the dynamite cruisers. Strict orders hadbeen given by Tremayne to destroy everything flying a hostile flag,and not to permit any news to be taken to England of the approach ofthe flotilla. The Federation was waging a war, not merely of conquestand revenge, but of extermination, and no more mercy was to be shownto its enemies than they had shown in their march of victory from oneend of Europe to the other.
While the Federation fleet had been crossing the Atlantic, otherevents no less important had been taking place in England andScotland. The hitherto apparently inert mass of the population hadsuddenly awakened out of its lethargy. In town and country alike menforsook their daily avocations as if by one
consent. As in America,artisans, pitmen, clerks, and tradesmen were suddenly transformedinto soldiers, who drilled, first in squads of ten, and then inhundreds and thousands, and finally in tens of thousands, alluniformed alike in rough grey breeches and tunics, with a knot of redribbon in the button-hole, and all armed with rifle, bayonet, andrevolver, which they seemed to handle with a strange and ominousfamiliarity.
All the railway traffic over the island was stopped, and therolling-stock collected at the great stations along the lines toLondon, and at the same time all the telegraph wires communicatingwith the south and east were cut. As day after day passed, signs ofan intense but strongly suppressed excitement became more and morevisible all over the provinces, and especially in the great towns andcities.
In London very much the same thing had happened. Hundreds ofthousands of civilians vanished during that seven days of anxiouswaiting for the hour of deliverance, and in their place sprang uporderly regiments of grey-clad soldiers, who saw the red knot in eachother's button-holes, and welcomed each other as comrades unknownbefore.
To the surprise of the commanders of the regular army, orders hadbeen issued by the King that all possible assistance was to berendered to these strange legions, which had thus so suddenly spranginto existence; and the result was that when the sun set on the 5thof 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 oftheir fellow-countrymen outside London, were waiting for a sign fromthe sky to fling themselves upon the entrapped and unsuspectinginvader.
That night countless eyes were upturned throughout the length andbreadth of Britain to the dun pall of wintry cloud that overspreadthe land. Yet so far, so perfect was the discipline of this gigantichost, not a sign of overt hostile movement had been made, and thecommanders of the armies of the League looked forward with exultingconfidence to the moment, now only a few hours distant, when thecapital of the British Empire, cut off from all help, should besurrendered into their hands in accordance with the terms agreedupon.
When night fell the _Ithuriel_ was floating four thousand feet aboveAberdeen. Arnold and Natasha, wrapped in warm furs, were standing ondeck impatiently watching the sun sinking down over the sea of cloudswhich lay between them and the earth.
"There it goes at last!" exclaimed Natasha, as the last of the levelbeams shot across the cloud-sea and the rim of the pale disc sankbelow the surface of the vapoury ocean. "The time that we have waitedand worked for so long has come at last. This is the eve ofArmageddon! Who would think it, floating up here above the clouds andbeneath those cold, calmly shining stars! And yet the fate of thewhole world is trembling in the balance, and the doings of the nexttwenty-four hours will settle the destiny of mankind for generationsto come. The hour of the Revolution has struck at last"--
"And therefore it is time that the Angel of the Revolution shouldgive the last signal with her own hand!" said Arnold, seized with asudden fancy, "Come, you shall start the dynamo yourself."
"Yes I will, and, I hope, kindle a flame that shall purge the earthof tyranny and oppression for ever. Richard, what must my father bethinking of just now down yonder in the cabin?"
"I dare not even guess. To-morrow or the next day will be the day ofreckoning, and then God help those of whom he demands payment, forthey will need it. The vials of wrath are full, and before long theoppressors of the earth will have drained them to the dregs. Come, itis time we went down."
They descended together to the engine-room, and meanwhile theair-ship sank through the clouds until the lights of Aberdeen layabout a thousand feet below. A lens of red glass had been fitted tothe searchlight of the _Ithuriel_, and all that was necessary was toconnect the forward engine with the dynamo.
Arnold put Natasha's hand on a little lever. As she took hold of itshe thought with a shudder of the mighty forces of destruction whichher next movement would let loose. Then she thought of all that thosenearest and dearest to her had suffered at the hands of Russiandespotism, and of all the nameless horrors of the rule whosedeath-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 witha sharp, determined motion, and the next instant a broad fan ofblood-red light shot over the _Ithuriel's_ bows.
At the same moment the air-ship's propellers began to spin round, andthen with the flood of red light streaming in front of her, sheheaded southward at full speed towards Edinburgh. The signal flashedover the Scottish capital, and then the _Ithuriel_ swerved round tothe westward.
Half an hour later Glasgow saw it, and then away she sped southwardacross the Border to Carlisle; and so through the long December nightshe flew hither and thither, eastward and westward, flashing the redbattle-signal over field and village and town; and wherever it shonearmed men sprang up like the fruit of the fabled dragon's teeth,companies were mustered in streets and squares and fields and marchedto railway stations; and soon long trains, one after another inendless succession, got into motion, all moving towards the south andeast, all converging upon London.
Last of all, after it had made a swift circuit of northern andcentral and western England, the red light swept along the southcoast, and then swerved northward again till it flashed thrice overLondon, and then it vanished into the darkness of the hour before thedawn of Armageddon.
Since the ever-memorable night of Thursday the 29th of July 1588,three hundred and sixteen years before, when "The beacon blazed uponthe roof of Edgcumbe's lofty Hall," and the answering fires sprang up"From Eddystone to Berwick bounds, from Lynn to Milford Bay," to tellthat the Spanish Armada was in sight, there had been no such night inEngland, nor had men ever dreamed that there should be.
But great as had been the deeds done by the heroes of the sixteenthcentury with the pigmy means at their command, they were but themerest child's play to the awful storm of devastation which, in a fewhours, was to burst over southern England. Then it was Englandagainst Spain; now it was Anglo-Saxondom against the world; and theconquering race of earth, armed with the most terrific powers ofdestruction that human wit had ever devised, was rising in its wrath,millions strong, to wipe out the stain of invasion from the sacredsoil of the motherland of the Anglo-Saxon nations.