CHAPTER XLIII.
THE OLD LION AT BAY.
The morning of the 6th of December dawned grey and cold over Londonand the hosts that were waiting for its surrender. Scarcely any smokerose from the myriad chimneys of the vast city, for the coal wasalmost all burnt, and what was left was selling at L12 a ton. Woodwas so scarce that people were tearing up the woodwork of theirhouses to keep a little fire going.
So the steel-grey sky remained clear, for towards daybreak the cloudshad been condensed by a cold north-easter into a sharp fall of fine,icy snow, and as the sun gained power it shone chilly over thewhitened landscape, the innumerable roofs of London, and the miles oftents lining the hills to the north and south of the Thames valley.
The havoc wrought by the bombardment on the public buildings of thegreat city had been terrible. Of the Houses of Parliament only ashapeless heap of broken stones remained, the Law Courts were inruins, what had been the Albert Hall was now a roofless ring ofblackened walls, Nelson's Column lay shattered across TrafalgarSquare, and the Royal Exchange, the Bank of England, and the MansionHouse mingled their fragments in the heart of the almost desertedcity.
Only three of the great buildings of London had suffered no damage.These were the British Museum, Westminster Abbey, and St Paul's,which had been spared in accordance with special orders issued by thecommanders of the League. The two former were spared for the samereason that the Germans had spared Strasburg Cathedral in1870--because their destruction would have been a loss, not toBritain alone, but to the world.
The great church of the metropolis had been left untouched chieflybecause it had been arranged that, on the fall of London, the Tsarwas to be proclaimed Emperor of Asia under its dome, and at the sametime General le Gallifet was to assume the Dictatorship of France andabolish the Republic, which for more than ten years had been theplaything of unprincipled financiers, and the laughing-stock ofEurope. As the sun rose the great golden cross, rising high out ofthe wilderness of houses, shone more and more brightly under thebrightening sky, and millions of eyes looked upon it from within thecity and from without with feelings far asunder as triumph anddefeat.
At daybreak the last meal had been eaten by the defenders of thecity. To supply it almost every animal left in London had beensacrificed, and the last drop of liquor was drunk, even to the lastbottle of wine in the Royal cellars, which the King shared with histwo commanders-in-chief, Lord Roberts and Lord Wolseley, in thepresence of the troops on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. At nineo'clock the King and Queen attended service in St. Paul's, and whenthey left the Cathedral half an hour later the besiegers on theheights were astounded to hear the bells of all the steeples leftstanding in London ring out in a triumphant series of peals whichrippled away eastward and westward from St. Paul's and WestminsterAbbey, caught up and carried on by steeple after steeple, until fromHighgate to Dulwich, and from Hammersmith to Canning Town, thebeleaguered and starving city might have been celebrating some greattriumph or deliverance.
The astonished besiegers could only put the extraordinarymanifestation down to joy on the part of the citizens at the nearapproaching end of the siege; but before the bells of London had beenringing for half an hour this fallacious idea was dispelled fromtheir minds in a very stern and summary fashion.
Since nightfall there had been no communication with the secretagents of the League in the various towns of England and Scotland. Atten o'clock a small company of Cossacks spurred and flogged theirjaded horses up the northern slope of Muswell Hill, on which the Tsarhad fixed his headquarters. Nearly every man was wounded, and thehorses were in the last stages of exhaustion. Their captain was atonce admitted to the presence of the Tsar, and, flinging himself onthe ground before the enraged Autocrat, gasped out the dreadfultidings that his little company were the sole survivors of the armyof occupation that had been left at Harwich, and which, twelve hoursbefore, had been thirty thousand strong.
A huge fleet of strange-looking vessels, flying a plain blood-redflag, had just before four A.M. forced the approaches to the harbour,sunk every transport and warship with guns that were fired withoutflame, or smoke, or report, and whose projectiles shatteredeverything that they struck. Immediately afterwards an immenseflotilla of transports had steamed in, and, under the protection ofthose terrible guns, had landed a hundred thousand men, all dressedin the same plain grey uniform, with no facings or ornaments save aknot of red ribbon at the button-hole, and armed with magazine rifleand a bayonet and a brace of revolvers. All were English by theirspeech, and every man appeared to know exactly what to do with veryfew orders from his officers.
This invading force had hunted the Russians out of Harwich likerabbits out of a warren, while the ships in the harbour had hurledtheir shells up into the air so that they fell back to earth on theretreating army and exploded with frightful effect. The general incommand had at once telegraphed to London for a detachment ofwar-balloons and reinforcements, but no response had been received.
After four hours' fighting the Russian army was in full retreat,while the attacking force was constantly increasing as transportafter transport steamed into the harbour and landed her men. AtColchester the Russians had been met by another vast army which hadapparently sprung from the earth, dressed and armed exactly as theinvading force was. What its numbers were there was no possibility oftelling.
By this time, too, treachery began to show itself in the Russianranks, and whole companies suddenly appeared with the red knot ofribbon in their tunics, and instantly turned their weapons againsttheir comrades, shooting them down without warning or mercy. Noquarter had been given to those who did not show the ribbon. Most ofthem died fighting, but those who had thrown away their arms wereshot down all the same.
Whoever commanded this strange army had manifestly given orders totake no prisoners, and it was equally certain that its movements weredirected by the Terrorists, for everywhere the battle-cries had been,"In the Master's name!" and "Slay, and spare not!"
The whole of the army, save the deserters, had been destroyed, andthe deserters had immediately assumed the grey uniforms of those ofthe Terrorist army who had fallen. The Cossack captain and his fortyor fifty followers were the sole remains of a body of three thousandmen who had fought their way through the second army. The wholecountry to the north and east seemed alive with the grey soldiery,and it was only after a hundred hair-breadth escapes that they hadmanaged to reach the protection of the lines round London.
Such was the tale of the bringer of bad tidings to the Tsar at themoment when he was looking forward to the crowning triumph of hisreign. Like the good soldier that he was, he wasted no time inthinking at a moment when everything depended on instant action.
He at once despatched a war-balloon to the French and Italianheadquarters with a note containing the terrible news from Harwich,and requesting Generals le Gallifet and Cosensz to lose no time incommunicating with the eastern and southern ports, and in throwingout corps of observation supported by war-balloons. Evidently theAmerican Government had played the League false at the last moment,and had allied herself with Britain.
As soon as he had sent off this message, the Tsar ordered a fleet offorty aerostats to proceed to the north-eastward, in advance of aforce of infantry and cavalry numbering three hundred thousand men,and supported by fifty batteries of field and machine guns, which hedetached to stop the progress of the Federation army towards London.Before this force was in motion a reply came back from General leGallifet to the effect that all communication with the south and eastwas stopped, and that an aerostat, which had been on scout dutyduring the night, had returned with the news that the whole countryappeared to be up in arms from Portsmouth to Dover. Corps ofobservation and a fleet of thirty aerostats had been sent out, andthree army corps were already on the march to the south and east.
Meanwhile, the hour for the surrender of London was drawing verynear, and all the while the bells were sending their mingled melodyof peals and carillons up into the clear frosty
air with a defiantjoyousness that seemed to speak of anything but surrender. As twelveo'clock approached the guns of all the batteries on the heights wereloaded and trained on different parts of the city, and the whole ofthe forces left after the detachment of the armies that had been sentto engage the battalions of the Federation prepared to descend uponthe devoted city from all sides after the two hours' incessantbombardment that had been ordered to precede the general attack.
It had been arranged that if the city surrendered a white flag was tobe hoisted on the cross of St. Paul's.
Within a few minutes of twelve the Tsar ascended to the roof of theAlexandra Palace on Muswell Hill, and turned his field-glasses on thetowering dome. His face and lips were bloodless with repressed butintense anxiety, but the hands that held his glasses to his eyes wereas steady as though he had been watching a review of his own troops.It was the supreme moment of his victorious career. He waspractically master of Europe. Only Britain held out. The relievingforces would be rent to fragments by his war-balloons, and thendecimated by his troops as the legions of Germany and Austria hadbeen. The capital of the English-speaking world lay starving at hisfeet, and a few minutes would see--
Ha! there goes the flag at last. A little ball of white buntingcreeps up from the gallery above the dark dome. It clears the railingunder the pedestal, and climbs to the apex of the shining cross. Asit does so the wild chorus of the bells suddenly ceases, and out ofthe silence that follows come the deep booming strokes of the greatbell of St. Paul's sounding the hour of twelve.
As the last stroke dies away the ball bursts, and the White Ensign ofBritain crossed by the Red Cross of St. George, and with the Jack inthe corner, floats out defiantly on the breeze, greeted by thereawakening clamour of the bells, and a deep hoarse cry from millionsof throats, that rolls like a vast sea of sound up the slopes to theencampments of the League.
With an irrepressible cry of rage, Alexander dashed his field-glassto the ground, and shouted, in a voice broken with passion--
"So! They have tricked us. Let the bombardment begin at once, andbring that flag down with the first shots!"
But before the words were out of his mouth, the bombardment hadalready commenced in a very different fashion to that in which he hadintended that it should begin. So intense had been the interest withwhich all eyes had been turned on the Cross of St. Paul's that no onehad noticed twelve little points of shining light hanging high in airover the batteries of the besiegers, six to the north and six to thesouth.
But the moment that the Ensign of St. George floated from the summitof St. Paul's a rapid series of explosions roared out like asuccession of thunder-claps along the lines of the batteries. Thehills of Surrey, and Kent, and Middlesex were suddenly transformedinto volcanoes spouting flame and thick black smoke, and flingingclouds of dust and fragments of darker objects high into the air.
The order of the Tsar was obeyed in part only, for by the time thatthe word to recommence the bombardment had been flashed round thecircuit of the entrenchments, more than half the batteries had beenput out of action. The twelve air-ships stationed at equal intervalsround the vast ellipse, and discharging their No. 3 shell from theirfour guns ahead and astern, from an elevation of four thousand feet,had simultaneously wrecked half the batteries of the besiegers beforetheir occupants had any clear idea of what was really happening.
Wherever one of those shells fell and exploded, earth and stone andiron melted into dust under the terrific force of the explodinggases, and the air-ships, moving with a velocity compared with whichthe utmost speed of the aerostats was as a snail's pace, flittedhither and thither wherever a battery got into action, and destroyedit before the second round had been fired.
There were still twenty-five aerostats at the command of the Tsarwhich had not been sent against the relieving forces, and as soon asit was realised that the aerial bombardment of the batteries camefrom the air-ships of the Terrorist fleet, they were sent into theair to engage them at all hazards. They outnumbered them two to one,but there was no comparison between the manoeuvring powers of the twoaerial squadrons.
As soon as the aerostats rose into the air, the Terrorist fleetreceded northward and southward from the batteries. Their guns had asix-mile range, and it did not matter to them which side of theassailed area they lay. They could still hurl their explosives withthe same deadly precision on the appointed mark. But with theaerostats it was a very different matter. They could only drop theirshells vertically, and where they were not exactly above the objectof attack their shells exploded with comparative harmlessness.
As a natural consequence they had to follow the air-ships, not onlyaway from London, but over their own encampments, in order to bringthem to anything like close quarters. The aerostats possessed oneadvantage, and one only, over the air-ships. They were able to riseto a much greater height. But this advantage the air-ships very soonturned into a disadvantage by reason of their immensely superiorspeed and ease of handling. They darted about at such a speed overthe heads of the massed forces of the League on either side ofLondon, that it was impossible to drop shells upon them withoutrunning the inevitable risk of missing the small and swiftly-movingair-ship, and so causing the shell to burst amidst friends instead offoes.
Thus the Terrorist fleet, sweeping hither and thither, in wide andever changing curves, lured the most dangerous assailants of thebeleaguered city farther and farther away from the real scene ofaction, at the very time when they were most urgently needed tosupport the attacking forces which at that moment were being pouredinto London.
To destroy the air-ships seemed an impossibility, since they couldmove at five times the speed of the swiftest aerostat, and yet toreturn to the bombardment of the city was to leave them free tocommit what havoc they pleased upon the encampments of the armies ofthe League. So they were drawn farther and farther away from thebeleaguered city, while their agile enemies, still keeping withintheir six-mile range, evaded their shells, and yet kept up a constantdischarge of their own projectiles upon the salient points of theattack on London.
By four o'clock in the afternoon all the batteries of the besiegershad been put out of action by the aerial bombardment. It was now amatter of man to man and steel to steel, and so the gage of finalbattle was accepted, and as dusk began to fall over the beleagueredcity, the Russian, French and Italian hosts left their lines, anddescended from their vantage ground to the assault on London, wherethe old Lion at bay was waiting for them with claws bared and teethgrinning defiance.