CHAPTER XLIX.
THE STORY OF THE MASTER.
That evening, when the lamps were lit and the curtains drawn in thelibrary at Alanmere, in the same room in which Tremayne had seen theVision of Armageddon, Natas told the story of Israel di Murska, theJewish Hungarian merchant, and of Sylvia Penarth, the beautifulEnglish wife whom he had loved better than his own faith and people,and how she had been taken from him to suffer a fate which had nowbeen avenged as no human wrongs had ever been before.
"Twenty-five years ago," he began, gazing dreamily into the greatfire of pine-logs, round the hearth of which he and his listenerswere sitting, "I, who am now an almost helpless, half-mutilatedcripple, was a strong, active man, in the early vigour of manhood,rich, respected, happy, and prosperous even beyond the average ofearthly good fortune.
"I was a merchant in London, and I had inherited a large fortune frommy father, which I had more than doubled by successful trading. I wasmarried to an English wife, a woman whose grace and beauty arefaithfully reflected in her daughter"--
As Natas said this, the fierce light that had begun to shine in hiseyes softened, and the hard ring left his voice, and for a littlespace he spoke in gentler tones, until sterner memories came andhardened them again.
"I will not deny that I bought her with my gold and fair promises ofa life of ease and luxury. But that is done every day in the world inwhich I then lived, and I only did as my Christian neighbours aboutme did. Yet I loved my beautiful Christian wife very dearly,--moredearly even than my people and my ancient faith,--or I should nothave married her.
"When Natasha was two years old the black pall of desolation fellsuddenly on our lives, and blasted our great happiness with a miseryso utter and complete that we, who were wont to count ourselves amongthe fortunate ones of the earth, were cast down so low that thebeggar at our doors might have looked down upon us.
"It was through no fault of mine or hers, nor through anycircumstance over which either of us had any control, that we fellfrom our serene estate. On the contrary, it was through a work ofpure mercy, intended for the relief of those of our people who weregroaning under the pitiless despotism of Russian officialism andsuperstition, that I fell, as so many thousands of my race havefallen, into that abyss of nameless misery and degradation thatRussian hands have dug for the innocent in the ghastly solitudes ofSiberia, and, without knowing it, dragged my sweet and loving wifeinto it after me.
"It came about in this wise.
"I had a large business connection in Russia, and at a time when allEurope was ringing with the story of the persecution of the RussianJews, I, at the earnest request of a committee of the leading Jews inLondon, undertook a mission to St. Petersburg, to bring theirsufferings, if possible, under the direct notice of the Tsar, and toobtain his consent to a scheme for the payment of a generalindemnity, subscribed to by all the wealthy Jews of the world, whichshould secure them against persecution and official tyranny untilthey could be gradually and completely removed from Russia.
"I, of course, found myself thwarted at every turn by the heartlessand corrupt officialism that stands between the Russian people andthe man whom they still regard as the vicegerent of God upon earth.
"Upon one pretext and another I was kept from the presence of theTsar for weeks, until he left his dominions on a visit to Denmark.
"Meanwhile I travelled about, and used my eyes as well as theofficials would permit me, to see whether the state of things wasreally as bad as the accounts that had reached England had made itout to be.
"I saw enough to convince me that no human words could describe theawful sufferings of the sons and daughters of Israel in that hatefulland of bondage.
"Neither their lives nor their honour, their homes nor theirproperty, were safe from the malice and the lust and the rapacity ofthe brutal ministers of Russian officialdom.
"I conversed with families from which fathers and mothers, sons anddaughters had been spirited away, either never to return, or to comeback years afterwards broken in health, ruined and dishonoured, tothe poor wrecks of the homes that had once been peaceful, pure, andhappy.
"I saw every injury, insult, and degradation heaped upon them thatpatient and long-suffering humanity could bear, until my soulsickened within me, and my spirit rose in revolt against the hatefuland inhuman tyranny that treated my people like vermin and wildbeasts, for no offence save a difference in race and creed.
"At last the shame and horror of it all got the better of myprudence, and the righteous rage that burned within me spoke outthrough my pen and my lips.
"I wrote faithful accounts of all I had seen to the committee inEngland. They never reached their destination, for I was already amarked man, and my letters were stopped and opened by the police.
"At last I one day attended a court of law, and heard one of thosetravesties of justice which the Russian officials call a trial forconspiracy.
"There was not one tittle of anything that would have been calledevidence, or that would not have been discredited and laughed out ofcourt in any other country in Europe; yet two of the five prisoners,a man and a woman, were sentenced to death, and the other three, twoyoung students and a girl who was to have been the bride of one ofthem in a few weeks' time, were doomed to five years in the mines ofKara, and after that, if they survived it, to ten years' exile inSakhalin.
"So awful and so hideous did the appalling injustice seem to me,accustomed as I was to the open fairness of the English criminalcourts, that, overcome with rage and horror, I rose to my feet as thejudge pronounced the frightful sentence, and poured forth a flood ofpassionate denunciations and wild appeals to the justice of humanityto revoke the doom of the innocent.
"Of course I was hustled out of the court and flung into the streetby the police attendants, and I groped my way back to my hotel witheyes blinded with tears of rage and sorrow.
"That afternoon I was requested by the proprietor of the hotel toleave before nightfall. I expostulated in vain. He simply told methat he dared not have in his house a man who had brought himselfinto collision with the police, and that I must find other lodgingsat once. This, however, I found to be no easy matter. Wherever I wentI was met with cold looks, and was refused admittance.
"Lower and lower sank my heart within me at each refusal, and theterrible conviction forced itself upon me that I was a marked manamidst all-powerful and unscrupulous enemies whom no Russian dareoffend. I was a Jew and an outcast, and there was nothing left for mebut to seek for refuge such as I could get among my own persecutedpeople.
"Far on into the night I found one, a modest lodging, in which Ihoped I could remain for a day or two while waiting for my passport,and making the necessary preparations to return to England and shakethe mire of Russia off my feet for ever. It would have been athousand times better for me and my dear ones, and for those whosesympathy and kindness involved them in my ruin, if, instead of goingto that ill-fated house, I had flung myself into the dark waters ofthe Neva, and so ended my sorrows ere they had well begun.
"I applied for my passport the next day, and was informed that itwould not be ready for at least three days. The delay was, of course,purposely created, and before the time had expired a police visit waspaid to the house in which I was lodging, and papers written incypher were found within the lining of one of my hats.
"I was arrested, and a guard was placed over the house. Without anyfurther ceremony I was thrown into a cell in the fortress of Peterand Paul to await the translation of the cypher. Three days later Iwas taken before the chief of police, and accused of having in mypossession papers proving that I was an emissary from the Nihilistheadquarters in London.
"I was told that my conduct had been so suspicious and of late sodisorderly, that I had been closely watched during my stay in St.Petersburg, with the result that conclusive evidence of treason hadbeen found against me.
"As I was known to be wealthy, and to have powerful friends inEngland, the formality of a trial was dispensed with, and aft
ereating my heart out for a month in my cell in the fortress, I wastransferred to Moscow to join the next convict train for Siberia.Arrived there, I for the first time learned my sentence--ten years inthe mines, and then ten in Sakhalin.
"Thus was I doomed by the trick of some police spy to pass what badefair to be the remainder of a life that had been so bright and fullof fair promise in hopeless exile, torment, and degradation--and allbecause I protested against injustice and made myself obnoxious tothe Russian police.
"As the chain-gang that I was attached to left Moscow, I found to myintense grief that the good Jew and his wife who had given me shelterwere also members of it. They had been convicted of 'harbouring apolitical conspirator,' and sentenced to five years' hard labour, andthen exile for life, as 'politicals,' which, as you no doubt know,meant that, if they survived the first part of their sentence, theywould be allowed to settle in an allotted part of Southern Siberia,free in everything but permission to leave the country.
"Were I to talk till this time to-morrow I could not properlydescribe to you all the horrors of that awful journey along the GreatSiberian road, from the Pillar of Farewells that marks the boundarybetween Europe and Asia across the frightful snowy wastes to Kara.
"The hideous story has been told again and again without avail to theChristian nations of Europe, and they have permitted that awful crimeagainst humanity to be committed year after year without even aprotest, in obedience to the miserable principles that bade them toplace policy before religion and the etiquette of nations before theeverlasting laws of God.
"After two years of heartbreaking toil at the mines my health utterlybroke down. One day I fell fainting under the lash of the brutaloverseer, and as I lay on the ground he ran at me and kicked me twicewith his heavy iron-shod boots, once on the hip, breaking the bone,and once on the lower part of the spine, crushing the spinal cord,and paralysing my lower limbs for ever.
"As this did not rouse me from my fainting-fit, the heartless fiendsnatched a torch from the wall of the mine-gallery and thrust theburning end in my long thick beard, setting it on fire and scorchingmy flesh horribly, as you can see. I was carried out of the mine andtaken to the convict hospital, where I lay for weeks between life anddeath, and only lived instead of died because of the quenchlessspirit that was within me crying out for vengeance on my tormentors.
"When I came back to consciousness, the first thing I learnt was thatI was free to return to England on condition that I did not stop onmy way through Russia.
"My friends, urged on by the tireless energy of my wife's anxiouslove, had at last found out what had befallen me, and proceedings hadbeen instituted to establish the innocence that had been betrayed bya common and too well-known device used by the Russian police tosecure the conviction and removal of those who have become obnoxiousto the bureaucracy.
"Whether my friends would ever have accomplished this of themselvesis doubtful, but suddenly the evidence of a pope of the OrthodoxChurch, to whom the spy who had put the forged letters in my hat hadconfessed the crime on his deathbed, placed the matter in such astrong clear light that not even the officialism of Russia couldcloud it over. The case got to the ears of the Tsar, and an order wastelegraphed to the Governor of Kara to release me and send me back toSt. Petersburg on the conditions I have named.
"Think of the mockery of such a pardon as that! By the unlawfulbrutality of an official, who was not even reprimanded for what hehad done, I was maimed, crippled, and disfigured for life, and now Iwas free to return to the land I had left on an errand of mercy,which tyranny and corruption had wilfully misconstrued into a missionof crime, and punished with the ruin of a once happy and useful life.That was bad enough, but worse was to come before the cup of mymiseries should be full."
Natas was silent for a moment, and as he gazed into the fire thespasm of a great agony passed over his face, and two great tearswelled up in his eyes and overflowed and ran down his cheeks on tohis breast.
"On receiving the order the governor telegraphed back that I was sickalmost to death, and not able to bear the fatigue of the long,toilsome journey, and asked for further orders. As soon as this newsreached my devoted wife she at once set out, in spite of all theentreaties of her friends and advisers, to cross the wastes ofSiberia, and take her place at my bedside.
"It was winter time, and from Ekaterinenburg, where the rail ended inthose days, the journey would have to be performed by sledge. She,therefore, took with her only one servant and a courier, that shemight travel as rapidly as possible.
"She reached Tiumen, and there all trace was lost of her and herattendants. She vanished into that great white wilderness of ice andsnow as utterly as though the grave had closed upon her. I knewnothing of her journey until I reached St. Petersburg many monthsafterwards.
"All that money could do was done to trace her, but all to no avail.The only official news that ever came back out of that dark world ofdeath and misery was that she had started from one of thepost-stations a few hours before a great snow-storm had come on, thatshe had never reached the next station--and after that all wasmystery.
"Five years passed. I had returned to find my little daughter welland blooming into youthful beauty, and my affairs prospering inskilful and honest hands. I was richer in wealth than I had everbeen, and in happiness poorer than a beggar, while the shadow of thatawful uncertainty hung over me.
"I could not believe the official story, for the search along theSiberian road had been too complete not to have revealed evidences ofthe catastrophe of which it told when the snows melted, and none suchwere ever found.
"At length one night, just as I was going to bed, I was told that aman who would not give his name insisted on seeing me on businessthat he would tell no one but myself. All that he would say was thathe came from Russia. That was enough. I ordered him to be admitted.
"He was a stranger, ragged and careworn, and his face was stampedwith the look of sullen, unspeakable misery that men's faces onlywear in one part of the world.
"'You are from Siberia,' I said, stretching out my hand to him.'Welcome, fellow-sufferer! Have you news for me?'
"'Yes, I am from Siberia,' he replied, taking my hand; 'an escapedNihilist convict from the mines. I have been four years getting fromKara to London, else you should have had my news sooner. I fear it issad enough, but what else could you expect from the Russianprison-land? Here it is.'
"As he spoke, he gave me an envelope, soiled and stained with longtravel, and my heart stood still as I recognised in the blurredaddress the handwriting of my long-lost wife.
"With trembling fingers I opened it, and through my tears I read aletter that my dear one had written to me on her deathbed four yearsbefore.
"It has lain next my heart ever since, and every word is burnt intomy brain, to stand there against the day of vengeance. But I havenever told their full tale of shame and woe to mortal ears, nor evercan.
"Let it suffice to say that my wife was beautiful with a beauty thatis rare among the daughters of men; that a woman's honour is held ascheaply in the wildernesses of Siberia as is the life of a man who isa convict.
"The official story of her death was false--false as are all the tenthousand other lies that have come out of that abode of oppressionand misery, and she whom I mourned would have been well-favoured ofheaven if she had died in the snowdrifts, as they said she did,rather than in the shame and misery to which her brutal destroyerbrought her.
"He was an official of high rank, and he had had the power to coverhis crime from the knowledge of his superiors in St. Petersburg.
"If it was ever known, it was hushed up for fear of the trouble thatit would have brought to his masters; but two years later he visitedParis, and was found one morning in bed with a dagger in his blackheart, and across his face the mark that told that he had died byorder of the Nihilist Executive.
"When I read those awful tidings from the grave, sorrow becamequenchless rage, and despair was swallowed up in revenge. I joinedthe Brotherho
od, and thenceforth placed a great portion of my wealthat their disposal. I rose in their councils till I commanded theirwhole organisation. No brain was so subtle as mine in planningschemes of revenge upon the oppressor, or of relief for the victimsof his tyranny.
"In a word, I became the brain of the Brotherhood which men used tocall Nihilists, and then I organised another Society behind and abovethis which the world has known as the Terror, and which the greatones of the earth have for years dreaded as the most potent forcethat ever was arrayed against the enemies of humanity. Of this forceI have been the controlling brain and the directing will. It was mycreature, and it has obeyed me blindly; but ever since that fatal dayin the mine at Kara I have been physically helpless, and thereforeobliged to trust to others the execution of the plans that Iconceived.
"It was for this reason that I had need of you, Alan Tremayne, andthis is why I chose you after I had watched you for years unseen asyou grew from youth to manhood, the embodiment of all that has madethe Anglo-Saxon the dominant factor in the development of present-dayhumanity.
"I have employed a power which, as I firmly believe, was given to mewhen eternal justice made me the instrument of its vengeance upon ageneration that had forgotten alike its God and its brother, to bendyour will unconsciously to mine, and to compel you to do my bidding.How far I was justified in that let the result show.
"It was once my intention to have bound you still closer to theBrotherhood by giving Natasha to you in marriage while you were yetunder the spell of my will; but the Master of Destiny willed itotherwise, and I was saved from doing a great wrong, for theintention to do which I have done my best to atone."
He paused for a moment and looked across the fireplace at Arnold andNatasha, who were sitting together on a big, low lounge that had beendrawn up to the fire. Natasha raised her eyes for a moment and thendropped them. She knew what was coming, and a bright red flush roseup from her white throat to the roots of her dusky, lustrous hair.
"Richard Arnold, in the first communication I ever had with you, Itold you that if you used the powers you held in your hand well andwisely, you should, in the fulness of time, attain to your heart'sdesire. You have proved your faith and obedience in the hour oftrial, and your strength and discretion in the day of battle. Now itis yours to ask and to have."
For all answer Arnold put out his hand and took hold of Natasha's,and said quietly but clearly--
"Give me this!"
"So be it!" said Natas. "What you have worthily won you will worthilywear. May your days be long and peaceful in the world to which youhave given peace!"
And so it came to pass that three days later, in the little privatechapel of Alanmere Castle, the two men who held the destinies of theworld in their hands, took to wife the two fairest women who evergave their loveliness to be the crown of strength and the reward ofloyal love.
For a week the Lord of Alanmere kept open house and royal state, ashis ancestors had done five hundred years before him. Theconventional absurdity of the honeymoon was ignored, as such bridesand bridegrooms might have been expected to ignore it. Arnold andNatasha took possession of a splendid suite of rooms in the easternwing of the Castle, and the two new-wedded couples passed the firstdays of their new happiness under one roof without the slightestconstraint; for the Castle was vast enough for solitude when theydesired it, and yet the solitude was not isolation or self-centredseclusion.
Tremayne's private wire kept them hourly informed of what was goingon in London, and when necessary the _Ithuriel_ was ready to traversethe space between Alanmere and the capital in an hour, as it did morethan once to the great delight and wonderment of Tremayne's bride, towhom the marvellous vessel seemed a miracle of something more thanmerely human skill and genius.
So the days passed swiftly and happily until the Christmas bells of1904 rang out over the length and breadth of Christendom, for thefirst time proclaiming in very truth and fact, so far as the Westernworld was concerned, "Peace on earth, Goodwill to Man."
"Into the vast, white, silent wilderness, out of whichnone save the guards were destined ever to emerge again."
_See page 385._]
* * * * *
On the 8th of January a swift warship, attended by two dynamitecruisers, left Portsmouth, bound for Odessa. She had on board thelast of the Tsars of Russia, and those of his generals and Ministerswho had been taken prisoners with him on Muswell Hill. A thousandfeet overhead floated the _Ariel_, under the command of AlexisMazanoff.
From Odessa the prisoners were taken by train to Moscow. There, inthe Central Convict Depot, they met their families and the officialswhose share in their crimes made it necessary to bring them under thesentence pronounced by Natas. They were chained together in squads,Tsar and prince, noble and official, exactly as their own countlessvictims had been in the past, and so they were taken with their wivesand children by train to Ekaterinenburg.
Although the railway extended as far as Tomsk, Mazanoff made themdisembark here, and marched them by the Great Siberian road to thePillar of Farewells on the Asiatic frontier. There, as so manythousands of heart-broken, despairing men and women had done beforethem, they looked their last on Russian soil.
From here they were marched on to the first Siberian _etape_, one ofa long series of foul and pestilential prisons which were to be theonly halting-places on their long and awful journey. The nextmorning, as soon as the chill grey light of the winter's dawn brokeover the snow-covered plains, the men were formed up in line, withthe sleighs carrying the women and children in the rear. When all wasready Mazanoff gave the word: "Forward!" the whips of the Cossackscracked, and the mournful procession moved slowly onward into thevast, white, silent wilderness, out of which none save the guardswere destined ever to emerge again.
EPILOGUE.
"AND ON EARTH PEACE!"
The winter and summer of 1905 passed in unbroken tranquillity allover Europe and the English-speaking world. The nations, at lastutterly sickened of bloodshed by the brief but awful experience ofthe last six months of 1904, earnestly and gladly accepted the neworder of things. From first to last of the war the slaughter hadaveraged more than a million of fighting men a month, and fully fivemillions of non-combatants, men, women, and children, had fallenvictims to famine and disease, or had been killed during thewholesale destruction of fortified towns by the war-balloons of theLeague. At the lowest calculation the invasion of England had costfour million lives.
It was an awful butcher's bill, and when the peoples of Europe awokefrom the delirium of war to look back upon the frightful carnival ofdeath and destruction, and realise that all this desolation and ruinhad come to pass in little more than seven months, so deep a horrorof war and all its abominations possessed them that they hailed withdelight the safeguards provided against it by the new EuropeanConstitution which was made public at the end of March.
It was a singularly short and simple document considering the immensechanges which it introduced. It contained only five clauses. Of thesethe first proclaimed the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon Federation inall matters of international policy, and set forth the penalties tobe incurred by any State that made war upon another.
The second constituted an International Board of Arbitration andControl, composed of all the Sovereigns of Europe and their PrimeMinisters for the time being, with the new President of the UnitedStates, the Governor-General of Canada, and the President of the nowfederated Australasian Colonies. This Board was to meet in sectionsevery year in the various capitals of Europe, and collectively everyfive years in London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Rome, and New York inrotation. There was no appeal from its decision save to the SupremeCouncil of the Federation, and this appeal could only be made withthe consent of the President of that Council, given after the factsof the matter in dispute had been laid before him in writing.
The third clause dealt with the rearrangement of the Europeanfrontiers. The Rhine from Karlsruhe to Basle was made the politicalas well as the natural
boundary between France and Germany. Theancient kingdom of Poland was restored, with the frontiers it hadpossessed before the First Partition in 1773, and a descendant ofKosciusko, elected by the votes of the adult citizens of thereconstituted kingdom, was placed upon the throne. Turkey in Europeceased to exist as a political power. Constantinople was garrisonedby British and Federation troops, and the country was administeredfor the time being by a Provisional Government under the presidencyof Lord Cromer, who was responsible only to the Supreme Council. Theother States were left undisturbed.
The fourth and fifth clauses dealt with land, property, and law. Alltenures of land existing before the war were cancelled at a stroke,and the soil of each country was declared to be the sole andinalienable property of the State. No occupiers were disturbed whowere turning the land to profitable account, or who were making useof a reasonable area as a residential estate; but the greatlandowners in the country and the ground landlords in the townsceased to exist as such, and all private incomes derived from therent of land were declared illegal and so forfeited.
All incomes unearned by productive work of hand or brain weresubjected to a progressive tax, which reached fifty per cent. whenthe income amounted to L10,000 a year. It is almost needless to saythat these clauses raised a tremendous outcry among the limitedclasses they affected; but the only reply made to it by the Presidentof the Supreme Council was "that honestly earned incomes paid no tax,and that the idle and useless classes ought to be thankful to bepermitted to exist at any price. The alternative of the tax would becompulsory labour paid for at its actual value by the State." Withoutone exception the grumblers preferred to pay the tax.
All rents, revised according to the actual value of the produce orproperty, were to be paid direct to the State. As long as he paidthis rent-tax no man could be disturbed in the possession of hisholding. If he did not pay it the non-payment was to be held aspresumptive evidence that he was not making a proper use of it, andhe was to receive a year's notice to quit; but if at the end of thattime he had amended his ways the notice was to be revoked.
In all countries the Civil and Criminal Codes of Law were to beamalgamated and simplified by a committee of judges appointeddirectly by the Parliament with the assent of the Sovereign. Thefifth clause of the Constitution plainly stated that no man was to beexpected to obey a law that he could not understand, and that theSupreme Council would uphold no law which was so complicated that itneeded a legal expert to explain it.
It is almost needless to say that this clause swept away at a blowthat pernicious class of hired advocates who had for ages grown richon the weakness and the dishonesty of their fellow-men. In afteryears it was found that the abolition of the professional lawyer hadfurthered the cause of peace and progress quite as efficiently as theprohibition of standing armies had done.
On the conclusion of the war the aerial fleet was increased totwenty-five vessels exclusive of the flagship. The number ofwar-balloons was raised to fifty, and three millions of Federationsoldiers were held ready for active service until the conclusion ofthe war in the East between the Moslems and Buddhists. By Novemberthe Moslems were victors all along the line, and during the last weekof that month the last battle between Christian and Moslem was foughton the Southern shore of the Bosphorus.
All communications with the Asiatic and African shores of theMediterranean were cut as soon as it became certain that SultanMohammed Reshad, at the head of a million and a half of victoriousMoslems, and supported by Prince Abbas of Egypt at the head of sevenhundred thousand more, was marching to the reconquest of Turkey. Themost elaborate precautions were taken to prevent any detailedinformation as to the true state of things in Europe reaching theSultan, as Tremayne and Arnold had come to the conclusion that itwould be better, if he persisted in courting inevitable defeat, thatit should fall upon him with crushing force and stupefyingsuddenness, so that he might be the more inclined to listen to reasonafterwards.
The Mediterranean was patrolled from end to end by air-ships anddynamite cruisers, and aerial scouts marked every movement of thevictorious Sultan until it became absolutely certain that hisobjective point was Scutari. Meanwhile, two millions of men had beenconcentrated between Galata and Constantinople, while another millionoccupied the northern shore of the Dardanelles. An immense force ofwarships and dynamite cruisers swarmed between Gallipoli and theGolden Horn. Twenty air-ships and forty-five war-balloons lay outsideConstantinople, ready to take the air at a moment's notice.
The conqueror of Northern Africa and Southern Asia had only a verygeneral idea as to what had really happened in Europe. His march ofconquest had not been interrupted by any European expedition. TheMoslems of India had exterminated the British garrisons, and therehad been no attempt at retaliation or vengeance, as there had been inthe days of the Mutiny. England, he knew, had been invaded, butaccording to the reports which had reached him, none of the invadershad ever got out of the island alive, and then the English had comeout and conquered Europe. Of the wonderful doings of the aerialfleets only the vaguest rumours had come to his ears, and these hadbeen so exaggerated and distorted, that he had but a very confusedidea of the real state of affairs.
The Moslem forces were permitted to advance without the slightestmolestation to Scutari and Lamsaki, and on the evening of the 28th ofNovember the Sultan took up his quarters in Scutari. That night hereceived a letter from the President of the Federation, setting forthsuccinctly, and yet very clearly, what had actually taken place inEurope, and calling upon him to give his allegiance to the SupremeCouncil, as the other sovereigns had done, and to accept theoverlordship of Northern Africa and Southern Asia in exchange forTurkey in Europe. The letter concluded by saying that the immediateresult of refusal to accept these terms would be the destruction ofthe Moslem armies on the following day. Before midnight, Tremaynereceived the Sultan's reply. It ran thus--
In the name of the Most Merciful God.
From MOHAMMED RESHAD, Commander of the Faithful, to ALAN TREMAYNE, Leader of the English.
I have come to retake the throne of my fathers, and I am not to be turned back by vain and boastful threats. What I have won with the sword I will keep with the sword, and I will own allegiance to none save God and His holy Prophet who have given me the victory. Give me back Stamboul and my ancient dominions, and we will divide the world between us. If not we must fight. Let the reply to this come before daybreak.
MOHAMMED.
No reply came back; but during the night the dynamite cruisers weredrawn up within half a mile of the Asiatic shore with their gunspointing southward over Scutari, while other warships patrolled thecoast to detect and frustrate any attempt to transport guns or troopsacross the narrow strip of water. With the first glimmer of light,the two aerial fleets took the air, the war-balloons in a long lineover the van of the Moslem army, and the air-ships spread out in asemicircle to the southward. The hour of prayer was allowed to passin peace, and then the work of death began. The war-balloons movedslowly forward in a straight line at an elevation of four thousandfeet, sweeping the Moslem host from van to rear with a ceaseless hailof melinite and cyanogen bombs. Great projectiles soared silently upfrom the water to the north, and where they fell buildings were tornto fragments, great holes were blasted into the earth, and everyhuman being within the radius of the explosion was blown to pieces,or hurled stunned to the ground. But more mysterious and terriblethan all were the effects of the assault delivered by the air-ships,which divided into squadrons and swept hither and thither in widecurves, with the sunlight shining on their silvery hulls and theirlong slender guns, smokeless and flameless, hurling the most awfulmissiles of all far and wide, over a scene of butchery and horrorthat beggared all description.
In vain the gallant Moslems looked for enemies in the flesh toconfront them. None appeared save a few sentinels across theBosphorus. And still the work of slaughter went on, pitiless andpassionless as the earthquake or the thunderstorm. Millions of shotswe
re fired into the air without result, and by the time the rain ofdeath had been falling without intermission for two hours, anirresistible panic fell upon the Moslem soldiery. They had never metenemies like these before, and, brave as lions and yet simple aschildren, they looked upon them as something more than human, andwith one accord they flung away their weapons and raised their handsin supplication to the sky. Instantly the aerial bombardment ceased,and within an hour East and West had shaken hands, Sultan Mohammedhad accepted the terms of the Federation, and the long warfare ofCross and Crescent had ceased, as men hoped, for ever.
Then the proclamation was issued disbanding the armies of Britain andthe Federation and the forces of the Sultan. The warships steamedaway westward on their last voyage to the South Atlantic, beneathwhose waves they were soon to sink with all their guns and armamentsfor ever. The war-balloons were to be kept for purposes oftransportation of heavy articles to Aeria, while the fleet ofair-ships was to remain the sole effective fighting force in theworld.
While these events were taking place in Europe, those who had beenbanished as outcasts from the society of civilised men by theterrible justice of Natas had been plodding their weary way, in thetracks of the thousands they had themselves sent to a living grave,along the Great Siberian Road to the hideous wilderness, in the midstof which lie the mines of Kara. From the Pillar of Farewells toTiumen, from thence to Tomsk,--where they met the first of thereleased political exiles returning in a joyous band to their belovedRussia,--and thence to Irkutsk, and then over the ice of Lake Baikal,and through the awful frozen desert of the Trans-Baikal Provinces,they had been driven like cattle until the remnant that had survivedthe horrors of the awful journey reached the desolate valley of theKara and were finally halted at the Lower Diggings.
Of nearly three hundred strong and well-fed men who had said good-byeto liberty at the Pillar of Farewells, only a hundred and twentypallid and emaciated wretches stood shivering in their rags andchains when the muster was called on the morning after their arrivalat Kara. Mazanoff and his escort had carried out their part of thesentence of Natas to the letter. The arctic blasts from the Tundras,the forced march, the chain and the scourge had done their work, andmore than half the exile-convicts had found in nameless graves alongthe road respite from the long horrors of the fate which awaited thesurvivors.
The first name called in the last muster was Alexander Romanoff."Here," came in a deep hollow tone from the gaunt and ragged wreck ofthe giant who twelve months before had been the stateliest figure inthe brilliant galaxy of European Royalty.
"Your sentence is hard labour in the mines for"--The last word wasnever spoken, for ere it was uttered the tall and still erect form ofthe dethroned Autocrat suddenly shrank together, lurched forward, andfell with a choking gasp and a clash of chains upon the hard-trampledsnow. A stream of blood rushed from his white, half-open lips, andwhen they went to raise him he was dead.
If ever son of woman died of a broken heart it was AlexanderRomanoff, last of the tyrants of Russia. Never had the avenging handof Nemesis, though long-delayed, fallen with more precise andterrible justice. On the very spot on which thousands of his subjectsand fellow-creatures, innocent of all crime save a desire forprogress, had worn out their lives in torturing toil to provide thegold that had gilded his luxury, he fell as the Idol fell of old inthe temple of Dagon.
He had seen the blasting of his highest hopes in the hour of theirapparent fruition. He had beheld the destruction of his army and theruin of his dynasty. He had seen kindred and friends and faithfulservants sink under the nameless horrors of a fate he could donothing to alleviate, and with the knowledge that nothing but deathcould release them from it, and now at the last moment death hadsnatched from him even the poor consolation of sharing the sufferingsof those nearest and dearest to him on earth.
This happened on the 1st of December 1905, at nine o'clock in themorning. At the same hour Arnold leapt the _Ithuriel_ over the Ridge,passed down the valley of Aeria like a flash of silver light, anddropped to earth on the shores of the lake. In the same grove ofpalms which had witnessed their despairing betrothal he found Natashaswinging in a hammock, with a black-eyed six-weeks'-old baby nestlingin her bosom, and her own loveliness softened and etherealised by thesacred grace of motherhood.
"Welcome, my lord!" she said, with a bright flush of pleasure and thesweetest smile even he had ever seen transfiguring her beauty, as shestretched out her hand in welcome at his approach. "Does the Kingcome in peace?"
"Yes, Angel mine! the empire that you asked for is yours. There isnot a regiment of men under arms in all the civilised world. The lastbattle has been fought and won, and so there is peace on earth atlast!"
THE END
MORRISON AND GIBB PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
* * * * *
Now Ready, Third Edition.
_308 pages, demy 8vo, cloth gilt, 6s._,
THE CAPTAIN OF THE MARY ROSE.
_A TALE OF TO-MORROW._
By W. LAIRD CLOWES,
U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE.
With 60 Illustrations by the Chevalier de Martino and Fred. T. Jane.
_A most graphic and enthralling description of the next Naval Warbetween France and Great Britain._
* * * * *
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"Deserves something more than a mere passing notice."--_The Times._
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"Written with no little spirit and imagination.... A stirring romanceof the future."--_Manchester Guardian._
"Is of a realistic and exciting character.... Designed to show whatthe naval warfare of the future may be."--_Glasgow Herald._
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"It is well told and magnificently illustrated."--_United ServiceMagazine._
"Full of absorbing interest."--_Engineer's Gazette._
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