Produced by Judith Boss.  HTML version by Al Haines.




The Lost Continent

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Lost Continent was originally published
under the title Beyond Thirty


Contents

 CHAPTER I
 CHAPTER II
 CHAPTER III
 CHAPTER IV
 CHAPTER V
 CHAPTER VI
 CHAPTER VII
 CHAPTER VIII
 CHAPTER IX




CHAPTER I.


Since earliest childhood I have been strangely fascinated by the
mystery surrounding the history of the last days of twentieth century
Europe. My interest is keenest, perhaps, not so much in relation to
known facts as to speculation upon the unknowable of the two centuries
that have rolled by since human intercourse between the Western and
Eastern Hemispheres ceased—the mystery of Europe’s state following the
termination of the Great War—provided, of course, that the war had been
terminated.

From out of the meagerness of our censored histories we learned that
for fifteen years after the cessation of diplomatic relations between
the United States of North America and the belligerent nations of the
Old World, news of more or less doubtful authenticity filtered, from
time to time, into the Western Hemisphere from the Eastern.

Then came the fruition of that historic propaganda which is best
described by its own slogan: “The East for the East—the West for the
West,” and all further intercourse was stopped by statute.

Even prior to this, transoceanic commerce had practically ceased, owing
to the perils and hazards of the mine-strewn waters of both the
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Just when submarine activities ended we do
not know but the last vessel of this type sighted by a Pan-American
merchantman was the huge Q 138, which discharged twenty-nine torpedoes
at a Brazilian tank steamer off the Bermudas in the fall of 1972. A
heavy sea and the excellent seamanship of the master of the Brazilian
permitted the Pan-American to escape and report this last of a long
series of outrages upon our commerce. God alone knows how many hundreds
of our ancient ships fell prey to the roving steel sharks of
blood-frenzied Europe. Countless were the vessels and men that passed
over our eastern and western horizons never to return; but whether they
met their fates before the belching tubes of submarines or among the
aimlessly drifting mine fields, no man lived to tell.

And then came the great Pan-American Federation which linked the
Western Hemisphere from pole to pole under a single flag, which joined
the navies of the New World into the mightiest fighting force that ever
sailed the seven seas—the greatest argument for peace the world had
ever known.

Since that day peace had reigned from the western shores of the Azores
to the western shores of the Hawaiian Islands, nor has any man of
either hemisphere dared cross 30°W. or 175°W. From 30° to 175° is
ours—from 30° to 175° is peace, prosperity and happiness.

Beyond was the great unknown. Even the geographies of my boyhood showed
nothing beyond. We were taught of nothing beyond. Speculation was
discouraged. For two hundred years the Eastern Hemisphere had been
wiped from the maps and histories of Pan-America. Its mention in
fiction, even, was forbidden.

Our ships of peace patrol thirty and one hundred seventy-five. What
ships from beyond they have warned only the secret archives of
government show; but, a naval officer myself, I have gathered from the
traditions of the service that it has been fully two hundred years
since smoke or sail has been sighted east of 30° or west of 175°. The
fate of the relinquished provinces which lay beyond the dead lines we
could only speculate upon. That they were taken by the military power,
which rose so suddenly in China after the fall of the republic, and
which wrested Manchuria and Korea from Russia and Japan, and also
absorbed the Philippines, is quite within the range of possibility.

It was the commander of a Chinese man-of-war who received a copy of the
edict of 1972 from the hand of my illustrious ancestor, Admiral Turck,
on one hundred seventy-five, two hundred and six years ago, and from
the yellowed pages of the admiral’s diary I learned that the fate of
the Philippines was even then presaged by these Chinese naval officers.

Yes, for over two hundred years no man crossed 30° to 175° and lived to
tell his story—not until chance drew me across and back again, and
public opinion, revolting at last against the drastic regulations of
our long-dead forbears, demanded that my story be given to the world,
and that the narrow interdict which commanded peace, prosperity, and
happiness to halt at 30° and 175° be removed forever.

I am glad that it was given to me to be an instrument in the hands of
Providence for the uplifting of benighted Europe, and the amelioration
of the suffering, degradation, and abysmal ignorance in which I found
her.

I shall not live to see the complete regeneration of the savage hordes
of the Eastern Hemisphere—that is a work which will require many
generations, perhaps ages, so complete has been their reversion to
savagery; but I know that the work has been started, and I am proud of
the share in it which my generous countrymen have placed in my hands.

The government already possesses a complete official report of my
adventures beyond thirty. In the narrative I purpose telling my story
in a less formal, and I hope, a more entertaining, style; though, being
only a naval officer and without claim to the slightest literary
ability, I shall most certainly fall far short of the possibilities
which are inherent in my subject. That I have passed through the most
wondrous adventures that have befallen a civilized man during the past
two centuries encourages me in the belief that, however ill the
telling, the facts themselves will command your interest to the final
page.

Beyond thirty! Romance, adventure, strange peoples, fearsome beasts—all
the excitement and scurry of the lives of the twentieth century
ancients that have been denied us in these dull days of peace and
prosaic prosperity—all, all lay beyond thirty, the invisible barrier
between the stupid, commercial present and the carefree, barbarous
past.

What boy has not sighed for the good old days of wars, revolutions, and
riots; how I used to pore over the chronicles of those old days, those
dear old days, when workmen went armed to their labors; when they fell
upon one another with gun and bomb and dagger, and the streets ran red
with blood! Ah, but those were the times when life was worth the
living; when a man who went out by night knew not at which dark corner
a “footpad” might leap upon and slay him; when wild beasts roamed the
forest and the jungles, and there were savage men, and countries yet
unexplored.

Now, in all the Western Hemisphere dwells no man who may not find a
school house within walking distance of his home, or at least within
flying distance.

The wildest beast that roams our waste places lairs in the frozen north
or the frozen south within a government reserve, where the curious may
view him and feed him bread crusts from the hand with perfect impunity.

But beyond thirty! And I have gone there, and come back; and now you
may go there, for no longer is it high treason, punishable by disgrace
or death, to cross 30° or 175°.

My name is Jefferson Turck. I am a lieutenant in the navy—in the great
Pan-American navy, the only navy which now exists in all the world.

I was born in Arizona, in the United States of North America, in the
year of our Lord 2116. Therefore, I am twenty-one years old.

In early boyhood I tired of the teeming cities and overcrowded rural
districts of Arizona. Every generation of Turcks for over two centuries
has been represented in the navy. The navy called to me, as did the
free, wide, unpeopled spaces of the mighty oceans. And so I joined the
navy, coming up from the ranks, as we all must, learning our craft as
we advance. My promotion was rapid, for my family seems to inherit
naval lore. We are born officers, and I reserve to myself no special
credit for an early advancement in the service.

At twenty I found myself a lieutenant in command of the aero-submarine
Coldwater, of the SS-96 class. The Coldwater was one of the first of
the air and underwater craft which have been so greatly improved since
its launching, and was possessed of innumerable weaknesses which,
fortunately, have been eliminated in more recent vessels of similar
type.

Even when I took command, she was fit only for the junk pile; but the
world-old parsimony of government retained her in active service, and
sent two hundred men to sea in her, with myself, a mere boy, in command
of her, to patrol thirty from Iceland to the Azores.

Much of my service had been spent aboard the great merchantmen-of-war.
These are the utility naval vessels that have transformed the navies of
old, which burdened the peoples with taxes for their support, into the
present day fleets of self-supporting ships that find ample time for
target practice and gun drill while they bear freight and the mails
from the continents to the far-scattered island of Pan-America.

This change in service was most welcome to me, especially as it brought
with it coveted responsibilities of sole command, and I was prone to
overlook the deficiencies of the Coldwater in the natural pride I felt
in my first ship.

The Coldwater was fully equipped for two months’ patrolling—the
ordinary length of assignment to this service—and a month had already
passed, its monotony entirely unrelieved by sight of another craft,
when the first of our misfortunes befell.

We had been riding out a storm at an altitude of about three thousand
feet. All night we had hovered above the tossing billows of the
moonlight clouds. The detonation of the thunder and the glare of
lightning through an occasional rift in the vaporous wall proclaimed
the continued fury of the tempest upon the surface of the sea; but we,
far above it all, rode in comparative ease upon the upper gale. With
the coming of dawn the clouds beneath us became a glorious sea of gold
and silver, soft and beautiful; but they could not deceive us as to the
blackness and the terrors of the storm-lashed ocean which they hid.

I was at breakfast when my chief engineer entered and saluted. His face
was grave, and I thought he was even a trifle paler than usual.

“Well?” I asked.

He drew the back of his forefinger nervously across his brow in a
gesture that was habitual with him in moments of mental stress.

“The gravitation-screen generators, sir,” he said. “Number one went to
the bad about an hour and a half ago. We have been working upon it
steadily since; but I have to report, sir, that it is beyond repair.”

“Number two will keep us supplied,” I answered. “In the meantime we
will send a wireless for relief.”

“But that is the trouble, sir,” he went on. “Number two has stopped. I
knew it would come, sir. I made a report on these generators three
years ago. I advised then that they both be scrapped. Their principle
is entirely wrong. They’re done for.” And, with a grim smile, “I shall
at least have the satisfaction of knowing my report was accurate.”

“Have we sufficient reserve screen to permit us to make land, or, at
least, meet our relief halfway?” I asked.

“No, sir,” he replied gravely; “we are sinking now.”

“Have you anything further to report?” I asked.

“No, sir,” he said.

“Very good,” I replied; and, as I dismissed him, I rang for my wireless
operator. When he appeared, I gave him a message to the secretary of
the navy, to whom all vessels in service on thirty and one hundred
seventy-five report direct. I explained our predicament, and stated
that with what screening force remained I should continue in the air,
making as rapid headway toward St. Johns as possible, and that when we
were forced to take to the water I should continue in the same
direction.

The accident occurred directly over 30° and about 52° N. The surface
wind was blowing a tempest from the west. To attempt to ride out such a
storm upon the surface seemed suicidal, for the Coldwater was not
designed for surface navigation except under fair weather conditions.
Submerged, or in the air, she was tractable enough in any sort of
weather when under control; but without her screen generators she was
almost helpless, since she could not fly, and, if submerged, could not
rise to the surface.

All these defects have been remedied in later models; but the knowledge
did not help us any that day aboard the slowly settling Coldwater, with
an angry sea roaring beneath, a tempest raging out of the west, and 30°
only a few knots astern.

To cross thirty or one hundred seventy-five has been, as you know, the
direst calamity that could befall a naval commander. Court-martial and
degradation follow swiftly, unless as is often the case, the
unfortunate man takes his own life before this unjust and heartless
regulation can hold him up to public scorn.

There has been in the past no excuse, no circumstance, that could
palliate the offense.

“He was in command, and he took his ship across thirty!” That was
sufficient. It might not have been in any way his fault, as, in the
case of the Coldwater, it could not possibly have been justly charged
to my account that the gravitation-screen generators were worthless;
but well I knew that should chance have it that we were blown across
thirty today—as we might easily be before the terrific west wind that
we could hear howling below us, the responsibility would fall upon my
shoulders.

In a way, the regulation was a good one, for it certainly accomplished
that for which it was intended. We all fought shy of 30° on the east
and 175° on the west, and, though we had to skirt them pretty close,
nothing but an act of God ever drew one of us across. You all are
familiar with the naval tradition that a good officer could sense
proximity to either line, and for my part, I am as firmly convinced of
the truth of this as I am that the compass finds the north without
recourse to tedious processes of reasoning.

Old Admiral Sanchez was wont to maintain that he could smell thirty,
and the men of the first ship in which I sailed claimed that Coburn,
the navigating officer, knew by name every wave along thirty from 60°N.
to 60°S. However, I’d hate to vouch for this.

Well, to get back to my narrative; we kept on dropping slowly toward
the surface the while we bucked the west wind, clawing away from thirty
as fast as we could. I was on the bridge, and as we dropped from the
brilliant sunlight into the dense vapor of clouds and on down through
them to the wild, dark storm strata beneath, it seemed that my spirits
dropped with the falling ship, and the buoyancy of hope ran low in
sympathy.

The waves were running to tremendous heights, and the Coldwater was not
designed to meet such waves head on. Her elements were the blue ether,
far above the raging storm, or the greater depths of ocean, which no
storm could ruffle.

As I stood speculating upon our chances once we settled into the
frightful Maelstrom beneath us and at the same time mentally computing
the hours which must elapse before aid could reach us, the wireless
operator clambered up the ladder to the bridge, and, disheveled and
breathless, stood before me at salute. It needed but a glance at him to
assure me that something was amiss.

“What now?” I asked.

“The wireless, sir!” he cried. “My God, sir, I cannot send.”

“But the emergency outfit?” I asked.

“I have tried everything, sir. I have exhausted every resource. We
cannot send,” and he drew himself up and saluted again.

I dismissed him with a few kind words, for I knew that it was through
no fault of his that the mechanism was antiquated and worthless, in
common with the balance of the Coldwaterl’s equipment. There was no
finer operator in Pan-America than he.

The failure of the wireless did not appear as momentous to me as to
him, which is not unnatural, since it is but human to feel that when
our own little cog slips, the entire universe must necessarily be put
out of gear. I knew that if this storm were destined to blow us across
thirty, or send us to the bottom of the ocean, no help could reach us
in time to prevent it. I had ordered the message sent solely because
regulations required it, and not with any particular hope that we could
benefit by it in our present extremity.

I had little time to dwell upon the coincidence of the simultaneous
failure of the wireless and the buoyancy generators, since very shortly
after the Coldwater had dropped so low over the waters that all my
attention was necessarily centered upon the delicate business of
settling upon the waves without breaking my shipl’s back. With our
buoyancy generators in commission it would have been a simple thing to
enter the water, since then it would have been but a trifling matter of
a forty-five degree dive into the base of a huge wave. We should have
cut into the water like a hot knife through butter, and have been
totally submerged with scarce a jar—I have done it a thousand times—but
I did not dare submerge the Coldwater for fear that it would remain
submerged to the end of time—a condition far from conducive to the
longevity of commander or crew.

Most of my officers were older men than I. John Alvarez, my first
officer, is twenty years my senior. He stood at my side on the bridge
as the ship glided closer and closer to those stupendous waves. He
watched my every move, but he was by far too fine an officer and
gentleman to embarrass me by either comment or suggestion.

When I saw that we soon would touch, I ordered the ship brought around
broadside to the wind, and there we hovered a moment until a huge wave
reached up and seized us upon its crest, and then I gave the order that
suddenly reversed the screening force, and let us into the ocean. Down
into the trough we went, wallowing like the carcass of a dead whale,
and then began the fight, with rudder and propellers, to force the
Coldwater back into the teeth of the gale and drive her on and on,
farther and farther from relentless thirty.

I think that we should have succeeded, even though the ship was wracked
from stem to stern by the terrific buffetings she received, and though
she were half submerged the greater part of the time, had no further
accident befallen us.

We were making headway, though slowly, and it began to look as though
we were going to pull through. Alvarez never left my side, though I all
but ordered him below for much-needed rest. My second officer, Porfirio
Johnson, was also often on the bridge. He was a good officer, but a man
for whom I had conceived a rather unreasoning aversion almost at the
first moment of meeting him, an aversion which was not lessened by the
knowledge which I subsequently gained that he looked upon my rapid
promotion with jealousy. He was ten years my senior both in years and
service, and I rather think he could never forget the fact that he had
been an officer when I was a green apprentice.

As it became more and more apparent that the Coldwater, under my
seamanship, was weathering the tempest and giving promise of pulling
through safely, I could have sworn that I perceived a shade of
annoyance and disappointment growing upon his dark countenance. He left
the bridge finally and went below. I do not know that he is directly
responsible for what followed so shortly after; but I have always had
my suspicions, and Alvarez is even more prone to place the blame upon
him than I.

It was about six bells of the forenoon watch that Johnson returned to
the bridge after an absence of some thirty minutes. He seemed nervous
and ill at ease—a fact which made little impression on me at the time,
but which both Alvarez and I recalled subsequently.

Not three minutes after his reappearance at my side the Coldwater
suddenly commenced to lose headway. I seized the telephone at my elbow,
pressing upon the button which would call the chief engineer to the
instrument in the bowels of the ship, only to find him already at the
receiver attempting to reach me.

“Numbers one, two, and five engines have broken down, sir,” he called.
“Shall we force the remaining three?”

“We can do nothing else,” I bellowed into the transmitter.

“They won’t stand the gaff, sir,” he returned.

“Can you suggest a better plan?” I asked.

“No, sir,” he replied.

“Then give them the gaff, lieutenant,” I shouted back, and hung up the
receiver.

For twenty minutes the Coldwater bucked the great seas with her three
engines. I doubt if she advanced a foot; but it was enough to keep her
nose in the wind, and, at least, we were not drifting toward thirty.

Johnson and Alvarez were at my side when, without warning, the bow
swung swiftly around and the ship fell into the trough of the sea.

“The other three have gone,” I said, and I happened to be looking at
Johnson as I spoke. Was it the shadow of a satisfied smile that crossed
his thin lips? I do not know; but at least he did not weep.

“You always have been curious, sir, about the great unknown beyond
thirty,” he said. “You are in a good way to have your curiosity
satisfied.” And then I could not mistake the slight sneer that curved
his upper lip. There must have been a trace of disrespect in his tone
or manner which escaped me, for Alvarez turned upon him like a flash.

“When Lieutenant Turck crosses thirty,” he said, “we shall all cross
with him, and God help the officer or the man who reproaches him!”

“I shall not be a party to high treason,” snapped Johnson. “The
regulations are explicit, and if the Coldwater crosses thirty it
devolves upon you to place Lieutenant Turck under arrest and
immediately exert every endeavor to bring the ship back into
Pan-American waters.”

“I shall not know,” replied Alvarez, “that the Coldwater passes thirty;
nor shall any other man aboard know it,” and, with his words, he drew a
revolver from his pocket, and before either I or Johnson could prevent
it had put a bullet into every instrument upon the bridge, ruining them
beyond repair.

And then he saluted me, and strode from the bridge, a martyr to loyalty
and friendship, for, though no man might know that Lieutenant Jefferson
Turck had taken his ship across thirty, every man aboard would know
that the first officer had committed a crime that was punishable by
both degradation and death. Johnson turned and eyed me narrowly.

“Shall I place him under arrest?” he asked.

“You shall not,” I replied. “Nor shall anyone else.”

“You become a party to his crime!” he cried angrily.

“You may go below, Mr. Johnson,” I said, “and attend to the work of
unpacking the extra instruments and having them properly set upon the
bridge.”

He saluted, and left me, and for some time I stood, gazing out upon the
angry waters, my mind filled with unhappy reflections upon the unjust
fate that had overtaken me, and the sorrow and disgrace that I had
unwittingly brought down upon my house.

I rejoiced that I should leave neither wife nor child to bear the
burden of my shame throughout their lives.

As I thought upon my misfortune, I considered more clearly than ever
before the unrighteousness of the regulation which was to prove my
doom, and in the natural revolt against its injustice my anger rose,
and there mounted within me a feeling which I imagine must have
paralleled that spirit that once was prevalent among the ancients
called anarchy.

For the first time in my life I found my sentiments arraying themselves
against custom, tradition, and even government. The wave of rebellion
swept over me in an instant, beginning with an heretical doubt as to
the sanctity of the established order of things—that fetish which has
ruled Pan-Americans for two centuries, and which is based upon a blind
faith in the infallibility of the prescience of the long-dead framers
of the articles of Pan-American federation—and ending in an adamantine
determination to defend my honor and my life to the last ditch against
the blind and senseless regulation which assumed the synonymity of
misfortune and treason.

I would replace the destroyed instruments upon the bridge; every
officer and man should know when we crossed thirty. But then I should
assert the spirit which dominated me, I should resist arrest, and
insist upon bringing my ship back across the dead line, remaining at my
post until we had reached New York. Then I should make a full report,
and with it a demand upon public opinion that the dead lines be wiped
forever from the seas.

I knew that I was right. I knew that no more loyal officer wore the
uniform of the navy. I knew that I was a good officer and sailor, and I
didn’t propose submitting to degradation and discharge because a lot of
old, preglacial fossils had declared over two hundred years before that
no man should cross thirty.

Even while these thoughts were passing through my mind I was busy with
the details of my duties. I had seen to it that a sea anchor was
rigged, and even now the men had completed their task, and the
Coldwater was swinging around rapidly, her nose pointing once more into
the wind, and the frightful rolling consequent upon her wallowing in
the trough was happily diminishing.

It was then that Johnson came hurrying to the bridge. One of his eyes
was swollen and already darkening, and his lip was cut and bleeding.
Without even the formality of a salute, he burst upon me, white with
fury.

“Lieutenant Alvarez attacked me!” he cried. “I demand that he be placed
under arrest. I found him in the act of destroying the reserve
instruments, and when I would have interfered to protect them he fell
upon me and beat me. I demand that you arrest him!”

“You forget yourself, Mr. Johnson,” I said. “You are not in command of
the ship. I deplore the action of Lieutenant Alvarez, but I cannot
expunge from my mind the loyalty and self-sacrificing friendship which
has prompted him to his acts. Were I you, sir, I should profit by the
example he has set. Further, Mr. Johnson, I intend retaining command of
the ship, even though she crosses thirty, and I shall demand implicit
obedience from every officer and man aboard until I am properly
relieved from duty by a superior officer in the port of New York.”

“You mean to say that you will cross thirty without submitting to
arrest?” he almost shouted.

“I do, sir,” I replied. “And now you may go below, and, when again you
find it necessary to address me, you will please be so good as to bear
in mind the fact that I am your commanding officer, and as such
entitled to a salute.”

He flushed, hesitated a moment, and then, saluting, turned upon his
heel and left the bridge. Shortly after, Alvarez appeared. He was pale,
and seemed to have aged ten years in the few brief minutes since I last
had seen him. Saluting, he told me very simply what he had done, and
asked that I place him under arrest.

I put my hand on his shoulder, and I guess that my voice trembled a
trifle as, while reproving him for his act, I made it plain to him that
my gratitude was no less potent a force than his loyalty to me. Then it
was that I outlined to him my purpose to defy the regulation that had
raised the dead lines, and to take my ship back to New York myself.

I did not ask him to share the responsibility with me. I merely stated
that I should refuse to submit to arrest, and that I should demand of
him and every other officer and man implicit obedience to my every
command until we docked at home.

His face brightened at my words, and he assured me that I would find
him as ready to acknowledge my command upon the wrong side of thirty as
upon the right, an assurance which I hastened to tell him I did not
need.

The storm continued to rage for three days, and as far as the wind
scarce varied a point during all that time, I knew that we must be far
beyond thirty, drifting rapidly east by south. All this time it had
been impossible to work upon the damaged engines or the gravity-screen
generators; but we had a full set of instruments upon the bridge, for
Alvarez, after discovering my intentions, had fetched the reserve
instruments from his own cabin, where he had hidden them. Those which
Johnson had seen him destroy had been a third set which only Alvarez
had known was aboard the Coldwater.

We waited impatiently for the sun, that we might determine our exact
location, and upon the fourth day our vigil was rewarded a few minutes
before noon.

Every officer and man aboard was tense with nervous excitement as we
awaited the result of the reading. The crew had known almost as soon as
I that we were doomed to cross thirty, and I am inclined to believe
that every man jack of them was tickled to death, for the spirits of
adventure and romance still live in the hearts of men of the
twenty-second century, even though there be little for them to feed
upon between thirty and one hundred seventy-five.

The men carried none of the burdens of responsibility. They might cross
thirty with impunity, and doubtless they would return to be heroes at
home; but how different the home-coming of their commanding officer!

The wind had dropped to a steady blow, still from west by north, and
the sea had gone down correspondingly. The crew, with the exception of
those whose duties kept them below, were ranged on deck below the
bridge. When our position was definitely fixed I personally announced
it to the eager, waiting men.

“Men,” I said, stepping forward to the handrail and looking down into
their upturned, bronzed faces, “you are anxiously awaiting information
as to the shipl’s position. It has been determined at latitude fifty
degrees seven minutes north, longitude twenty degrees sixteen minutes
west.”

I paused and a buzz of animated comment ran through the massed men
beneath me. “Beyond thirty. But there will be no change in commanding
officers, in routine or in discipline, until after we have docked again
in New York.”

As I ceased speaking and stepped back from the rail there was a roar of
applause from the deck such as I never before had heard aboard a ship
of peace. It recalled to my mind tales that I had read of the good old
days when naval vessels were built to fight, when ships of peace had
been men-of-war, and guns had flashed in other than futile target
practice, and decks had run red with blood.

With the subsidence of the sea, we were able to go to work upon the
damaged engines to some effect, and I also set men to examining the
gravitation-screen generators with a view to putting them in working
order should it prove not beyond our resources.

For two weeks we labored at the engines, which indisputably showed
evidence of having been tampered with. I appointed a board to
investigate and report upon the disaster. But it accomplished nothing
other than to convince me that there were several officers upon it who
were in full sympathy with Johnson, for, though no charges had been
preferred against him, the board went out of its way specifically to
exonerate him in its findings.

All this time we were drifting almost due east. The work upon the
engines had progressed to such an extent that within a few hours we
might expect to be able to proceed under our own power westward in the
direction of Pan-American waters.

To relieve the monotony I had taken to fishing, and early that morning
I had departed from the Coldwater in one of the boats on such an
excursion. A gentle west wind was blowing. The sea shimmered in the
sunlight. A cloudless sky canopied the west for our sport, as I had
made it a point never voluntarily to make an inch toward the east that
I could avoid. At least, they should not be able to charge me with a
willful violation of the dead lines regulation.

I had with me only the boatl’s ordinary complement of men—three in all,
and more than enough to handle any small power boat. I had not asked
any of my officers to accompany me, as I wished to be alone, and very
glad am I now that I had not. My only regret is that, in view of what
befell us, it had been necessary to bring the three brave fellows who
manned the boat.

Our fishing, which proved excellent, carried us so far to the west that
we no longer could see the Coldwater. The day wore on, until at last,
about mid-afternoon, I gave the order to return to the ship.

We had proceeded but a short distance toward the east when one of the
men gave an exclamation of excitement, at the same time pointing
eastward. We all looked on in the direction he had indicated, and
there, a short distance above the horizon, we saw the outlines of the
Coldwater silhouetted against the sky.

“They’ve repaired the engines and the generators both,” exclaimed one
of the men.

It seemed impossible, but yet it had evidently been done. Only that
morning, Lieutenant Johnson had told me that he feared that it would be
impossible to repair the generators. I had put him in charge of this
work, since he always had been accounted one of the best
gravitation-screen men in the navy. He had invented several of the
improvements that are incorporated in the later models of these
generators, and I am convinced that he knows more concerning both the
theory and the practice of screening gravitation than any living
Pan-American.

At the sight of the Coldwater once more under control, the three men
burst into a glad cheer. But, for some reason which I could not then
account, I was strangely overcome by a premonition of personal
misfortune. It was not that I now anticipated an early return to
Pan-America and a board of inquiry, for I had rather looked forward to
the fight that must follow my return. No, there was something else,
something indefinable and vague that cast a strange gloom upon me as I
saw my ship rising farther above the water and making straight in our
direction.

I was not long in ascertaining a possible explanation of my depression,
for, though we were plainly visible from the bridge of the
aero-submarine and to the hundreds of men who swarmed her deck, the
ship passed directly above us, not five hundred feet from the water,
and sped directly westward.

We all shouted, and I fired my pistol to attract their attention,
though I knew full well that all who cared to had observed us, but the
ship moved steadily away, growing smaller and smaller to our view until
at last she passed completely out of sight.




CHAPTER II.


What could it mean? I had left Alvarez in command. He was my most loyal
subordinate. It was absolutely beyond the pale of possibility that
Alvarez should desert me. No, there was some other explanation.
Something occurred to place my second officer, Porfirio Johnson, in
command. I was sure of it but why speculate? The futility of conjecture
was only too palpable. The Coldwater had abandoned us in midocean.
Doubtless none of us would survive to know why.

The young man at the wheel of the power boat had turned her nose about
as it became evident that the ship intended passing over us, and now he
still held her in futile pursuit of the Coldwater.

“Bring her about, Snider,” I directed, “and hold her due east. We can’t
catch the Coldwater, and we can’t cross the Atlantic in this. Our only
hope lies in making the nearest land, which, unless I am mistaken, is
the Scilly Islands, off the southwest coast of England. Ever heard of
England, Snider?”

“There’s a part of the United States of North America that used to be
known to the ancients as New England,” he replied. “Is that where you
mean, sir?”

“No, Snider,” I replied. “The England I refer to was an island off the
continent of Europe. It was the seat of a very powerful kingdom that
flourished over two hundred years ago. A part of the United States of
North America and all of the Federated States of Canada once belonged
to this ancient England.”

“Europe,” breathed one of the men, his voice tense with excitement. “My
grandfather used to tell me stories of the world beyond thirty. He had
been a great student, and he had read much from forbidden books.”

“In which I resemble your grandfather,” I said, “for I, too, have read
more even than naval officers are supposed to read, and, as you men
know, we are permitted a greater latitude in the study of geography and
history than men of other professions.

“Among the books and papers of Admiral Porter Turck, who lived two
hundred years ago, and from whom I am descended, many volumes still
exist, and are in my possession, which deal with the history and
geography of ancient Europe. Usually I bring several of these books
with me upon a cruise, and this time, among others, I have maps of
Europe and her surrounding waters. I was studying them as we came away
from the Coldwater this morning, and luckily I have them with me.”

“You are going to try to make Europe, sir?” asked Taylor, the young man
who had last spoken.

“It is the nearest land,” I replied. “I have always wanted to explore
the forgotten lands of the Eastern Hemisphere. Here’s our chance. To
remain at sea is to perish. None of us ever will see home again. Let us
make the best of it, and enjoy while we do live that which is forbidden
the balance of our race—the adventure and the mystery which lie beyond
thirty.”

Taylor and Delcarte seized the spirit of my mood but Snider, I think,
was a trifle sceptical.

“It is treason, sir,” I replied, “but there is no law which compels us
to visit punishment upon ourselves. Could we return to Pan-America, I
should be the first to insist that we face it. But we know thatl’s not
possible. Even if this craft would carry us so far, we haven’t enough
water or food for more than three days.

“We are doomed, Snider, to die far from home and without ever again
looking upon the face of another fellow countryman than those who sit
here now in this boat. Isn’t that punishment sufficient for even the
most exacting judge?”

Even Snider had to admit that it was.

“Very well, then, let us live while we live, and enjoy to the fullest
whatever of adventure or pleasure each new day brings, since any day
may be our last, and we shall be dead for a considerable while.”

I could see that Snider was still fearful, but Taylor and Delcarte
responded with a hearty, “Aye, aye, sir!”

They were of different mold. Both were sons of naval officers. They
represented the aristocracy of birth, and they dared to think for
themselves.

Snider was in the minority, and so we continued toward the east. Beyond
thirty, and separated from my ship, my authority ceased. I held
leadership, if I was to hold it at all, by virtue of personal
qualifications only, but I did not doubt my ability to remain the
director of our destinies in so far as they were amenable to human
agencies. I have always led. While my brain and brawn remain unimpaired
I shall continue always to lead. Following is an art which Turcks do
not easily learn.

It was not until the third day that we raised land, dead ahead, which I
took, from my map, to be the isles of Scilly. But such a gale was
blowing that I did not dare attempt to land, and so we passed to the
north of them, skirted Landl’s End, and entered the English Channel.

I think that up to that moment I had never experienced such a thrill as
passed through me when I realized that I was navigating these historic
waters. The lifelong dreams that I never had dared hope to see
fulfilled were at last a reality—but under what forlorn circumstances!

Never could I return to my native land. To the end of my days I must
remain in exile. Yet even these thoughts failed to dampen my ardor.

My eyes scanned the waters. To the north I could see the rockbound
coast of Cornwall. Mine were the first American eyes to rest upon it
for more than two hundred years. In vain, I searched for some sign of
ancient commerce that, if history is to be believed, must have dotted
the bosom of the Channel with white sails and blackened the heavens
with the smoke of countless funnels, but as far as eye could reach the
tossing waters of the Channel were empty and deserted.

Toward midnight the wind and sea abated, so that shortly after dawn I
determined to make inshore in an attempt to effect a landing, for we
were sadly in need of fresh water and food.

According to my observations, we were just off Ram Head, and it was my
intention to enter Plymouth Bay and visit Plymouth. From my map it
appeared that this city lay back from the coast a short distance, and
there was another city given as Devonport, which appeared to lie at the
mouth of the river Tamar.

However, I knew that it would make little difference which city we
entered, as the English people were famed of old for their hospitality
toward visiting mariners. As we approached the mouth of the bay I
looked for the fishing craft which I expected to see emerging thus
early in the day for their labors. But even after we rounded Ram Head
and were well within the waters of the bay I saw no vessel. Neither was
there buoy nor light nor any other mark to show larger ships the
channel, and I wondered much at this.

The coast was densely overgrown, nor was any building or sign of man
apparent from the water. Up the bay and into the River Tamar we motored
through a solitude as unbroken as that which rested upon the waters of
the Channel. For all we could see, there was no indication that man had
ever set his foot upon this silent coast.

I was nonplused, and then, for the first time, there crept over me an
intuition of the truth.

Here was no sign of war. As far as this portion of the Devon coast was
concerned, that seemed to have been over for many years, but neither
were there any people. Yet I could not find it within myself to believe
that I should find no inhabitants in England. Reasoning thus, I
discovered that it was improbable that a state of war still existed,
and that the people all had been drawn from this portion of England to
some other, where they might better defend themselves against an
invader.

But what of their ancient coast defenses? What was there here in
Plymouth Bay to prevent an enemy landing in force and marching where
they wished? Nothing. I could not believe that any enlightened military
nation, such as the ancient English are reputed to have been, would
have voluntarily so deserted an exposed coast and an excellent harbor
to the mercies of an enemy.

I found myself becoming more and more deeply involved in quandary. The
puzzle which confronted me I could not unravel. We had landed, and I
now stood upon the spot where, according to my map, a large city should
rear its spires and chimneys. There was nothing but rough, broken
ground covered densely with weeds and brambles, and tall, rank grass.

Had a city ever stood there, no sign of it remained. The roughness and
unevenness of the ground suggested something of a great mass of debris
hidden by the accumulation of centuries of undergrowth.

I drew the short cutlass with which both officers and men of the navy
are, as you know, armed out of courtesy to the traditions and memories
of the past, and with its point dug into the loam about the roots of
the vegetation growing at my feet.

The blade entered the soil for a matter of seven inches, when it struck
upon something stonelike. Digging about the obstacle, I presently
loosened it, and when I had withdrawn it from its sepulcher I found the
thing to be an ancient brick of clay, baked in an oven.

Delcarte we had left in charge of the boat; but Snider and Taylor were
with me, and following my example, each engaged in the fascinating
sport of prospecting for antiques. Each of us uncovered a great number
of these bricks, until we commenced to weary of the monotony of it,
when Snider suddenly gave an exclamation of excitement, and, as I
turned to look, he held up a human skull for my inspection.

I took it from him and examined it. Directly in the center of the
forehead was a small round hole. The gentleman had evidently come to
his end defending his country from an invader.

Snider again held aloft another trophy of the search—a metal spike and
some tarnished and corroded metal ornaments. They had lain close beside
the skull.

With the point of his cutlass Snider scraped the dirt and verdigris
from the face of the larger ornament.

“An inscription,” he said, and handed the thing to me.

They were the spike and ornaments of an ancient German helmet. Before
long we had uncovered many other indications that a great battle had
been fought upon the ground where we stood. But I was then, and still
am, at loss to account for the presence of German soldiers upon the
English coast so far from London, which history suggests would have
been the natural goal of an invader.

I can only account for it by assuming that either England was
temporarily conquered by the Teutons, or that an invasion of so vast
proportions was undertaken that German troops were hurled upon the
England coast in huge numbers and that landings were necessarily
effected at many places simultaneously. Subsequent discoveries tend to
strengthen this view.

We dug about for a short time with our cutlasses until I became
convinced that a city had stood upon the spot at some time in the past,
and that beneath our feet, crumbled and dead, lay ancient Devonport.

I could not repress a sigh at the thought of the havoc war had wrought
in this part of England, at least. Farther east, nearer London, we
should find things very different. There would be the civilization that
two centuries must have wrought upon our English cousins as they had
upon us. There would be mighty cities, cultivated fields, happy people.
There we would be welcomed as long-lost brothers. There would we find a
great nation anxious to learn of the world beyond their side of thirty,
as I had been anxious to learn of that which lay beyond our side of the
dead line.

I turned back toward the boat.

“Come, men!” I said. “We will go up the river and fill our casks with
fresh water, search for food and fuel, and then tomorrow be in
readiness to push on toward the east. I am going to London.”




CHAPTER III.


The report of a gun blasted the silence of a dead Devonport with
startling abruptness.

It came from the direction of the launch, and in an instant we three
were running for the boat as fast as our legs would carry us. As we
came in sight of it we saw Delcarte a hundred yards inland from the
launch, leaning over something which lay upon the ground. As we called
to him he waved his cap, and stooping, lifted a small deer for our
inspection.

I was about to congratulate him on his trophy when we were startled by
a horrid, half-human, half-bestial scream a little ahead and to the
right of us. It seemed to come from a clump of rank and tangled bush
not far from where Delcarte stood. It was a horrid, fearsome sound, the
like of which never had fallen upon my ears before.

We looked in the direction from which it came. The smile had died from
Delcarte’s lips. Even at the distance we were from him I saw his face
go suddenly white, and he quickly threw his rifle to his shoulder. At
the same moment the thing that had given tongue to the cry moved from
the concealing brushwood far enough for us, too, to see it.

Both Taylor and Snider gave little gasps of astonishment and dismay.

“What is it, sir?” asked the latter.

The creature stood about the height of a tall manl’s waist, and was
long and gaunt and sinuous, with a tawny coat striped with black, and
with white throat and belly. In conformation it was similar to a cat—a
huge cat, exaggerated colossal cat, with fiendish eyes and the most
devilish cast of countenance, as it wrinkled its bristling snout and
bared its great yellow fangs.

It was pacing, or rather, slinking, straight for Delcarte, who had now
leveled his rifle upon it.

“What is it, sir?” mumbled Snider again, and then a half-forgotten
picture from an old natural history sprang to my mind, and I recognized
in the frightful beast the Felis tigris of ancient Asia, specimens of
which had, in former centuries, been exhibited in the Western
Hemisphere.

Snider and Taylor were armed with rifles and revolvers, while I carried
only a revolver. Seizing Sniderl’s rifle from his trembling hands, I
called to Taylor to follow me, and together we ran forward, shouting,
to attract the beastl’s attention from Delcarte until we should all be
quite close enough to attack with the greatest assurance of success.

I cried to Delcarte not to fire until we reached his side, for I was
fearful lest our small caliber, steel-jacketed bullets should, far from
killing the beast, tend merely to enrage it still further. But he
misunderstood me, thinking that I had ordered him to fire.

With the report of his rifle the tiger stopped short in apparent
surprise, then turned and bit savagely at its shoulder for an instant,
after which it wheeled again toward Delcarte, issuing the most terrific
roars and screams, and launched itself, with incredible speed, toward
the brave fellow, who now stood his ground pumping bullets from his
automatic rifle as rapidly as the weapon would fire.

Taylor and I also opened up on the creature, and as it was broadside to
us it offered a splendid target, though for all the impression we
appeared to make upon the great cat we might as well have been
launching soap bubbles at it.

Straight as a torpedo it rushed for Delcarte, and, as Taylor and I
stumbled on through the tall grass toward our unfortunate comrade, we
saw the tiger rear upon him and crush him to the earth.

Not a backward step had the noble Delcarte taken. Two hundred years of
peace had not sapped the red blood from his courageous line. He went
down beneath that avalanche of bestial savagery still working his gun
and with his face toward his antagonist. Even in the instant that I
thought him dead I could not help but feel a thrill of pride that he
was one of my men, one of my class, a Pan-American gentleman of birth.
And that he had demonstrated one of the principal contentions of the
army-and-navy adherents—that military training was necessary for the
salvation of personal courage in the Pan-American race which for
generations had had to face no dangers more grave than those incident
to ordinary life in a highly civilized community, safeguarded by every
means at the disposal of a perfectly organized and all-powerful
government utilizing the best that advanced science could suggest.

As we ran toward Delcarte, both Taylor and I were struck by the fact
that the beast upon him appeared not to be mauling him, but lay quiet
and motionless upon its prey, and when we were quite close, and the
muzzles of our guns were at the animal’s head, I saw the explanation of
this sudden cessation of hostilities—Felis tigris was dead.

One of our bullets, or one of the last that Delcarte fired, had
penetrated the heart, and the beast had died even as it sprawled
forward crushing Delcarte to the ground.

A moment later, with our assistance, the man had scrambled from beneath
the carcass of his would-be slayer, without a scratch to indicate how
close to death he had been.

Delcarte’s buoyance was entirely unruffled. He came from under the
tiger with a broad grin on his handsome face, nor could I perceive that
a muscle trembled or that his voice showed the least indication of
nervousness or excitement.

With the termination of the adventure, we began to speculate upon the
explanation of the presence of this savage brute at large so great a
distance from its native habitat. My readings had taught me that it was
practically unknown outside of Asia, and that, so late as the twentieth
century, at least, there had been no savage beasts outside captivity in
England.

As we talked, Snider joined us, and I returned his rifle to him. Taylor
and Delcarte picked up the slain deer, and we all started down toward
the launch, walking slowly. Delcarte wanted to fetch the tigerl’s skin,
but I had to deny him permission, since we had no means to properly
cure it.

Upon the beach, we skinned the deer and cut away as much meat as we
thought we could dispose of, and as we were again embarking to continue
up the river for fresh water and fuel, we were startled by a series of
screams from the bushes a short distance away.

“Another Felis tigris,” said Taylor.

“Or a dozen of them,” supplemented Delcarte, and, even as he spoke,
there leaped into sight, one after another, eight of the beasts, full
grown—magnificent specimens.

At the sight of us, they came charging down like infuriated demons. I
saw that three rifles would be no match for them, and so I gave the
word to put out from shore, hoping that the “tiger,” as the ancients
called him, could not swim.

Sure enough, they all halted at the beach, pacing back and forth,
uttering fiendish cries, and glaring at us in the most malevolent
manner.

As we motored away, we presently heard the calls of similar animals far
inland. They seemed to be answering the cries of their fellows at the
waterl’s edge, and from the wide distribution and great volume of the
sound we came to the conclusion that enormous numbers of these beasts
must roam the adjacent country.

“They have eaten up the inhabitants,” murmured Snider, shuddering.

“I imagine you are right,” I agreed, “for their extreme boldness and
fearlessness in the presence of man would suggest either that man is
entirely unknown to them, or that they are extremely familiar with him
as their natural and most easily procured prey.”

“But where did they come from?” asked Delcarte. “Could they have
traveled here from Asia?”

I shook my head. The thing was a puzzle to me. I knew that it was
practically beyond reason to imagine that tigers had crossed the
mountain ranges and rivers and all the great continent of Europe to
travel this far from their native lairs, and entirely impossible that
they should have crossed the English Channel at all. Yet here they
were, and in great numbers.

We continued up the Tamar several miles, filled our casks, and then
landed to cook some of our deer steak, and have the first square meal
that had fallen to our lot since the Coldwater deserted us. But scarce
had we built our fire and prepared the meat for cooking than Snider,
whose eyes had been constantly roving about the landscape from the
moment that we left the launch, touched me on the arm and pointed to a
clump of bushes which grew a couple of hundred yards away.

Half concealed behind their screening foliage I saw the yellow and
black of a big tiger, and, as I looked, the beast stalked majestically
toward us. A moment later, he was followed by another and another, and
it is needless to state that we beat a hasty retreat to the launch.

The country was apparently infested by these huge Carnivora, for after
three other attempts to land and cook our food we were forced to
abandon the idea entirely, as each time we were driven off by hunting
tigers.

It was also equally impossible to obtain the necessary ingredients for
our chemical fuel, and, as we had very little left aboard, we
determined to step our folding mast and proceed under sail, hoarding
our fuel supply for use in emergencies.

I may say that it was with no regret that we bid adieu to Tigerland, as
we rechristened the ancient Devon, and, beating out into the Channel,
turned the launchl’s nose southeast, to round Bolt Head and continue up
the coast toward the Strait of Dover and the North Sea.

I was determined to reach London as soon as possible, that we might
obtain fresh clothing, meet with cultured people, and learn from the
lips of Englishmen the secrets of the two centuries since the East had
been divorced from the West.

Our first stopping place was the Isle of Wight. We entered the Solent
about ten o’clock one morning, and I must confess that my heart sank as
we came close to shore. No lighthouse was visible, though one was
plainly indicated upon my map. Upon neither shore was sign of human
habitation. We skirted the northern shore of the island in fruitless
search for man, and then at last landed upon an eastern point, where
Newport should have stood, but where only weeds and great trees and
tangled wild wood rioted, and not a single manmade thing was visible to
the eye.

Before landing, I had the men substitute soft bullets for the
steel-jacketed projectiles with which their belts and magazines were
filled. Thus equipped, we felt upon more even terms with the tigers,
but there was no sign of the tigers, and I decided that they must be
confined to the mainland.

After eating, we set out in search of fuel, leaving Taylor to guard the
launch. For some reason I could not trust Snider alone. I knew that he
looked with disapproval upon my plan to visit England, and I did not
know but what at his first opportunity, he might desert us, taking the
launch with him, and attempt to return to Pan-America.

That he would be fool enough to venture it, I did not doubt.

We had gone inland for a mile or more, and were passing through a
park-like wood, when we came suddenly upon the first human beings we
had seen since we sighted the English coast.

There were a score of men in the party. Hairy, half-naked men they
were, resting in the shade of a great tree. At the first sight of us
they sprang to their feet with wild yells, seizing long spears that had
lain beside them as they rested.

For a matter of fifty yards they ran from us as rapidly as they could,
and then they turned and surveyed us for a moment. Evidently emboldened
by the scarcity of our numbers, they commenced to advance upon us,
brandishing their spears and shouting horribly.

They were short and muscular of build, with long hair and beards
tangled and matted with filth. Their heads, however, were shapely, and
their eyes, though fierce and warlike, were intelligent.

Appreciation of these physical attributes came later, of course, when I
had better opportunity to study the men at close range and under
circumstances less fraught with danger and excitement. At the moment I
saw, and with unmixed wonder, only a score of wild savages charging
down upon us, where I had expected to find a community of civilized and
enlightened people.

Each of us was armed with rifle, revolver, and cutlass, but as we stood
shoulder to shoulder facing the wild men I was loath to give the
command to fire upon them, inflicting death or suffering upon strangers
with whom we had no quarrel, and so I attempted to restrain them for
the moment that we might parley with them.

To this end I raised my left hand above my head with the palm toward
them as the most natural gesture indicative of peaceful intentions
which occurred to me. At the same time I called aloud to them that we
were friends, though, from their appearance, there was nothing to
indicate that they might understand Pan-American, or ancient English,
which are of course practically identical.

At my gesture and words they ceased their shouting and came to a halt a
few paces from us. Then, in deep tones, one who was in advance of the
others and whom I took to be the chief or leader of the party replied
in a tongue which while intelligible to us, was so distorted from the
English language from which it evidently had sprung, that it was with
difficulty that we interpreted it.

“Who are you,” he asked, “and from what country?”

I told him that we were from Pan-America, but he only shook his head
and asked where that was. He had never heard of it, or of the Atlantic
Ocean which I told him separated his country from mine.

“It has been two hundred years,” I told him, “since a Pan-American
visited England.”

“England?” he asked. “What is England?”

“Why this is a part of England!” I exclaimed.

“This is Grubitten,” he assured me. “I know nothing about England, and
I have lived here all my life.”

It was not until long after that the derivation of Grubitten occurred
to me. Unquestionably it is a corruption of Great Britain, a name
formerly given to the large island comprising England, Scotland and
Wales. Subsequently we heard it pronounced Grabrittin and Grubritten.

I then asked the fellow if he could direct us to Ryde or Newport; but
again he shook his head, and said that he never had heard of such
countries. And when I asked him if there were any cities in this
country he did not know what I meant, never having heard the word
cities.

I explained my meaning as best I could by stating that by city I
referred to a place where many people lived together in houses.

“Oh,” he exclaimed, “you mean a camp! Yes, there are two great camps
here, East Camp and West Camp. We are from East Camp.”

The use of the word camp to describe a collection of habitations
naturally suggested war to me, and my next question was as to whether
the war was over, and who had been victorious.

“No,” he replied to this question. “The war is not yet over. But it
soon will be, and it will end, as it always does, with the Westenders
running away. We, the Eastenders, are always victorious.”

“No,” I said, seeing that he referred to the petty tribal wars of his
little island, “I mean the Great War, the war with Germany. Is it
ended—and who was victorious?”

He shook his head impatiently.

“I never heard,” he said, “of any of these strange countries of which
you speak.”

It seemed incredible, and yet it was true. These people living at the
very seat of the Great War knew nothing of it, though but two centuries
had passed since, to our knowledge, it had been running in the height
of its titanic frightfulness all about them, and to us upon the far
side of the Atlantic still was a subject of keen interest.

Here was a lifelong inhabitant of the Isle of Wight who never had heard
of either Germany or England! I turned to him quite suddenly with a new
question.

“What people live upon the mainland?” I asked, and pointed in the
direction of the Hants coast.

“No one lives there,” he replied.

“Long ago, it is said, my people dwelt across the waters upon that
other land; but the wild beasts devoured them in such numbers that
finally they were driven here, paddling across upon logs and driftwood,
nor has any dared return since, because of the frightful creatures
which dwell in that horrid country.”

“Do no other peoples ever come to your country in ships?” I asked.

He never heard the word ship before, and did not know its meaning. But
he assured me that until we came he had thought that there were no
other peoples in the world other than the Grubittens, who consist of
the Eastenders and the Westenders of the ancient Isle of Wight.

Assured that we were inclined to friendliness, our new acquaintances
led us to their village, or, as they call it, camp. There we found a
thousand people, perhaps, dwelling in rude shelters, and living upon
the fruits of the chase and such sea food as is obtainable close to
shore, for they had no boats, nor any knowledge of such things.

Their weapons were most primitive, consisting of rude spears tipped
with pieces of metal pounded roughly into shape. They had no
literature, no religion, and recognized no law other than the law of
might. They produced fire by striking a bit of flint and steel
together, but for the most part they ate their food raw. Marriage is
unknown among them, and while they have the word, mother, they did not
know what I meant by “father.” The males fight for the favor of the
females. They practice infanticide, and kill the aged and physically
unfit.

The family consists of the mother and the children, the men dwelling
sometimes in one hut and sometimes in another. Owing to their bloody
duels, they are always numerically inferior to the women, so there is
shelter for them all.

We spent several hours in the village, where we were objects of the
greatest curiosity. The inhabitants examined our clothing and all our
belongings, and asked innumerable questions concerning the strange
country from which we had come and the manner of our coming.

I questioned many of them concerning past historical events, but they
knew nothing beyond the narrow limits of their island and the savage,
primitive life they led there. London they had never heard of, and they
assured me that I would find no human beings upon the mainland.

Much saddened by what I had seen, I took my departure from them, and
the three of us made our way back to the launch, accompanied by about
five hundred men, women, girls, and boys.

As we sailed away, after procuring the necessary ingredients of our
chemical fuel, the Grubittens lined the shore in silent wonder at the
strange sight of our dainty craft dancing over the sparkling waters,
and watched us until we were lost to their sight.




CHAPTER IV.


It was during the morning of July 6, 2137, that we entered the mouth of
the Thames—to the best of my knowledge the first Western keel to cut
those historic waters for two hundred and twenty-one years!

But where were the tugs and the lighters and the barges, the lightships
and the buoys, and all those countless attributes which went to make up
the myriad life of the ancient Thames?

Gone! All gone! Only silence and desolation reigned where once the
commerce of the world had centered.

I could not help but compare this once great water-way with the waters
about our New York, or Rio, or San Diego, or Valparaiso. They had
become what they are today during the two centuries of the profound
peace which we of the navy have been prone to deplore. And what, during
this same period, had shorn the waters of the Thames of their pristine
grandeur?

Militarist that I am, I could find but a single word of
explanation—war!

I bowed my head and turned my eyes downward from the lonely and
depressing sight, and in a silence which none of us seemed willing to
break, we proceeded up the deserted river.

We had reached a point which, from my map, I imagined must have been
about the former site of Erith, when I discovered a small band of
antelope a short distance inland. As we were now entirely out of meat
once more, and as I had given up all expectations of finding a city
upon the site of ancient London, I determined to land and bag a couple
of the animals.

Assured that they would be timid and easily frightened, I decided to
stalk them alone, telling the men to wait at the boat until I called to
them to come and carry the carcasses back to the shore.

Crawling carefully through the vegetation, making use of such trees and
bushes as afforded shelter, I came at last almost within easy range of
my quarry, when the antlered head of the buck went suddenly into the
air, and then, as though in accordance with a prearranged signal, the
whole band moved slowly off, farther inland.

As their pace was leisurely, I determined to follow them until I came
again within range, as I was sure that they would stop and feed in a
short time.

They must have led me a mile or more at least before they again halted
and commenced to browse upon the rank, luxuriant grasses. All the time
that I had followed them I had kept both eyes and ears alert for sign
or sound that would indicate the presence of Felis tigris; but so far
not the slightest indication of the beast had been apparent.

As I crept closer to the antelope, sure this time of a good shot at a
large buck, I suddenly saw something that caused me to forget all about
my prey in wonderment.

It was the figure of an immense grey-black creature, rearing its
colossal shoulders twelve or fourteen feet above the ground. Never in
my life had I seen such a beast, nor did I at first recognize it, so
different in appearance is the live reality from the stuffed, unnatural
specimens preserved to us in our museums.

But presently I guessed the identity of the mighty creature as Elephas
africanus, or, as the ancients commonly described it, African elephant.

The antelope, although in plain view of the huge beast, paid not the
slightest attention to it, and I was so wrapped up in watching the
mighty pachyderm that I quite forgot to shoot at the buck and
presently, and in quite a startling manner, it became impossible to do
so.

The elephant was browsing upon the young and tender shoots of some low
bushes, waving his great ears and switching his short tail. The
antelope, scarce twenty paces from him, continued their feeding, when
suddenly, from close beside the latter, there came a most terrifying
roar, and I saw a great, tawny body shoot, from the concealing verdure
beyond the antelope, full upon the back of a small buck.

Instantly the scene changed from one of quiet and peace to
indescribable chaos. The startled and terrified buck uttered cries of
agony. His fellows broke and leaped off in all directions. The elephant
raised his trunk, and, trumpeting loudly, lumbered off through the
wood, crushing down small trees and trampling bushes in his mad flight.

Growling horribly, a huge lion stood across the body of his prey—such a
creature as no Pan-American of the twenty-second century had ever
beheld until my eyes rested upon this lordly specimen of “the king of
beasts.” But what a different creature was this fierce-eyed demon,
palpitating with life and vigor, glossy of coat, alert, growling,
magnificent, from the dingy, moth-eaten replicas beneath their glass
cases in the stuffy halls of our public museums.

I had never hoped or expected to see a living lion, tiger, or
elephant—using the common terms that were familiar to the ancients,
since they seem to me less unwieldy than those now in general use among
us—and so it was with sentiments not unmixed with awe that I stood
gazing at this regal beast as, above the carcass of his kill, he roared
out his challenge to the world.

So enthralled was I by the spectacle that I quite forgot myself, and
the better to view him, the great lion, I had risen to my feet and
stood, not fifty paces from him, in full view.

For a moment he did not see me, his attention being directed toward the
retreating elephant, and I had ample time to feast my eyes upon his
splendid proportions, his great head, and his thick black mane.

Ah, what thoughts passed through my mind in those brief moments as I
stood there in rapt fascination! I had come to find a wondrous
civilization, and instead I found a wild-beast monarch of the realm
where English kings had ruled. A lion reigned, undisturbed, within a
few miles of the seat of one of the greatest governments the world has
ever known, his domain a howling wilderness, where yesterday fell the
shadows of the largest city in the world.

It was appalling; but my reflections upon this depressing subject were
doomed to sudden extinction. The lion had discovered me.

For an instant he stood silent and motionless as one of the mangy
effigies at home, but only for an instant. Then, with a most ferocious
roar, and without the slightest hesitancy or warning, he charged upon
me.

He forsook the prey already dead beneath him for the pleasures of the
delectable tidbit, man. From the remorselessness with which the great
Carnivora of modern England hunted man, I am constrained to believe
that, whatever their appetites in times past, they have cultivated a
gruesome taste for human flesh.

As I threw my rifle to my shoulder, I thanked God, the ancient God of
my ancestors, that I had replaced the hard-jacketed bullets in my
weapon with soft-nosed projectiles, for though this was my first
experience with Felis leo, I knew the moment that I faced that charge
that even my wonderfully perfected firearm would be as futile as a
peashooter unless I chanced to place my first bullet in a vital spot.

Unless you had seen it you could not believe credible the speed of a
charging lion. Apparently the animal is not built for speed, nor can he
maintain it for long. But for a matter of forty or fifty yards there
is, I believe, no animal on earth that can overtake him.

Like a bolt he bore down upon me, but, fortunately for me, I did not
lose my head. I guessed that no bullet would kill him instantly. I
doubted that I could pierce his skull. There was hope, though, in
finding his heart through his exposed chest, or, better yet, of
breaking his shoulder or foreleg, and bringing him up long enough to
pump more bullets into him and finish him.

I covered his left shoulder and pulled the trigger as he was almost
upon me. It stopped him. With a terrific howl of pain and rage, the
brute rolled over and over upon the ground almost to my feet. As he
came I pumped two more bullets into him, and as he struggled to rise,
clawing viciously at me, I put a bullet in his spine.

That finished him, and I am free to admit that I was mighty glad of it.
There was a great tree close behind me, and, stepping within its shade,
I leaned against it, wiping the perspiration from my face, for the day
was hot, and the exertion and excitement left me exhausted.

I stood there, resting, for a moment, preparatory to turning and
retracing my steps to the launch, when, without warning, something
whizzed through space straight toward me. There was a dull thud of
impact as it struck the tree, and as I dodged to one side and turned to
look at the thing I saw a heavy spear imbedded in the wood not three
inches from where my head had been.

The thing had come from a little to one side of me, and, without
waiting to investigate at the instant, I leaped behind the tree, and,
circling it, peered around the other side to get a sight of my would-be
murderer.

This time I was pitted against men—the spear told me that all too
plainly—but so long as they didn’t take me unawares or from behind I
had little fear of them.

Cautiously I edged about the far side of the trees until I could obtain
a view of the spot from which the spear must have come, and when I did
I saw the head of a man just emerging from behind a bush.

The fellow was quite similar in type to those I had seen upon the Isle
of Wight. He was hairy and unkempt, and as he finally stepped into view
I saw that he was garbed in the same primitive fashion.

He stood for a moment gazing about in search of me, and then he
advanced. As he did so a number of others, precisely like him, stepped
from the concealing verdure of nearby bushes and followed in his wake.
Keeping the trees between them and me, I ran back a short distance
until I found a clump of underbrush that would effectually conceal me,
for I wished to discover the strength of the party and its armament
before attempting to parley with it.

The useless destruction of any of these poor creatures was the farthest
idea from my mind. I should have liked to have spoken with them, but I
did not care to risk having to use my high-powered rifle upon them
other than in the last extremity.

Once in my new place of concealment, I watched them as they approached
the tree. There were about thirty men in the party and one woman—a girl
whose hands seemed to be bound behind her and who was being pulled
along by two of the men.

They came forward warily, peering cautiously into every bush and
halting often. At the body of the lion, they paused, and I could see
from their gesticulations and the higher pitch of their voices that
they were much excited over my kill.

But presently they resumed their search for me, and as they advanced I
became suddenly aware of the unnecessary brutality with which the
girl’s guards were treating her. She stumbled once, not far from my
place of concealment, and after the balance of the party had passed me.
As she did so one of the men at her side jerked her roughly to her feet
and struck her across the mouth with his fist.

Instantly my blood boiled, and forgetting every consideration of
caution, I leaped from my concealment, and, springing to the manl’s
side, felled him with a blow.

So unexpected had been my act that it found him and his fellow
unprepared; but instantly the latter drew the knife that protruded from
his belt and lunged viciously at me, at the same time giving voice to a
wild cry of alarm.

The girl shrank back at sight of me, her eyes wide in astonishment, and
then my antagonist was upon me. I parried his first blow with my
forearm, at the same time delivering a powerful blow to his jaw that
sent him reeling back; but he was at me again in an instant, though in
the brief interim I had time to draw my revolver.

I saw his companion crawling slowly to his feet, and the others of the
party racing down upon me. There was no time to argue now, other than
with the weapons we wore, and so, as the fellow lunged at me again with
the wicked-looking knife, I covered his heart and pulled the trigger.

Without a sound, he slipped to the earth, and then I turned the weapon
upon the other guard, who was now about to attack me. He, too,
collapsed, and I was alone with the astonished girl.

The balance of the party was some twenty paces from us, but coming
rapidly. I seized her arm and drew her after me behind a nearby tree,
for I had seen that with both their comrades down the others were
preparing to launch their spears.

With the girl safe behind the tree, I stepped out in sight of the
advancing foe, shouting to them that I was no enemy, and that they
should halt and listen to me. But for answer they only yelled in
derision and launched a couple of spears at me, both of which missed.

I saw then that I must fight, yet still I hated to slay them, and it
was only as a final resort that I dropped two of them with my rifle,
bringing the others to a temporary halt. Again, I appealed to them to
desist. But they only mistook my solicitude for them for fear, and,
with shouts of rage and derision, leaped forward once again to
overwhelm me.

It was now quite evident that I must punish them severely,
or—myself—die and relinquish the girl once more to her captors. Neither
of these things had I the slightest notion of doing, and so I again
stepped from behind the tree, and, with all the care and deliberation
of target practice, I commenced picking off the foremost of my
assailants.

One by one the wild men dropped, yet on came the others, fierce and
vengeful, until, only a few remaining, these seemed to realize the
futility of combating my modern weapon with their primitive spears,
and, still howling wrathfully, withdrew toward the west.

Now, for the first time, I had an opportunity to turn my attention
toward the girl, who had stood, silent and motionless, behind me as I
pumped death into my enemies and hers from my automatic rifle.

She was of medium height, well formed, and with fine, clear-cut
features. Her forehead was high, and her eyes both intelligent and
beautiful. Exposure to the sun had browned a smooth and velvety skin to
a shade which seemed to enhance rather than mar an altogether lovely
picture of youthful femininity.

A trace of apprehension marked her expression—I cannot call it fear
since I have learned to know her—and astonishment was still apparent in
her eyes. She stood quite erect, her hands still bound behind her, and
met my gaze with level, proud return.

“What language do you speak?” I asked. “Do you understand mine?”

“Yes,” she replied. “It is similar to my own. I am Grabritin. What are
you?”

“I am a Pan-American,” I answered. She shook her head. “What is that?”

I pointed toward the west. “Far away, across the ocean.”

Her expression altered a trifle. A slight frown contracted her brow.
The expression of apprehension deepened.

“Take off your cap,” she said, and when, to humor her strange request,
I did as she bid, she appeared relieved. Then she edged to one side and
leaned over seemingly to peer behind me. I turned quickly to see what
she discovered, but finding nothing, wheeled about to see that her
expression was once more altered.

“You are not from there?” and she pointed toward the east. It was a
half question. “You are not from across the water there?”

“No,” I assured her. “I am from Pan-America, far away to the west. Have
you ever heard of Pan-America?”

She shook her head in negation. “I do not care where you are from,” she
explained, “if you are not from there, and I am sure you are not, for
the men from there have horns and tails.”

It was with difficulty that I restrained a smile.

“Who are the men from there?” I asked.

“They are bad men,” she replied. “Some of my people do not believe that
there are such creatures. But we have a legend—a very old, old legend,
that once the men from there came across to Grabritin. They came upon
the water, and under the water, and even in the air. They came in great
numbers, so that they rolled across the land like a great gray fog.
They brought with them thunder and lightning and smoke that killed, and
they fell upon us and slew our people by the thousands and the hundreds
of thousands. But at last we drove them back to the waterl’s edge, back
into the sea, where many were drowned. Some escaped, and these our
people followed—men, women, and even children, we followed them back.
That is all. The legend says our people never returned. Maybe they were
all killed. Maybe they are still there. But this, also, is in the
legend, that as we drove the men back across the water they swore that
they would return, and that when they left our shores they would leave
no human being alive behind them. I was afraid that you were from
there.”

“By what name were these men called?” I asked.

“We call them only the ‘men from there,’” she replied, pointing toward
the east. “I have never heard that they had another name.”

In the light of what I knew of ancient history, it was not difficult
for me to guess the nationality of those she described simply as “the
men from over there.” But what utter and appalling devastation the
Great War must have wrought to have erased not only every sign of
civilization from the face of this great land, but even the name of the
enemy from the knowledge and language of the people.

I could only account for it on the hypothesis that the country had been
entirely depopulated except for a few scattered and forgotten children,
who, in some marvelous manner, had been preserved by Providence to
re-populate the land. These children had, doubtless, been too young to
retain in their memories to transmit to their children any but the
vaguest suggestion of the cataclysm which had overwhelmed their
parents.

Professor Cortoran, since my return to Pan-America, has suggested
another theory which is not entirely without claim to serious
consideration. He points out that it is quite beyond the pale of human
instinct to desert little children as my theory suggests the ancient
English must have done. He is more inclined to believe that the
expulsion of the foe from England was synchronous with widespread
victories by the allies upon the continent, and that the people of
England merely emigrated from their ruined cities and their devastated,
blood-drenched fields to the mainland, in the hope of finding, in the
domain of the conquered enemy, cities and farms which would replace
those they had lost.

The learned professor assumes that while a long-continued war had
strengthened rather than weakened the instinct of paternal devotion, it
had also dulled other humanitarian instincts, and raised to the first
magnitude the law of the survival of the fittest, with the result that
when the exodus took place the strong, the intelligent, and the
cunning, together with their offspring, crossed the waters of the
Channel or the North Sea to the continent, leaving in unhappy England
only the helpless inmates of asylums for the feebleminded and insane.

My objections to this, that the present inhabitants of England are
mentally fit, and could therefore not have descended from an ancestry
of undiluted lunacy he brushes aside with the assertion that insanity
is not necessarily hereditary; and that even though it was, in many
cases a return to natural conditions from the state of high
civilization, which is thought to have induced mental disease in the
ancient world, would, after several generations, have thoroughly
expunged every trace of the affliction from the brains and nerves of
the descendants of the original maniacs.

Personally, I do not place much stock in Professor Cortoranl’s theory,
though I admit that I am prejudiced. Naturally one does not care to
believe that the object of his greatest affection is descended from a
gibbering idiot and a raving maniac.

But I am forgetting the continuity of my narrative—a continuity which I
desire to maintain, though I fear that I shall often be led astray, so
numerous and varied are the bypaths of speculation which lead from the
present day story of the Grabritins into the mysterious past of their
forbears.

As I stood talking with the girl I presently recollected that she still
was bound, and with a word of apology, I drew my knife and cut the
rawhide thongs which confined her wrists at her back.

She thanked me, and with such a sweet smile that I should have been
amply repaid by it for a much more arduous service.

“And now,” I said, “let me accompany you to your home and see you
safely again under the protection of your friends.”

“No,” she said, with a hint of alarm in her voice; “you must not come
with me—Buckingham will kill you.”

Buckingham. The name was famous in ancient English history. Its
survival, with many other illustrious names, is one of the strongest
arguments in refutal of Professor Cortoranl’s theory; yet it opens no
new doors to the past, and, on the whole, rather adds to than
dissipates the mystery.

“And who is Buckingham,” I asked, “and why should he wish to kill me?”

“He would think that you had stolen me,” she replied, “and as he wishes
me for himself, he will kill any other whom he thinks desires me. He
killed Wettin a few days ago. My mother told me once that Wettin was my
father. He was king. Now Buckingham is king.”

Here, evidently, were a people slightly superior to those of the Isle
of Wight. These must have at least the rudiments of civilized
government since they recognized one among them as ruler, with the
title, king. Also, they retained the word father. The girl’s
pronunciation, while far from identical with ours, was much closer than
the tortured dialect of the Eastenders of the Isle of Wight. The longer
I talked with her the more hopeful I became of finding here, among her
people, some records, or traditions, which might assist in clearing up
the historic enigma of the past two centuries. I asked her if we were
far from the city of London, but she did not know what I meant. When I
tried to explain, describing mighty buildings of stone and brick, broad
avenues, parks, palaces, and countless people, she but shook her head
sadly.

“There is no such place near by,” she said. “Only the Camp of the Lions
has places of stone where the beasts lair, but there are no people in
the Camp of the Lions. Who would dare go there!” And she shuddered.

“The Camp of the Lions,” I repeated. “And where is that, and what?”

“It is there,” she said, pointing up the river toward the west. “I have
seen it from a great distance, but I have never been there. We are much
afraid of the lions, for this is their country, and they are angry that
man has come to live here.

“Far away there,” and she pointed toward the south-west, “is the land
of tigers, which is even worse than this, the land of the lions, for
the tigers are more numerous than the lions and hungrier for human
flesh. There were tigers here long ago, but both the lions and the men
set upon them and drove them off.”

“Where did these savage beasts come from?” I asked.

“Oh,” she replied, “they have been here always. It is their country.”

“Do they not kill and eat your people?” I asked.

“Often, when we meet them by accident, and we are too few to slay them,
or when one goes too close to their camp. But seldom do they hunt us,
for they find what food they need among the deer and wild cattle, and,
too, we make them gifts, for are we not intruders in their country?
Really we live upon good terms with them, though I should not care to
meet one were there not many spears in my party.”

“I should like to visit this Camp of the Lions,” I said.

“Oh, no, you must not!” cried the girl. “That would be terrible. They
would eat you.” For a moment, then, she seemed lost in thought, but
presently she turned upon me with: “You must go now, for any minute
Buckingham may come in search of me. Long since should they have
learned that I am gone from the camp—they watch over me very
closely—and they will set out after me. Go! I shall wait here until
they come in search of me.”

“No,” I told her. “I’ll not leave you alone in a land infested by lions
and other wild beasts. If you won’t let me go as far as your camp with
you, then I’ll wait here until they come in search of you.”

“Please go!” she begged. “You have saved me, and I would save you, but
nothing will save you if Buckingham gets his hands on you. He is a bad
man. He wishes to have me for his woman so that he may be king. He
would kill anyone who befriended me, for fear that I might become
anotherl’s.”

“Didn’t you say that Buckingham is already the king?” I asked.

“He is. He took my mother for his woman after he had killed Wettin. But
my mother will die soon—she is very old—and then the man to whom I
belong will become king.”

Finally, after much questioning, I got the thing through my head. It
appears that the line of descent is through the women. A man is merely
head of his wife’s family—that is all. If she chances to be the oldest
female member of the “royal” house, he is king. Very naively the girl
explained that there was seldom any doubt as to whom a childl’s mother
was.

This accounted for the girl’s importance in the community and for
Buckinghaml’s anxiety to claim her, though she told me that she did not
wish to become his woman, for he was a bad man and would make a bad
king. But he was powerful, and there was no other man who dared dispute
his wishes.

“Why not come with me,” I suggested, “if you do not wish to become
Buckinghaml’s?”

“Where would you take me?” she asked.

Where, indeed! I had not thought of that. But before I could reply to
her question she shook her head and said, “No, I cannot leave my
people. I must stay and do my best, even if Buckingham gets me, but you
must go at once. Do not wait until it is too late. The lions have had
no offering for a long time, and Buckingham would seize upon the first
stranger as a gift to them.”

I did not perfectly understand what she meant, and was about to ask her
when a heavy body leaped upon me from behind, and great arms encircled
my neck. I struggled to free myself and turn upon my antagonist, but in
another instant I was overwhelmed by a half dozen powerful, half-naked
men, while a score of others surrounded me, a couple of whom seized the
girl.

I fought as best I could for my liberty and for hers, but the weight of
numbers was too great, though I had the satisfaction at least of giving
them a good fight.

When they had overpowered me, and I stood, my hands bound behind me, at
the girl’s side, she gazed commiseratingly at me.

“It is too bad that you did not do as I bid you,” she said, “for now it
has happened just as I feared—Buckingham has you.”

“Which is Buckingham?” I asked.

“I am Buckingham,” growled a burly, unwashed brute, swaggering
truculently before me. “And who are you who would have stolen my
woman?”

The girl spoke up then and tried to explain that I had not stolen her;
but on the contrary I had saved her from the men from the “Elephant
Country” who were carrying her away.

Buckingham only sneered at her explanation, and a moment later gave the
command that started us all off toward the west. We marched for a
matter of an hour or so, coming at last to a collection of rude huts,
fashioned from branches of trees covered with skins and grasses and
sometimes plastered with mud. All about the camp they had erected a
wall of saplings pointed at the tops and fire hardened.

This palisade was a protection against both man and beasts, and within
it dwelt upward of two thousand persons, the shelters being built very
close together, and sometimes partially underground, like deep
trenches, with the poles and hides above merely as protection from the
sun and rain.

The older part of the camp consisted almost wholly of trenches, as
though this had been the original form of dwellings which was slowly
giving way to the drier and airier surface domiciles. In these trench
habitations I saw a survival of the military trenches which formed so
famous a part of the operation of the warring nations during the
twentieth century.

The women wore a single light deerskin about their hips, for it was
summer, and quite warm. The men, too, were clothed in a single garment,
usually the pelt of some beast of prey. The hair of both men and women
was confined by a rawhide thong passing about the forehead and tied
behind. In this leathern band were stuck feathers, flowers, or the
tails of small mammals. All wore necklaces of the teeth or claws of
wild beasts, and there were numerous metal wristlets and anklets among
them.

They wore, in fact, every indication of a most primitive people—a race
which had not yet risen to the heights of agriculture or even the
possession of domestic animals. They were hunters—the lowest plane in
the evolution of the human race of which science takes cognizance.

And yet as I looked at their well shaped heads, their handsome
features, and their intelligent eyes, it was difficult to believe that
I was not among my own. It was only when I took into consideration
their mode of living, their scant apparel, the lack of every least
luxury among them, that I was forced to admit that they were, in truth,
but ignorant savages.

Buckingham had relieved me of my weapons, though he had not the
slightest idea of their purpose or uses, and when we reached the camp
he exhibited both me and my arms with every indication of pride in this
great capture.

The inhabitants flocked around me, examining my clothing, and
exclaiming in wonderment at each new discovery of button, buckle,
pocket, and flap. It seemed incredible that such a thing could be,
almost within a stone’s throw of the spot where but a brief two
centuries before had stood the greatest city of the world.

They bound me to a small tree that grew in the middle of one of their
crooked streets, but the girl they released as soon as we had entered
the enclosure. The people greeted her with every mark of respect as she
hastened to a large hut near the center of the camp.

Presently she returned with a fine looking, white-haired woman, who
proved to be her mother. The older woman carried herself with a regal
dignity that seemed quite remarkable in a place of such primitive
squalor.

The people fell aside as she approached, making a wide way for her and
her daughter. When they had come near and stopped before me the older
woman addressed me.

“My daughter has told me,” she said, “of the manner in which you
rescued her from the men of the elephant country. If Wettin lived you
would be well treated, but Buckingham has taken me now, and is king.
You can hope for nothing from such a beast as Buckingham.”

The fact that Buckingham stood within a pace of us and was an
interested listener appeared not to temper her expressions in the
slightest.

“Buckingham is a pig,” she continued. “He is a coward. He came upon
Wettin from behind and ran his spear through him. He will not be king
for long. Some one will make a face at him, and he will run away and
jump into the river.”

The people began to titter and clap their hands. Buckingham became red
in the face. It was evident that he was far from popular.

“If he dared,” went on the old lady, “he would kill me now, but he does
not dare. He is too great a coward. If I could help you I should gladly
do so. But I am only queen—the vehicle that has helped carry down,
unsullied, the royal blood from the days when Grabritin was a mighty
country.”

The old queenl’s words had a noticeable effect upon the mob of curious
savages which surrounded me. The moment they discovered that the old
queen was friendly to me and that I had rescued her daughter they
commenced to accord me a more friendly interest, and I heard many words
spoken in my behalf, and demands were made that I not be harmed.

But now Buckingham interfered. He had no intention of being robbed of
his prey. Blustering and storming, he ordered the people back to their
huts, at the same time directing two of his warriors to confine me in a
dugout in one of the trenches close to his own shelter.

Here they threw me upon the ground, binding my ankles together and
trussing them up to my wrists behind. There they left me, lying upon my
stomach—a most uncomfortable and strained position, to which was added
the pain where the cords cut into my flesh.

Just a few days ago my mind had been filled with the anticipation of
the friendly welcome I should find among the cultured Englishmen of
London. Today I should be sitting in the place of honor at the banquet
board of one of Londonl’s most exclusive clubs, feted and lionized.

The actuality! Here I lay, bound hand and foot, doubtless almost upon
the very site of a part of ancient London, yet all about me was a
primeval wilderness, and I was a captive of half-naked wild men.

I wondered what had become of Delcarte and Taylor and Snider. Would
they search for me? They could never find me, I feared, yet if they
did, what could they accomplish against this horde of savage warriors?

Would that I could warn them. I thought of the girl—doubtless she could
get word to them, but how was I to communicate with her? Would she come
to see me before I was killed? It seemed incredible that she should not
make some slight attempt to befriend me; yet, as I recalled, she had
made no effort to speak with me after we had reached the village. She
had hastened to her mother the moment she had been liberated. Though
she had returned with the old queen, she had not spoken to me, even
then. I began to have my doubts.

Finally, I came to the conclusion that I was absolutely friendless
except for the old queen. For some unaccountable reason my rage against
the girl for her ingratitude rose to colossal proportions.

For a long time I waited for some one to come to my prison whom I might
ask to bear word to the queen, but I seemed to have been forgotten. The
strained position in which I lay became unbearable. I wriggled and
twisted until I managed to turn myself partially upon my side, where I
lay half facing the entrance to the dugout.

Presently my attention was attracted by the shadow of something moving
in the trench without, and a moment later the figure of a child
appeared, creeping upon all fours, as, wide-eyed, and prompted by
childish curiosity, a little girl crawled to the entrance of my hut and
peered cautiously and fearfully in.

I did not speak at first for fear of frightening the little one away.
But when I was satisfied that her eyes had become sufficiently
accustomed to the subdued light of the interior, I smiled.

Instantly the expression of fear faded from her eyes to be replaced
with an answering smile.

“Who are you, little girl?” I asked.

“My name is Mary,” she replied. “I am Victoryl’s sister.”

“And who is Victory?”

“You do not know who Victory is?” she asked, in astonishment.

I shook my head in negation.

“You saved her from the elephant country people, and yet you say you do
not know her!” she exclaimed.

“Oh, so she is Victory, and you are her sister! I have not heard her
name before. That is why I did not know whom you meant,” I explained.
Here was just the messenger for me. Fate was becoming more kind.

“Will you do something for me, Mary?” I asked.

“If I can.”

“Go to your mother, the queen, and ask her to come to me,” I said. “I
have a favor to ask.”

She said that she would, and with a parting smile she left me.

For what seemed many hours I awaited her return, chafing with
impatience. The afternoon wore on and night came, and yet no one came
near me. My captors brought me neither food nor water. I was suffering
considerable pain where the rawhide thongs cut into my swollen flesh. I
thought that they had either forgotten me, or that it was their
intention to leave me here to die of starvation.

Once I heard a great uproar in the village. Men were shouting—women
were screaming and moaning. After a time this subsided, and again there
was a long interval of silence.

Half the night must have been spent when I heard a sound in the trench
near the hut. It resembled muffled sobs. Presently a figure appeared,
silhouetted against the lesser darkness beyond the doorway. It crept
inside the hut.

“Are you here?” whispered a childlike voice.

It was Mary! She had returned. The thongs no longer hurt me. The pangs
of hunger and thirst disappeared. I realized that it had been
loneliness from which I suffered most.

“Mary!” I exclaimed. “You are a good girl. You have come back, after
all. I had commenced to think that you would not. Did you give my
message to the queen? Will she come? Where is she?”

The childl’s sobs increased, and she flung herself upon the dirt floor
of the hut, apparently overcome by grief.

“What is it?” I asked. “Why do you cry?”

“The queen, my mother, will not come to you,” she said, between sobs.
“She is dead. Buckingham has killed her. Now he will take Victory, for
Victory is queen. He kept us fastened up in our shelter, for fear that
Victory would escape him, but I dug a hole beneath the back wall and
got out. I came to you, because you saved Victory once before, and I
thought that you might save her again, and me, also. Tell me that you
will.”

“I am bound and helpless, Mary,” I replied. “Otherwise I would do what
I could to save you and your sister.”

“I will set you free!” cried the girl, creeping up to my side. “I will
set you free, and then you may come and slay Buckingham.”

“Gladly!” I assented.

“We must hurry,” she went on, as she fumbled with the hard knots in the
stiffened rawhide, “for Buckingham will be after you soon. He must make
an offering to the lions at dawn before he can take Victory. The taking
of a queen requires a human offering!”

“And I am to be the offering?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, tugging at a knot. “Buckingham has been wanting a
sacrifice ever since he killed Wettin, that he might slay my mother and
take Victory.”

The thought was horrible, not solely because of the hideous fate to
which I was condemned, but from the contemplation it engendered of the
sad decadence of a once enlightened race. To these depths of ignorance,
brutality, and superstition had the vaunted civilization of twentieth
century England been plunged, and by what? War! I felt the structure of
our time-honored militaristic arguments crumbling about me.

Mary labored with the thongs that confined me. They proved
refractory—defying her tender, childish fingers. She assured me,
however, that she would release me, if “they” did not come too soon.

But, alas, they came. We heard them coming down the trench, and I bade
Mary hide in a corner, lest she be discovered and punished. There was
naught else she could do, and so she crawled away into the Stygian
blackness behind me.

Presently two warriors entered. The leader exhibited a unique method of
discovering my whereabouts in the darkness. He advanced slowly, kicking
out viciously before him. Finally he kicked me in the face. Then he
knew where I was.

A moment later I had been jerked roughly to my feet. One of the fellows
stopped and severed the bonds that held my ankles. I could scarcely
stand alone. The two pulled and hauled me through the low doorway and
along the trench. A party of forty or fifty warriors were awaiting us
at the brink of the excavation some hundred yards from the hut.

Hands were lowered to us, and we were dragged to the surface. Then
commenced a long march. We stumbled through the underbrush wet with
dew, our way lighted by a score of torchbearers who surrounded us. But
the torches were not to light the way—that was but incidental. They
were carried to keep off the huge Carnivora that moaned and coughed and
roared about us.

The noises were hideous. The whole country seemed alive with lions.
Yellow-green eyes blazed wickedly at us from out the surrounding
darkness. My escort carried long, heavy spears. These they kept ever
pointed toward the beast of prey, and I learned from snatches of the
conversation I overheard that occasionally there might be a lion who
would brave even the terrors of fire to leap in upon human prey. It was
for such that the spears were always couched.

But nothing of the sort occurred during this hideous death march, and
with the first pale heralding of dawn we reached our goal—an open place
in the midst of a tangled wildwood. Here rose in crumbling grandeur the
first evidences I had seen of the ancient civilization which once had
graced fair Albion—a single, time-worn arch of masonry.

“The entrance to the Camp of the Lions!” murmured one of the party in a
voice husky with awe.

Here the party knelt, while Buckingham recited a weird, prayer-like
chant. It was rather long, and I recall only a portion of it, which
ran, if my memory serves me, somewhat as follows:


Lord of Grabritin, we
Fall on our knees to thee,
This gift to bring.
Greatest of kings are thou!
To thee we humbly bow!
Peace to our camp allow.
God save thee, king!


Then the party rose, and dragging me to the crumbling arch, made me
fast to a huge, corroded, copper ring which was dangling from an
eyebolt imbedded in the masonry.

None of them, not even Buckingham, seemed to feel any personal
animosity toward me. They were naturally rough and brutal, as primitive
men are supposed to have been since the dawn of humanity, but they did
not go out of their way to maltreat me.

With the coming of dawn the number of lions about us seemed to have
greatly diminished—at least they made less noise—and as Buckingham and
his party disappeared into the woods, leaving me alone to my terrible
fate, I could hear the grumblings and growlings of the beasts
diminishing with the sound of the chant, which the party still
continued. It appeared that the lions had failed to note that I had
been left for their breakfast, and had followed off after their
worshippers instead.

But I knew the reprieve would be but for a short time, and though I had
no wish to die, I must confess that I rather wished the ordeal over and
the peace of oblivion upon me.

The voices of the men and the lions receded in the distance, until
finally quiet reigned about me, broken only by the sweet voices of
birds and the sighing of the summer wind in the trees.

It seemed impossible to believe that in this peaceful woodland setting
the frightful thing was to occur which must come with the passing of
the next lion who chanced within sight or smell of the crumbling arch.

I strove to tear myself loose from my bonds, but succeeded only in
tightening them about my arms. Then I remained passive for a long time,
letting the scenes of my lifetime pass in review before my mindl’s eye.

I tried to imagine the astonishment, incredulity, and horror with which
my family and friends would be overwhelmed if, for an instant, space
could be annihilated and they could see me at the gates of London.

The gates of London! Where was the multitude hurrying to the marts of
trade after a night of pleasure or rest? Where was the clang of tramcar
gongs, the screech of motor horns, the vast murmur of a dense throng?

Where were they? And as I asked the question a lone, gaunt lion strode
from the tangled jungle upon the far side of the clearing. Majestically
and noiselessly upon his padded feet the king of beasts moved slowly
toward the gates of London and toward me.

Was I afraid? I fear that I was almost afraid. I know that I thought
that fear was coming to me, and so I straightened up and squared my
shoulders and looked the lion straight in the eyes—and waited.

It is not a nice way to die—alone, with one’s hands fast bound, beneath
the fangs and talons of a beast of prey. No, it is not a nice way to
die, not a pretty way.

The lion was halfway across the clearing when I heard a slight sound
behind me. The great cat stopped in his tracks. He lashed his tail
against his sides now, instead of simply twitching its tip, and his low
moan became a thunderous roar.

As I craned my neck to catch a glimpse of the thing that had aroused
the fury of the beast before me, it sprang through the arched gateway
and was at my side—with parted lips and heaving bosom and disheveled
hair—a bronzed and lovely vision to eyes that had never harbored hope
of rescue.

It was Victory, and in her arms she clutched my rifle and revolver. A
long knife was in the doeskin belt that supported the doeskin skirt
tightly about her lithe limbs. She dropped my weapons at my feet, and,
snatching the knife from its resting place, severed the bonds that held
me. I was free, and the lion was preparing to charge.

“Run!” I cried to the girl, as I bent and seized my rifle. But she only
stood there at my side, her bared blade ready in her hand.

The lion was bounding toward us now in prodigious leaps. I raised the
rifle and fired. It was a lucky shot, for I had no time to aim
carefully, and when the beast crumpled and rolled, lifeless, to the
ground, I went upon my knees and gave thanks to the God of my
ancestors.

And, still upon my knees, I turned, and taking the girl’s hand in mine,
I kissed it. She smiled at that, and laid her other hand upon my head.

“You have strange customs in your country,” she said.

I could not but smile at that when I thought how strange it would seem
to my countrymen could they but see me kneeling there on the site of
London, kissing the hand of Englandl’s queen.

“And now,” I said, as I rose, “you must return to the safety of your
camp. I will go with you until you are near enough to continue alone in
safety. Then I shall try to return to my comrades.”

“I will not return to the camp,” she replied.

“But what shall you do?” I asked.

“I do not know. Only I shall never go back while Buckingham lives. I
should rather die than go back to him. Mary came to me, after they had
taken you from the camp, and told me. I found your strange weapons and
followed with them. It took me a little longer, for often I had to hide
in the trees that the lions might not get me, but I came in time, and
now you are free to go back to your friends.”

“And leave you here?” I exclaimed.

She nodded, but I could see through all her brave front that she was
frightened at the thought. I could not leave her, of course, but what
in the world I was to do, cumbered with the care of a young woman, and
a queen at that, I was at a loss to know. I pointed out that phase of
it to her, but she only shrugged her shapely shoulders and pointed to
her knife.

It was evident that she felt entirely competent to protect herself.

As we stood there we heard the sound of voices. They were coming from
the forest through which we had passed when we had come from camp.

“They are searching for me,” said the girl. “Where shall we hide?”

I didn’t relish hiding. But when I thought of the innumerable dangers
which surrounded us and the comparatively small amount of ammunition
that I had with me, I hesitated to provoke a battle with Buckingham and
his warriors when, by flight, I could avoid them and preserve my
cartridges against emergencies which could not be escaped.

“Would they follow us there?” I asked, pointing through the archway
into the Camp of the Lions.

“Never,” she replied, “for, in the first place, they would know that we
would not dare go there, and in the second they themselves would not
dare.”

“Then we shall take refuge in the Camp of the Lions,” I said.

She shuddered and drew closer to me.

“You dare?” she asked.

“Why not?” I returned. “We shall be safe from Buckingham, and you have
seen, for the second time in two days, that lions are harmless before
my weapons. Then, too, I can find my friends easiest in this direction,
for the River Thames runs through this place you call the Camp of the
Lions, and it is farther down the Thames that my friends are awaiting
me. Do you not dare come with me?”

“I dare follow wherever you lead,” she answered simply.

And so I turned and passed beneath the great arch into the city of
London.




CHAPTER V.


As we entered deeper into what had once been the city, the evidences of
manl’s past occupancy became more frequent. For a mile from the arch
there was only a riot of weeds and undergrowth and trees covering small
mounds and little hillocks that, I was sure, were formed of the ruins
of stately buildings of the dead past.

But presently we came upon a district where shattered walls still
raised their crumbling tops in sad silence above the grass-grown
sepulchers of their fallen fellows. Softened and mellowed by ancient
ivy stood these sentinels of sorrow, their scarred faces still
revealing the rents and gashes of shrapnel and of bomb.

Contrary to our expectations, we found little indication that lions in
any great numbers laired in this part of ancient London. Well-worn
pathways, molded by padded paws, led through the cavernous windows or
doorways of a few of the ruins we passed, and once we saw the savage
face of a great, black-maned lion scowling down upon us from a
shattered stone balcony.

We followed down the bank of the Thames after we came upon it. I was
anxious to look with my own eyes upon the famous bridge, and I guessed,
too, that the river would lead me into the part of London where stood
Westminster Abbey and the Tower.

Realizing that the section through which we had been passing was
doubtless outlying, and therefore not so built up with large structures
as the more centrally located part of the old town, I felt sure that
farther down the river I should find the ruins larger. The bridge would
be there in part, at least, and so would remain the walls of many of
the great edifices of the past. There would be no such complete ruin of
large structures as I had seen among the smaller buildings.

But when I had come to that part of the city which I judged to have
contained the relics I sought I found havoc that had been wrought there
even greater than elsewhere.

At one point upon the bosom of the Thames there rises a few feet above
the water a single, disintegrating mound of masonry. Opposite it, upon
either bank of the river, are tumbled piles of ruins overgrown with
vegetation.

These, I am forced to believe, are all that remain of London Bridge,
for nowhere else along the river is there any other slightest sign of
pier or abutment.

Rounding the base of a large pile of grass-covered debris, we came
suddenly upon the best preserved ruin we had yet discovered. The entire
lower story and part of the second story of what must once have been a
splendid public building rose from a great knoll of shrubbery and
trees, while ivy, thick and luxuriant, clambered upward to the summit
of the broken walls.

In many places the gray stone was still exposed, its smoothly chiseled
face pitted with the scars of battle. The massive portal yawned, somber
and sorrowful, before us, giving a glimpse of marble halls within.

The temptation to enter was too great. I wished to explore the interior
of this one remaining monument of civilization now dead beyond recall.
Through this same portal, within these very marble halls, had Gray and
Chamberlin and Kitchener and Shaw, perhaps, come and gone with the
other great ones of the past.

I took Victoryl’s hand in mine.

“Come!” I said. “I do not know the name by which this great pile was
known, nor the purposes it fulfilled. It may have been the palace of
your sires, Victory. From some great throne within, your forebears may
have directed the destinies of half the world. Come!”

I must confess to a feeling of awe as we entered the rotunda of the
great building. Pieces of massive furniture of another day still stood
where man had placed them centuries ago. They were littered with dust
and broken stone and plaster, but, otherwise, so perfect was their
preservation I could hardly believe that two centuries had rolled by
since human eyes were last set upon them.

Through one great room after another we wandered, hand in hand, while
Victory asked many questions and for the first time I began to realize
something of the magnificence and power of the race from whose loins
she had sprung.

Splendid tapestries, now mildewed and rotting, hung upon the walls.
There were mural paintings, too, depicting great historic events of the
past. For the first time Victory saw the likeness of a horse, and she
was much affected by a huge oil which depicted some ancient cavalry
charge against a battery of field guns.

In other pictures there were steamships, battleships, submarines, and
quaint looking railway trains—all small and antiquated in appearance to
me, but wonderful to Victory. She told me that she would like to remain
for the rest of her life where she could look at those pictures daily.

From room to room we passed until presently we emerged into a mighty
chamber, dark and gloomy, for its high and narrow windows were choked
and clogged by ivy. Along one paneled wall we groped, our eyes slowly
becoming accustomed to the darkness. A rank and pungent odor pervaded
the atmosphere.

We had made our way about half the distance across one end of the great
apartment when a low growl from the far end brought us to a startled
halt.

Straining my eyes through the gloom, I made out a raised dais at the
extreme opposite end of the hall. Upon the dais stood two great chairs,
highbacked and with great arms.

The throne of England! But what were those strange forms about it?

Victory gave my hand a quick, excited little squeeze.

“The lions!” she whispered.

Yes, lions indeed! Sprawled about the dais were a dozen huge forms,
while upon the seat of one of the thrones a small cub lay curled in
slumber.

As we stood there for a moment, spellbound by the sight of those
fearsome creatures occupying the very thrones of the sovereigns of
England, the low growl was repeated, and a great male rose slowly to
his feet.

His devilish eyes bored straight through the semi-darkness toward us.
He had discovered the interloper. What right had man within this palace
of the beasts? Again he opened his giant jaws, and this time there
rumbled forth a warning roar.

Instantly eight or ten of the other beasts leaped to their feet.
Already the great fellow who had spied us was advancing slowly in our
direction. I held my rifle ready, but how futile it appeared in the
face of this savage horde.

The foremost beast broke into a slow trot, and at his heels came the
others. All were roaring now, and the din of their great voices
reverberating through the halls and corridors of the palace formed the
most frightful chorus of thunderous savagery imaginable to the mind of
man.

And then the leader charged, and upon the hideous pandemonium broke the
sharp crack of my rifle, once, twice, thrice. Three lions rolled,
struggling and biting, to the floor. Victory seized my arm, with a
quick, “This way! Here is a door,” and a moment later we were in a tiny
antechamber at the foot of a narrow stone staircase.

Up this we backed, Victory just behind me, as the first of the
remaining lions leaped from the throne room and sprang for the stairs.
Again I fired, but others of the ferocious beasts leaped over their
fallen fellows and pursued us.

The stairs were very narrow—that was all that saved us—for as I backed
slowly upward, but a single lion could attack me at a time, and the
carcasses of those I slew impeded the rushes of the others.

At last we reached the top. There was a long corridor from which opened
many doorways. One, directly behind us, was tight closed. If we could
open it and pass into the chamber behind we might find a respite from
attack.

The remaining lions were roaring horribly. I saw one sneaking very
slowly up the stairs toward us.

“Try that door,” I called to Victory. “See if it will open.”

She ran up to it and pushed.

“Turn the knob!” I cried, seeing that she did not know how to open a
door, but neither did she know what I meant by knob.

I put a bullet in the spine of the approaching lion and leaped to
Victoryl’s side. The door resisted my first efforts to swing it inward.
Rusted hinges and swollen wood held it tightly closed. But at last it
gave, and just as another lion mounted to the top of the stairway it
swung in, and I pushed Victory across the threshold.

Then I turned to meet the renewed attack of the savage foe. One lion
fell in his tracks, another stumbled to my very feet, and then I leaped
within and slammed the portal to.

A quick glance showed me that this was the only door to the small
apartment in which we had found sanctuary, and, with a sigh of relief,
I leaned for a moment against the panels of the stout barrier that
separated us from the ramping demons without.

Across the room, between two windows, stood a flat-topped desk. A
little pile of white and brown lay upon it close to the opposite edge.
After a moment of rest I crossed the room to investigate. The white was
the bleached human bones—the skull, collar bones, arms, and a few of
the upper ribs of a man. The brown was the dust of a decayed military
cap and blouse. In a chair before the desk were other bones, while more
still strewed the floor beneath the desk and about the chair. A man had
died sitting there with his face buried in his arms—two hundred years
ago.

Beneath the desk were a pair of spurred military boots, green and
rotten with decay. In them were the leg bones of a man. Among the tiny
bones of the hands was an ancient fountain pen, as good, apparently, as
the day it was made, and a metal covered memoranda book, closed over
the bones of an index finger.

It was a gruesome sight—a pitiful sight—this lone inhabitant of mighty
London.

I picked up the metal covered memoranda book. Its pages were rotten and
stuck together. Only here and there was a sentence or a part of a
sentence legible. The first that I could read was near the middle of
the little volume:

“His majesty left for Tunbridge Wells today, he ... jesty was stricken
... terday. God give she does not die ... am military governor of Lon
...”

And farther on:

“It is awful ... hundred deaths today ... worse than the bombardm ...”

Nearer the end I picked out the following:

“I promised his maj ... e will find me here when he ret ... alone.”

The most legible passage was on the next page:

“Thank God we drove them out. There is not a single ... man on British
soil today; but at what awful cost. I tried to persuade Sir Phillip to
urge the people to remain. But they are mad with fear of the Death, and
rage at our enemies. He tells me that the coast cities are packed ...
waiting to be taken across. What will become of England, with none left
to rebuild her shattered cities!”

And the last entry:

“... alone. Only the wild beasts ... A lion is roaring now beneath the
palace windows. I think the people feared the beasts even more than
they did the Death. But they are gone, all gone, and to what? How much
better conditions will they find on the continent? All gone—only I
remain. I promised his majesty, and when he returns he will find that I
was true to my trust, for I shall be awaiting him. God save the King!”

That was all. This brave and forever nameless officer died nobly at his
post—true to his country and his king. It was the Death, no doubt, that
took him.

Some of the entries had been dated. From the few legible letters and
figures which remained I judge the end came some time in August, 1937,
but of that I am not at all certain.

The diary has cleared up at least one mystery that had puzzled me not a
little, and now I am surprised that I had not guessed its solution
myself—the presence of African and Asiatic beasts in England.

Acclimated by years of confinement in the zoological gardens, they were
fitted to resume in England the wild existence for which nature had
intended them, and once free, had evidently bred prolifically, in
marked contrast to the captive exotics of twentieth century
Pan-America, which had gradually become fewer until extinction occurred
some time during the twenty-first century.

The palace, if such it was, lay not far from the banks of the Thames.
The room in which we were imprisoned overlooked the river, and I
determined to attempt to escape in this direction.

To descend through the palace was out of the question, but outside we
could discover no lions. The stems of the ivy which clambered upward
past the window of the room were as large around as my arm. I knew that
they would support our weight, and as we could gain nothing by
remaining longer in the palace, I decided to descend by way of the ivy
and follow along down the river in the direction of the launch.

Naturally I was much handicapped by the presence of the girl. But I
could not abandon her, though I had no idea what I should do with her
after rejoining my companions. That she would prove a burden and an
embarrassment I was certain, but she had made it equally plain to me
that she would never return to her people to mate with Buckingham.

I owed my life to her, and, all other considerations aside, that was
sufficient demand upon my gratitude and my honor to necessitate my
suffering every inconvenience in her service. Too, she was queen of
England. But, by far the most potent argument in her favor, she was a
woman in distress—and a young and very beautiful one.

And so, though I wished a thousand times that she was back in her camp,
I never let her guess it, but did all that lay within my power to serve
and protect her. I thank God now that I did so.

With the lions still padding back and forth beyond the closed door,
Victory and I crossed the room to one of the windows. I had outlined my
plan to her, and she had assured me that she could descend the ivy
without assistance. In fact, she smiled a trifle at my question.

Swinging myself outward, I began the descent, and had come to within a
few feet of the ground, being just opposite a narrow window, when I was
startled by a savage growl almost in my ear, and then a great taloned
paw darted from the aperture to seize me, and I saw the snarling face
of a lion within the embrasure.

Releasing my hold upon the ivy, I dropped the remaining distance to the
ground, saved from laceration only because the lionl’s paw struck the
thick stem of ivy.

The creature was making a frightful racket now, leaping back and forth
from the floor at the broad window ledge, tearing at the masonry with
his claws in vain attempts to reach me. But the opening was too narrow,
and the masonry too solid.

Victory had commenced the descent, but I called to her to stop just
above the window, and, as the lion reappeared, growling and snarling, I
put a .33 bullet in his face, and at the same moment Victory slipped
quickly past him, dropping into my upraised arms that were awaiting
her.

The roaring of the beasts that had discovered us, together with the
report of my rifle, had set the balance of the fierce inmates of the
palace into the most frightful uproar I have ever heard.

I feared that it would not be long before intelligence or instinct
would draw them from the interiors and set them upon our trail, the
river. Nor had we much more than reached it when a lion bounded around
the corner of the edifice we had just quitted and stood looking about
as though in search of us.

Following, came others, while Victory and I crouched in hiding behind a
clump of bushes close to the bank of the river. The beasts sniffed
about the ground for a while, but they did not chance to go near the
spot where we had stood beneath the window that had given us escape.

Presently a black-maned male raised his head, and, with cocked ears and
glaring eyes, gazed straight at the bush behind which we lay. I could
have sworn that he had discovered us, and when he took a few short and
stately steps in our direction I raised my rifle and covered him. But,
after a long, tense moment he looked away, and turned to glare in
another direction.

I breathed a sigh of relief, and so did Victory. I could feel her body
quiver as she lay pressed close to me, our cheeks almost touching as we
both peered through the same small opening in the foliage.

I turned to give her a reassuring smile as the lion indicated that he
had not seen us, and as I did so she, too, turned her face toward mine,
for the same purpose, doubtless. Anyway, as our heads turned
simultaneously, our lips brushed together. A startled expression came
into Victoryl’s eyes as she drew back in evident confusion.

As for me, the strangest sensation that I have ever experienced claimed
me for an instant. A peculiar, tingling thrill ran through my veins,
and my head swam. I could not account for it.

Naturally, being a naval officer and consequently in the best society
of the federation, I have seen much of women. With others, I have
laughed at the assertions of the savants that modern man is a cold and
passionless creation in comparison with the males of former ages—in a
word, that love, as the one grand passion, had ceased to exist.

I do not know, now, but that they were more nearly right than we have
guessed, at least in so far as modern civilized woman is concerned. I
have kissed many women—young and beautiful and middle aged and old, and
many that I had no business kissing—but never before had I experienced
that remarkable and altogether delightful thrill that followed the
accidental brushing of my lips against the lips of Victory.

The occurrence interested me, and I was tempted to experiment further.
But when I would have essayed it another new and entirely unaccountable
force restrained me. For the first time in my life I felt embarrassment
in the presence of a woman.

What further might have developed I cannot say, for at that moment a
perfect she-devil of a lioness, with keener eyes than her lord and
master, discovered us. She came trotting toward our place of
concealment, growling and baring her yellow fangs.

I waited for an instant, hoping that I might be mistaken, and that she
would turn off in some other direction. But no—she increased her trot
to a gallop, and then I fired at her, but the bullet, though it struck
her full in the breast, didn’t stop her.

Screaming with pain and rage, the creature fairly flew toward us.
Behind her came other lions. Our case looked hopeless. We were upon the
brink of the river. There seemed no avenue of escape, and I knew that
even my modern automatic rifle was inadequate in the face of so many of
these fierce beasts.

To remain where we were would have been suicidal. We were both standing
now, Victory keeping her place bravely at my side, when I reached the
only decision open to me.

Seizing the girl’s hand, I turned, just as the lioness crashed into the
opposite side of the bushes, and, dragging Victory after me, leaped
over the edge of the bank into the river.

I did not know that lions are not fond of water, nor did I know if
Victory could swim, but death, immediate and terrible, stared us in the
face if we remained, and so I took the chance.

At this point the current ran close to the shore, so that we were
immediately in deep water, and, to my intense satisfaction, Victory
struck out with a strong, overhand stroke and set all my fears on her
account at rest.

But my relief was short-lived. That lioness, as I have said before, was
a veritable devil. She stood for a moment glaring at us, then like a
shot she sprang into the river and swam swiftly after us.

Victory was a length ahead of me.

“Swim for the other shore!” I called to her.

I was much impeded by my rifle, having to swim with one hand while I
clung to my precious weapon with the other. The girl had seen the
lioness take to the water, and she had also seen that I was swimming
much more slowly than she, and what did she do? She started to drop
back to my side.

“Go on!” I cried. “Make for the other shore, and then follow down until
you find my friends. Tell them that I sent you, and with orders that
they are to protect you. Go on! Go on!”

But she only waited until we were again swimming side by side, and I
saw that she had drawn her long knife, and was holding it between her
teeth.

“Do as I tell you!” I said to her sharply, but she shook her head.

The lioness was overhauling us rapidly. She was swimming silently, her
chin just touching the water, but blood was streaming from between her
lips. It was evident that her lungs were pierced.

She was almost upon me. I saw that in a moment she would take me under
her forepaws, or seize me in those great jaws. I felt that my time had
come, but I meant to die fighting. And so I turned, and, treading
water, raised my rifle above my head and awaited her.

Victory, animated by a bravery no less ferocious than that of the dumb
beast assailing us, swam straight for me. It all happened so swiftly
that I cannot recall the details of the kaleidoscopic action which
ensued. I knew that I rose high out of the water, and, with clubbed
rifle, dealt the animal a terrific blow upon the skull, that I saw
Victory, her long blade flashing in her hand, close, striking, upon the
beast, that a great paw fell upon her shoulder, and that I was swept
beneath the surface of the water like a straw before the prow of a
freighter.

Still clinging to my rifle, I rose again, to see the lioness struggling
in her death throes but an arml’s length from me. Scarcely had I risen
than the beast turned upon her side, struggled frantically for an
instant, and then sank.




CHAPTER VI.


Victory was nowhere in sight. Alone, I floated upon the bosom of the
Thames. In that brief instant I believe that I suffered more mental
anguish than I have crowded into all the balance of my life before or
since. A few hours before, I had been wishing that I might be rid of
her, and now that she was gone I would have given my life to have her
back again.

Wearily I turned to swim about the spot where she had disappeared,
hoping that she might rise once at least, and I would be given the
opportunity to save her, and, as I turned, the water boiled before my
face and her head shot up before me. I was on the point of striking out
to seize her, when a happy smile illumined her features.

“You are not dead!” she cried. “I have been searching the bottom for
you. I was sure that the blow she gave you must have disabled you,” and
she glanced about for the lioness.

“She has gone?” she asked.

“Dead,” I replied.

“The blow you struck her with the thing you call rifle stunned her,”
she explained, “and then I swam in close enough to get my knife into
her heart.”

Ah, such a girl! I could not but wonder what one of our own
Pan-American women would have done under like circumstances. But then,
of course, they have not been trained by stern necessity to cope with
the emergencies and dangers of savage primeval life.

Along the bank we had just quitted, a score of lions paced to and fro,
growling menacingly. We could not return, and we struck out for the
opposite shore. I am a strong swimmer, and had no doubt as to my
ability to cross the river, but I was not so sure about Victory, so I
swam close behind her, to be ready to give her assistance should she
need it.

She did not, however, reaching the opposite bank as fresh, apparently,
as when she entered the water. Victory is a wonder. Each day that we
were together brought new proofs of it. Nor was it her courage or
vitality only which amazed me. She had a head on those shapely
shoulders of hers, and dignity! My, but she could be regal when she
chose!

She told me that the lions were fewer upon this side of the river, but
that there were many wolves, running in great packs later in the year.
Now they were north somewhere, and we should have little to fear from
them, though we might meet with a few.

My first concern was to take my weapons apart and dry them, which was
rather difficult in the face of the fact that every rag about me was
drenched. But finally, thanks to the sun and much rubbing, I succeeded,
though I had no oil to lubricate them.

We ate some wild berries and roots that Victory found, and then we set
off again down the river, keeping an eye open for game on one side and
the launch on the other, for I thought that Delcarte, who would be the
natural leader during my absence, might run up the Thames in search of
me.

The balance of that day we sought in vain for game or for the launch,
and when night came we lay down, our stomachs empty, to sleep beneath
the stars. We were entirely unprotected from attack from wild beasts,
and for this reason I remained awake most of the night, on guard. But
nothing approached us, though I could hear the lions roaring across the
river, and once I thought I heard the howl of a beast north of us—it
might have been a wolf.

Altogether, it was a most unpleasant night, and I determined then that
if we were forced to sleep out again that I should provide some sort of
shelter which would protect us from attack while we slept.

Toward morning I dozed, and the sun was well up when Victory aroused me
by gently shaking my shoulder.

“Antelope!” she whispered in my ear, and, as I raised my head, she
pointed up-river. Crawling to my knees, I looked in the direction she
indicated, to see a buck standing upon a little knoll some two hundred
yards from us. There was good cover between the animal and me, and so,
though I might have hit him at two hundred yards, I preferred to crawl
closer to him and make sure of the meat we both so craved.

I had covered about fifty yards of the distance, and the beast was
still feeding peacefully, so I thought that I would make even surer of
a hit by going ahead another fifty yards, when the animal suddenly
raised his head and looked away, up-river. His whole attitude
proclaimed that he was startled by something beyond him that I could
not see.

Realizing that he might break and run and that I should then probably
miss him entirely, I raised my rifle to my shoulder. But even as I did
so the animal leaped into the air, and simultaneously there was a sound
of a shot from beyond the knoll.

For an instant I was dumbfounded. Had the report come from down-river,
I should have instantly thought that one of my own men had fired. But
coming from up-river it puzzled me considerably. Who could there be
with firearms in primitive England other than we of the Coldwater?

Victory was directly behind me, and I motioned for her to lie down, as
I did, behind the bush from which I had been upon the point of firing
at the antelope. We could see that the buck was quite dead, and from
our hiding place we waited to discover the identity of his slayer when
the latter should approach and claim his kill.

We had not long to wait, and when I saw the head and shoulders of a man
appear above the crest of the knoll, I sprang to my feet, with a
heartfelt cry of joy, for it was Delcarte.

At the sound of my voice, Delcarte half raised his rifle in readiness
for the attack of an enemy, but a moment later he recognized me, and
was coming rapidly to meet us. Behind him was Snider. They both were
astounded to see me upon the north bank of the river, and much more so
at the sight of my companion.

Then I introduced them to Victory, and told them that she was queen of
England. They thought, at first, that I was joking. But when I had
recounted my adventures and they realized that I was in earnest, they
believed me.

They told me that they had followed me inshore when I had not returned
from the hunt, that they had met the men of the elephant country, and
had had a short and one-sided battle with the fellows. And that
afterward they had returned to the launch with a prisoner, from whom
they had learned that I had probably been captured by the men of the
lion country.

With the prisoner as a guide they had set off up-river in search of me,
but had been much delayed by motor trouble, and had finally camped
after dark a half mile above the spot where Victory and I had spent the
night. They must have passed us in the dark, and why I did not hear the
sound of the propeller I do not know, unless it passed me at a time
when the lions were making an unusually earsplitting din upon the
opposite side.

Taking the antelope with us, we all returned to the launch, where we
found Taylor as delighted to see me alive again as Delcarte had been. I
cannot say truthfully that Snider evinced much enthusiasm at my rescue.

Taylor had found the ingredients for chemical fuel, and the distilling
of them had, with the motor trouble, accounted for their delay in
setting out after me.

The prisoner that Delcarte and Snider had taken was a powerful young
fellow from the elephant country. Notwithstanding the fact that they
had all assured him to the contrary, he still could not believe that we
would not kill him.

He assured us that his name was Thirty-six, and, as he could not count
above ten, I am sure that he had no conception of the correct meaning
of the word, and that it may have been handed down to him either from
the military number of an ancestor who had served in the English ranks
during the Great War, or that originally it was the number of some
famous regiment with which a forbear fought.

Now that we were reunited, we held a council to determine what course
we should pursue in the immediate future. Snider was still for setting
out to sea and returning to Pan-America, but the better judgment of
Delcarte and Taylor ridiculed the suggestion—we should not have lived a
fortnight.

To remain in England, constantly menaced by wild beasts and men equally
as wild, seemed about as bad. I suggested that we cross the Channel and
ascertain if we could not discover a more enlightened and civilized
people upon the continent. I was sure that some trace of the ancient
culture and greatness of Europe must remain. Germany, probably, would
be much as it was during the twentieth century, for, in common with
most Pan-Americans, I was positive that Germany had been victorious in
the Great War.

Snider demurred at the suggestion. He said that it was bad enough to
have come this far. He did not want to make it worse by going to the
continent. The outcome of it was that I finally lost my patience, and
told him that from then on he would do what I thought best—that I
proposed to assume command of the party, and that they might all
consider themselves under my orders, as much so as though we were still
aboard the Coldwater and in Pan-American waters.

Delcarte and Taylor immediately assured me that they had not for an
instant assumed anything different, and that they were as ready to
follow and obey me here as they would be upon the other side of thirty.

Snider said nothing, but he wore a sullen scowl. And I wished then, as
I had before, and as I did to a much greater extent later, that fate
had not decreed that he should have chanced to be a member of the
launchl’s party upon that memorable day when last we quitted the
Coldwater.

Victory, who was given a voice in our councils, was all for going to
the continent, or anywhere else, in fact, where she might see new
sights and experience new adventures.

“Afterward we can come back to Grabritin,” she said, “and if Buckingham
is not dead and we can catch him away from his men and kill him, then I
can return to my people, and we can all live in peace and happiness.”

She spoke of killing Buckingham with no greater concern than one might
evince in the contemplated destruction of a sheep; yet she was neither
cruel nor vindictive. In fact, Victory is a very sweet and womanly
woman. But human life is of small account beyond thirty—a legacy from
the bloody days when thousands of men perished in the trenches between
the rising and the setting of a sun, when they laid them lengthwise in
these same trenches and sprinkled dirt over them, when the Germans
corded their corpses like wood and set fire to them, when women and
children and old men were butchered, and great passenger ships were
torpedoed without warning.

Thirty-six, finally assured that we did not intend slaying him, was as
keen to accompany us as was Victory.

The crossing to the continent was uneventful, its monotony being
relieved, however, by the childish delight of Victory and Thirty-six in
the novel experience of riding safely upon the bosom of the water, and
of being so far from land.

With the possible exception of Snider, the little party appeared in the
best of spirits, laughing and joking, or interestedly discussing the
possibilities which the future held for us: what we should find upon
the continent, and whether the inhabitants would be civilized or
barbarian peoples.

Victory asked me to explain the difference between the two, and when I
had tried to do so as clearly as possible, she broke into a gay little
laugh.

“Oh,” she cried, “then I am a barbarian!”

I could not but laugh, too, as I admitted that she was, indeed, a
barbarian. She was not offended, taking the matter as a huge joke. But
some time thereafter she sat in silence, apparently deep in thought.
Finally she looked up at me, her strong white teeth gleaming behind her
smiling lips.

“Should you take that thing you call ‘razor,’” she said, “and cut the
hair from the face of Thirty-six, and exchange garments with him, you
would be the barbarian and Thirty-six the civilized man. There is no
other difference between you, except your weapons. Clothe you in a
wolfskin, give you a knife and a spear, and set you down in the woods
of Grabritin—of what service would your civilization be to you?”

Delcarte and Taylor smiled at her reply, but Thirty-six and Snider
laughed uproariously. I was not surprised at Thirty-six, but I thought
that Snider laughed louder than the occasion warranted. As a matter of
fact, Snider, it seemed to me, was taking advantage of every
opportunity, however slight, to show insubordination, and I determined
then that at the first real breach of discipline I should take action
that would remind Snider, ever after, that I was still his commanding
officer.

I could not help but notice that his eyes were much upon Victory, and I
did not like it, for I knew the type of man he was. But as it would not
be necessary ever to leave the girl alone with him I felt no
apprehension for her safety.

After the incident of the discussion of barbarians I thought that
Victoryl’s manner toward me changed perceptibly. She held aloof from
me, and when Snider took his turn at the wheel, sat beside him, upon
the pretext that she wished to learn how to steer the launch. I
wondered if she had guessed the manl’s antipathy for me, and was
seeking his company solely for the purpose of piquing me.

Snider was, too, taking full advantage of his opportunity. Often he
leaned toward the girl to whisper in her ear, and he laughed much,
which was unusual with Snider.

Of course, it was nothing at all to me; yet, for some unaccountable
reason, the sight of the two of them sitting there so close to one
another and seeming to be enjoying each otherl’s society to such a
degree irritated me tremendously, and put me in such a bad humor that I
took no pleasure whatsoever in the last few hours of the crossing.

We aimed to land near the site of ancient Ostend. But when we neared
the coast we discovered no indication of any human habitations
whatever, let alone a city. After we had landed, we found the same
howling wilderness about us that we had discovered on the British Isle.
There was no slightest indication that civilized man had ever set a
foot upon that portion of the continent of Europe.

Although I had feared as much, since our experience in England, I could
not but own to a feeling of marked disappointment, and to the gravest
fears of the future, which induced a mental depression that was in no
way dissipated by the continued familiarity between Victory and Snider.

I was angry with myself that I permitted that matter to affect me as it
had. I did not wish to admit to myself that I was angry with this
uncultured little savage, that it made the slightest difference to me
what she did or what she did not do, or that I could so lower myself as
to feel personal enmity towards a common sailor. And yet, to be honest,
I was doing both.

Finding nothing to detain us about the spot where Ostend once had
stood, we set out up the coast in search of the mouth of the River
Rhine, which I purposed ascending in search of civilized man. It was my
intention to explore the Rhine as far up as the launch would take us.
If we found no civilization there we would return to the North Sea,
continue up the coast to the Elbe, and follow that river and the canals
of Berlin. Here, at least, I was sure that we should find what we
sought—and, if not, then all Europe had reverted to barbarism.

The weather remained fine, and we made excellent progress, but
everywhere along the Rhine we met with the same disappointment—no sign
of civilized man, in fact, no sign of man at all.

I was not enjoying the exploration of modern Europe as I had
anticipated—I was unhappy. Victory seemed changed, too. I had enjoyed
her company at first, but since the trip across the Channel I had held
aloof from her.

Her chin was in the air most of the time, and yet I rather think that
she regretted her friendliness with Snider, for I noticed that she
avoided him entirely. He, on the contrary, emboldened by her former
friendliness, sought every opportunity to be near her. I should have
liked nothing better than a reasonably good excuse to punch his head;
yet, paradoxically, I was ashamed of myself for harboring him any ill
will. I realized that there was something the matter with me, but I did
not know what it was.

Matters remained thus for several days, and we continued our journey up
the Rhine. At Cologne, I had hoped to find some reassuring indications,
but there was no Cologne. And as there had been no other cities along
the river up to that point, the devastation was infinitely greater than
time alone could have wrought. Great guns, bombs, and mines must have
leveled every building that man had raised, and then nature,
unhindered, had covered the ghastly evidence of human depravity with
her beauteous mantle of verdure. Splendid trees reared their stately
tops where splendid cathedrals once had reared their domes, and sweet
wild flowers blossomed in simple serenity in soil that once was
drenched with human blood.

Nature had reclaimed what man had once stolen from her and defiled. A
herd of zebras grazed where once the German kaiser may have reviewed
his troops. An antelope rested peacefully in a bed of daisies where,
perhaps, two hundred years ago a big gun belched its terror-laden
messages of death, of hate, of destruction against the works of man and
God alike.

We were in need of fresh meat, yet I hesitated to shatter the quiet and
peaceful serenity of the view with the crack of a rifle and the death
of one of those beautiful creatures before us. But it had to be done—we
must eat. I left the work to Delcarte, however, and in a moment we had
two antelope and the landscape to ourselves.

After eating, we boarded the launch and continued up the river. For two
days we passed through a primeval wilderness. In the afternoon of the
second day we landed upon the west bank of the river, and, leaving
Snider and Thirty-six to guard Victory and the launch, Delcarte,
Taylor, and I set out after game.

We tramped away from the river for upwards of an hour before
discovering anything, and then only a small red deer, which Taylor
brought down with a neat shot of two hundred yards. It was getting too
late to proceed farther, so we rigged a sling, and the two men carried
the deer back toward the launch while I walked a hundred yards ahead,
in the hope of bagging something further for our larder.

We had covered about half the distance to the river, when I suddenly
came face to face with a man. He was as primitive and uncouth in
appearance as the Grabritins—a shaggy, unkempt savage, clothed in a
shirt of skin cured with the head on, the latter surmounting his own
head to form a bonnet, and giving to him a most fearful and ferocious
aspect.

The fellow was armed with a long spear and a club, the latter dangling
down his back from a leathern thong about his neck. His feet were
incased in hide sandals.

At sight of me, he halted for an instant, then turned and dove into the
forest, and, though I called reassuringly to him in English he did not
return nor did I again see him.

The sight of the wild man raised my hopes once more that elsewhere we
might find men in a higher state of civilization—it was the society of
civilized man that I craved—and so, with a lighter heart, I continued
on toward the river and the launch.

I was still some distance ahead of Delcarte and Taylor, when I came in
sight of the Rhine again. But I came to the waterl’s edge before I
noticed that anything was amiss with the party we had left there a few
hours before.

My first intimation of disaster was the absence of the launch from its
former moorings. And then, a moment later—I discovered the body of a
man lying upon the bank. Running toward it, I saw that it was
Thirty-six, and as I stopped and raised the Grabritinl’s head in my
arms, I heard a faint moan break from his lips. He was not dead, but
that he was badly injured was all too evident.

Delcarte and Taylor came up a moment later, and the three of us worked
over the fellow, hoping to revive him that he might tell us what had
happened, and what had become of the others. My first thought was
prompted by the sight I had recently had of the savage native. The
little party had evidently been surprised, and in the attack Thirty-six
had been wounded and the others taken prisoners. The thought was almost
like a physical blow in the face—it stunned me. Victory in the hands of
these abysmal brutes! It was frightful. I almost shook poor Thirty-six
in my efforts to revive him.

I explained my theory to the others, and then Delcarte shattered it by
a single movement of the hand. He drew aside the lionl’s skin that
covered half of the Grabritinl’s breast, revealing a neat, round hole
in Thirty-sixl’s chest—a hole that could have been made by no other
weapon than a rifle.

“Snider!” I exclaimed. Delcarte nodded. At about the same time the
eyelids of the wounded man fluttered, and raised. He looked up at us,
and very slowly the light of consciousness returned to his eyes.

“What happened, Thirty-six?” I asked him.

He tried to reply, but the effort caused him to cough, bringing about a
hemorrhage of the lungs and again he fell back exhausted. For several
long minutes he lay as one dead, then in an almost inaudible whisper he
spoke.

“Snider—” He paused, tried to speak again, raised a hand, and pointed
down-river. “They—went—back,” and then he shuddered convulsively and
died.

None of us voiced his belief. But I think they were all alike: Victory
and Snider had stolen the launch, and deserted us.




CHAPTER VII.


We stood there, grouped about the body of the dead Grabritin, looking
futilely down the river to where it made an abrupt curve to the west, a
quarter of a mile below us, and was lost to sight, as though we
expected to see the truant returning to us with our precious launch—the
thing that meant life or death to us in this unfriendly, savage world.

I felt, rather than saw, Taylor turn his eyes slowly toward my profile,
and, as mine swung to meet them, the expression upon his face recalled
me to my duty and responsibility as an officer.

The utter hopelessness that was reflected in his face must have been
the counterpart of what I myself felt, but in that brief instant I
determined to hide my own misgivings that I might bolster up the
courage of the others.

“We are lost!” was written as plainly upon Taylorl’s face as though his
features were the printed words upon an open book. He was thinking of
the launch, and of the launch alone. Was I? I tried to think that I
was. But a greater grief than the loss of the launch could have
engendered in me, filled my heart—a sullen, gnawing misery which I
tried to deny—which I refused to admit—but which persisted in obsessing
me until my heart rose and filled my throat, and I could not speak when
I would have uttered words of reassurance to my companions.

And then rage came to my relief—rage against the vile traitor who had
deserted three of his fellow countrymen in so frightful a position. I
tried to feel an equal rage against the woman, but somehow I could not,
and kept searching for excuses for her—her youth, her inexperience, her
savagery.

My rising anger swept away my temporary helplessness. I smiled, and
told Taylor not to look so glum.

“We will follow them,” I said, “and the chances are that we shall
overtake them. They will not travel as rapidly as Snider probably
hopes. He will be forced to halt for fuel and for food, and the launch
must follow the windings of the river; we can take short cuts while
they are traversing the detour. I have my map—thank God! I always carry
it upon my person—and with that and the compass we will have an
advantage over them.”

My words seemed to cheer them both, and they were for starting off at
once in pursuit. There was no reason why we should delay, and we set
forth down the river. As we tramped along, we discussed a question that
was uppermost in the mind of each—what we should do with Snider when we
had captured him, for with the action of pursuit had come the
optimistic conviction that we should succeed. As a matter of fact, we
had to succeed. The very thought of remaining in this utter wilderness
for the rest of our lives was impossible.

We arrived at nothing very definite in the matter of Sniderl’s
punishment, since Taylor was for shooting him, Delcarte insisting that
he should be hanged, while I, although fully conscious of the gravity
of his offense, could not bring myself to give the death penalty.

I fell to wondering what charm Victory had found in such a man as
Snider, and why I insisted upon finding excuses for her and trying to
defend her indefensible act. She was nothing to me. Aside from the
natural gratitude I felt for her since she had saved my life, I owed
her nothing. She was a half-naked little savage—I, a gentleman, and an
officer in the worldl’s greatest navy. There could be no close bonds of
interest between us.

This line of reflection I discovered to be as distressing as the
former, but, though I tried to turn my mind to other things, it
persisted in returning to the vision of an oval face, sun-tanned; of
smiling lips, revealing white and even teeth; of brave eyes that
harbored no shadow of guile; and of a tumbling mass of wavy hair that
crowned the loveliest picture on which my eyes had ever rested.

Every time this vision presented itself I felt myself turn cold with
rage and hate against Snider. I could forgive the launch, but if he had
wronged her he should die—he should die at my own hands; in this I was
determined.

For two days we followed the river northward, cutting off where we
could, but confined for the most part to the game trails that
paralleled the stream. One afternoon, we cut across a narrow neck of
land that saved us many miles, where the river wound to the west and
back again.

Here we decided to halt, for we had had a hard day of it, and, if the
truth were known, I think that we had all given up hope of overtaking
the launch other than by the merest accident.

We had shot a deer just before our halt, and, as Taylor and Delcarte
were preparing it, I walked down to the water to fill our canteens. I
had just finished, and was straightening up, when something floating
around a bend above me caught my eye. For a moment I could not believe
the testimony of my own senses. It was a boat.

I shouted to Delcarte and Taylor, who came running to my side.

“The launch!” cried Delcarte; and, indeed, it was the launch, floating
down-river from above us. Where had it been? How had we passed it? And
how were we to reach it now, should Snider and the girl discover us?

“Itl’s drifting,” said Taylor. “I see no one in it.”

I was stripping off my clothes, and Delcarte soon followed my example.
I told Taylor to remain on shore with the clothing and rifles. He might
also serve us better there, since it would give him an opportunity to
take a shot at Snider should the man discover us and show himself.

With powerful strokes we swam out in the path of the oncoming launch.
Being a stronger swimmer than Delcarte, I soon was far in the lead,
reaching the center of the channel just as the launch bore down upon
me. It was drifting broadside on. I seized the gunwale and raised
myself quickly, so that my chin topped the side. I expected a blow the
moment that I came within the view of the occupants, but no blow fell.

Snider lay upon his back in the bottom of the boat alone. Even before I
had clambered in and stooped above him I knew that he was dead. Without
examining him further, I ran forward to the control board and pressed
the starting button. To my relief, the mechanism responded—the launch
was uninjured. Coming about, I picked up Delcarte. He was astounded at
the sight that met his eyes, and immediately fell to examining
Sniderl’s body for signs of life or an explanation of the manner in
which he met his death.

The fellow had been dead for hours—he was cold and still. But
Delcarte’s search was not without results, for above Sniderl’s heart
was a wound, a slit about an inch in length—such a slit as a sharp
knife would make, and in the dead fingers of one hand was clutched a
strand of long brown hair—Victoryl’s hair was brown.

They say that dead men tell no tales, but Snider told the story of his
end as clearly as though the dead lips had parted and poured forth the
truth. The beast had attacked the girl, and she had defended her honor.

We buried Snider beside the Rhine, and no stone marks his last resting
place. Beasts do not require headstones.

Then we set out in the launch, turning her nose upstream. When I had
told Delcarte and Taylor that I intended searching for the girl,
neither had demurred.

“We had her wrong in our thoughts,” said Delcarte, “and the least that
we can do in expiation is to find and rescue her.”

We called her name aloud every few minutes as we motored up the river,
but, though we returned all the way to our former camping place, we did
not find her. I then decided to retrace our journey, letting Taylor
handle the launch, while Delcarte and I, upon opposite sides of the
river, searched for some sign of the spot where Victory had landed.

We found nothing until we had reached a point a few miles above the
spot where I had first seen the launch drifting down toward us, and
there I discovered the remnants of a recent camp fire.

That Victory carried flint and steel I was aware, and that it was she
who built the fire I was positive. But which way had she gone since she
stopped here?

Would she go on down the river, that she might thus bring herself
nearer her own Grabritin, or would she have sought to search for us
upstream, where she had seen us last?

I had hailed Taylor, and sent him across the river to take in Delcarte,
that the two might join me and discuss my discovery and our future
plans.

While waiting for them, I stood looking out over the river, my back
toward the woods that stretched away to the east behind me. Delcarte
was just stepping into the launch upon the opposite side of the stream,
when, without the least warning, I was violently seized by both arms
and about the waist—three or four men were upon me at once; my rifle
was snatched from my hands and my revolver from my belt.

I struggled for an instant, but finding my efforts of no avail, I
ceased them, and turned my head to have a look at my assailants. At the
same time several others of them walked around in front of me, and, to
my astonishment, I found myself looking upon uniformed soldiery, armed
with rifles, revolvers, and sabers, but with faces as black as coal.




CHAPTER VIII.


Delcarte and Taylor were now in mid-stream, coming toward us, and I
called to them to keep aloof until I knew whether the intentions of my
captors were friendly or otherwise. My good men wanted to come on and
annihilate the blacks. But there were upward of a hundred of the
latter, all well armed, and so I commanded Delcarte to keep out of
harml’s way, and stay where he was till I needed him.

A young officer called and beckoned to them. But they refused to come,
and so he gave orders that resulted in my hands being secured at my
back, after which the company marched away, straight toward the east.

I noticed that the men wore spurs, which seemed strange to me. But
when, late in the afternoon, we arrived at their encampment, I
discovered that my captors were cavalrymen.

In the center of a plain stood a log fort, with a blockhouse at each of
its four corners. As we approached, I saw a herd of cavalry horses
grazing under guard outside the walls of the post. They were small,
stocky horses, but the telltale saddle galls proclaimed their calling.
The flag flying from a tall staff inside the palisade was one which I
had never before seen nor heard of.

We marched directly into the compound, where the company was dismissed,
with the exception of a guard of four privates, who escorted me in the
wake of the young officer. The latter led us across a small parade
ground, where a battery of light field guns was parked, and toward a
log building, in front of which rose the flagstaff.

I was escorted within the building into the presence of an old negro, a
fine looking man, with a dignified and military bearing. He was a
colonel, I was to learn later, and to him I owe the very humane
treatment that was accorded me while I remained his prisoner.

He listened to the report of his junior, and then turned to question
me, but with no better results than the former had accomplished. Then
he summoned an orderly, and gave some instructions. The soldier
saluted, and left the room, returning in about five minutes with a
hairy old white man—just such a savage, primeval-looking fellow as I
had discovered in the woods the day that Snider had disappeared with
the launch.

The colonel evidently expected to use the fellow as interpreter, but
when the savage addressed me it was in a language as foreign to me as
was that of the blacks. At last the old officer gave it up, and,
shaking his head, gave instructions for my removal.

From his office I was led to a guardhouse, in which I found about fifty
half-naked whites, clad in the skins of wild beasts. I tried to
converse with them, but not one of them could understand Pan-American,
nor could I make head or tail of their jargon.

For over a month I remained a prisoner there, working from morning
until night at odd jobs about the headquarters building of the
commanding officer. The other prisoners worked harder than I did, and I
owe my better treatment solely to the kindliness and discrimination of
the old colonel.

What had become of Victory, of Delcarte, of Taylor I could not know;
nor did it seem likely that I should ever learn. I was most depressed.
But I whiled away my time in performing the duties given me to the best
of my ability and attempting to learn the language of my captors.

Who they were or where they came from was a mystery to me. That they
were the outpost of some powerful black nation seemed likely, yet where
the seat of that nation lay I could not guess.

They looked upon the whites as their inferiors, and treated us
accordingly. They had a literature of their own, and many of the men,
even the common soldiers, were omnivorous readers. Every two weeks a
dust-covered trooper would trot his jaded mount into the post and
deliver a bulging sack of mail at headquarters. The next day he would
be away again upon a fresh horse toward the south, carrying the
soldiers’ letters to friends in the far off land of mystery from whence
they all had come.

Troops, sometimes mounted and sometimes afoot, left the post daily for
what I assumed to be patrol duty. I judged the little force of a
thousand men were detailed here to maintain the authority of a distant
government in a conquered country. Later, I learned that my surmise was
correct, and this was but one of a great chain of similar posts that
dotted the new frontier of the black nation into whose hands I had
fallen.

Slowly I learned their tongue, so that I could understand what was said
before me, and make myself understood. I had seen from the first that I
was being treated as a slave—that all whites that fell into the hands
of the blacks were thus treated.

Almost daily new prisoners were brought in, and about three weeks after
I was brought in to the post a troop of cavalry came from the south to
relieve one of the troops stationed there. There was great jubilation
in the encampment after the arrival of the newcomers, old friendships
were renewed and new ones made. But the happiest men were those of the
troop that was to be relieved.

The next morning they started away, and as they were forced upon the
parade ground we prisoners were marched from our quarters and lined up
before them. A couple of long chains were brought, with rings in the
links every few feet. At first I could not guess the purpose of these
chains. But I was soon to learn.

A couple of soldiers snapped the first ring around the neck of a
powerful white slave, and one by one the rest of us were herded to our
places, and the work of shackling us neck to neck commenced.

The colonel stood watching the procedure. Presently his eyes fell upon
me, and he spoke to a young officer at his side. The latter stepped
toward me and motioned me to follow him. I did so, and was led back to
the colonel.

By this time I could understand a few words of their strange language,
and when the colonel asked me if I would prefer to remain at the post
as his body servant, I signified my willingness as emphatically as
possible, for I had seen enough of the brutality of the common soldiers
toward their white slaves to have no desire to start out upon a march
of unknown length, chained by the neck, and driven on by the great
whips that a score of the soldiers carried to accelerate the speed of
their charges.

About three hundred prisoners who had been housed in six prisons at the
post marched out of the gates that morning, toward what fate and what
future I could not guess. Neither had the poor devils themselves more
than the most vague conception of what lay in store for them, except
that they were going elsewhere to continue in the slavery that they had
known since their capture by their black conquerors—a slavery that was
to continue until death released them.

My position was altered at the post. From working about the
headquarters office, I was transferred to the colonel’s living
quarters. I had greater freedom, and no longer slept in one of the
prisons, but had a little room to myself off the kitchen of the
colonel’s log house.

My master was always kind to me, and under him I rapidly learned the
language of my captors, and much concerning them that had been a
mystery to me before. His name was Abu Belik. He was a colonel in the
cavalry of Abyssinia, a country of which I do not remember ever
hearing, but which Colonel Belik assured me is the oldest civilized
country in the world.

Colonel Belik was born in Adis Abeba, the capital of the empire, and
until recently had been in command of the emperorl’s palace guard.
Jealousy and the ambition and intrigue of another officer had lost him
the favor of his emperor, and he had been detailed to this frontier
post as a mark of his sovereignl’s displeasure.

Some fifty years before, the young emperor, Menelek XIV, was ambitious.
He knew that a great world lay across the waters far to the north of
his capital. Once he had crossed the desert and looked out upon the
blue sea that was the northern boundary of his dominions.

There lay another world to conquer. Menelek busied himself with the
building of a great fleet, though his people were not a maritime race.
His army crossed into Europe. It met with little resistance, and for
fifty years his soldiers had been pushing his boundaries farther and
farther toward the north.

“The yellow men from the east and north are contesting our rights here
now,” said the colonel, “but we shall win—we shall conquer the world,
carrying Christianity to all the benighted heathen of Europe, and Asia
as well.”

“You are a Christian people?” I asked.

He looked at me in surprise, nodding his head affirmatively.

“I am a Christian,” I said. “My people are the most powerful on earth.”

He smiled, and shook his head indulgently, as a father to a child who
sets up his childish judgment against that of his elders.

Then I set out to prove my point. I told him of our cities, of our
army, of our great navy. He came right back at me asking for figures,
and when he was done I had to admit that only in our navy were we
numerically superior.

Menelek XIV is the undisputed ruler of all the continent of Africa, of
all of ancient Europe except the British Isles, Scandinavia, and
eastern Russia, and has large possessions and prosperous colonies in
what once were Arabia and Turkey in Asia.

He has a standing army of ten million men, and his people possess
slaves—white slaves—to the number of ten or fifteen million.

Colonel Belik was much surprised, however, upon his part, to learn of
the great nation which lay across the ocean, and when he found that I
was a naval officer, he was inclined to accord me even greater
consideration than formerly. It was difficult for him to believe my
assertion that there were but few blacks in my country, and that these
occupied a lower social plane than the whites.

Just the reverse is true in Colonel Belikl’s land. He considered whites
inferior beings, creatures of a lower order, and assured me that even
the few white freemen of Abyssinia were never accorded anything
approximating a position of social equality with the blacks. They live
in the poorer districts of the cities, in little white colonies, and a
black who marries a white is socially ostracized.

The arms and ammunition of the Abyssinians are greatly inferior to
ours, yet they are tremendously effective against the ill-armed
barbarians of Europe. Their rifles are of a type similar to the
magazine rifles of twentieth century Pan-America, but carrying only
five cartridges in the magazine, in addition to the one in the chamber.
They are of extraordinary length, even those of the cavalry, and are of
extreme accuracy.

The Abyssinians themselves are a fine looking race of black men—tall,
muscular, with fine teeth, and regular features, which incline
distinctly toward Semitic mold—I refer to the full-blooded natives of
Abyssinia. They are the patricians—the aristocracy. The army is
officered almost exclusively by them. Among the soldiery a lower type
of negro predominates, with thicker lips and broader, flatter noses.
These men are recruited, so the colonel told me, from among the
conquered tribes of Africa. They are good soldiers—brave and loyal.
They can read and write, and they are endowed with a self-confidence
and pride which, from my readings of the words of ancient African
explorers, must have been wanting in their earliest progenitors. On the
whole, it is apparent that the black race has thrived far better in the
past two centuries under men of its own color than it had under the
domination of whites during all previous history.

I had been a prisoner at the little frontier post for over a month,
when orders came to Colonel Belik to hasten to the eastern frontier
with the major portion of his command, leaving only one troop to
garrison the fort. As his body servant, I accompanied him mounted upon
a fiery little Abyssinian pony.

We marched rapidly for ten days through the heart of the ancient German
empire, halting when night found us in proximity to water. Often we
passed small posts similar to that at which the colonel’s regiment had
been quartered, finding in each instance that only a single company or
troop remained for defence, the balance having been withdrawn toward
the northeast, in the same direction in which we were moving.

Naturally, the colonel had not confided to me the nature of his orders.
But the rapidity of our march and the fact that all available troops
were being hastened toward the northeast assured me that a matter of
vital importance to the dominion of Menelek XIV in that part of Europe
was threatening or had already broken.

I could not believe that a simple rising of the savage tribes of whites
would necessitate the mobilizing of such a force as we presently met
with converging from the south into our trail. There were large bodies
of cavalry and infantry, endless streams of artillery wagons and guns,
and countless horse-drawn covered vehicles laden with camp equipage,
munitions, and provisions.

Here, for the first time, I saw camels, great caravans of them, bearing
all sorts of heavy burdens, and miles upon miles of elephants doing
similar service. It was a scene of wondrous and barbaric splendor, for
the men and beasts from the south were gaily caparisoned in rich
colors, in marked contrast to the gray uniformed forces of the
frontier, with which I had been familiar.

The rumor reached us that Menelek himself was coming, and the pitch of
excitement to which this announcement raised the troops was little
short of miraculous—at least, to one of my race and nationality whose
rulers for centuries had been but ordinary men, holding office at the
will of the people for a few brief years.

As I witnessed it, I could not but speculate upon the moral effect upon
his troops of a sovereignl’s presence in the midst of battle. All else
being equal in war between the troops of a republic and an empire,
could not this exhilarated mental state, amounting almost to hysteria
on the part of the imperial troops, weigh heavily against the soldiers
of a president? I wonder.

But if the emperor chanced to be absent? What then? Again I wonder.

On the eleventh day we reached our destination—a walled frontier city
of about twenty thousand. We passed some lakes, and crossed some old
canals before entering the gates. Within, beside the frame buildings,
were many built of ancient brick and well-cut stone. These, I was told,
were of material taken from the ruins of the ancient city which, once,
had stood upon the site of the present town.

The name of the town, translated from the Abyssinian, is New Gondar. It
stands, I am convinced, upon the ruins of ancient Berlin, the one time
capital of the old German empire, but except for the old building
material used in the new town there is no sign of the former city.

The day after we arrived, the town was gaily decorated with flags,
streamers, gorgeous rugs, and banners, for the rumor had proved
true—the emperor was coming.

Colonel Belik had accorded me the greatest liberty, permitting me to go
where I pleased, after my few duties had been performed. As a result of
his kindness, I spent much time wandering about New Gondar, talking
with the inhabitants, and exploring the city of black men.

As I had been given a semi-military uniform which bore insignia
indicating that I was an officerl’s body servant, even the blacks
treated me with a species of respect, though I could see by their
manner that I was really as the dirt beneath their feet. They answered
my questions civilly enough, but they would not enter into conversation
with me. It was from other slaves that I learned the gossip of the
city.

Troops were pouring in from the west and south, and pouring out toward
the east. I asked an old slave who was sweeping the dirt into little
piles in the gutters of the street where the soldiers were going. He
looked at me in surprise.

“Why, to fight the yellow men, of course,” he said. “They have crossed
the border, and are marching toward New Gondar.”

“Who will win?” I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. “Who knows?” he said. “I hope it will be the
yellow men, but Menelek is powerful—it will take many yellow men to
defeat him.”

Crowds were gathering along the sidewalks to view the emperorl’s entry
into the city. I took my place among them, although I hate crowds, and
I am glad that I did, for I witnessed such a spectacle of barbaric
splendor as no other Pan-American has ever looked upon.

Down the broad main thoroughfare, which may once have been the historic
Unter den Linden, came a brilliant cortege. At the head rode a regiment
of red-coated hussars—enormous men, black as night. There were troops
of riflemen mounted on camels. The emperor rode in a golden howdah upon
the back of a huge elephant so covered with rich hangings and
embellished with scintillating gems that scarce more than the beastl’s
eyes and feet were visible.

Menelek was a rather gross-looking man, well past middle age, but he
carried himself with an air of dignity befitting one descended in
unbroken line from the Prophet—as was his claim.

His eyes were bright but crafty, and his features denoted both
sensuality and cruelness. In his youth he may have been a rather fine
looking black, but when I saw him his appearance was revolting—to me,
at least.

Following the emperor came regiment after regiment from the various
branches of the service, among them batteries of field guns mounted on
elephants.

In the center of the troops following the imperial elephant marched a
great caravan of slaves. The old street sweeper at my elbow told me
that these were the gifts brought in from the far outlying districts by
the commanding officers of the frontier posts. The majority of them
were women, destined, I was told, for the harems of the emperor and his
favorites. It made my old companion clench his fists to see those poor
white women marching past to their horrid fates, and, though I shared
his sentiments, I was as powerless to alter their destinies as he.

For a week the troops kept pouring in and out of New Gondar—in, always,
from the south and west, but always toward the east. Each new
contingent brought its gifts to the emperor. From the south they
brought rugs and ornaments and jewels; from the west, slaves; for the
commanding officers of the western frontier posts had naught else to
bring.

From the number of women they brought, I judged that they knew the
weakness of their imperial master.

And then soldiers commenced coming in from the east, but not with the
gay assurance of those who came from the south and west—no, these
others came in covered wagons, blood-soaked and suffering. They came at
first in little parties of eight or ten, and then they came in fifties,
in hundreds, and one day a thousand maimed and dying men were carted
into New Gondar.

It was then that Menelek XIV became uneasy. For fifty years his armies
had conquered wherever they had marched. At first he had led them in
person, lately his presence within a hundred miles of the battle line
had been sufficient for large engagements—for minor ones only the
knowledge that they were fighting for the glory of their sovereign was
necessary to win victories.

One morning, New Gondar was awakened by the booming of cannon. It was
the first intimation that the townspeople had received that the enemy
was forcing the imperial troops back upon the city. Dust covered
couriers galloped in from the front. Fresh troops hastened from the
city, and about noon Menelek rode out surrounded by his staff.

For three days thereafter we could hear the cannonading and the
spitting of the small arms, for the battle line was scarce two leagues
from New Gondar. The city was filled with wounded. Just outside,
soldiers were engaged in throwing up earthworks. It was evident to the
least enlightened that Menelek expected further reverses.

And then the imperial troops fell back upon these new defenses, or,
rather, they were forced back by the enemy. Shells commenced to fall
within the city. Menelek returned and took up his headquarters in the
stone building that was called the palace. That night came a lull in
the hostilities—a truce had been arranged.

Colonel Belik summoned me about seven o’clock to dress him for a
function at the palace. In the midst of death and defeat the emperor
was about to give a great banquet to his officers. I was to accompany
my master and wait upon him—I, Jefferson Turck, lieutenant in the
Pan-American navy!

In the privacy of the colonel’s quarters I had become accustomed to my
menial duties, lightened as they were by the natural kindliness of my
master, but the thought of appearing in public as a common slave
revolted every fine instinct within me. Yet there was nothing for it
but to obey.

I cannot, even now, bring myself to a narration of the humiliation
which I experienced that night as I stood behind my black master in
silent servility, now pouring his wine, now cutting up his meats for
him, now fanning him with a large, plumed fan of feathers.

As fond as I had grown of him, I could have thrust a knife into him, so
keenly did I feel the affront that had been put upon me. But at last
the long banquet was concluded. The tables were removed. The emperor
ascended a dais at one end of the room and seated himself upon a
throne, and the entertainment commenced. It was only what ancient
history might have led me to expect—musicians, dancing girls, jugglers,
and the like.

Near midnight, the master of ceremonies announced that the slave women
who had been presented to the emperor since his arrival in New Gondar
would be exhibited, that the royal host would select such as he wished,
after which he would present the balance of them to his guests. Ah,
what royal generosity!

A small door at one side of the room opened, and the poor creatures
filed in and were ranged in a long line before the throne. Their backs
were toward me. I saw only an occasional profile as now and then a
bolder spirit among them turned to survey the apartment and the
gorgeous assemblage of officers in their brilliant dress uniforms. They
were profiles of young girls, and pretty, but horror was indelibly
stamped upon them all. I shuddered as I contemplated their sad fate,
and turned my eyes away.

I heard the master of ceremonies command them to prostrate themselves
before the emperor, and the sounds as they went upon their knees before
him, touching their foreheads to the floor. Then came the official’s
voice again, in sharp and peremptory command.

“Down, slave!” he cried. “Make obeisance to your sovereign!”

I looked up, attracted by the tone of the manl’s voice, to see a
single, straight, slim figure standing erect in the center of the line
of prostrate girls, her arms folded across her breast and little chin
in the air. Her back was toward me—I could not see her face, though I
should like to see the countenance of this savage young lioness,
standing there defiant among that herd of terrified sheep.

“Down! Down!” shouted the master of ceremonies, taking a step toward
her and half drawing his sword.

My blood boiled. To stand there, inactive, while a negro struck down
that brave girl of my own race! Instinctively I took a forward step to
place myself in the manl’s path. But at the same instant Menelek raised
his hand in a gesture that halted the officer. The emperor seemed
interested, but in no way angered at the girl’s attitude.

“Let us inquire,” he said in a smooth, pleasant voice, “why this young
woman refuses to do homage to her sovereign,” and he put the question
himself directly to her.

She answered him in Abyssinian, but brokenly and with an accent that
betrayed how recently she had acquired her slight knowledge of the
tongue.

“I go on my knees to no one,” she said. “I have no sovereign. I myself
am sovereign in my own country.”

Menelek, at her words, leaned back in his throne and laughed
uproariously. Following his example, which seemed always the correct
procedure, the assembled guests vied with one another in an effort to
laugh more noisily than the emperor.

The girl but tilted her chin a bit higher in the air—even her back
proclaimed her utter contempt for her captors. Finally Menelek restored
quiet by the simple expedient of a frown, whereupon each loyal guest
exchanged his mirthful mien for an emulative scowl.

“And who,” asked Menelek, “are you, and by what name is your country
called?”

“I am Victory, Queen of Grabritin,” replied the girl so quickly and so
unexpectedly that I gasped in astonishment.




CHAPTER IX.


Victory! She was here, a slave to these black conquerors. Once more I
started toward her, but better judgment held me back—I could do nothing
to help her other than by stealth. Could I even accomplish aught by
this means? I did not know. It seemed beyond the pale of possibility,
and yet I should try.

“And you will not bend the knee to me?” continued Menelek, after she
had spoken. Victory shook her head in a most decided negation.

“You shall be my first choice, then,” said the emperor. “I like your
spirit, for the breaking of it will add to my pleasure in you, and
never fear but that it shall be broken—this very night. Take her to my
apartments,” and he motioned to an officer at his side.

I was surprised to see Victory follow the man off in apparent quiet
submission. I tried to follow, that I might be near her against some
opportunity to speak with her or assist in her escape. But, after I had
followed them from the throne room, through several other apartments,
and down a long corridor, I found my further progress barred by a
soldier who stood guard before a doorway through which the officer
conducted Victory.

Almost immediately the officer reappeared and started back in the
direction of the throne room. I had been hiding in a doorway after the
guard had turned me back, having taken refuge there while his back was
turned, and, as the officer approached me, I withdrew into the room
beyond, which was in darkness. There I remained for a long time,
watching the sentry before the door of the room in which Victory was a
prisoner, and awaiting some favorable circumstance which would give me
entry to her.

I have not attempted to fully describe my sensations at the moment I
recognized Victory, because, I can assure you, they were entirely
indescribable. I should never have imagined that the sight of any human
being could affect me as had this unexpected discovery of Victory in
the same room in which I was, while I had thought of her for weeks
either as dead, or at best hundreds of miles to the west, and as
irretrievably lost to me as though she were, in truth, dead.

I was filled with a strange, mad impulse to be near her. It was not
enough merely to assist her, or protect her—I desired to touch her—to
take her in my arms. I was astounded at myself. Another thing puzzled
me—it was my incomprehensible feeling of elation since I had again seen
her. With a fate worse than death staring her in the face, and with the
knowledge that I should probably die defending her within the hour, I
was still happier than I had been for weeks—and all because I had seen
again for a few brief minutes the figure of a little heathen maiden. I
couldn’t account for it, and it angered me; I had never before felt any
such sensations in the presence of a woman, and I had made love to some
very beautiful ones in my time.

It seemed ages that I stood in the shadow of that doorway, in the
ill-lit corridor of the palace of Menelek XIV. A sickly gas jet cast a
sad pallor upon the black face of the sentry. The fellow seemed rooted
to the spot. Evidently he would never leave, or turn his back again.

I had been in hiding but a short time when I heard the sound of distant
cannon. The truce had ended, and the battle had been resumed. Very
shortly thereafter the earth shook to the explosion of a shell within
the city, and from time to time thereafter other shells burst at no
great distance from the palace. The yellow men were bombarding New
Gondar again.

Presently officers and slaves commenced to traverse the corridor on
matters pertaining to their duties, and then came the emperor, scowling
and wrathful. He was followed by a few personal attendants, whom he
dismissed at the doorway to his apartments—the same doorway through
which Victory had been taken. I chafed to follow him, but the corridor
was filled with people. At last they betook themselves to their own
apartments, which lay upon either side of the corridor.

An officer and a slave entered the very room in which I hid, forcing me
to flatten myself to one side in the darkness until they had passed.
Then the slave made a light, and I knew that I must find another hiding
place.

Stepping boldly into the corridor, I saw that it was now empty save for
the single sentry before the emperorl’s door. He glanced up as I
emerged from the room, the occupants of which had not seen me. I walked
straight toward the soldier, my mind made up in an instant. I tried to
simulate an expression of cringing servility, and I must have
succeeded, for I entirely threw the man off his guard, so that he
permitted me to approach within reach of his rifle before stopping me.
Then it was too late—for him.

Without a word or a warning, I snatched the piece from his grasp, and,
at the same time struck him a terrific blow between the eyes with my
clenched fist. He staggered back in surprise, too dumbfounded even to
cry out, and then I clubbed his rifle and felled him with a single
mighty blow.

A moment later, I had burst into the room beyond. It was empty!

I gazed about, mad with disappointment. Two doors opened from this to
other rooms. I ran to the nearer and listened. Yes, voices were coming
from beyond and one was a womanl’s, level and cold and filled with
scorn. There was no terror in it. It was Victoryl’s.

I turned the knob and pushed the door inward just in time to see
Menelek seize the girl and drag her toward the far end of the
apartment. At the same instant there was a deafening roar just outside
the palace—a shell had struck much nearer than any of its predecessors.
The noise of it drowned my rapid rush across the room.

But in her struggles, Victory turned Menelek about so that he saw me.
She was striking him in the face with her clenched fist, and now he was
choking her.

At sight of me, he gave voice to a roar of anger.

“What means this, slave?” he cried. “Out of here! Out of here! Quick,
before I kill you!”

But for answer I rushed upon him, striking him with the butt of the
rifle. He staggered back, dropping Victory to the floor, and then he
cried aloud for the guard, and came at me. Again and again I struck
him; but his thick skull might have been armor plate, for all the
damage I did it.

He tried to close with me, seizing the rifle, but I was stronger than
he, and, wrenching the weapon from his grasp, tossed it aside and made
for his throat with my bare hands. I had not dared fire the weapon for
fear that its report would bring the larger guard stationed at the
farther end of the corridor.

We struggled about the room, striking one another, knocking over
furniture, and rolling upon the floor. Menelek was a powerful man, and
he was fighting for his life. Continually he kept calling for the
guard, until I succeeded in getting a grip upon his throat; but it was
too late. His cries had been heard, and suddenly the door burst open,
and a score of armed guardsmen rushed into the apartment.

Victory seized the rifle from the floor and leaped between me and them.
I had the black emperor upon his back, and both my hands were at his
throat, choking the life from him.

The rest happened in the fraction of a second. There was a rending
crash above us, then a deafening explosion within the chamber. Smoke
and powder fumes filled the room. Half stunned, I rose from the
lifeless body of my antagonist just in time to see Victory stagger to
her feet and turn toward me. Slowly the smoke cleared to reveal the
shattered remnants of the guard. A shell had fallen through the palace
roof and exploded just in the rear of the detachment of guardsmen who
were coming to the rescue of their emperor. Why neither Victory nor I
were struck is a miracle. The room was a wreck. A great, jagged hole
was torn in the ceiling, and the wall toward the corridor had been
blown entirely out.

As I rose, Victory had risen, too, and started toward me. But when she
saw that I was uninjured she stopped, and stood there in the center of
the demolished apartment looking at me. Her expression was
inscrutable—I could not guess whether she was glad to see me, or not.

“Victory!” I cried. “Thank God that you are safe!” And I approached
her, a greater gladness in my heart than I had felt since the moment
that I knew the Coldwater must be swept beyond thirty.

There was no answering gladness in her eyes. Instead, she stamped her
little foot in anger.

“Why did it have to be you who saved me!” she exclaimed. “I hate you!”

“Hate me?” I asked. “Why should you hate me, Victory? I do not hate
you. I—I—” What was I about to say? I was very close to her as a great
light broke over me. Why had I never realized it before? The truth
accounted for a great many hitherto inexplicable moods that had claimed
me from time to time since first I had seen Victory.

“Why should I hate you?” she repeated. “Because Snider told me—he told
me that you had promised me to him, but he did not get me. I killed
him, as I should like to kill you!”

“Snider lied!” I cried. And then I seized her and held her in my arms,
and made her listen to me, though she struggled and fought like a young
lioness. “I love you, Victory. You must know that I love you—that I
have always loved you, and that I never could have made so base a
promise.”

She ceased her struggles, just a trifle, but still tried to push me
from her. “You called me a barbarian!” she said.

Ah, so that was it! That still rankled. I crushed her to me.

“You could not love a barbarian,” she went on, but she had ceased to
struggle.

“But I do love a barbarian, Victory!” I cried, “the dearest barbarian
in the world.”

She raised her eyes to mine, and then her smooth, brown arms encircled
my neck and drew my lips down to hers.

“I love you—I have loved you always!” she said, and then she buried her
face upon my shoulder and sobbed. “I have been so unhappy,” she said,
“but I could not die while I thought that you might live.”

As we stood there, momentarily forgetful of all else than our new found
happiness, the ferocity of the bombardment increased until scarce
thirty seconds elapsed between the shells that rained about the palace.

To remain long would be to invite certain death. We could not escape
the way that we had entered the apartment, for not only was the
corridor now choked with debris, but beyond the corridor there were
doubtless many members of the emperorl’s household who would stop us.

Upon the opposite side of the room was another door, and toward this I
led the way. It opened into a third apartment with windows overlooking
an inner court. From one of these windows I surveyed the courtyard.
Apparently it was empty, and the rooms upon the opposite side were
unlighted.

Assisting Victory to the open, I followed, and together we crossed the
court, discovering upon the opposite side a number of wide, wooden
doors set in the wall of the palace, with small windows between. As we
stood close behind one of the doors, listening, a horse within neighed.

“The stables!” I whispered, and, a moment later, had pushed back a door
and entered. From the city about us we could hear the din of great
commotion, and quite close the sounds of battle—the crack of thousands
of rifles, the yells of the soldiers, the hoarse commands of officers,
and the blare of bugles.

The bombardment had ceased as suddenly as it had commenced. I judged
that the enemy was storming the city, for the sounds we heard were the
sounds of hand-to-hand combat.

Within the stables I groped about until I had found saddles and bridles
for two horses. But afterward, in the darkness, I could find but a
single mount. The doors of the opposite side, leading to the street,
were open, and we could see great multitudes of men, women, and
children fleeing toward the west. Soldiers, afoot and mounted, were
joining the mad exodus. Now and then a camel or an elephant would pass
bearing some officer or dignitary to safety. It was evident that the
city would fall at any moment—a fact which was amply proclaimed by the
terror-stricken haste of the fear-mad mob.

Horse, camel, and elephant trod helpless women and children beneath
their feet. A common soldier dragged a general from his mount, and,
leaping to the animal’s back, fled down the packed street toward the
west. A woman seized a gun and brained a court dignitary, whose horse
had trampled her child to death. Shrieks, curses, commands,
supplications filled the air. It was a frightful scene—one that will be
burned upon my memory forever.

I had saddled and bridled the single horse which had evidently been
overlooked by the royal household in its flight, and, standing a little
back in the shadow of the stable’s interior, Victory and I watched the
surging throng without.

To have entered it would have been to have courted greater danger than
we were already in. We decided to wait until the stress of blacks
thinned, and for more than an hour we stood there while the sounds of
battle raged upon the eastern side of the city and the population flew
toward the west. More and more numerous became the uniformed soldiers
among the fleeing throng, until, toward the last, the street was packed
with them. It was no orderly retreat, but a rout, complete and
terrible.

The fighting was steadily approaching us now, until the crack of rifles
sounded in the very street upon which we were looking. And then came a
handful of brave men—a little rear guard backing slowly toward the
west, working their smoking rifles in feverish haste as they fired
volley after volley at the foe we could not see.

But these were pressed back and back until the first line of the enemy
came opposite our shelter. They were men of medium height, with olive
complexions and almond eyes. In them I recognized the descendants of
the ancient Chinese race.

They were well uniformed and superbly armed, and they fought bravely
and under perfect discipline. So rapt was I in the exciting events
transpiring in the street that I did not hear the approach of a body of
men from behind. It was a party of the conquerors who had entered the
palace and were searching it.

They came upon us so unexpectedly that we were prisoners before we
realized what had happened. That night we were held under a strong
guard just outside the eastern wall of the city, and the next morning
were started upon a long march toward the east.

Our captors were not unkind to us, and treated the women prisoners with
respect. We marched for many days—so many that I lost count of them—and
at last we came to another city—a Chinese city this time—which stands
upon the site of ancient Moscow.

It is only a small frontier city, but it is well built and well kept.
Here a large military force is maintained, and here also, is a terminus
of the railroad that crosses modern China to the Pacific.

There was every evidence of a high civilization in all that we saw
within the city, which, in connection with the humane treatment that
had been accorded all prisoners upon the long and tiresome march,
encouraged me to hope that I might appeal to some high officer here for
the treatment which my rank and birth merited.

We could converse with our captors only through the medium of
interpreters who spoke both Chinese and Abyssinian. But there were many
of these, and shortly after we reached the city I persuaded one of them
to carry a verbal message to the officer who had commanded the troops
during the return from New Gondar, asking that I might be given a
hearing by some high official.

The reply to my request was a summons to appear before the officer to
whom I had addressed my appeal. A sergeant came for me along with the
interpreter, and I managed to obtain his permission to let Victory
accompany me—I had never left her alone with the prisoners since we had
been captured.

To my delight I found that the officer into whose presence we were
conducted spoke Abyssinian fluently. He was astounded when I told him
that I was a Pan-American. Unlike all others whom I had spoken with
since my arrival in Europe, he was well acquainted with ancient
history—was familiar with twentieth century conditions in Pan-America,
and after putting a half dozen questions to me was satisfied that I
spoke the truth.

When I told him that Victory was Queen of England he showed little
surprise, telling me that in their recent explorations in ancient
Russia they had found many descendants of the old nobility and royalty.

He immediately set aside a comfortable house for us, furnished us with
servants and with money, and in other ways showed us every attention
and kindness.

He told me that he would telegraph his emperor at once, and the result
was that we were presently commanded to repair to Peking and present
ourselves before the ruler.

We made the journey in a comfortable railway carriage, through a
country which, as we traveled farther toward the east, showed
increasing evidence of prosperity and wealth.

At the imperial court we were received with great kindness, the emperor
being most inquisitive about the state of modern Pan-America. He told
me that while he personally deplored the existence of the strict
regulations which had raised a barrier between the east and the west,
he had felt, as had his predecessors, that recognition of the wishes of
the great Pan-American federation would be most conducive to the
continued peace of the world.

His empire includes all of Asia, and the islands of the Pacific as far
east as 175°W. The empire of Japan no longer exists, having been
conquered and absorbed by China over a hundred years ago. The
Philippines are well administered, and constitute one of the most
progressive colonies of the Chinese empire.

The emperor told me that the building of this great empire and the
spreading of enlightenment among its diversified and savage peoples had
required all the best efforts of nearly two hundred years. Upon his
accession to the throne he had found the labor well nigh perfected and
had turned his attention to the reclamation of Europe.

His ambition is to wrest it from the hands of the blacks, and then to
attempt the work of elevating its fallen peoples to the high estate
from which the Great War precipitated them.

I asked him who was victorious in that war, and he shook his head sadly
as he replied:

“Pan-America, perhaps, and China, with the blacks of Abyssinia,” he
said. “Those who did not fight were the only ones to reap any of the
rewards that are supposed to belong to victory. The combatants reaped
naught but annihilation. You have seen—better than any man you must
realize that there was no victory for any nation embroiled in that
frightful war.”

“When did it end?” I asked him.

Again he shook his head. “It has not ended yet. There has never been a
formal peace declared in Europe. After a while there were none left to
make peace, and the rude tribes which sprang from the survivors
continued to fight among themselves because they knew no better
condition of society. War razed the works of man—war and pestilence
razed man. God give that there shall never be such another war!”

You all know how Porfirio Johnson returned to Pan-America with John
Alvarez in chains; how Alvarezl’s trial raised a popular demonstration
that the government could not ignore. His eloquent appeal—not for
himself, but for me—is historic, as are its results. You know how a
fleet was sent across the Atlantic to search for me, how the
restrictions against crossing thirty to one hundred seventy-five were
removed forever, and how the officers were brought to Peking, arriving
upon the very day that Victory and I were married at the imperial
court.

My return to Pan-America was very different from anything I could
possibly have imagined a year before. Instead of being received as a
traitor to my country, I was acclaimed a hero. It was good to get back
again, good to witness the kindly treatment that was accorded my dear
Victory, and when I learned that Delcarte and Taylor had been found at
the mouth of the Rhine and were already back in Pan-America my joy was
unalloyed.

And now we are going back, Victory and I, with the men and the
munitions and power to reclaim England for her queen. Again I shall
cross thirty, but under what altered conditions!

A new epoch for Europe is inaugurated, with enlightened China on the
east and enlightened Pan-America on the west—the two great peace powers
whom God has preserved to regenerate chastened and forgiven Europe. I
have been through much—I have suffered much, but I have won two great
laurel wreaths beyond thirty. One is the opportunity to rescue Europe
from barbarism, the other is a little barbarian, and the greater of
these is—Victory.