The Last Fight

: The World Peril Of 1910

It so happened that on the first night the German Emperor saw the comet

without the aid of a telescope he was attacked by one of those fits of

hysteria which, according to ancient legend, are the hereditary curse of

the House of Brandenburg. He had made possible that which had been

impossible for over a thousand years--he had invaded England in force,

and he had established himself and his Allies in all the greatest

fo
tress-camps of south-eastern England. After all, the story of the

comet might be a freak of the scientific imagination; there might be

some undetected error in the calculations. One great mistake had been

made already, either by the comet or its discoverer--why not another?



"No," he said to himself, as he stood in front of the headquarters at

Aldershot looking up at the comet, "we've heard about you before, my

friend. Astronomers and other people have prophesied a dozen times that

you or something like you were going to bring about the end of the

world, but somehow it never came off; whereas it is pretty certain that

the capture of London will come off if it is only properly managed. At

anyrate, I am inclined to back my chances of taking London against yours

of destroying it."



And so he made his decision. He sent a telegram to Dover ordering an

aerogram to be sent to John Castellan, whose address was now, of course,

anywhere in the air or sea; the message was to be repeated from all the

Continental stations until he was found. It contained the first

capitulation that the War Lord of Germany had ever made. He accepted the

terms of his Admiral of the Air and asked him to bring his fleet the

following day to assist in a general assault on London--London once

taken, John Castellan could have the free hand that he had asked for.



In twelve hours a reply came back from the Jotunheim in Norway.

Meanwhile, the Kaiser, as Generalissimo of the Allied Forces,

telegraphed orders to all the commanders of army corps in England to

prepare for a final assault on the positions commanding London within

twenty-four hours. At the same time he sent telegraphic orders to all

the centres of mobilisation in Europe, ordering the advance of all

possible reinforcements with the least delay. It was his will that four

million men should march on London that week, and, in spite of the

protests of the Emperor of Austria and the Tsar, his will was obeyed.



So the truce was broken and the millions advanced, as it were over the

brink of Eternity, towards London. But the reinforcements never came.

Every transport that steamed out of Bremen, Hamburg, Kiel, Antwerp,

Brest or Calais, vanished into the waters; for now the whole squadron of

twelve Ithuriels had been launched and had got to work, and the

British fleets from the Mediterranean, the China Seas and the North

Atlantic, had once more asserted Britain's supremacy on the seas. In

addition to these, ten first-class battleships, twelve first and fifteen

second-class cruisers and fifty destroyers had been turned out by the

Home yards, and so the British Islands were once more ringed with an

unbreakable wall of steel. One invasion had been accomplished, but now

no other was possible. The French Government absolutely refused to send

any more men. The Italian armies had crossed the Alps at three points,

and every soldier left in France was wanted to defend her own fortresses

and cities from the attack of the invader.



But, despite all this, the War Lord held to his purpose; and that night

the last battle ever fought between civilised nations began, and when

the sun rose on the sixteenth of April, its rays lit up what was

probably the most awful scene of carnage that human eyes had ever looked

upon. The battle-line of the invaders had extended from Sheerness to

Reading in a sort of irregular semicircle, and it was estimated

afterwards that not less than a million and a half of killed and wounded

men, fifty thousand horses and hundreds of disabled batteries of light

and heavy artillery strewed the long line of defeat and conquest.



The British aerial fleet of twenty ships had made victory for the

defenders a practical certainty. As Admiral Hingeston had told the Tsar,

they could both out-fly and out-shoot the Flying Fishes. This they did

and more. The moment that a battery got into position half a dozen

searchlights were concentrated on it. Then came a hail of shells, and a

series of explosions which smashed the guns to fragments and killed

every living thing within a radius of a hundred yards. Infantry and

cavalry shared the same fate the moment that any formation was made for

an attack on the British positions; the storm of fire was made ten-fold

more terrible by the unceasing bombardment from the air; and the

brilliant glow of the searchlights thrown down from a height of a

thousand feet or so along the lines of the attacking forces made the

work of the defenders comparatively easy, for the man in a fight who can

see and is not seen is worth several who are seen and yet fight in the

dark.



But the assailants were exposed to an even more deadly danger than

artillery or rifle fire. The catastrophe which had overwhelmed the

British Fleet in Dover Harbour was repeated with ten-fold effect; but

this time the tables were turned. The British aerial fleet hunted the

Flying Fishes as hawks hunt partridges, and whenever one of them was

found over a hostile position a shell from the silent, flameless guns

hit her, and down she went to explode like a volcano amongst masses of

cavalry, infantry and artillery, and of this utter panic was the only

natural result.



Eleven out of the twelve Flying Fishes were thus accounted for. What

had become of the twelfth no one knew. It might have been partially

crippled and fallen far away from the great battlefield; or it might

have turned tail and escaped, and in this case it was a practical

certainty, at least in Lennard's mind, that it was John Castellan's own

vessel and that he, seeing that the battle was lost, had taken her away

to some unknown spot in order to fulfil the threat contained in his

letter, and for this reason five of the British airships were at once

despatched to mount guard over the great cannon at Bolton.



The defeat of the Allies both by land and sea, though accomplished at

the eleventh hour of the world's threatened fate, had been so complete

and crushing, and the death-total had reached such a ghastly figure,

that Austria, Russia and France flatly refused to continue the Alliance.

After all the tremendous sacrifice that had been made in men, money and

material they had not even reached London. From their outposts on the

Surrey hills they could see the vast city, silent and apparently

sleeping under its canopy of hazy clouds, but that was all. It was still

as distant from them as the poles; and so the Allies looked upon it and

then upon their dead, and admitted, by their silence if not by their

words, that Britain the Unconquered was unconquerable still.



The German Emperor's fit had passed. Even he was appalled when upon that

memorable morning he received the joint note of his three Allies and

learnt the awful cost of that one night's fighting.



Just as he was countersigning the Note of Capitulation in the

headquarters at Aldershot, the Auriole swung round from the northward

and descended on to the turf flying the flag of truce. He saw it

through the window, got up, put his right hand on the butt of the

revolver in his hip-pocket, thought hard for one fateful moment, then

took it away and went out.



At the gate he met Lord Kitchener; they exchanged salutes and shook

hands, and the Kaiser said:



"Well, my lord, what are the terms?"



K. of K. laughed, simply because he couldn't help it. The absolute hard

business of the question went straight to the heart of the best business

man in the British Army.



"I am not here to make or accept terms, your Majesty," he said. "I am

only the bearer of a message, and here it is."



Then he handed the Kaiser an envelope bearing the Royal Arms.



"I am instructed to take your reply back as soon as possible," he

continued. Then he saluted again and walked away towards the Auriole.



The Kaiser opened the envelope and read--an invitation to lunch from his

uncle, Edward of England, and a request to bring his august colleagues

with him to talk matters over. There was no hint of battle, victory or

defeat. It was a quite commonplace letter, but all the same it was one

of those triumphs of diplomacy which only the first diplomatist in

Europe knew how to achieve. Then he too laughed as he folded up the

letter and went to Lord Kitchener and said:



"This is only an invitation to lunch, and you have told me you are not

here to propose or take terms. That, of course, was official, but

personally--"



K. of K. stiffened up, and a harder glint came into his eyes.



"I can say nothing personally, your Majesty, except to ask you to

remember my reply to Cronje."



The Kaiser remembered that reply of three words, "Surrender, or fight,"

and he knew that he could not fight, save under a penalty of utter

destruction. He went back into his room, brought back the joint note

which he had just received, and gave it to Lord Kitchener, just as it

was, without even putting it into an envelope, saying:



"That is our answer. We are beaten, and those who lose must pay."



Lord Kitchener looked over the note and said, in a somewhat dry tone:



"This, your Majesty, I read as absolute surrender."



"It is," said William the Second, his hand instinctively going to the

hilt of his sword. Lord Kitchener shook his head, and said very quietly

and pleasantly:



"No, your Majesty, not that. But," he said, looking up at the four flags

which were still flying above the headquarters, "I should be obliged if

you would give orders to haul those down and hoist the Jack instead."



There was no help for it, and no one knew better than the Kaiser the

strength there was behind those quietly-spoken words. The awful lesson

of the night before had taught him that this beautiful cruiser of the

air which lay within a few yards of him could in a few moments rise into

the air and scatter indiscriminate death and destruction around her, and

so the flags came down, the old Jack once more went up, and Aldershot

was English ground again.



Wherefore, not to enter into unnecessary details, the Auriole, instead

of making the place a wilderness as Lord Kitchener had quite determined

to do, became an aerial pleasure yacht. Orderlies were sent to the

Russian, Austrian and French headquarters, and an hour later the chiefs

of the Allies were sitting in the deck saloon of the airship, flying at

about sixty miles an hour towards London.



The lunch at Buckingham Palace was an entirely friendly affair. King

Edward had intended it to be a sort of international shake-hands all

round. The King of Italy was present, as the Columbia had been

despatched early in the morning to bring him from Rome, and had picked

up the French President on the way back at Paris. The King gave the

first and only toast, and that was:



"Your Majesties and Monsieur le President, in the name of Humanity, I

ask you to drink to Peace."



They drank, and so ended the last war that was ever fought on British

soil.









EPILOGUE



"AND ON EARTH, PEACE!"





On the morning of the thirtieth of April, the interest of the whole

world was centred generally upon Bolton, and particularly upon the

little spot of black earth enclosed by a ring of Bessemer furnaces in

the midst of which lay another ring, a ring of metal, the mouth of the

great cannon, whose one and only shot was to save or lose the world. At

a height of two thousand feet, twenty airships circled at varying

distances round the mouth of the gun, watching for the one Flying Fish

which had not been accounted for in the final fight.



The good town of Bolton itself was depopulated. For days past the comet

had been blazing brighter and brighter, even in the broad daylight, and

the reports which came pouring in every day from the observatories of

the world made it perfectly clear that Lennard's calculations would be

verified at midnight.



Mr Parmenter and his brother capitalists had guaranteed two millions

sterling as compensation for such destruction of property as might be

brought about by the discharge of the cannon, and, coupled with this

guarantee, was a request that everyone living within five miles of what

had been the Great Lever pit should leave, and this was authorised by a

Royal Proclamation. There was no confusion, because, when faced with

great issues, the Lancashire intellect does not become confused. It just

gets down to business and does it. So it came about that the people of

Bolton, rich and poor, millionaire and artisan, made during that

momentous week a general flitting, taking with them just such of their

possessions as would be most precious to them if the Fates permitted

them to witness the dawn of the first of May.



The weather, strangely enough, had been warm and sunny for the last

fortnight, despite the fact that the ever-brightening Invader from Space

gradually outshone the sun itself, and so on all the moors round Bolton

there sprang up a vast town of tents and ready-made bungalows from

Chorley round by Darwen to Bury. Thousands of people had come from all

parts of the kingdom to see the fate of the world decided. What was left

of the armies of the Allies were also brought up by train, and all the

British forces were there as well. They were all friends now for there

was no more need for fighting, since the events of the next few hours

would decide the fate of the human race.



As the sun set over the western moors a vast concourse of men and women,

representing almost every nationality on earth, watched the coming of

the Invader, brightening now with every second and over-arching the

firmament with its wide-spreading wings. There were no sceptics now. No

one could look upon that appalling Shape and not believe, and if

absolute confirmation of Lennard's prophecy had been wanted it would

have been found in the fact that the temperature began to rise after

sunset. That had never happened before within the memory of man.



The crowning height of the moors which make a semicircle to the

north-west of Bolton is Winter Hill, which stands about half-way between

Bolton and Chorley, and, roughly speaking, would make the centre of a

circle including Bolton, Wigan, Chorley and Blackburn. It rises to a

height of nearly fifteen hundred feet and dominates the surrounding

country for fully fifteen miles, and on the summit of this rugged,

heather-clad moor was pitched what might be called without exaggeration

the headquarters of the forces which were to do battle for humanity. A

huge marquee had been erected in an ancient quarry just below the

summit; from the centre pole of this flew the Royal Standard of England,

and from the other poles the standards of every civilised nation in the

world.



The front of the marquee opened to the south eastward, and by the

unearthly light of the comet the mill chimneys of Bolton, dominated by

the great stack of Dobson & Barlow's, could be seen pointing like black

fingers up to the approaching terror. In the centre of the opening were

two plain deal tables. There was an instrument on each of them, and from

these separate wires ran on two series of poles and buried themselves at

last in the heart of the charge of the great cannon. Beside the

instruments were two chronometers synchronised from Greenwich and

beating time together to the thousandth part of a second, counting out

what might perhaps be the last seconds of human life on earth.



Grouped about the two tables were the five sovereigns of Europe and the

President of the French Republic, and with them stood the greatest

soldiers, sailors and scientists, statesmen and diplomatists between

east and west.



On a long deck chair beside one of the tables lay Lord Westerham with

his left arm bound across his breast and looking little better than the

ghost of the man he had been a month ago. Beside him stood Lady Margaret

and Norah Castellan, and with them were the two men who had done so much



to change defeat into victory; the captain and lieutenant of the

ever-famous Ithuriel.



Never before had there been such a gathering of all sorts and conditions

of men on one spot of earth; but as the hours went on and dwindled into

minutes, all differences of rank and position became things of the past.

In the presence of that awful Shape which was now flaming across the

heavens, all men and women were equal, since by midnight all might be

reduced at the same instant to the same dust and ashes. The ghastly

orange-green glare shone down alike on the upturned face of monarch and

statesman, soldier and peasant, millionaire and pauper, the good and the

bad, the noble and the base, and tinged every face with its own ghastly

hue.



Five minutes to twelve!



There was a shaking of hands, but no words were spoken. Norah Castellan

stooped and kissed her wounded lover's brow, and then stood up and

clasped her hands behind her. Lennard went to one of the tables and

Auriole to the other.



Lennard had honestly kept the unspoken pact that had been made between

them in the observatory at Whernside. Neither word nor look of love had

passed his lips or lightened his eyes; and even now, as he stood beside

her, looking at her face, beautiful still even in that ghastly light,

his glance was as steady as if he had been looking through the eye-piece

of his telescope.



Auriole had her right forefinger already resting on a little white

button, ready at a touch to send the kindling spark into the mighty mass

of explosives which lay buried at the bottom of what had been the Great

Lever pit. Lennard also had his right forefinger on another button, but

his left hand was in his coat pocket and the other forefinger was on the

trigger of a loaded and cocked revolver. There were several other

revolvers in men's pockets--men who had sworn that their nearest and

dearest should be spared the last tortures of the death-agony of

humanity.



The chronometers began to tick off the seconds of the last minute. The

wings of the comet spread out vaster and vaster and its now flaming

nucleus blazed brighter and brighter. A low, vague wailing sound seemed

to be running through the multitudes which thronged the semicircle of

moors. It was the first and perhaps the last utterance of the agony of

unendurable suspense.



At the thirtieth second Lennard looked up and said in a quiet,

passionless tone:



"Ready!"



At the same moment he saw, as millions of others thought they saw, a

grey shape skimming through the air from the north-east towards Bolton.

It could not be a British airship, for the fleet had already scattered,

as the shock of the coming explosion would certainly have caused them to

smash up like so many shells. It was John Castellan's Flying Fish come

to fulfil the letter of his threat, even at this supreme moment of the

world's fate.



Again Lennard spoke.



"Twenty seconds."



And then he began to count.

"Nine--eight--seven--six--five--four--three--two--Now!"



The two fingers went down at the same instant and completed the

circuits. The next, the central fires of the earth seemed to have burst

loose. A roar such as had never deafened human ears before thundered

from earth to heaven, and a vast column of pale flame leapt up with a

concussion which seemed to shake the foundations of the world. Then in

the midst of the column of flame there came a brighter flash, a

momentary blaze of green-blue flame flashing out for a moment and

vanishing.



"That was John's ship," said Norah. "God forgive him!"



"He will," said Westerham, taking her hand. "He was wrong-headed on that

particular subject, but he was a brave man, and a genius. I don't think

there's any doubt about that."



"It's good of you to say so," said Norah. "Poor John! With all his

learning and genius to come to that--"



"We all have to get there some time, Norah, and after all, whether he's

right or wrong, a man can't die better than for what he believes to be

the truth and the right. We may think him mistaken, he thought he was

right, and he has proved it. God rest his soul!"



"Amen!" said Norah, and she leant over again and kissed him on the

brow.



Then came ten seconds more of mute and agonised suspense, and men's

fingers tightened their grip on the revolvers. Then the upturned

straining eyes looked upon such a sight as human eyes will never see

again save perchance those which, in the fulness of time, may look upon

the awful pageantry of the Last Day.



High up in the air there was a shrill screaming sound which seemed

something like an echo of the roar of the great gun. Something like a

white flash of light darted upwards straight to the heart of the

descending Invader. Then the whole heavens were illumined by a blinding

glare. The nucleus of the comet seemed to throw out long rays of

many-coloured light. A moment later it had burst into myriads of faintly

gleaming atoms.



The watching millions on earth instinctively clasped their hands to

their ears, expecting such a sound as would deafen them for ever; but

none came, for the explosion had taken place beyond the limits of the

earth's atmosphere. The whole sky was now filled from zenith to horizon

with a pale, golden, luminous mist, and through this the moon and stars

began to shine dimly.



Then a blast of burning air swept shrieking and howling across the

earth, for now the planet Terra was rushing at her headlong speed of

nearly seventy thousand miles an hour through the ocean of fire-mist

into which the shattered comet had been dissolved. Then this passed. The

cool wind of night followed it, and the moon and stars shone down once

more undimmed through the pure and cloudless ether.



Until now there had been silence. Men and women looked at each other and

clasped hands; and then Tom Bowcock, standing just outside the marquee

with his arm round his wife's shoulders, lifted up his mighty baritone

voice and sang the lines:





"Praise God from whom all blessings flow!"





Hundreds and then thousands, then millions of voices took up the

familiar strain, and so from the tops of the Lancashire moors the chorus

rolled on from village to village and town to town, until with one

voice, though with many tongues, east and west were giving thanks for

the Great Deliverance.



But the man who, under Providence, had wrought it, seemed deaf and blind

to all this. He only felt a soft trembling clasp round his right hand,

and he only heard Auriole's voice whispering his name.



The next moment a stronger grip pulled his left hand out of his coat

pocket, bringing the revolver with it, and Mr Parmenter's voice, shaken

by rare emotion, said, loudly enough for all in the marquee to hear:



"We may thank God and you, Gilbert Lennard, that there's still a world

with living men and women on it, and there's one woman here who's going

to live for you only till death do you part. She told me all about it

last night. You've won her fair and square, and you're going to have

her. I did have other views for her, but I've changed my mind, because I

have learnt other things since then. But anyhow, with no offence to this

distinguished company, I reckon you're the biggest man on earth just

now."



Soon after daybreak on the first of May, one of the airships that had

been guarding Whernside dropped on the top of Winter Hill, and the

captain gave Lennard a cablegram which read thus:





"LENNARD, Bolton, England: Good shot. As you left no pieces for us

to shoot at we've let our shot go. No use for it here. Hope it will

stop next celestial stranger coming this way. America thanks you.

Any terms you like for lecturing tour.--HENCHELL."





Lennard did not see his way to accept the lecturing offer because he had

much more important business on hand: but a week later, after a

magnificent and, if the word may be used, multiple marriage ceremony

had been performed in Westminster Abbey, five airships, each with a

bride and bridegroom on board, rose from the gardens of Buckingham

Palace and, followed by the cheers of millions, winged their way

westward. Thirty-five hours later there was such a dinner-party at the

White House, Washington, as eclipsed all the previous glories even of

American hospitality.



Nothing was ever seen of the projectile which "The Pittsburg Prattler"

had hurled into space. Not even the great Whernside reflector was able

to pick it up. The probability, therefore, is that even now it is still

speeding on its lonely way through the Ocean of Immensity, and it is

within the bounds of possibility that at some happy moment in the future

and somewhere far away beyond the reach of human vision, its huge charge

of explosives may do for some other threatened world what the one which

the Bolton Baby coughed up into Space just in the nick of time did to

save this home of ours from the impending Peril of 1910.



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