The World Masters Part 26

CHAPTER x.x.xI

Until five o'clock there was silence both in the works and on the ships in the harbour. Then, as the southern sun began to climb on its upward curve, the eight searchlights on the towers blazed out, looking ghostly white in the twilight. They were arranged so that they formed two intersecting triangles on each face of the works.

From the top of the western gate flamed a huge star. It was a ten-million-candle-power light, and its radiance, cast directly upon the harbour, was so intense that while the ships were flooded with light, the dim, watery rays of the sun made twilight in comparison with it.

"That is well managed," said Admiral Nazanoff to the count as they were taking their early coffee on the bridge of the ice-breaker. "I suppose that devil-ray, or whatever they call it, is running along those lights, and so making a barrier that no living thing can pa.s.s without destruction. It is an amazing invention, whatever it is; but it is murder, not war. Still, if it comes to an a.s.sault, we must rush it. Meanwhile it is to be hoped that our guns will have destroyed their infernal apparatus.

"You see, we have six ships here in line abreast, and twelve guns, each throwing a melinite sh.e.l.l of not less than a hundred pounds, are trained on the face of the building. When your excellency has fired the first shot they will open, and, at the same time, fifty smaller quick-firers will sweep the walls in such a fashion that no living thing will exist for a moment, either on top of them or in front. In fact, once let us destroy the apparatus which generates that horrible devil-ray, I can give it no other name, and the works are ours."

"But the shooting will not be all on our side, admiral, I fear," said the count. "That is a very terrible little gun that they have on the _Nadine_. It was only a twelve-pounder, but a couple of shots sent the _Vlodoya_ to the bottom, and this man Vandel--if the light had been better he would not have been living now--told me himself that they had guns ten times as powerful on the works."

"Most probably a little Yankee bluff, my dear count," said the admiral. "I dislike those searchlights much more than I fear the guns.

You see, it is almost impossible to take an accurate aim against a searchlight, while it is perfectly easy to shoot from behind or below them. Still, all our guns are fortunately laid already. Yours, which is the starboard one down yonder, is trained on the gate in the centre. The sh.e.l.l will pierce that, and if it strikes the engine-house or whatever it is in the middle of the square it will probably disable the works. That, I believe, is the heart and centre of the whole system."

"It is very probable," said the count, who had already described what he had seen of the works to the admiral, "and I hope my shot will find it, for then my poor Sophie will be partly, at least, avenged. It was a terrible end for two such beautiful women, was it not, admiral?

Fargeau did not matter so much; for, after all, he was only a half-turned traitor and spy."

"It was the most awful sight I have ever beheld," replied the admiral; "indeed I cannot think that human eyes could look upon anything more horrible. But by mid-day I hope our guns will have avenged them as completely as good shot and sh.e.l.l can do. And now, excellency, with your permission we must have our last council of war; I must see my captains and arrange the last details with Admiral Dumont, as it is getting near six. I took the trouble of setting my watch by the clock in the reception-room."

"And mine," said the count, taking out his repeater, "has been going with it for days. When this chimes six we may begin."

Within a few minutes the two admirals and the captains of the different vessels went, by appointment, to the cabin of the _Ivan_, and the last details were arranged. As the clock struck six every available gun was to open on the western face of the works, and the fire of the heaviest guns was to be concentrated on the towers and the central gate until the searchlights were extinguished and the deadly rays rendered impotent.

Meanwhile boats and steam-pinnaces were to be ready to land the sailors and marines with their machine-guns, and as soon as there was reason to believe that the rays were no longer operative, a general advance in force was to be made on the western gate. No quarter was to be given; no prisoners taken. Victor Fargeau had left his father's legacy and all necessary directions for operating the works with Admiral Dumont, and so there would be no necessity for any a.s.sistance from the prisoners, and therefore no need to take any.

At five minutes to six Count Valdemar and Admiral Nazanoff went down on to the fore-deck. At the same moment that they were making their last examination of the guns, a thin ray of electric light shone out from the top of a little rocky promontory to the north of the harbour, where there was a little white tower which the invaders had taken for a harmless and necessary lighthouse. The ray fell directly on the fore-deck of the _Ivan_.

"Ah," said the admiral, stepping back under the protection of the top works, "take care, your excellency, that is only about a hundred metres off, and they may have one of those infernal rays there."

"It is six o'clock," said the count, taking his watch in his left hand and the lanyard of the gun in his right. The beam of ghostly light wavered and fell on him as he stepped back to pull. The next instant the flesh of his uplifted hand melted away from the bones, the lanyard fell away. With a cry of agony he dropped his hand, and then the terrible ray fell on his face. The horror-stricken officers and men saw it change from a face to a skull, watched his fur cap shrivel up and vanish, the hair and flesh on his scalp disappear. Then he dropped, and the bare skull struck the steel deck with a queer sharp click.

A sudden paralysis of horror fell upon officers and men alike, until the admiral roared out an order to turn the port gun on to the lighthouse. He was obeyed, and the gun was fired hurriedly; the sh.e.l.l struck the rock just below the lighthouse and exploded with a terrific report, but the living rock held good, and the deadly ray shone on.

The gunner who had fired it was blasted to a skeleton in a moment, and the rest of the officers and men ran for shelter like so many frightened hares. They were ready to face any ordinary danger, but this was too awful for mortal courage.

Then the ray wandered over the fore-decks and bridges of the other ships till it reached the _Caiman_, on the bridge of which Admiral Dumont was standing, a horrified spectator of what had happened on the _Ivan_. He had a pistol in his hand; a shot was to be the signal for the French vessels to open fire. The ray fell on his hand as he raised it to fire, the hand shrivelled to bone before he could pull the trigger. But the gunners had seen the signal, and the guns roared out. Over fifty guns of all calibres roared and crackled for a minute or so, and a brief hurricane of sh.e.l.l swept across the stony plain between the harbour and the works.

Then it stopped. Every gun was silent, for not a man dared go near it.

Every officer and man who had shown himself in the open had been reduced to a heap of bones before he could get back under shelter.

Then those who were out of reach of the terrible death-rays saw six long guns rise from the masked batteries beside the two towers and over the central gate. There was no flash or report, but the next moment six hundred-pound sh.e.l.ls, charged with Vandelite, had struck the French and Russian vessels, and, as a fighting force, the expeditions had practically ceased to exist.

Every ship was. .h.i.t either in her hull or her top works. The steel structures crumpled up and collapsed under the terrible energy of the explosion. The steel-walled casemates were cracked and ripped open as though they had been built of common deal, and every man on deck within twenty yards of the explosion dropped dead or insensible. Both admirals were killed almost at the same moment.

The guns sank back and rose again, and again the explosions crashed out on board the doomed ships. The death-ray played continuously over their decks and every man who showed himself fell dead with the flesh withered from his face and skull. The terrible bombardment lasted for about a quarter of an hour, and then when only the _Caiman_ and _Ivan_ were left afloat, and the crews of the other vessels had either gone down with them or had swum or scrambled ash.o.r.e in the boats, the guns ceased, and the rays were shut off.

This ended the fight, if, indeed, fight it could be called. Several of the sh.e.l.ls had struck the walls and blown out large portions of the facings, but no vital spot had been touched, thanks to the difficulty of taking aim in the blinding glare of the searchlights. The little lighthouse on the north point, which had proved such a veritable tower of strength, was still unharmed, although the rocks about it were splintered and pulverised by sh.e.l.l-fire.

Only about a dozen petty officers and a couple of hundred sailors and stokers escaped, and most of them were half-mad with fear. They were ordered back on board the _Ivan_, which, thanks to her enormously strong construction, had stood the terrible bombardment better than the _Caiman_. Her topworks were smashed out of all shape, and her decks were ripped and rent in all directions, but her hull was still sound, and a few days' work at her engines would make them serviceable. And in her the survivors of the ill-fated expedition ultimately went back to Europe with a formal message from the directors of the Trust to the governments of France and Russia, expressing their regret that so much damage and loss of life had resulted from the act of piracy committed by those who had mistaken the Magnetic for the North Pole.

The _Corneille_, the old wooden ship which had conveyed Madame de Bourbon out of the range of the guns and the death-ray, was brought back the next morning by the _Nadine_ and the _Washington_, whose business it had been to stop the escape of any French or Russian vessel from the waters of Boothia, and as she was immediately available for the service, she carried Madame de Bourbon back to France. With her she took a small box of oak, which contained all that the death-ray had left of Adelaide de Conde, Marquise de Montpensier, the last, save herself, of the daughters of the old line of the Bourbons.

A similar casket containing the bones of Sophie Valdemar and her father were sent under her care to the count's brother, whose place in Petersburg was less than a hundred yards distant from the German Emba.s.sy, the scene of the reception where what was now but dry bones, dust, and ashes, had been life and beauty and subtly working brains, plotting for the possession of the world-empire, whose throne was not now in any of the splendid capitals of Europe, or of the east, or west, but within the four-square limits--measuring four hundred feet each way--within which the World Masters reigned impregnable and supreme.

EPILOGUE

The short Northern summer was drawing rapidly to its close when Chrysie and Hardress were p.r.o.nounced fit to travel. Hardress had had a very narrow shave, for one of the count's bullets had grazed the right lung, and the wound had brought on an acute attack of pleural inflammation.

Chrysie's wounds had healed within a fortnight, and as soon as she was able to get about she did her best to supplant Lady Olive as nurse in the sickroom.

"You may be his sister," she said, in answer to a strong protest from Lady Olive, "and you're just as good a sister as a man wants to have; but I hope I'm going to be something more than a sister; and so, if he's going to be mine and I'm going to be his, I want to do the rest.

After all, you see it's only a sort of looking after one's own property."

Just at this moment Hardress woke up and turned a languid head and a pair of weary and yet eager eyes upon the two girls.

"Chrysie," he said, in a thick, hoa.r.s.e whisper, and yet through smiling lips, "in the speech of your own country, you've got it in once. There's just one thing I want now to make me well. You know what it is. Come and give it me."

"Why, you mean thing!" said Chrysie, going towards the bed, "I believe you've heard everything we've been saying."

"Some of it," he whispered. "What about that reserve--that territory, you know, that I was supposed to have an option on in Buffalo?"

"Buffalo's not Boothia, Shafto," she replied, using his Christian name for the first time since they had known each other; "but the reserve's all right. I guess you've only got to take up your option when you want it."

"Then I'll take it now," he whispered again, looking weariedly and yet with an infinite longing into her eyes.

"And so you shall," she said, leaning down over the bed. "You have done the work--you and Lord Orrel and poppa. You've done everything that you said you would; you're masters of the world, and, as far as mortals can be, controllers of human destiny--you and Doctor Lamson.

He began it, didn't he? If it hadn't been for him and his knowledge you'd have done nothing at all. And he's got his reward too. That's so; isn't it, Olive? Yes; you can tell the story afterwards, but you and I are going to marry two of the world masters, and we're each of us going to have a world master for father, and--well, I guess that's about all there is in it. And now I'm going to seal the contract."

She bent her head and kissed Hardress's pale but still smiling lips, and just at that moment there was a knock at the door. Lady Olive almost involuntarily said, "Come in," and Doctor Lamson, who had, next to Emil Fargeau, been the working genius of the whole vast scheme which the dead savant had worked out in his laboratory at Stra.s.sburg, came in.

Miss Chrysie, flushing and bright-eyed, straightened herself up, looking most innocently guilty. Doctor Lamson looked at her for a moment and then at Lady Olive. His own clear, deep-set grey eyes lit up with a flash, and his clean-cut lips curved into a smile, as he said:

"I hope I'm not intruding, as a much more distinguished person than myself once said; but, as Hardress is so much better, having apparently found a most potent, though unqualified, physician, I thought you would like to hear the latest news from Europe. The Powers have surrendered at discretion. As they can't fight, they are willing to make peace. They have accepted King Edward as arbitrator, and he, like the good sportsman that he is, has decided that in future, if a country wants to fight another, it shall submit the _casus belli_ to a committee of the Powers not concerned in the quarrel. If they are all concerned in it, the tribunal is to consist of the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Archimandrite of the Greek Church.

If either of the belligerents refuse arbitration after the dispute has been thoroughly gone through, or begins fighting before the decision is delivered, it will have the same experiences as Europe had in the late war--which, of course, was no war."

"Because we stopped it," said Lady Olive, looking straight across the room into Doctor Lamson's eyes.

"Well, yes, _we_," said Chrysie, standing up beside the bed. "I reckon, all things considered, we four have had about as much to do with stopping this war and teaching the nations to behave decently as anybody else on earth. We are here on the throne of the world, kings and queens from pole to pole!"

"But, my dear Chrysie," exclaimed Lady Olive, flushing from her shapely chin to her temples, and making a move towards the door, "surely you don't mean----"

"I don't mean any more than we all mean in our hearts," interrupted Chrysie, taking Hardress's hand in hers. "What's the use of world masters and world mistresses trying to hide things from each other? We four people here in this room run the world. I want to run this man, and you want to run that one; and they, of course, think they'll run us, which they won't! Anyhow, we're all willing to try that, and I think the best thing we can do is to sign, seal, and deliver the contract of the offensive and defensive alliance right here and now.

You kiss, and we'll kiss, and that's all there is to it."

And they kissed.