THEoutcome of the First Parliament of Man was hailed by the professional peace-makers as the sublimest achievement of the ages. A way had been found at last to banish war. The dream of the poet had been fulfilled. They called on all men to beat their guns into plowshares, their swords into pruning-hooks. They proclaimed the end of force, the dawn of the Age of Reason.
Our nation once more demonstrated its love for the orator who preaches smooth things. The Honorable Plato Barker praised the President for his brave stand for the rights and dignity of the Republic in his heroic defense of the Monroe Doctrine.
In the same breath he acclaimed the President of Chile who led the way to the court of reason as a new prophet of humanity. He would not yield one inch in the maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine—no! But it had been demonstrated that such issues could be settled by moral suasion! The next session of the august Parliament of Man, he declared, would ratify the decision of the Pan-American Congress without a dissenting voice.
The long pent energies of our nation drove us forward now at lightning speed. During the last year of the great war our commerce had practically come to dominate the world. Anticipating conditions at its close, Congress passed a new high tariff which closed our ports to the flood of cheap goods Europe was ready to dump on our shores. Every wheel in America was turning, every man at work, wages leaped upward with profits mounting to unheard-of figures. The distress in Europe from the glut of an overstocked market sent us millions of laborers and still our industries clamored for more.
A hundred million Americans went mad with prosperity. Our wealth had already mounted steadily during the war. We were not only the richest nation on earth, there was no rival in sight.
New York ascended her throne as the money center of the world, and wealth beyond the dreams of avarice poured into the coffers of her captains of industry.
The one thing on which we had failed to make relative progress was the development of our national defenses. We had more ships, more guns, more forts, more aircraft and more submarines than ever before, but our relative position in power of defense had dropped to the lowest record in history.
At the beginning of the great war in 1914 our navystood third on the list in power and efficiency. Only Great Britain and Germany outranked us and Germany’s balance of power was so slight that our advantageous position was deemed sufficient to overcome it.
At the end of the great war we had sunk to sixth place among the nations in power and efficiency of defense.
Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia and Japan outranked us so far that we could not consider ourselves in their class. The armies of each of these powers were so tremendous in their aggregate the mind could not grasp the import of such figures.
In spite of all the losses, Germany’s mobile forces, ready at a moment’s notice, numbered 5,000,000 trained veterans with muscles of steel and equipment unparalleled in the history of warfare. Russia had 9,000,000 men armed and hardened by war, France had 3,000,000, Great Britain 3,000,000, Austria-Hungary 3,000,000, Japan 4,000,000.
The navies of the world had also grown by leaps and bounds in spite of the few ships that had been sunk in the conflict. Great Britain still stood first, Germany next and then France, Russia and Japan. The navies of each of these nations not only outranked us in the number of ships, submarines, hydroplanesand the range of their guns, but the complete and perfect organization of their governing and directing powers more than doubled their fighting efficiency as compared to ours, gun for gun and man for man.
We were still trusting to blind luck. We had no general staff whose business it is to study conditions and create plans of defense. We had no plans for conducting a war of defense at all either on land or sea. Our admirals had warned the Government and the people, under solemn oath before Congress, that it would require five years of superhuman effort properly to equip, man and train to battle efficiency a navy which could meet the ships of either of the five great nations with any hope of success.
And nothing had been done about it.
The energies of a hundred million people were now absorbed, under the guidance of Waldron and his associated groups of propagandists, preparing to celebrate the great Peace Jubilee the week preceding the meeting of the Pan-American Congress called to settle the problem of the Monroe Doctrine.
This celebration was planned on a scale of lavish expenditure, in pageantry, oratory, illuminations, processions, and revelry unheard of in our history. The programmes were identical in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Washington, Baltimore, Norfolk,New Orleans, Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, Denver, San Francisco, and Los Angeles and a score of smaller cities.
John Vassar refused to accept the invitation of the Mayor of New York to address the mass meeting of naturalized Americans in the Madison Square Garden.
Virginia Holland not only refused to lead the grand Pageant of Peace in its march up Fifth Avenue to the speakers’ stand, but she resigned as president of the Woman’s Federation of Clubs of America, shut herself in her room at their country place on Long Island and refused to be interviewed.
John Vassar read the announcement with joy. The leaven of his ideas had begun to stir the depths of her brilliant mind and pure heart! The defeats of the past were as nothing if they brought her again into his life.
He wrote her a long, tender, passionate appeal that he might see her again.
He posted it at midnight on the opening day of the Jubilee. He had read of her resignation only in the afternoon papers. The managers of the ceremonies had taken for granted her approval and announced that she would lead the pageant of symbolic floats on a snow-white horse as grand marshal.
Vassar waited with impatience for her answer thenext day. If the mails were properly handled his letter should have reached her by noon. An immediate answer posted in Babylon at one o’clock might be delivered at Stuyvesant Square by six. He started at every call of the postman’s whistle in vain. He was sure an answer would come in the morning. Nothing came. He put his hand on the telephone once to call her and decided against the possibility of a second bungling of his cause.
Instead he called the post-office and learned that a congestion of mail, owing to the disorganization of the service by the Jubilee, had caused a delay of twenty-four hours in the delivery to points on Long Island.
He waited in vain another day. He walked alone through the crowded streets that night studying the curious contagion of hysteria which had swept the entire city from its moorings of an orderly sane life.
The din of horns and the shouts of boys and girls, crowding and jostling on the densely packed pavements, surpassed the orgies of any New Year’s riot he had ever witnessed. Every dance hall in Greater New York was thronged with merrymakers. The committee in charge of the Jubilee, supplied with unlimited money, had hired every foot of floor space that could be used for dancing and placed it at the disposal of the social organizations of the city. Wine was flowinglike water. The police winked at folly. A world’s holiday was on for a week.
Vassar visited Jack’s, Maxim’s, Bustanoby’s, Rector’s, and Churchill’s to watch the orgie at its height. Every seat was filled and surging crowds were waiting their turn at the tables. Hundreds of pretty girls, flushed with wine, were throwing confetti and thrusting feathers into the faces of passing men. The bolder of them were seated on the laps of their sweethearts, shouting the joys of peaceful conquest.
Professional dancers led the revelry with excesses of suggestive step and pose that brought wild rounds of approval from the more reckless observers.
Vassar left the last place at 12:30 with a sense of sickening anger. The fun had only begun. It would not reach the climax before two o’clock. At three the girls who were throwing confetti would be too drunk to sit in their chairs.
He drew a deep breath of fresh air and started up Broadway for a turn in the park.
He paused in front of a vacant cab. The chauffeur tipped his cap.
“Cab, sir? Free for two hours. Take you anywhere you want to go for a song. All mine on the side. Engaged here for the night. They won’t be out till morning. They’ve just set down.”
A sudden impulse seized him to drive past Waldron’s castle and see its illumination. No doubt the place would be a blaze of dazzling electric lights.
He called his order mechanically and stepped into the cab. His mind was not on the glowing lights or pleasure mad crowds. He was dreaming of the woman who had taken him to that house a little more than two years before. Every detail of that ride and interview with Waldron stood out now in his imagination with startling vividness. His mind persisted in picturing the two corseted young men who stepped from the elevator so suddenly. He wondered again what the devil they had been doing there and where they came from—and above all why they were accompanied by Villard.
Before he realized that he had started the river flashed in view from the heights south of Waldron’s castle. He had told the chauffeur to keep off the Drive, stick to Broadway and turn up Fort Washington Avenue which ran through the center of Waldron’s estate.
To his amazement the banker’s house was dark save the light from a single window in the tower that gleamed like the eye of a demon crouching in the shadows of the skies. The tall steel flag staff on the tower had been lengthened to a hundred and fifty feet. Its white line could be distinctly seen against the stars. Andfrom the top of this staff now hung the arm of a wireless station. Waldron had no doubt gone in for wireless experiments as another one of his fads.
Far up in the sky he caught the hum of an aeroplane motor. He leaped from the cab and listened. The sound was unmistakable. He had been on the Congressional committees and witnessed a hundred experiments by the Army Aviation Corps.
“What the devil can that mean at one o’clock at night?” he muttered.
He leaped into the cab, calling to his driver:
“Go back to Times Square and drop me at the Times Building—quick.”
He made up his mind to report this extraordinary discovery to the night editor and try by his wireless plant to get in touch with Waldron’s tower.
The cab was just sweeping down Broadway between two famous restaurants and the orgies inside were at their height. The shouts and songs and drunken calls, the clash of dishes, the pop of champagne corks and twang of music poured through the open windows.
The cab suddenly lurched, and rose into the air, lifted on a floor of asphalt. An explosion shook the earth and ripped the sky with a sword of flame.
The cab crashed downward and lit squarely on the flat roof of a low-pitched building right side up.
Vassar leaped out in time to hear the dull roar of the second explosion.
The first had blown up and blocked the subway and elevated systems. The second had destroyed the power plants of the surface lines.
It had come—the war he had vainly fought to prevent! And he knew with unerring certainty the hand and brain directing the first treacherous assault.
VASSARsmashed the skylight of the low roof on which he had been hurled, reached the ground floor and kicked his way through a window. The half-drunken crowd of revelers were pouring out of restaurants close by. The electric lights on the four blocks about the gaping hole had been extinguished and only the gas lamps on the side streets threw their dim rays over the smoking cavern.
The merrymakers were still in a jovial mood. What was one explosion more or less? A gas main had merely blown up—that was all. They took advantage of the darkness to kiss their girls and indulge in coarse jests.
A fat Johnny emerging from a restaurant shouted:
“Where was Moses when the light went out?”
A wag who was still able to carry his liquor to the street wailed in maudlin falsetto:
“The question ’fore the house is, ‘Who struck Billy Patterson?’ ”
A series of terrific explosions shook the earth in rapid succession, and the crowd began to scramble back intothe banquet halls, or run in mad panic without a plan or purpose.
A company of soldiers in dull brown uniforms with helmets of the pattern of the ancient Romans swung suddenly into Broadway from a vacant building on a darkened side street and rushed northward at double quick.
“In God’s name, what regiment’s that?” Vassar asked half to himself.
A gilded youth with battered hat slouched over his flushed face replied:
“Search me, brother—and what’s more I don’t give a damn—just so they turn on the lights and send me a cab—I’ve just gotter have a cab—I can’t travel without a cab—What t’ell’s the matter anyhow?”
Vassar left him muttering and followed the troops at a brisk trot.
They turned into Sixty-second Street, into Columbus Avenue, and poured through the smashed doors at the Twelfth Regiment Armory—they had been blown open with dynamite.
A sentinel on the corner stopped him.
“Will you tell me what company just entered the Armory?”
The soldier answered in good English with a touch of foreign accent.
“ ‘In God’s name, what regiment’s that?’ ”“ ‘In God’s name, what regiment’s that?’ ”
“Certainly, mein Herr—Company C, Twelfth Regiment of the Imperial Confederation, at present on garrison duty in the city of New York—”
“How the devil did you land?”
“We’ve been here for months awaiting orders—”
He saw the terrible truth in a flash. The secret agent of Imperial Europe had organized a royal army and armed them at his leisure, Villard acting under Waldron’s guidance. The six months’ delay in the meeting of the Pan-American Congress was made for this purpose. They were all trained soldiers. Their officers had landed during the past three months. The Peace Jubilee was the mask for their movements in every great center of population.
At a given signal they had blown in the doors of every armory in Greater New York, disarmed the National Guard and mounted machine guns on their parapets.
In ten minutes machine guns were bristling from the corners of every street leading to the captured armories.
It was a master stroke! There were at least a million aliens, trained soldiers of Northern and Central Europe, living in the United States.
A single master mind could direct this army as one man.
He thanked God that his father and the girls wereat Babylon. He had sent them there to avoid the scenes of the Peace Jubilee. He was too cautious now to play into the hands of the enemy.
He made his way to a telephone booth and attempted to call the Mayor’s house.
There was no answer from Central. The telephone system was out of commission.
He hurried to a Western Union office to wire Washington. Every key was silent and the operators were standing in terror-stricken groups discussing the meaning of it all.
He hurried to the Times Building to try and reach the President by wireless and found the plant a wreck.
It was ten o’clock next day before the extent of the night’s horror was known to little groups of leading men who had been lucky enough to escape arrest by the Imperial garrison.
Vassar stood among his friends in the dim back room of Schultz’s store pale and determined, speaking in subdued tone.
Scrap by scrap the appalling situation had been revealed.
A federation of crowned heads of Northern and Central Europe had decided in caucus that the United States of America was the one fly in the ointment of world harmony. They determined to remove it at once,and extend the system of government by divine right not only into South America but North America as well. The great war had impoverished their treasuries. The money had flowed into the vaults of the despised common herd of the United States. They would first indemnify themselves for the losses of the world war out of this exhaustless hoard and then organize the social and industrial chaos of the West into the imperial efficiency of a real civilization.
The result would make them the masters of the Western World for all time. Their system once organized would be invincible. The slaves they had rescued from anarchy would kiss the hand of their conquerors at last.
This was the whispered message a trusted leader had received from an officer half drunk with wine and crazed by the victory they had already achieved for the approaching imperial fleet.
Their business was to arrest and hold as hostages every man of wealth in New York, guard the vaults and banks to prevent the removal of money, garrison and control the cities until the fleet had landed the imperial army.
The completeness with which the uprising of royalist subjects had been executed was appalling. They had taken the trunk lines of every railroad in America. Not a train had arrived in New York from any point southof Newark, New Jersey, and no train from the north had reached the city beyond Tarrytown on the Hudson or South Norwalk on the New York, New Haven and Hartford.
A motor-cycle reached New York from Philadelphia bearing to the Mayor the startling information that the Navy Yard had been captured, the Quaker City’s transportation system paralyzed and that the Mayor had surrendered to the commanding general of a full army corps of twenty thousand foreign soldiers.
An automobile arrived from Boston with the same startling information from the capital of New England. Not only had the Navy Yard at Boston fallen into the hands of the enemy but the Yard at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, as well.
Not a wheel was turning in the great terminal stations of New York. The telephone and telegraph and cable systems were in the hands of the enemy. To make the wreck of the means of communication complete every wireless plant which had not been blown up was in the hands of an officer of the imperial garrison.
It was impossible to communicate by wire, wireless or by mail with Baltimore or Washington, to say nothing of the cities further inland.
Hour by hour the startling items of news crept into the stricken metropolis by automobile and motor-cyclemessengers. The motor-cycle had proven the only reliable means of communication. Pickets were now commandeering or destroying every automobile that attempted to pass the main highways. But one had gotten through from Boston. The motor-cycles had taken narrow paths and side-stepped the pickets.
Not only had the great cities and navy yards been betrayed into the hands of a foreign foe mobilized in a night, but every manufactory of arms and ammunition, and every arsenal had been captured with trifling loss of life. The big gun factory at Troy, the stores of ammunition at Dover, New Jersey, the Bethlehem Iron Works, the great factories at Springfield, Bridgeport, Hartford, Ilion, Utica and Syracuse were defenseless and had fallen. In short, with the remorseless movement of fate every instrument for the manufacture of arms and ammunition was in the hands of our foes, locked and barred with bristling machine guns thrusting their noses from every window and every street corner leading to their enclosures.
The thing had been done with a thoroughness and lightning rapidity that stunned the imagination of the men who had dared to think of resistance.
The only problem which confronted their commander was to hold what he had captured until the arrival of the fleet and transports bearing the first division ofthe regular army with its mighty guns, aeroplanes and submarines.
Unless this fleet and army should arrive and land within a reasonable time, the overwhelming numbers of the populated centers, the scattered forces of the regular army of the United States and the National Guard, with the volunteers who possessed rifles would present a dangerous problem. The amount of dynamite and other high explosives yet in the hands of the people could not be estimated.
They had yet to reckon with the regular army. The traitors had already found foemen worthy of their steel in the police force of New York. Our little army of ten thousand policemen had given a good account of themselves before the sun had risen on the fatal morning.
A force of five thousand reserves fought for six bloody hours to recapture the Armory of the Seventy-first Regiment at Park Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street. They used their own machine guns with terrible effect on a regiment that had been rushed to assist the garrison inside. This regiment had been annihilated as they emerged from the tunnel of the Fourth Avenue Street car system at Thirty-third Street. The police had received word that they were in the tunnel, placed their machine guns to rake its mouth and when the gray helmets emerged, they were met with a storm ofdeath. Their bodies were piled in a ghastly heap that blocked the way of retreat. But the men inside were invisible. Their machine guns and sharpshooters piled our blue coats in dark heaps over Thirty-fourth Street, Fourth Avenue, Thirty-third Street and Lexington Avenue. At ten o’clock their commander determined to smash the barricade of the main entrance where the doors had been dynamited and take the armory or wipe out his force in the attempt.
In this armory had been stored enough guns for the new National Guard to equip an army large enough to dispute possession of the city with their foes. Behind the cases containing these rifles were piled five hundred machine guns whose value now was beyond estimate.
The Colonel of the regiment quartered inside knew their value even better than his assailant. The fight at the barricades of the door was to the death.
When the firing ceased, there was no bluecoat left to give the order to retreat. Their bodies were piled in a compact mass five feet high.
The police force of the metropolis were not defeated. They were simply annihilated. In pools of blood they had wiped out the jibes and slurs of an unhappy past. Not one who wore the blue surrendered. They had died to a man.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard escaped the fate of the yards at Boston and Portsmouth by a miracle.
The superdreadnoughtPennsylvaniahad not been assigned to the fleet which had just been dispatched through the Panama Canal to the Pacific. She had entered the basin to receive slight repairs. By a curious piece of luck her Captain had refused shore leave to his men to attend the festivities of the Jubilee.
A premonition of disaster through some subtle sixth sense had caused him at the last moment to issue the order for every man to remain on the ship. The sailors had pleaded in vain. They had turned in cursing their superior for a fool and a tyrant.
The explosions which wrecked the doors of the armories and paralyzed the traffic of the city found the Captain of thePennsylvaniaawake, pacing her decks, unable to sleep.
When the division of the Imperial Guard assigned to storm the yard rushed it they ran squarely into the guns of the big gray monster, whose searchlights suddenly swept every nook and corner of the inclosure.
In ten minutes from the time they dynamited the gates and rushed the grounds the shells from thePennsylvaniawere tearing them to pieces and incidentally reducing the Navy Yard to a junk heap.
When the Yard had been cleared, the Captain landedhis marines, searched the ruins and picked up a wounded officer who in sheer bravado, cocksure of ultimate victory, gave him the information he demanded.
“Who the hell are you anyhow?” the Captain asked.
“Lieutenant Colonel Harden of the Sixty-ninth Imperial Guard of the American Colonies—”
“Colonies, eh?”
The young officer smiled.
“From tonight, the United States of America disappears from the map of the world. It will be divided between the kingdoms comprising the Imperial Federation of Northern Europe. England and France are yet poisoned with your democratic ideas. They have remained neutral, following your illustrious example in the world war. We don’t need them. Our task is so easy it’s a joke. You have my sympathy, Captain. You’re a brave and capable man. You would do honor to the Imperial Navy. You surprised me tonight. I was informed—reliably informed—that you and your men were celebrating the reign of universal peace—”
“Who is your leader?”
“A great man, sir, known in New York as Charles Waldron. The Emperor in command of the forces of United Europe has been informed already by wireless that America is in his hands. Tomorrow morning this leader’s name will be Prince Karl von Waldron, Governor-General of the Imperial Provinces of North America.”
“So?”
“I advise you, Captain, to make the best terms you can with your new master.”
“Thank you,” was the dry reply.
The Captain dispatched a launch to Governor’s Island reporting to General Hood the remarkable information he had received. His guns had already roused the garrison. The launch met General Hood’s at the mouth of the basin.
The two men clasped hands in silence on the deck of thePennsylvania.
“The first blow, a thunderbolt from the blue, General—without a declaration—”
“A blow below the belt too—a slave insurrection is honorable war compared to the treachery that would thus abuse our hospitality!”
They tried the telephones and telegraph stations in vain. A council of war was called and through the grim hours from twoA. M.until dawn they sat in solemn session.
VASSAR’SCommittee of Public Safety in the rear room of Schultz’ store grew rapidly into a recruiting stand for volunteers.
Before twelve o’clock the old Armory across the way was packed with hundreds of excited followers eager to fight. A bare hundred of them had permits to carry revolvers. A few had secured sticks of dynamite from builders. A hundred old muskets Vassar’s East Side Guard had used were there—but not a shell.
While they talked and raged in stunned amazement over the situation, a newsboy’s hoarse cry of extra startled the meeting. The morning papers had all gone to press before the blow had been struck.
“Get a paper—quick!” Vassar cried to Brodski, his district leader.
The familiar call of the two newsboys yelling from each side of the street could now be heard. This time their words were clearly heard above the din.
“Wuxtra! Wuxtra!”
“New York City captured!”
“Proclamation of Prince Karl von Waldron!”
“Wuxtra! Wuxtra! Wuxtra!”
Brodski returned with copies of theHerald,Tribune,Times,World,Sun, andPress.
Each had issued a morning extra.
On the front page, in double-leaded black-faced type, surmounted by an imperial coat-of-arms supporting a crown, the proclamation of the new Governor-General was printed:
TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITEDSTATESYour Republic no longer exists. The invincible fleet of the Imperial Federation of Northern and Central Europe is now rapidly approaching New York. The transports which it guards bear the first division of the Imperial Army of Occupation, one hundred and fifty thousand strong.The chief cities of the country have already surrendered to my garrisons of 200,000 veteran soldiers. Under my immediate command in Greater New York are 50,000 soldiers—25,000 infantry and cavalry and 25,000 men equipped with 8000 machine guns.We are here to preserve order, guard your property and deliver the first city of America intact to the Commander-in-Chief of the approaching Imperial Army.All saloons are ordered closed until opened bylicense of the new government. All assemblies in schools, churches, theaters, public halls or on the streets or parks are forbidden under penalty of death.All persons found with firearms, explosives or weapons of any kind which might be used in war or for the purpose of rioting will be given until noon tomorrow to deposit the same in the Seventy-first Regiment Armory, Park Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street.After that hour the penalty for any citizen, male or female, caught bearing arms, will be instant death and the confiscation of property.All automobiles, motor-cars, bicycles and horses are hereby proclaimed the property of the Imperial Government and it is forbidden under penalty of death for any person save a soldier in royal uniform to use them.The railroads will be opened for traffic under Imperial control within forty-eight hours. No uneasiness need be felt, therefore, that your food supply will fail. The subways and surface lines will be ready for use within twenty-four hours.All persons are ordered to resume their usual occupations tomorrow morning at daylight when the means of transportation have been restored.Resistance of any kind will be absolutely futile. The President of the United States and his entire Cabinet are prisoners of war, and your Capitol, duly guarded, is in my hands. Your fleet is inthe Pacific, and I have destroyed the locks of the Panama Canal.The Imperial Government earnestly desires that all bloodshed be avoided. We have the best interests of the people at heart. We will establish for the first time in your history a government worthy of this nation. My Imperial Master will treat all loyal subjects as his beloved children. His foes will be ground to dust beneath his feet. For these no quarter will be asked, none given.I have already caused the arrest and imprisonment of two hundred well-known citizens to be held as hostages for your good behavior.Your great churches, your municipal buildings and your big commercial houses have all been mined. At the first outbreak of rebellion, your hostages will be shot and your city reduced to ashes.In the name of my Imperial Master I command the peace.Prince Karl von Waldron,Governor-General of theProvinces of North America.
TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITEDSTATES
Your Republic no longer exists. The invincible fleet of the Imperial Federation of Northern and Central Europe is now rapidly approaching New York. The transports which it guards bear the first division of the Imperial Army of Occupation, one hundred and fifty thousand strong.
The chief cities of the country have already surrendered to my garrisons of 200,000 veteran soldiers. Under my immediate command in Greater New York are 50,000 soldiers—25,000 infantry and cavalry and 25,000 men equipped with 8000 machine guns.
We are here to preserve order, guard your property and deliver the first city of America intact to the Commander-in-Chief of the approaching Imperial Army.
All saloons are ordered closed until opened bylicense of the new government. All assemblies in schools, churches, theaters, public halls or on the streets or parks are forbidden under penalty of death.
All persons found with firearms, explosives or weapons of any kind which might be used in war or for the purpose of rioting will be given until noon tomorrow to deposit the same in the Seventy-first Regiment Armory, Park Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street.
After that hour the penalty for any citizen, male or female, caught bearing arms, will be instant death and the confiscation of property.
All automobiles, motor-cars, bicycles and horses are hereby proclaimed the property of the Imperial Government and it is forbidden under penalty of death for any person save a soldier in royal uniform to use them.
The railroads will be opened for traffic under Imperial control within forty-eight hours. No uneasiness need be felt, therefore, that your food supply will fail. The subways and surface lines will be ready for use within twenty-four hours.
All persons are ordered to resume their usual occupations tomorrow morning at daylight when the means of transportation have been restored.
Resistance of any kind will be absolutely futile. The President of the United States and his entire Cabinet are prisoners of war, and your Capitol, duly guarded, is in my hands. Your fleet is inthe Pacific, and I have destroyed the locks of the Panama Canal.
The Imperial Government earnestly desires that all bloodshed be avoided. We have the best interests of the people at heart. We will establish for the first time in your history a government worthy of this nation. My Imperial Master will treat all loyal subjects as his beloved children. His foes will be ground to dust beneath his feet. For these no quarter will be asked, none given.
I have already caused the arrest and imprisonment of two hundred well-known citizens to be held as hostages for your good behavior.
Your great churches, your municipal buildings and your big commercial houses have all been mined. At the first outbreak of rebellion, your hostages will be shot and your city reduced to ashes.
In the name of my Imperial Master I command the peace.
Prince Karl von Waldron,Governor-General of theProvinces of North America.
Vassar read this remarkable proclamation aloud amid a silence that was strangling.
He opened the papers and glanced at the editorial columns. It was as he feared.
A free press in America no longer existed.
Waldron was dictating every utterance from his tower on the heights of Manhattan.
Each paper earnestly appealed to all citizens to refrain from violence and make the best of their situation until intelligent advice could be given after a sufficient time had passed for reflection and conference with all parts of the nation.
Vassar mopped his brow and groaned.
“Well, boys,” he began, “we must give them credit for doing a good job. They don’t bungle, they don’t muddle, they don’t leave anything to chance. They’ve got us for the moment. There’s but one thing to do, submit—”
“No!—No!” came the angry growl.
Vassar smiled.
“Submit for the present, I was trying to tell you, until we can find the nucleus of an army to support. He didn’t mention our forts or our little army. They failed to get those forts from the rear and they’re intact. There are half a dozen battleships somewhere on the Atlantic side. The main fleet cannot reach us within a month. The Panama Canal has been blown up of course. But the ships that are here with two dozen efficient submarines and aeroplanes will be heard from before the army lands—”
“That’s the talk!” Benda cried. “We’re all Americans, signor!”
“Ya, gov’nor!” Schultz whispered. “This ismycountry now—I fight—if you’ll give me a gun.”
A boy of eighteen, smeared with dirt and mud, pushed his way into the crowd and thrust a note into Vassar’s hand.
“In God’s name, Billy!” the young leader cried. “What are you doing here?”
The boy saluted.
“My duty, sir. When I heard what was happening I reported to General Hood. I’m on secret dispatch work.”
Vassar gripped the boy’s hand, dropped it, tore the letter open, read it hastily, and turned to the crowd:
“Now men, listen! The forts are intact. General Wood appoints me on his staff, with the rank of colonel. He is establishing his headquarters at Southhampton, Long Island. ThePennsylvaniahas slipped to sea and is gathering our fleet. She has picked up wireless messages which leads her to believe that the landing will be made at that point. Our little fleet is getting ready for the fight. I want every man that can find a gun to hustle over to Jamaica. The army holds the Long Island Railroad from Jamaica. Trains are now waiting for you there.
“They can’t begin to enforce that proclamation until their army lands. The garrisons here will stick to the armories and their machine guns until reinforced—”
A suppressed cheer swept the crowd.
Vassar lifted his hand for silence.
“Now I want volunteers to take this order to every election district in New York—”
“Si—si, signor,” Benda cried. “Angela and my bambino—they go too. I play and shout for the Emperor. Angela she beat the tambourine and play for the soldiers. We get the word in the danger places, quick!”
“Good boy!” Vassar exclaimed. “I’ll send you where the others might fail—”
In rapid succession he sent his five hundred followers through the city bearing the whispered word to every district.
When the last man had hurried away he turned to Billy.
“Your sister and the children?”
“Virgina’s gone to a mountaineer’s cabin in the Adirondacks—left the night the Jubilee began—”
“No wonder she didn’t reply—“ Vassar muttered.
“She’ll be back here in double quick time, though, when she hears of this. You know Virginia’s got no commonsense—”
“And the kids?”
“I took Zonia and Marya over to our house. The old man and your father’s with them. They’ve a couple of shotguns and two revolvers. They’re all right.”
Vassar smiled grimly at the boy’s faith.
“Report to General Hood that I will reach Jamaica within six to eight hours and that he may expect twenty thousand men to be there before nine o’clock tonight. How’d you get here?”
“Hid my bicycle in Brooklyn and walked across the bridge.”
“I’ll follow suit. I know where I can put my hand on a good bicycle or two at the Athletic Club—”
Billy saluted and hurried on his mission.
At nine o’clock, the Jamaica terminal was jammed with forty thousand volunteers armed with every weapon conceivable, from a crowbar to a yacht cannon. A sailor had actually smuggled an old brass saluting piece into a ramshackled automobile and gotten into the station with it. These relics from the ark were left in the basement of the terminal.
General Hood had succeeded in getting sixty thousand rifles from the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Governor’s Island, the Forts and one uncaptured armory in Brooklyn which the guns of thePennsylvaniahad torn open and held until occupied by his troops.
All night the Volunteers from Brooklyn and New York streamed into Jamaica. Before daylight a hundred thousand men were struggling to board the trains for Southampton.
But fifty thousand were allowed to leave. There were no more guns. The remaining fifty thousand were held as reserves with such rude weapons as they possessed. Guards were placed defending the approaches to Brooklyn and New York and a camp established for drilling and training the new recruits into the semblance of an army.
THEsun rose on a day never to be forgotten by the people of Long Island. Refugees were pouring along every road from the city. A wild rumor of the bombardment of New York had spread and they were determined to get behind General Hood’s thin line of half-armed defenders. They were still imbued with a blind faith that somewhere our mighty nation had an army of adequate defense.
Virginia Holland had reached home by automobile to find her father’s house turned into a recruiting camp. Old soldiers of the Grand Army of the Republic and the Confederate veterans of New York and Brooklyn, were out in their faded uniforms demanding guns with which to defend the flag.
Holland received them in his house and began to drill on the lawn. Virginia with sinking heart hurried to serve refreshments to the mob of excited men. Marya and Zonia joined with enthusiasm.
Benda was there awaiting Vassar’s arrival with a squad of his friends for whom he had procured uniforms and a few guns. He was drilling them in hisearnest, awkward way when Angela suddenly appeared in the line of refugees from New York.
He rushed to stop her:
“Ah, my Angela, you here! And I told you stay home!”
Angela tossed her head with contempt for his fears.
“I come with you—”
“Go back—back—I say!”
Angela merely laughed and resumed her march with the refugees. If they could live she could.
Tommaso threw up his hands in despair and returned to his drill.
At noon Vassar approached at the head of a division of raw troops. The road was lined with cheering people. He halted his men at the gate, dismounted and entered the Holland lawn, hoping against hope for a word with Virginia. He watched for a moment old Holland at the pathetic task of drilling his blue and gray veterans.
“It won’t do, Mr. Holland,” he said with a smile. “Your fighting is done—”
“Nonsense!” Holland protested. “I’ll show you—”
He put his line of veterans through the manual of arms and one of them fainted.
Vassar slipped his arm about him tenderly.
“It’s no use. I need your guns. Give them to me—”
Tommaso marched in and took the half-dozen guns against the bitter protests of the old men.
They gathered at the gate and cheered and cried as the boys answered the assembly call.
Vassar met Virginia and extended his hand in silence. She turned away fighting for self-control. Her heart was too sore in its consciousness of tragedy for surrender yet. His tall figure straightened, he turned and hurried to his men.
It was not until she saw him riding bravely toward the enemy to the certain doom that awaited our men that she lifted her hands in a vain effort to recall him and sob her repentance in his arms.
INvain officers tried to stem the torrent of humanity that poured out in the wake of the volunteers. The wildest rumors had deprived them of all reason. They had heard that the city would be shelled by the foreign fleet within six hours and reduced to ashes. It was reported that the enemy’s giant submarines had already passed the forts at Sandy Hook and the Narrows and were now taking their places around the city in the North and East Rivers. The guns of these dreadnaught submarines threw five-inch shells and New York was already at their mercy.
It was useless to argue with these terror-stricken people. They merely stared in dumb misery and trudged on, mothers leading children, dirty, bedraggled, footsore and hungry—little boys and girls carrying their toys and pets—the old, the young, scrambling, crowding, hurrying they knew not where for safety.
Vassar arrived at General Hood’s headquarters in time to witness the clash of our squadron with the advance fleet of the enemy.
The battle was not more than five miles at sea in plain view of the shore.
He watched the struggle in dumb misery.
It was magnificent. But it was not war. He felt this from the moment he saw our five ships with their little flotilla of torpedo boats and submarines head for the giant armada that moved toward them with the swift, unerring sweep of Fate.
Our great red, white and blue battle flags suddenly fluttered in the azure skies as thePennsylvania’s forward turret spit a white cloud of smoke. A long silence, ominous and tense followed and the sand dunes shivered with the roar of her mighty guns.
The big cruiser leading the van of the advancing foe answered with two white balls of smoke and Vassar saw the geysers rise from their exploding shells five hundred yards short of our ship.
From out of the distant sky above the armada emerged a flock of gray gulls—tiny specks at first, they gradually spread until their steel wings swept a space five miles in width. The hydroplanes of the enemy had risen from the sea and were coming to meet our brave airmen with their pitiful little fleet of biplanes.
Higher and higher our boys climbed till but tiny specks in the sky. The great gray fleet of the hostile gulls began to circle after them.
The guns of our battleship were roaring their defiancenow in salvos that shook the earth. The imperial armada, with twenty magnificent dreadnaughts, advanced to meet them with every gun thundering.
“O my God!” Vassar groaned. “To think our people closed their eyes and refused to see this day!”
Had his bill for national defense become a law our navy would have ranked second, if not first, in the world. It would not have been necessary to shift it from the Atlantic to the Pacific. We could have commanded both oceans. It would be too late when our main fleet returned by the Straits of Magellan.
Our ships were putting up a magnificent fight. One of them had been struck and was evidently crippled, but her big guns were still roaring, her huge battle flags streaming in the wind.
Vassar lowered his glasses and turned to General Hood.
“They’re going to die game!”
The General answered with his binoculars gripped tight, gazing seaward. “They’re gamecocks all right—but I’m just holding my breath now. You notice the enemy does not advance?”
“Yes, by George, they’re afraid! There’s not a dreadnaught among them that can match the guns of our flagship!”
“Nonsense,” Hood answered evenly, “they’ve sloweddown for another reason. Unless I’m mistaken they’ve led our squadron into a school of submarines—”
The words were scarcely out of his mouth before a huge column of water and smoke leaped into the heavens beside the flagship, her big hull heeled on her beam’s end and she hung in the air a helpless, quivering mass of twisted steel slowly sinking.
“They’ve got her!” Vassar groaned.
Before thePennsylvaniahad disappeared her three sister ships had been torpedoed. They were slowly sinking, the calm waters black with our drowning men.
The sea was literally alive with submarines. The conning towers of dozens could be seen circling the doomed ships.
TheOklahomahad been disabled by shell fire before the submarines appeared. She was running full steam now for the beach, with a dozen submarines closing in on her. The white streak of foam left by their upper decks could be distinctly seen from the shore. Utterly reckless of any danger from the after guns of the dying dreadnaught they were racing for the honor of launching the torpedo that would send her to the bottom.
Her after guns roared and two submarines were smashed. Their white line of foam ended in a widening mirror of oil on the dark surface of the sea.
At almost the same moment a torpedo found her bow and sent the huge prow into the air. She dropped and her stern lifted, the propellers still spinning. Two swift submarines making twenty-two knots an hour had circled her on both sides and brought their torpedoes to bear on her bow at the same moment. Her battle flag was flying as she sank headforemost to her grave.
The wind suddenly shifted and the men who watched with beating hearts heard the stirring strains of “The Star Spangled Banner” floating across the waters from her slippery decks. Weird and thrilling were its notes mingling with the soft wash of the surf at low tide. The music was unearthly. Its strains came from the deep places of eternity.
Instinctively both men lowered their glasses and stood with uncovered heads until the music died away and only the dark blue bodies of our boys were seen where a mighty ship had gone down.
“We’ve but one life to give!” Hood exclaimed. “It’s a pity we haven’t the tools now to make that life count for more!”
The little torpedo boat flotilla closed in and dashed headlong for the submarines. To the surprise of the watchers not one of the undersea craft dived or yielded an inch. Their five-inch disappearing guns leaped from the level of the water and answered our destroyersgun for gun. Their decks were awash with the sea and armored so heavily that little danger could be done by our shells.
The battle of the sharks was over in thirty minutes. Not a single destroyer escaped. They had dashed headlong into a field of more than a hundred dreadnaught submarines. One by one our destroyers broke in pieces and sank to rise no more.
A few dark blue blots on the smooth waters could be seen—all we had left afloat—and they were sinking one by one without a hand being lifted to their rescue.
The imperial armada was mistress of the seas. The great ships moved majestically in and prepared to shell the shores to clear the way for their landing.
SOintense and spectacular had been the battle of the fleets that neither Vassar nor his superior officer had lifted their eyes to the dim struggle of the skies. The birdmen had climbed to such heights they were no larger to the eye than a flock of circling pigeons. The tragedies of this battle were no less grim and desperate. Two of these daring defenders of our shores had been ordered to stay out of the fight and report to General Hood if the fleet should be sunk.
They saw one of these couriers descending in swift, graceful circles. He landed on the sand dunes, sprang from his seat and saluted the General.
“Well, sir?” General Hood cried.
The birdman was a smiling young giant with blond hair and fine blue eyes. They were sparkling with pride.
“It was some fight, General—believe me! Our fellows covered themselves with glory—that’s all! I nearly died of heart failure because I couldn’t go in with ’em.”
“How many escaped?”
“I didn’t see any of the boys try to get away, sir—”
“They all fell?”
“Oh, yes sir, of course, they all fell—but, take it from me, they gave those fellows merry hell before they did—”
He paused and mopped his brow.
“My, but it’s hot down here!” he complained. “They looked like fierce eagles up there and every time they made a dash at an enemy their claws brought blood. Honest to God, General, I saw one of our big biplanes smash six taubes and send them swirling into the sea before they got him. They were as thick after him as bees too. He’d climb up and then dip for them with a devilish swoop—his machine gun playing a devil’s tattoo on the fellow below. Six times he got his man, and then I saw them close in on him—not two to one or ten to one—it was twenty to one! He didn’t have a chance. It was a crime. If our fellows had just had half as many machines, they’d have won hands down. There were only nine of them in the fight against fifty of the enemy—”
“How many of the enemy all told did they account for?” Hood asked sharply.
“God knows—I couldn’t take it all in. But I saw fifteen of them go down. There wasn’t one of our men that failed to score. They fought like devils. Inever saw such skill. I never saw such daring. I’m proud I’m a citizen of this Republic. We gave the world the aeroplane and we’re going to show them how to use it before we get through!”
The General scribbled an order and handed it to the birdman.
“Take that to the commander at Fort Hamilton, and report to me at Patchogue, my new headquarters.”
The birdman touched his goggled cap, his assistant started the engines and in a minute the great bird was swinging into the sky. With two graceful circles mounting steadily she straightened her course for the Narrows and Vassar turned to the General.
“You will retreat to Patchogue?”
“There’s no other course possible. We can’t fight the guns of those ships. They can land at their leisure. My hope is that they will be delayed by the weather. God may help us a little if Congress wouldn’t.”
“You want time to intrench?”
“Yes and get our artillery in position. If we can’t get some big guns in place to meet theirs—it’s no use. I’ve asked the forts to send me two battalions of coast artillery organized for the field. We’ll get a battalion of artillery from Virginia by boat tomorrow. Our men are coming as fast as they can get here over hundreds and thousands of miles, with our railroadsblocked If the weather delays this landing until we can mass two hundred guns against their four hundred we may make a stand by digging in. I’ll have my mob underground by tomorrow night in some sort of fashion. If they give me a week—it may take some time to smoke me out—”
“It’s breezing up!” Vassar interrupted excitedly.
“And it’s from the right point too, thank God,” the General responded. “I could have shouted when I heard the first strains of that band floating in from sea.”
Already the sea was roaring with a new angry note. The barometers on the armada had given the signal too. The mighty fleet was standing far out to sea now awaiting a more favorable moment to spring on the land that lay at the mercy of their great guns.
THEGeneral hastened to give orders for the retirement. By noon the next day his battleline stretched from Patchogue through Holtsville to Port Jefferson and a hundred thousand men were wielding pick and shovel with savage determination. There was one thing these men didn’t lack whatever was missing in their equipment. They hadn’t enough guns. They had no uniforms—save on the handful of regulars sprinkled among them. They hadn’t much ammunition. They did have courage. They were there to do and die.
For three days the wind blew a steady gale from the southwest and piled the white foaming breakers high on the sand dunes.
Through the pounding surf the sea lifted our bloated dead until they lay in grim blue heaps on the white sands at low tide. General Hood despatched Vassar to see that they were buried. He piled them in big trenches one on top of the other.
The wind died to a gentle caress as Vassar stood and watched them dumped into unmarked trenches—braveboys whose lives we could have saved with a few paltry millions spent in preparation.
His thoughts were bitter.
Had we been prepared no nation on earth had dared attack us. Our fighting force in men would fill an army of 16,000,000. Our strength in money was greater than Continental Europe combined. We had the men. We had the money. We were just not ready—that was all. We could have whipped combined Europe had we been prepared, and combined Europe, knowing this, would have courted our favor with bows and smiles.
The thin line of the new moon broke through the soft fleece of clouds and the stars came out in countless thousands. The lights were playing far out at sea too, the big searchlights of the scouts and battle cruisers. They flashed on the grave diggers now, held steady for a moment and swung in search of guns. They were not interested in the dead.
Vassar’s heart went out in a throb of pity as he watched the scene—pity for the men whom a mighty nation had murdered for nothing—pity for the well-meaning but foolish men and women whose childish theories of peace had made this stupendous crime possible.
He thought too with the keenest pang of the anguish that would come to the heart of the womanhe loved when the magnitude of this betrayal of a nation crushed her soul. Men like Barker and Pike would continue their parrot talk perhaps until Death called them. The heart of Virginia Holland would be crushed by this appalling tragedy. If he could only take her in his arms and whisper his love!
At dawn next morning Vassar stayed to watch from the hills the landing of the armada. They had scorned to waste a shot from their big guns to cover the landing. It was unnecessary. Their airmen had reconnoitered and reported the defending army miles away hastily digging their trenches.
“Good!” the imperial commander replied on receiving this report. “The bigger and longer their trenches, the bigger the battle. What we want is one fight and that settles it.”
Through four days the landing proceeded with marvelous precision, each man at his post. The whole great movement went forward without a hitch with scarcely an accident to mar its almost festive character.
Twenty-five huge transports lay in the offing discharging their thousands of troops from barges and lighters. The men swarmed on the sands like locusts. Nothing had been left to chance. Nothing had been forgotten. They had cavalry in thousands—huge artillerythat covered acres. Fifty magnificent horses were hitched to a single gun of the largest type. Their food supplies were apparently exhaustless. Each regiment had its moving kitchens, its laundry wagons, its bakery.
The signal corps were already stringing their wires. A wireless plant had been in communication with the commander on the flagship since the work of landing began.
When the last ship had discharged her cargo, it was known that four full army corps, each with complete equipment of cavalry, artillery and machine guns, had been landed and that this first division of the invading host consisted of not less than one hundred and sixty thousand officers and men—every one of whom spoke good English as well as his native tongue.
The news spread with lightning rapidity through the army of defense and on past their lines into the terror-stricken city. The thousands of half-mad refugees who had fled to the country began now to turn again toward New York. They had slept in the fields and woods for more than a week. Their condition was pitiful and their suffering a source of constant worry to the officers.
On the day that the invaders began their march from the beach to form on the turnpike for their final sweep against the trenches, Hood had massed from all sourcestwo hundred pieces of artillery to defend his trenches against more than five hundred of the enemy. What the range and caliber of these hostile guns might be he could only guess. He knew one thing with painful certainty—whatever their range and caliber might be they were manned by veteran artillerymen who had fought them for years under the hideous conditions of modern war. Not a man in his army had ever been under the fire of modern artillery. That his gunners would give a good account of themselves, however, he had not the slightest doubt.
The rub would come when they began to fall. Trained men to take their places were not to be had. If it should come to cold steel, he could trust the raw volunteers in his trenches to defend their homes against a horde of devils. The trouble was but a handful of his men were equipped with bayonets.
He had just inspected his lines and given his final instructions to his brigade commanders when an extraordinary procession marched into his lines from Brooklyn, headed by the Honorable Plato Barker and the Reverend Dr. A. Cuthbert Pike, still president of the Peace Union.
The General refused to see or speak to them. Pike sought Vassar and begged him as an old political associate of Barker’s to secure ten minutes’ interview.
“I assure you, Congressman,” Pike insisted in his nervous fidgety way, “that Barker may be able to open negotiations with the invaders if you will let us through the lines!”
Vassar sought for ten minutes to dissuade Pike from his purpose. His faith was unshaken—in sheer asinine fatuity it was sublime. It was so ridiculous that the young leader decided that the best thing that could happen to the country was to get both Barker and Pike inside the enemy’s lines.
Barker had not been able to reach New York for the Peace Jubilee. He had regarded this great work of his career complete—crowned with glorious success. He had passed on to greater things. So remarkable had been his triumph in the Parliament of Man, so complete the vindication of his theories of arbitration and moral suasion as a substitute for war, that he had been able to raise the price of his Chautauqua lecture fees to five hundred dollars guarantee and one-third the gate receipts.
When the tragic crash came which threatened at one stroke to dislocate his process of reasoning and destroy his lecture bookings at the same moment, he was at the little town of Winona, Indiana, lecturing to five thousand enraptured Chautauqua peace enthusiasts. He had just finished counting the gate receipts, twenty-fivehundred dollars on the day. His share was five hundred dollars and the half of the remaining thousand, making fifteen hundred dollars—the largest fee ever received by a lecturer in the history of the country.
With a regretful look at their pile, he was congratulating the management on having so much left over after he had been paid, when the astounding message was read announcing the insurrection of two hundred thousand armed foreigners, their capture of the President, his Cabinet, the Capitol and the fall of the cities.
The great man laughed.
“It’s a huge hoax, my friends!” he shouted in soothing tones. “A wag is putting up a joke on me—that’s all. I’m an old timer. I take these things as they come—don’t worry.”
His soothing words quieted the crowd for an hour until the second message arrived announcing the surrender of Chicago, and St. Louis to the same mysterious power and announcing that the landing from a great armada of the hostile army was hourly expected at New York.
The silver-tongued orator at once took up his burden and hastened East to meet the coming foe.
He lifted his hand in solemn invocation over the vast throng of panic-stricken hearers as he took his departure.
“Be of good cheer, my friends!” he cried. “I have always held the high faith that if we appeal to the heart of the misguided foe who invades our soil we can make him a good American. I, for one, will set my life on the issue. I will go as your ambassador to this foe. He is a man of the same hopes and faith even as you and I. Touched by the same divine influences that have lifted us from the barbarism of war we can save him also!
“Have no fear—this is all senseless panic. Personally I do not believe this wild canard of a foreign invasion. Our cities may be the victims of a wide conspiracy of dissatisfied Socialists and Anarchists—but a foreign foe—bah! I go to meet him with faith serene!”
Pike related the story of this scene with a hush of awe in his voice as if he had seen a vision of the living God and the sight had stricken him partly dumb.
Vassar appealed finally to the General to give them a pass through the lines.
“Tell those two windbags to go through my lines if they wish—I don’t give a damn where they go,” Hood snapped. “I only hope and pray that a friendly bayonet lets the air out of them so that we shall never hear them again. I won’t see them. I won’t speak to them. I won’t give them a scrap of paper. If theydare to pass with any fool proposition of their disordered brains, it’s their affair—not mine. Tell them to get out of this camp quick—I don’t care which way they go.”
At Pike’s solicitation Vassar escorted Barker through the lines and watched the pair disappear arm in arm down the turnpike toward Southampton.
They walked five miles before they found a conveyance. They tried to hire a rig from a farmer. He refused to move at any price—even after Barker explained who he was and the tremendous import of his mission.
Through much dickering they succeeded in buying of him an old horse that had been turned out to graze. The Long Islander drove a hard bargain. After loud protests, and finally denunciation for his lack of patriotism, Barker counted out two hundred and fifty dollars of his last lecture fee. He still carried the fifteen hundred dollars in cash in his inside pocket.
They tried in vain to find another horse. For this one they had no saddle. As Barker was getting stout, and puffed painfully at the hills, little Pike insisted that he ride.
“You first, Brother Pike—“ the orator maintained.
“No—no—Brother Barker, you ride, I can walk!” Pike protested.
They finally compromised on the principles of the peace propaganda and both of them mounted the old steed—the silver-tongued orator in front and his faithful henchman behind holding to his ample waist.
The compromise worked until the horse got tired of it. At the end of an hour’s journey he refused to move another inch, bucked and threw them both in a heap. In vain they tried to move him. He not only refused to carry double, he bucked and threw Barker, who ventured to mount alone. To Pike’s horror the great orator lost his temper, swore a mighty oath and smote the beast with a gold-headed cane which he had received as a token of his supremacy as an advocate of peace.
They now had the horse on their hands as an encumbrance. Barker refused to let him loose. He was of a thrifty turn of mind even in a crisis. He determined to ship that horse West and make him earn the two fifty. So leading the steed, with stout hearts still undaunted, the two apostles passed on toward the coming foe.