ADA\ACE 
 
 STANLEY \VATEBLGD
 
 ARMAGEDDON
 
 
 
 
 
 .
 
 ARMAGEDDON 
 
 A TALE OF LOVE, WAR, AND 
 INVENTION. 
 
 STANLEY WATERLOO, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 THK STORY OF An, " " A MAN AND A WOMAN, 
 " AN ODD SITUATION," KTC. 
 
 CHICAGO AXD NFAV YORK: 
 
 KAN I). \h XAI.LV vV CO.MI AN V. 
 
 PUBLISHERS.
 
 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE REDDENING HORIZON. 
 
 In the first years of the present century the 
 nations were in turmoil. The nineteenth cen 
 tury had flickered out in something like racial 
 warfare, and, while there had been an adjust 
 ment, while there was nominal peace through 
 out the hemispheres, there was an undercur 
 rent of fear, and mighty preparations were 
 making among the nations which were domi 
 nant. The whole world was afoot and gird 
 ing itself for threatening war. 
 
 The wonder was, not so much that such a 
 condition should exist as that there should 
 have been maintained so long even a sort of 
 semi-equilibrium in international relations. 
 When the Spanish-American war ended all 
 points of contact between the nations were in 
 flamed. Something must happen. It is true 
 
 2138SS7
 
 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 that nothing absolutely <kTmite as to the 
 future connections ami alliances of the gov 
 ernments of the world had yet been deter 
 mined upon, but the air was weighted. There 
 had, so far, been no formulated alliance of the 
 Anglo-Saxons; there had, as yet, been devised 
 no offsetting European combination, but the 
 political atmosphere of th world had that op 
 pressiveness which ])recedes a. thunderstorm, 
 and thoughtful statesmen knew that the storm 
 must come and that its lightning-strokes 
 \vould obliterate forces and change maps. 
 
 The attitude of the Americans was optimis 
 tic, with a readiness. There was a living 
 leaven in the lump, the leaven of two hundred 
 thousand young men spread evenly through 
 out all the states, who had responded when 
 the call to arms came in iSgS. They had 
 been victorious and were made much of; their 
 friend^ and, neighbors regarded them highly; 
 they were patriotic and had much to say, and 
 they made public opinion; they had smelled 
 gunpowder; they had faced battle-shot and 
 fever; they had left comrades buried in shal 
 low trenches; they had learned, what war was. 
 and, after a little rest and much glory were 
 not disinclined for war ai/ain. in a contingencv.
 
 THE REDDENING HORIZON. 7 
 
 Otherwise, America was just about as it had 
 been before the war with Spain. Tt is true 
 that material and military conditions were 
 somewhat changed. We had made Cuba an 
 independent republic; Porto Rico we had 
 simply annexed as a strong outpost, the gov 
 ernment of the island being but an incident. 
 Over in the Pacific, Hawaii had come in as a 
 matter of course, during the war, and we had 
 utilized the Philippines, because that had be 
 come for us a national and international neces 
 sity. The Pacific had been bridged; to us be 
 longed the conveniences of the highway 
 from San Francisco to Hongkong; we had 
 taken all we needed but only what we needed. 
 
 Not a nation in the world but at last, and 
 for the first time, realized the attitude of .the 
 great republic. It had fought and defeated its 
 overweening and over-religious adversary, 
 had banished that non-progressive force to its 
 home provinces and had then, to the astonish 
 ment of the world, abstained from seizing 
 upon all of the near and remote possessions 
 within its grasp. It had in effect said to the 
 other nations of the world: 
 
 (> I have more than scouted across my con 
 tinent. 1 have occupied even its western shore
 
 8 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 and bred my children there. They, cast and 
 west, are among the great thinking, acting 
 peoples of the world, and must have all due 
 rights and privileges. Across the broadest of 
 oceans, the eldest of empires is threatened 
 with division and, whether divided or not, it 
 is about to make available as a business prize 
 to the advanced nations of the world its vast 
 commercial privileges. I have built a trade 
 bridge arranged a row of stepping-stones 
 across the Pacific; I must maintain the station 
 I have taken and have the means of defending 
 my highways and my byways. 
 
 "I need the facilities for best fighting here 
 and there, anywhere about the globe where 
 it may become necessary for me to fight, but 
 I grasp no more than that which is enough 
 for my single purpose, and T have no thought 
 of seeking to seize more until my people shall 
 overflow my own broad land. Then they 
 must do as best they can. Then they must do 
 as their Viking ancestors did. Then they 
 must have it in them, or fail to have it in them, 
 to say to what degree might is right. For 
 the present, they have demanded nothing and 
 sought nothing, but to implace themselves 
 and do it well and strongly upon such points
 
 THE REDDENING HORIZON. 9 
 
 about the globe as may make it somewhat 
 easier in life for their great-great-grandchil 
 dren. Should the occasion come sooner for 
 the utilization of these vantage-places so much 
 the better for us of this age who are thinking 
 out this thing and who have a decent degree 
 of readiness for any sort of fight to-day." 
 
 Meanwhile the idea of an Anglo-Saxon al 
 liance had grown and broadened. It had been 
 fostered by thinking men of both Great Britain 
 and America. Those who could best foresee 
 the future of races favored it, and those who 
 had only clannish memories in mind opposed 
 it. But a tentative alliance, at least, it was 
 evident, must come. 
 
 Of course bitter opposition to the growing 
 spirit of Anglo-Saxon alliance was at once 
 manifested by a large number of American 
 citizens" possessed of fine lungs, foreign birth 
 or teachings, world-reforming ideas, and great 
 flux of words. It was almost droll, but the 
 amiable American laws gave to each of these 
 eloquent men of other than American tradi 
 tions a vote, and votes secure election and 
 Congressmen want to be elected again. Our 
 school books, too, had long taught our chil 
 dren to think of Englishmen as enemies and,
 
 TO ARMAGEDDON 
 
 especially, in the country, the ancient preju 
 dice somewhat prevailed. These inthienc.es 
 had a certain potency. 
 
 There was exerted, also, in opposition to 
 the contemplated alliance, informal though 
 the alliance might be. one force more potent 
 than all others put together, that exerted by 
 the clement composed of those who exploit 
 themselves as "The hereditary foes of K up 
 land," a bnovant, illogical and too impression 
 able class, led often astray by the more foxy, 
 self-seeking and overtopping representatives 
 of their own race. Very well did these leaders 
 understand, though they didn t mention it, 
 that their own reasonably regular and more 
 or less full and easily gained incomes were in 
 danger if there were to be an abandonment 
 of the race enmity brought across the At 
 lantic to be engrafted, if possible, upon the 
 American people. 
 
 They did their w>rk cleverly, the agitators: 
 they were g ib talkers and their fullowings had 
 long been organi/ed. A few adroit American 
 ofiice seekers whimpered and whined before 
 them and cast their lot with them for a time. 
 but only for a time. There is no room here 
 to tell the storv of the airitator who had lived
 
 THE REDDENING HORIZON. II 
 
 so well for years, nor of his following in the 
 lower grades of American politicians. When 
 the great culminating wave came they were 
 all swept into the movement, and let it be 
 said to the credit of the Irishman, that when 
 the time came, he sprang into the ranks and 
 fought for his adopted country. The average 
 congressman or other politician whose course 
 the agitator had influenced was found or 
 dinarily among the home guards. 
 
 Of course, with the Anglo-Saxon combina 
 tion in sight, the European nations were agi 
 tated by doubts. They were not quite a 
 brotherly group, for heretofore, as chances 
 fell, they had fed upon each other. Naturally, 
 as facing the combination the Russian should 
 come first. lie is the great growing, creep 
 ing - southward - and - eastward threatening 
 force. Naturally, the Russian wanted no com 
 bination of America with Great Britain. lie 
 was inclined to make much, just then, of his 
 skin-deep friendship with the United States, 
 for there was India. It must be said of this 
 Slav, too, that, notwithstanding what has hap 
 pened and is to be here related, he is a force 
 great in the present and perhaps to be far 
 greater in the future, lie is millions; his
 
 12 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 priestly domination is being regulated and 
 modernized by Tolstoi and other thinkers of 
 Russia; he learns languages more readily than 
 does ;my one of any other race, and he fights 
 well in a sort of kismet \vay. 
 
 It may be possible that the Slav, developing 
 on ne\v lines, is to be the successor of tin- 
 Anglo-Saxon in a material and philosophic 
 way, his strong spirit, enforced by militarism 
 and its new-born religion, may yet direct the 
 altairs of the world, but whatever his fntnre 
 may be, the day of the Slav has not yet come, 
 lie but struggled toward his triumph or his 
 fate, as the event might prove. as was nat 
 ural. The Russian Kmpire moved toward 
 the Anti-Anglo-Saxon alliance. 
 
 That the ( ierman Kmperor should have- 
 been even tempted toward such an alliance 
 was a thing extraordinary. It was strange, it 
 was remark-able and uncouth, an unconscion 
 able thing, that he should be for a moment 
 with the Slav and the Latin in this combina 
 tion, though there are other strange incon 
 sistencies in the world s affairs. The land 
 which gave birth to the founder of Christianity 
 bows to the prophet Mahomet, and the
 
 THE REDDENING HORIZON. 13 
 
 temples of India know not the gentle religion 
 of Buddha. 
 
 Why, the Emperor of Germany ought to 
 have been proud and defiant in the matter 
 and, since he liked to pose, to have posed as 
 the dean of the Anglo-Saxons! Of course, 
 we are all Teutons. Ancient Germany was to 
 Great Britain as Great Britain is to America. 
 In the area of acres including what is now 
 consolidated Germany, lies the land from 
 which upsprang the fellows who made trouble 
 for Qesar there was one Vergincetorix who 
 was a beauty and they were Teutons who, 
 in the fury of seizing and populating land, 
 forced themselves northwestward until they 
 reached what we call the English Channel, 
 and then, with Hengist and Horsa and the 
 rest, flung over to an island and found Angles 
 and wolves and seized upon the land washed 
 by the Gulf Stream and made a new race of 
 their own, the race that broadened the Chris 
 tian religion, the race that has peopled with 
 strong men the wild places of the world; the 
 race that did rather a neat thing at Waterloo; 
 the race which, when its sons fighting among 
 themselves, as in the Cromwellian wars, or 
 the war of the Revolution, or the American
 
 M ARMAGKDDON. 
 
 Civil war. has a1\vays done exceedingly well, 
 and under stress loo. lint the (ionium Fm- 
 peror and some of his advisers failed, at an 
 important moment, to see the logical attitude 
 f< >r his country. 
 
 As for France, her attitude was not unex 
 pected save to the ignorant, those who, hav 
 ing read old school hooks alone, still dreamed 
 that France and Russia were natural allies of 
 the United States, regardless of nature, train 
 ing, belief and blood. As a matter of fact, and 
 very consistently, in heart. France had been 
 with Spain throughout the Spanish-American 
 war. Firstly, and most dominant, religious 
 traditions and influences trended that way; 
 secondly, financial relations, and lastly, blood 
 and family relations. A somewhat like ex 
 planation would apply to Austria, though 
 with that unhappy empire the time for change 
 and experiment had come. Here too. blood 
 and religion counted, and, in addition, com 
 plications were such that war with the out 
 sider was at least less bad than the civil war 
 impending. 
 
 It was so with Italy, though in a lesser de 
 gree. As for Spain, all the desperate ven 
 geance-seeking venom which could be bottled
 
 THE REDDENING HORIZON. 15 
 
 up in a proud and belittled nation, was hers, 
 and Portugal was with her, as a matter of 
 course, racially and religiously. The totter 
 ing Austrian and the beaten inhabitant of the 
 southwestern European peninsula were to 
 gether. The Anti-Anglo-Saxon combina 
 tion, perfect save for the grumbling of a por 
 tion of the German people, began to assume 
 a definite form. The great men who organ 
 ized it were men of earnestness and power; 
 men of weakening race though individually 
 strong, recognizing the decadence, and strug 
 gling persistently against the evanishment of 
 racial potency which some inexorable law r had 
 decreed. 
 
 Great Britain, the isolated, recognized the 
 situation. She fostered and not altogether 
 in selfishness, be it said her closer growing 
 relations with the United States. And in the 
 recognized impending emergency her liber 
 ally governed colonies drew nearer to her. 
 There was arming in Australia and in Canada, 
 and there were significant movements of bod 
 ies of troops in India and on the Nile. Yet 
 the Foreign Office was reticent, and the 
 Premier blandly informed all questioners that 
 Great Britain was at peace. But ever, as in
 
 if) ARMAGH!)!)! >.\. 
 
 America, was heard the M>und of hammer 
 upon rivet in tlic shipyards, and ever, day am 1 
 night, tires llashud forth red.ly from the foun 
 dries. 
 
 As the statesman walked, the earth heaved 
 underneath his feet, though hardly enough 
 to unbalance or really frighten him. lie won 
 dered and pondered and guessed, as did all 
 thinking men. but hardly conceived the mag 
 nitude of the coming e;irth<|uake. Xever in 
 the history of the world s political events were 
 those directing such affairs more doubtful and 
 perplexed. Would the almost inevitable war 
 be racial? Would it be religious? Would it 
 be simply political with a view to divide tin- 
 territory of the weak:" 
 
 Men had not taken into consideration Ap- 
 pleton and the Wild (ioose. In this circum 
 stance there was nothing remarkable, for none 
 had ever heard of either.
 
 DAVID APPLKTUN. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 DAVID APPLETON. 
 
 This is to tell of certain events, some pre 
 ceding and some growing out of the situation 
 a s outlined in the last chapter, particularly as 
 they affected, and ultimately were affected by, 
 my friend, David Appleton. 
 
 While statesmen and princes brooded and 
 struggled over problems of public policy and 
 craft, while navies fretted the seas, and armies 
 shook the earth as they marched and counter 
 marched, we two unknown men, encamped on 
 an Illinois prairie, held counsel over our 
 special perplexities, meanwhile looking out on 
 the broad world with curious eyes, studying 
 with varying thoughts and passions the 
 strokes and parryings of the nations. 
 
 David Appleton had been my classmate at 
 college. He had been, truth to say, most un 
 justly unpopular with me and my group there, 
 because of his fellowship with algebra, too 
 surpassing facility in calculus, his intimate
 
 I ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 and affectionate relations with conic sections, 
 while at the same time, he was well regarded 
 because of his assistance in enabling his weak- 
 er brethren to pass, though totteriuglv, the 
 examinations in those studies. I .efore our 
 graduation he and 1 became warm frienils. 
 Anions^ those ii] (rising with the great events of 
 the last year. Appleton has been a looming 
 figure and I have been his associate and as 
 sistant. 
 
 It was not merely as a mathematician, bin 
 to some extent as an inventor that Appleton 
 excelled, even in his college clays. It was he 
 who contrived the charming system of pulleys 
 by which, one niglii, we raised an amiable 
 cow and left her tethered upon the roof of the 
 chapel building, and it was he who devised a 
 cut-off for the gas mains a hundred yards trom 
 the university. The gift of invention grew 
 with him after he engaged in the struggle with 
 the world. lie invented something about a 
 locomotive and made money. There came a 
 time, though, when he abandoned his of lice 
 and regular business and was not seen among 
 his friends for months. L pon my return home 
 from Nicaragua, where I had been \\ith the 
 Canal Commission, I was making vain in-
 
 DAVID APPLETON. 19 
 
 quiries for Appleton when one day he sent 
 for me. 
 
 The explanation of my friend s absorption 
 is not a long story. He was experimenting 
 and promoting an invention of his own which 
 he declared surpassed everything of its kind 
 conceived in the past, and, furthermore, as he 
 confessed later, he was in love. In each enter 
 prise he was, as he said, "up to his neck." 
 The outcome of the love affair depended, to 
 an extent, upon the success of the invention. 
 But what was most important, as I look back 
 now, was that, upon the outcome of his in 
 vention depended in a measure at least, as 
 subsequently appeared, the location of cer 
 tain boundary lines defining the mastership 
 of the great nations of the world. 
 
 It was Appleton s sudden reversion to our 
 old association, the flaming up of the former 
 friendship, which appealed to me most strong 
 ly. I had thought often of him but had not 
 imagined that he had me as much in mind. 
 Yet he had, in a way, been as sentimental as 
 I. \Ye had drifted apart, and now we came 
 together again in Chicago. We were more 
 comfortable because of it. 
 
 1 rather distinctly approved of the lank,
 
 20 ARMAGKDDON. 
 
 brown fellow, as lie left his chair .and walked 
 back and forth with his hands in his pockets, 
 when, one day, he fully opened his heart to 
 me. There was a clean health} look about 
 him. Here we were, over thirtv years of a^e, 
 each of us, and the skin lay close and smooth 
 upon his face, while his eyes were as clear as 
 when, at ten years of ai^e, he had chased a red 
 squirrel alon^ the wood-bordered rail fence 
 of some Wisconsin farm, llis body was as 
 health} as his mind. 
 
 I cannot tell, and 1 suppose no one can for 
 I should know if anyone the story of the de 
 velopment of Appleton s mind after he left 
 college surcharged with the sort of informa 
 tion which miidit aid in ^reat work, or end 
 in nothing. lie was simp]} a man witli a bi<^ 
 brain of the constructive sort. I know very 
 little, even now, of his earl} business career, 
 of llis successes or his failures, his hopes or 
 his disappointments. I do not know how it 
 came that he fumbled his way through to 
 that device, which, sold to the railroads, lett 
 him with twenty-five thousand or thirty-live 
 thousand dollars to the i^ood. Neither can 
 T tell what vaulting ambition was in him or 
 from what trend of thought, begotten of his
 
 DAVID APPLETON. 21 
 
 work, came to him broader design for more 
 hazardous but more splendid conquest. He 
 was always reticent in this regard, but, 
 through an association, which, because of a 
 host of things of which I will tell later, be 
 came longer continued and closer than is usual 
 with most men, there came material for doubt 
 less nearly correct conclusions as to his quali 
 ty. Unbounded ambition he had, unlimited 
 pluck he had and, withal, an imagination and 
 fancy and dreaminess which made him some 
 times almost womanly. Pretty good combi 
 nation that, for what we call a man, wasn t it? 
 "It s all queer," he said, "But I think you ll 
 comprehend it. We were pretty close to 
 gether in college, weren t we? Though we 
 weren t so very close together socially or in 
 the ways of the college fraternities and all that 
 sort of thing, still, somehow, we always under 
 stood and helped each other, in a way, and 
 since the old studying time, though we have 
 corresponded indifferently, there has seemed 
 to be a connecting link between us. Maybe 
 you do not comprehend it as I do, but I hope 
 the thing is mutual. Anyhow I have thought 
 that, perhaps, if in some strait you needed 
 help, you would send for me. I, at least, have
 
 22 ARMAGF.DDOX. 
 
 felt that way toward vein. It has come in my 
 way fn>t. As a beginning of what I have to 
 say to you I \vill summarize the situation. 
 
 "1 have succeeded, after a fashion, as an 
 inventor. 1 have some thousands of dollars. 
 I have a threat enterprise in which I shall need 
 an assistant who will be a friend and confi 
 dant. There are labors aside from the sheer 
 thought to be productive and there is manual 
 work to be done. I must have a brother to 
 help me in a legitimate and straightforward 
 conduct of the enterprise. There arc money 
 considerations. My success from a worldly 
 point of view is involved, and that affects my 
 life at its core as it touches the possibilities of 
 the future with the woman I have told you 
 about. I suppose 1 must be an isolated per 
 son. Anyhow, you arc the only man in the 
 world to \\hom 1 felt I could appeal. 
 
 "I have abandoned my regular business. 
 which was successful, and am working upon a 
 
 weights into the air, and holding them there 
 without support from below. I have a new 
 thought an idea of entirely new application 
 in this connection, and since I abandoned my 
 self to this particular undertaking there have
 
 DAVID APPLETON. 23 
 
 arisen new difficulties and perplexities, but I 
 am right in my idea. Will you help me? As 
 to your helpful ability, so far as my purpose 
 goes, it largely consists of your nerve and per 
 fect understanding of me. As to that, I ve 
 already made up my mind. I can offer you 
 some money, enough at least to make you 
 safe, and of course you will prosper should 
 the undertaking succeed, as I firmly believe 
 it will. You will have plenty of hard work, 
 an opportunity for the exhibition of your 
 friendship, and a chance to meet infinite bodily 
 peril. \y:m will share with me at last what 
 comes to the large gambler upon a large scale, 
 whether he be one in cards or stocks or in the 
 broader and better game where minds are 
 strained to some purpose, where even the fu 
 ture affairs of nations may be affected. Prob 
 ably this sharing will be to your good, but 
 you must take your chances. The details I 
 will tell you. After that, you can determine. 
 I know that I have thought of what no other 
 man has conceived, and have done that which 
 has not been done before." 
 
 .Ml this and more Appleton said, and that 
 nip-ht 1 could think and dream of nothing but
 
 24 AR.MAGKDDOX. 
 
 him and his enthusiasm. The next day he 
 piloted me out through the western verge of 
 the city and to the prairie where he was at 
 work. 
 
 It was a quiet place, on the western bank 
 of the Des Plaines River. Looking toward 
 the water one saw the gracious outlines of the 
 waving elms and strong-limbed oaks which 
 lined the shallow stream, and toward the 
 north, west and south, the prairie rolled, 
 broken in the distance occasionally by an or 
 chard-surrounded farmhouse, a greener island 
 in the sea of green. 
 
 From rough boards Appleton had built a 
 long wide shed, or rather barn, for it was lofty, 
 and in this his treasure was enclosed, most of 
 the room being used as a workshop. A small 
 space at the south end of the building had been 
 fitted up as an office and living rooms, and 
 from this end a rude pia/./a extended but a 
 few feet over the unbroken prairie sod. 
 
 \Ve passed through the rooms directly to 
 the space provided for the machine. The 
 long room was open on one side, being fitted 
 with great sliding doors on the west, and there- 
 was a framework outside resembling some 
 what the platform of a boat house. It was all
 
 DAVID APPLETON. 25 
 
 strange and new to me, and I was interested 
 when Appleton proceeded, directly and sim 
 ply, to the explanation of his invention in 
 terms suited to the comprehension of a lay 
 man.
 
 26 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 CHAPTER If!. 
 
 It s pretty hard work, trying to tell about 
 Applcton s invention. lie had engaged the 
 services of some elever fello\\/., all of one fami- 
 ly, I think, and they were working for him 
 and were of great service to us, to the end of 
 our >tay on the prairie, though not confidcn- 
 tiallv so as was an odd fellow who came later. 
 I suppose that I am not a good person to tell 
 what the invention was. I can only do so in 
 a general way and within my limitations. 
 
 The main feature was a great torpedo- 
 shaped thin^ with an aluminum exterior. The 
 thickness of this aluminum covering was a 
 matter of constant and violent debate between 
 Appleton .and me, after I became identified 
 with the enterprise. With no weight to speak 
 of, it meant vast buoyancy; with a greater 
 weight it meant less buoyancy and more dis 
 aster following the inevitable experimental 
 alighting. Appleton, after much thought and 
 numberless experiments, had decided to take
 
 ON THE PRAIRIE. 27 
 
 chances with this buoyant thing, to make it 
 as light as possible, and to rely upon the 
 utilization of the vast force he had at his com 
 mand, and which was now being first tried, 
 in driving in a certain direction something 
 floating in a surrounding the same above as 
 below, something entirely immersed in one 
 element. Appleton had gathered together as 
 far as he could, the forces necessary lor the 
 accomplishment of his work. He had stored 
 electricity; he had reservoirs of compressed 
 and liquified air; he had wonderful contriv 
 ances for the reduction of friction and the 
 reduction of weight as compared with force. 
 I was doubtful at first, but I ve long had faith 
 in aerial navigation I ve always had since a 
 talk years ago with the most famous of living 
 inventors, when he gave his views on the sub 
 ject, and I saw plainly that Appleton s " Lift 
 ing machine," as he modestly called it, looked 
 toward some new venture in aerial experi 
 ments. Up to this time 1 had felt no ground 
 ed and established faith in Appleton. lie was, 
 I had thought, too much of a dreamer. But, 
 dreamer though he was, he had sense and he 
 had the accretion of much learning in his short 
 but full years of work and study. What other
 
 26 ARM AGED DOX. 
 
 CHA1TKR III. 
 OX Till-: PRAIRIE. 
 
 It s pretty hard work, trying to tell about 
 Appleton s invention. lie had engaged the 
 services of some clever fello\\s. all of one fami- 
 ly, I think, and they were working for him 
 and were of great ser\ ice to us, to the end of 
 our >tay on the prairie, though not confiden 
 tially so as was an odd fellow who came later. 
 I suppose that I am not a good person to tell 
 what the invention was. I can only do so in 
 a general way and within my limitations. 
 
 The main feature was a great torpedo- 
 shaped tiling with an aluminum exterior. The 
 thickness of this aluminum covering was a 
 matter of constant and violent debate between 
 Appletoii and me. after I became identified 
 with the enterprise. With no weight to speak 
 of. it meant vast buoyancy; with a greater 
 weight it meant less buovancy and more dis 
 aster following the inevitable experimental 
 alighting. Appleton. after much thought and 
 numberless experiments, had decided to take
 
 ON THE PRAIRIE. 27 
 
 chances with this buoyant thing, to make it 
 as light as possible, and to rely upon the 
 utilization of the vast force he had at his com 
 mand, and which was now being first tried, 
 in driving in a certain direction something 
 floating in a surrounding the same above as 
 below, something entirely immersed in one 
 element. Appleton had gathered together as 
 far as he could, the forces necessary for the 
 accomplishment of his work. He had stored 
 electricity; he had reservoirs of compressed 
 and liquified air; he had wonderful contriv 
 ances for the reduction of friction and the 
 reduction of weight as compared with force. 
 I was doubtful at first, but I ve long had faith 
 in aerial navigation I ve always had since a 
 talk years ago with the most famous of living 
 inventors, when he gave his views on the sub 
 ject, and I saw plainly that Appleton s "Lift 
 ing machine," as he modestly called it, looked 
 toward some new venture in aerial experi 
 ments. Up to this time 1 had felt no ground 
 ed and established faith in Appleton. lie was, 
 I had thought, too much of a dreamer. But, 
 dreamer though he was, he had sense and he 
 had the accretion of much learning in his short 
 but full years of work and study. What other
 
 28 ARMAGHDDON. 
 
 iiHMi lind learned rind what he had devised hiin- 
 self were his. Tie knew the quality of the 
 problem. The famous inventor had said that 
 night I so well remembered: 
 
 "(liven the power, with sufficiently less re 
 latively of the carried weight at present neces- 
 >ary to produce the ])ower. power to rise 
 above the earth and maintain a fixed posi 
 tion is an accomplished tact. At present, 
 we do not produce a machine which can 
 be connected with some gas-lifted tiling, 
 and which has not at the same time such 
 weight as will oltset its driving power. 
 What is lacking to make a dirigible 
 thing iloating in the air is something with 
 vast power ot propulsion and weight so light 
 that the weight is not a counterbalance to 
 the effect produced." 
 
 As a wondering lad 1 had heard this state 
 ment from a source which commanded re 
 spect, and now I saw clearly that the inventor 
 had. as usual with him, told the simple, genius- 
 b< n-\] truth. Applet< >n had some idea. 1 le had 
 sought something which would have strong 
 propulsive machinery of the lightness desired. 
 He had succeeded, after a fashion. 
 
 Aluminum is a good thing. It was worth
 
 ON THE PRAIRIE. 29 
 
 eighteen dollars a pound a while ago. It is 
 worth a dollar or two a pound now, because 
 some clever young fellows of Cleveland, fresh 
 from college, invented a new process, and the 
 metal which lies in every clay bank is now 
 given to the world for a moderate price which 
 will be lower still. Appleton s main reliance 
 for the initial lifting shall I call it floating 
 medium? was made of aluminum. He had 
 taken the Cleveland men into his confidence, 
 and in that city the machine was practically 
 built, though put together in the prairie barn 
 where I now beheld it. The thing was about 
 seventy feet long and fifteen feet across and 
 it looked, as said, like a torpedo. The metal 
 was as thin, and strong at the same time, as 
 anything of its kind could be. Filled with 
 gas, it would float of itself with quite an up 
 ward pulling power in addition. Plugged 
 close to it, attached rigidly and barely lifted 
 when let loose with the torpedo-shaped thing 
 was a sort of boat or carrier, and in this was 
 the powerful driving force upon which Ap- 
 pleton relied. Here the motive power, which 
 I must not too clearly specify, comes in again. 
 I cannot describe the device; J am a bungler 
 at it, anyway, and, in any case, 1 have no right
 
 30 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 to describe it with accuracy, hut I do know 
 this, that the force was altogether of the air, 
 although Appleton was experimenting much 
 with electricity, too. The manner in which, 
 when Appleton touched certain buttons, the 
 luting or the forward driving or the back 
 ward-putting screw blades revolved, was a 
 spectacle worth seeing;. The steering- ap 
 paratus was such that Appleton could make 
 the device go up or down at his pleasure, and 
 he had at his command such enormous re 
 sources in the \\a\- of driving power that he 
 could, under certain favorable conditions, 
 make it go this way or that way at his com 
 mand. Of course, all this presupposed the 
 calmest weather. There had been other in 
 ventions of the sort almost as good in most 
 ways, it seemed to me. except for the new 
 motive power here employed. The tiling once 
 lifted up into the air did much that Appleton 
 Imped for. \Ylicn a wind came, though, 
 "things were different." as Appleton said. 
 
 It doesn t matter, k rom the moment 1 saw 
 that machine and heard Appleton tell about 
 it. 1 had but one ambition to help it along, 
 aid as 1 might in perfecting it, and be lifted 
 up over that green prairie in it. 1 resolved to
 
 ON THE PRAIRIE. 3 1 
 
 join the earnest man s working force, and 
 stand by him to the end. I became an en 
 thusiastic dreamer with him. Dreamers make 
 the world progress, after all. Ninety-nine out 
 of the hundred fail. The hundredth becomes 
 one of the world s exclamation points. Cer 
 tainly here was a chance. 
 
 Within a week I had moved out to the big 
 barn-like structure on the prairie, and was 
 as absorbed in the new idea as Appleton him 
 self. There were difficulties worth overcom 
 ing. 
 
 There came trouble. I shall not give de 
 tails, but there were the usual troubles of in 
 ventors. We could never, proud as we were 
 of our machine, quite adapt ourselves to the 
 winds of the upper air. They were too much 
 addicted to carrying us away with them. We, 
 necessarily, accepted the situation and drifted 
 downward, with such gradual slope as we 
 could command, to the peaceful prairie, always 
 within a mile or two of home, and one of us 
 went over to the cabin and made arrangements 
 for bringing back the paraphernalia. The two 
 horses which we kept in the old shed outside 
 the big building had become accustomed to 
 dragging the great invention back and forth.
 
 32 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 riiey were not harnessed as horses of the fire 
 departments of ^reat eities may be, in a mo 
 ment, lint they were pretty nearly that way. 
 They knew instinctively when disaster had 
 come and almost Miorted in their stalls when 
 they saw ()T>ricn whom I will tell of later 
 
 coming in to hitch them to the old waLn>n 
 with its derrick all ready for use. They knew 
 that the} had to drai; that preposterous tor 
 pedo tiling hack a^ ain to its resting place in 
 the bii; building. Don t tell me that a horse 
 hasn t intelligence. Those horses, somewhat 
 indignantly, entered into the spirit of the great 
 struggle. 1 was worried, but nothing affected 
 Appleton. That big brute, with that big head 
 of his, knew that he owned a coming more 
 or less practicable air traverser and went 
 ahead stolidly. Really. I was the sufferer. 
 Really. I am the one man who outfit to have 
 a medal of some sort, but Appleton is getting 
 most of the praise, and I am. as I tell him, 
 nobodv. However, it doesn t matter. 
 
 ( )ne day a day of hard work when we 
 reached our haven at night, we found sitting 
 at ease on our stoop 1 suppose I should say 
 pia/za, but that sounds too ambitious a 
 stranger, lie was voung, broad ot shoulder.
 
 ON THE PRAIRIE. 33 
 
 deep of chest and a trifle below the medium 
 height, lie arose as \vc approached and in 
 troduced himself as O Brien, "Leander 
 O Brien, son of old man O Brien, of South 
 Halsted Street." 
 
 Appleton, looking- at the newcomer 
 thoughtfully, seemed to remember vaguely 
 the ancestral O Brien, and seated himself on 
 the steps to talk with the visitor. I seated 
 myself as well, and examined Leander O Brien 
 at leisure. He had a queer hunch to his 
 shoulders at times and, when enforcing a 
 proposition, a defiantly appealing turning out 
 ward of his hands which was most effective. 
 His hair was cut short and so was his coat. 
 His eyes were of the watchful sort, but steady. 
 They were gray and the lashes and eyebrows 
 were not well defined, but the general aspect 
 of the face was that suggesting a combina 
 tion of faithful follower and aggressive citizen. 
 The young man seemed a sort of blithesome 
 fighting animal. 
 
 "Are youse the fellows getting up a flying 
 machine?" he demanded of Appleton. 
 
 Appleton told his questioner that we were 
 probably the men he sought, although we 
 were not flying much just now. 
 
 3
 
 34 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 "Arc youse the man who helped niy father, 
 old man O lirien?" 
 
 "I am I )avid Appleton." 
 
 "Can I go \vilh yousc?" implored O Brien. 
 Then thrusting his hat far hack on his head, 
 he announced, looking at first one then the 
 other of us: 
 
 "Youse must take me; I ll go anyway!" 
 
 I can t help it 1 must digress about that 
 hat. It is part of things. \\Vre a great coun 
 try, a beautiful country lying between two 
 enormous oceans, and there are vast blue in 
 land seas and forests and mountains and 
 prairies and, in fact, everything pertaining to 
 landscape even until you get down to bosky 
 dells and sparrows and worms, and we have 
 a great signal service system and we think we 
 are clever, but, honestly, I believe that if, in 
 stead ot the signal service stations which cost 
 so many thousand dollars apiece a year, we d 
 had a lot of Leander () linens, we d be bet 
 ter off. Talk about your (lags which lly from 
 the top of some signal service station! thev 
 weren t "in it," are not in it and never will be 
 in it in comparison with that aggressive 
 straight-rimmed Derby hat of his. \Yhv. the 
 ilau s on the signal service station are dumb
 
 ON THE PRAIRIE. 35 
 
 thing s compared with that! It set fair or it 
 set stormy or it set doubtful with a deadly ac 
 curacy beyond anything all the officers of the 
 signal service have ever yet been able to de 
 vise. For instance, suppose it were set fair, 
 that is if things were going well with us in 
 the estimation of Leander O Brien, then the 
 hat would sit lightly and jauntily upon the 
 back of his head at an angle of about forty- 
 five degrees, and his face would beam out so 
 roundly and glowingly that if the morning 
 happened to be a little crisp you wanted to 
 warm your hands before it. Contrariwise, if 
 tilings hadn t gone in our estimation as they 
 should have gone, and our attitude regarding 
 the rest of the world was either defensive or 
 offensive, then Air. O Brien s hat had a long, 
 low, rakish tilt to the front, with the greatest 
 depression immediately over the left eye. I 
 noticed that this particular tilt of his hat came, 
 usually, with the purple twilight, but I think 
 it was rather an action of habit than of hours. 
 As a matter of fact, Air. O Brien had probably 
 never before known anything about a sunset 
 or a purple twilight. J lis idea of eight o clock 
 in the evening had consisted of some bad gas 
 lights on South Ilalsted Street and of start-
 
 36 
 
 ing (Hi adventures with "the boys" with the 
 hat adjusted as described. It is true there 
 was something incongruous in that rakishly- 
 tilted hat among the sweet surroundings of 
 a gentle country morning or midday or oc 
 casionally somewhat foggy gloaming. It 
 seemed out of place. It was, in a sense, as 
 if a man should casually throw a brick at his 
 grandmother or turn handsprings down the 
 middle aisle of a church in the midst of ser 
 vice; still, I came to like and even to love 
 the air with which O lirieii wore his hat. All 
 these habits grow on us. It became so that I 
 even studied the degree of tilt and the angle 
 over his head in any direction. When I saw 
 it set on the back of his head I became elated; 
 when I saw it cocked deeplv forward in a low 
 and lurking manner I became to put it mild 
 ly apprehensive. 
 
 I might as well say here. that, from the 
 moment of enlistment, Lcandcr O Brien never 
 left us. lie slept on our porch that night, 
 with many blankets for his bed and covering, 
 and the next morning at davlight as I looked
 
 ON THE PRAIRIE. 37 
 
 Behind him stalked a dog", not noticed by 
 me the night before, though without doubt 
 he was then present with his master. It was a 
 dog that belonged distinctly to a class, but 
 with an individuality I ve never seen excelled. 
 He was a beautiful dog, that is, a beautiful dog 
 in the sense that, like Victor Hugo s Gwynp- 
 laine, he was so ugly as to be entrancing". He 
 always seemed to me green in color. He was 
 what is called a brindle bull-dog, but he was 
 exceptionally intense. The yellow and black 
 and a certain bronze were so intermingled 
 that the dog seemed to me almost a green, 
 though there wasn t much sense in the im 
 pression. I think the shape of the dog ap 
 pealed to me even before his color or general 
 expression. It was alarming, but fascinating. 
 In a general way, the figure was rakish while 
 at the same time broad and short. 
 
 I will try to describe the dog in detail. As 
 I have already said, he was a brindle, but there 
 was a great white spot on one side of him 
 which I was given to understand had been the 
 result of a most delightful pit-fight at the stock 
 yards, the hair upon the hcaled-up, torn-out 
 place having come in white some weeks after 
 the encounter. The face of the dog was very
 
 40 ARMACiKDDON. 
 
 CHAPTER [V. 
 
 I don t know how to describe the girl. I 
 don t <|iiite understand ho\v stich a fellow as 
 Applcton could have attained such a hold 
 upon her, for she was something exceptionally 
 worth having-. It seems to me that Appleton 
 with his beetling brows and slouchy aspect 
 ought not to have the right to make such a 
 girl as Helen I )aggart in love with him. 
 There was an incongruity about the whole 
 blessed business. She was one of the nattiest 
 and neatest creatures 1 ever saw. tall and well 
 built and with the tact of making herself most 
 presentable as to every outline. She had 
 fluffy brownish hair and it hung in the right 
 way. She was full of bust, and slender of 
 waist and broad of hip, and when she walked 
 she sprang. Yet she was. after all, 1 thought 
 at first, perhaps just the commonplace, beau 
 tiful, graceful and thoroughly good girl of the 
 day, only more highly educated and broader 
 of mind than is the ordinarv voting woman.
 
 THE LOVERS. 41 
 
 She must have been an appreciative and 
 understanding woman to fall in love with Ap- 
 pleton, a girl who could see through a rough 
 rind and recognize the real quality of the man. 
 The fact that she had so fallen in love rather 
 reconciled me to her before I met her. I 
 said to myself. "Here s a bright woman." 
 When I saw her and she was not long in 
 making her appearance I was startled be 
 cause she was so beautiful and so well dressed, 
 and so easily adroit and discursive of speech 
 that I could not at first quite believe in the 
 great true heart of her, which I came after 
 wards to know so well. 
 
 She paid little or no attention to me. She 
 had learned from Appleton that I was one of 
 the things to be relied upon in the course of 
 those two people in the world, but aside from 
 that I was nobody. Bless her heart, she 
 stuck to him as the bark sticks to a tree, just 
 as any woman should stick to a man with 
 whom she has made the stake, and I was noth 
 ing but a big brother from the beginning. It 
 did not make any difference whether I had a 
 collar on or not. 
 
 The only thing that I objected to was that 
 Helen Daggart s clothes fitted her too well.
 
 42 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 Those tailor-made suits cost money and she 
 was too trig" for anything. Furthermore, she 
 
 had opinions. Xo\v, when a woman prizes 
 tailor-made clothes and lias opinions as well, 
 it s going too far. Xo woman has a right to 
 have tailor-made clothes and opinions too. 
 The strain on the man is too much. lie has 
 to donhly admire. 
 
 On the first day she came out to see us at 
 the big shanty the manner in which she made 
 her appearance was not dignified. She drove 
 out of town, her family owning a coachman 
 and horses, and, there having been rain and 
 the alluvial deposits of the prairie being par 
 ticularly muddy at this time of the year, the 
 advance, though resolute was, to put it mild 
 ly, something more of a wallow than a rush. 
 Hut they reached us eventually; then came 
 a conversation between the two lovers which 
 1 could not well help hearing. She was talk 
 ing to him of his invention, and of their per 
 sonal affairs and all that sort of thing, and 
 I want to say here, frankly, that, though she 
 didn t know the difference between an air 
 pressure and a hoc-handle or between a 
 piston and a wheel-barrow, yet she had, in her 
 feminine wav, some sort of the judgment
 
 THE LOVERS. 43 
 
 which is not always just at hand to us big 
 brutes of males who pride ourselves upon our 
 logical quality which sometimes fails. 
 
 Nevertheless, she was mostly wrong and 
 Appleton was mostly right. It was beautiful 
 just to hear them. lie would explain to her 
 the peculiarities of his invention and, in tech 
 nical language, demonstrate to her that it 
 could not but succeed, and she would listen to 
 him patiently and smilingly, as a woman can 
 do, while she had no more idea of what he 
 was talking about than a kitten has of the 
 geology of the Dog Star. Nevertheless, each 
 of these people lived for the other. She was a 
 very interesting study for me. 
 
 They talked and talked and the end of it all 
 was that, because he was so absorbed in and 
 determined upon what he should do, the girl, 
 who was worthy of him, finally encouraged his 
 resolutions, and applauded his work, although 
 she still murmured something of her wish that 
 he could be "more practical." She left him 
 more reluctantly than it seems to me was 
 necessary. We came outside the big rectan 
 gular building, all three of us together, and, 
 before that, they had said good-bye to each 
 other. Then, just as we three were standing
 
 44 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 ami talking and par! ing, what should tliosc 
 two people do on this occasion hut contrive 
 to drift away t< Aether around the corner of 
 the build::;:;" where 1 could not see them and, 
 1 suppose, pari again. 
 
 Many more visits Helen made that summer, 
 and Applcton fell deeper and deeper in love. 
 
 1 tell you he was subjugated, i don t sup 
 pose I need explain much of this because any 
 one who has anything to do with women, and 
 mo:-t men have, knows what subjugation is, 
 sooner or later. She would come out there 
 so trim and jaunty, and it might be two thou 
 sand and ninety-five decrees in the shade, and 
 the lace rufile around her white throat 
 wouldn t have any remote decree of limpness 
 about it. As for Appleton and me, we would 
 be just reeking under the heat. And this 
 is but a simile we worked so hard on those 
 hot days that, just from the perspiration, I 
 was sloshy in my shoes. I have admitted that 
 I am availing myself of poetic license, but I 
 retract. It s onlv an exaggeration of an un 
 pleasant fact. \Vell. just when Appleton and 
 ! \\ere that way. that girl would come out in 
 all her tailor-made-ness or still more distract 
 ing summer dress of gossamer and lace, and
 
 THE LOVERS. 45 
 
 be as cool as a cucumber. That frost and 
 snow ruflle around her throat irritated me. 
 No matter how wilted we were that everlast 
 ing lace thing would stand up there, stiff and 
 immaculate. 
 
 Well, her superiority over us as to throat 
 surroundings is but a fair illustration of her 
 superiority in other ways. Appleton, dogged, 
 resolute man, was, in her hands, apparently as 
 the clay which can be squeezed into any shape, 
 and, as for me, out of regard for my own 
 safety, I kept aside as much as possible. I was 
 a sort of clay in her hands, too. A little stiff er 
 clay than Appleton was, probably, because I 
 wasn t her particular clay in fact, there is 
 another girl who knows a good deal about 
 kneading herself but there we were, under 
 the rule of this creature of flesh and bones 
 and white skin and fine garb and diploma 
 from a swagger women s college. Appleton 
 might be full of a great idea about some lit 
 tle improvement in the machine, but when 
 that blooming tailor-made suit with its filling 
 rose up against the horizon we were gone. 
 We were as a ship is when there comes whirl 
 ing toward it a great water-spout in mid- 
 ocean. \Ye were as a caravan of the desert
 
 4^> A R MAC, I D DON 
 
 is when the sirocco looms u]> in the far dis 
 tance. \Ve were as the Kansas fanner is when 
 the cyclone comes twirling" over the prairie 
 and he knows that \\itiiin the next five 
 minutes one end of his house and his wife s 
 cousin and his two best mules and his barn 
 are all going to be wafted into the next coun 
 ty. That s what \ve were when that girl came. 
 Yet, we were glad to see her coming. Kvery- 
 thing became then a little brighter and a little 
 better. Men arc weak creatures. 
 
 The manner of their love-making 1 was al 
 ways most interesting to me. Appleton has 
 a sort of dominant way with him, but there 
 was no dominance apparent when Miss I )ag- 
 gart and he were together at least, there was 
 no dominance on his side of the house. That 
 charming young woman simply arose and was 
 tall. She had the wisdom of the college and 
 the firmness of her convictions. She was in 
 love with Appleton there was no doubt of 
 that as 1 have said, something in his queer 
 character had appealed to her. but she thought 
 of him partlv. I believe, a> a great lump of 
 most excellent marble to be >haped into a 
 heroic and mo>t symmetrical figure by her 
 own fair hands. You know what I mean.
 
 THE LOVERS. 47 
 
 Lots of women poor things take fellows to 
 mold em and then the fellows don t mold, 
 and there are broken hearts sometimes; but 
 this case was different. 
 
 Helen Daggart was the only child of Asaph 
 Daggart, a man of substantial fortune, warm 
 heart, and active brain. Appleton liked Mr. 
 Daggart and admired him, but we both re 
 marked, from time to time, that it seemed 
 likely that Mr. Daggart did not return in very 
 great measure, the warm admiration of the 
 younger man. 
 
 Helen s mother was a woman with whom 
 no one could be long acquainted without a 
 feeling warmer than admiration. I no sooner 
 knew her, even distantly, than I wanted, un 
 selfishly, her friendship. The charming old 
 lady and her husband were still in love with 
 each other, and Helen was as the heart s core 
 of each. 
 
 Neither father nor mother ever showed dis 
 pleasure nor dissent at the affair between their 
 daughter and Appleton. One or the other 
 usually accompanied Helen when she came to 
 our prairie quarters; there was a calm and ap 
 parently comfortable acceptance of the situa 
 tion, and yet Appleton knew, and the old
 
 48 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 couple knew that he kne\v, that they were 
 solidly and tirmlv set upon in some way break 
 ing np tlie love-match which seeme<l to be 
 so rapidly forming under their eyes. "Pins 
 condition of affairs <^ave me mueh uneasiness, 
 and although Appleton never spoke of it. 1 
 eonld see that it was by no means out of his 
 mind as a subject of rather painful meditation. 
 The bother of it was that the opposition was 
 perfectly unspoken, the hostility bein^ of an 
 intangible nature, and so difficult to combat. 
 There was trouble m store for the lovers; 
 J could see that from the first. Helen s par 
 ents could not object, personally, to Apple- 
 ton. He was as straight of i^rain as men are 
 made and showed it to the most indifferent ob 
 server, but he was an inventor, a seeker after 
 the unknown and the hitherto impossible, an 
 adventurer upon the shoreless seas of material 
 creation. It was onlv a question of time to 
 the imaLMtiatii m < if "s< ilid men" when he would 
 become wild of eye. lon_^ of hair, and thread 
 bare of coat. A settled home could never be 
 his; he was the marked victim already of a 
 fixed idea. Xo placid onlcrlv familv could 
 contemplate the entrance into its circle of this
 
 THE LOVERS. 49 
 
 figure, with any moderate degree of equa 
 nimity. 
 
 The Daggarts loved Helen with absorbing 
 parental affection, and, here s the rub she 
 loved them devotedly and was to them, 
 though apparently willful of way and inde 
 pendent, entirely subject, because of the heart 
 bond between them all. 
 
 Naturally, in the visiting back and forth, it 
 fell often to my lot to talk to Mrs. Daggart, 
 and, less often to Mr. Daggart. At first I was 
 mildly interested in them both, but soon I 
 grew earnestly so in my effort to reach their 
 inner consciousness, and discover their plans 
 relating to Appleton and Helen. 
 
 There was no deep strategy in them, and 
 I soon saw what their really wise and sensible 
 plan of campaign was. Open opposition, they 
 well knew, would only fan the flame of love. 
 Patient acquiescence, gentle endurance of the 
 inevitable, that was the tone they adopted. 
 Sooner or later, the wise old heads reasoned, 
 Appleton would fly away in his "kite," as Mr. 
 Daggart called the machine, and there was no 
 telling what mode of deliverance would then 
 naturally come to save them from the threat- 
 
 4
 
 50 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 filed family alliance. Appleton might sail 
 across the ocean, or drop into it, or land, limp 
 and ignominious, even dead, perhaps, upon 
 the roof of some nearby sky-scraper. There 
 was certainly room for speculation and hope 
 of a good riddance, when once the inventor 
 should go away on his cloud-racing hobby. 
 Then, oh then, the parents thought, then 
 "poor Helen!" lint they would tend the 
 broken lily, and bring it back to life, and 
 in a little time she would forget Appleton and 
 fall in love with some comfortable and well- 
 balanced person not unlike Asaph Daggart, 
 marry him, and be happy ever after! 
 
 This was the scheme of the parent birds. 
 After I divined it their ill-concealed nutter- 
 ings, their friendly visits and invitations, their 
 forced interest in Appleton and his invention, 
 all their simple ways and doings became as an 
 open book to me. 1 said nothing to Appleton, 
 \\lio suspected nothing but was simplv puz 
 zled, as is the manner of lovers, over the wavs 
 of old folk. Appleton felt the obstacle they 
 set in his way. and yet was thrown out of the 
 straight method of reasoning by their very 
 friendly manner.
 
 THE LOVERS. 51 
 
 Helen seemed utterly unconscious of all 
 around her except Appleton. Whether she 
 was or not must forever remain a question. I 
 could not read the mind of that fair young 
 woman.
 
 52 ARMAGKDDOX. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 IX WHICH I DISTINGUISH MYSELF. 
 
 As the months \vure on our work pro 
 gressed, and I became gradually acquainted 
 with some of the practical difficulties in Ap 
 plet on s way. I soon saw that, like many 
 other inventions, this one was hampered in its 
 complete and perfect development by want 
 of money. 
 
 "\Ye must always take second or third be>t 
 material." said Appleton one day, after an 
 abject faihire in an experiment. "That is 
 what ails the machine from end to end. I 
 need the best metal, wood, silk. rope, wire, 
 everything \Yentworth, old boy, I ve done 
 my best, bnt I need more money!" 
 
 The bi^ r man sat down on the i^rass with a 
 look somewhat drooping, for him. bnt after 
 all there was nut a line of real discouragement 
 in his face < *r ti^ tire. 
 
 \\ e talked for a loiiL, r time, going over the 
 problems in hand one by one. and when tin- 
 palaver was over we neither of us knew very
 
 I DISTINGUISH MYSELF. 53 
 
 well what to do, but we had resolved that 
 something must be done, and at once, and we 
 were sure that the something to do was to 
 make an effort at least to raise a reasonable 
 sum of ready money. 
 
 Of course the features of the situation were 
 almost pitiful. Here was a man of great brain 
 seeking to do something which should be not 
 for his own advantage alone but for the good 
 of the world, yet hampered and barred from 
 accomplishment for lack of money. Off to 
 the east of us loomed darkly a cloud upon the 
 horizon. That was the smoke hanging above 
 Chicago. Underneath that smoke, among 
 the two or three millions of people, were two 
 or three hundred vastly successful money 
 makers, men who had possession of millions 
 of dollars and any one of whom, without em 
 barrassment, could carry Appleton through 
 to at least an ultimate test of the result of 
 all his thinking. There was but one course 
 to be pursued now. Some of these men must 
 be reached, and I, of course, was the one to 
 reach them. 
 
 There is no necessity for going over in de 
 tail what happened within the next three or 
 four days. I selected eight or ten of the most
 
 54 
 
 promising of those who had made vast for 
 tunes in railroads or lard or \vheat or oil or 
 corsets and stockings .and things, or horses, 
 and 1 was snnM>ed three-fourths of the time 
 with much vigor 1>ut great clumsiness l>y the 
 capitalists upon whom I called. 1 kept get 
 ting more and more indignant and more de 
 termined. 
 
 I got to he mightily honey-tongned. I 
 would go into the ante-room of a capitalist s 
 office and, as I walked along the corridor, a 
 little wohhly as to my legs and a little shaky 
 as to what the result of the encounter would 
 he, I would say to myself: "Well, after all, 
 why shouldn t you override this other tellow. J 
 lie is your equal neither socially nor intellect- 
 nail}-, and if some one were to tell him that 
 Sam Weller was uncle to Paul and Virginia he 
 would helieve it. simply hecause he had never 
 heard of any of the three. Xow. 1 trace your 
 self up and he a man when you go in." 
 
 Then I would reach an ante-room and meet 
 a hoy and finally get into the next room where 
 I was confronted, almost uniformly, hv a clerk 
 of ahout forty-five years, \\ith a clean-shaven 
 face except for a tuft of side-whiskers dang-
 
 I DISTINGUISH MYSELF. 55 
 
 It s odd, isn t it, how those ante-room clerks 
 always have that thing below and in front of 
 the ears? and I want to say of all of them, 
 and I suppose they knew their business, that 
 each of them on every occasion which I can 
 call to mind, treated me as if I were an angle 
 worm and as if it were a favor that I should 
 be allowed to go in and have converse with 
 his old millionaire, whose trousers generally 
 bulged below the waistline and whom I could 
 have thrashed in a minute and a half if I could 
 have persuaded him to go out into the alley 
 way with me. 
 
 Well, I saw millionaire after millionaire and 
 stood so much snubbing that it seemed to me 
 I had attained a callous on my manhood, but, 
 eventually, out of all the lot of the successful 
 business men I could reach, I had three more 
 or less hypnotized. Talk about kissing the 
 Blarney Stone! Why I would have tried to 
 kiss every paving block in Chicago and to do 
 it on my hands and knees if I had thought 
 it would have helped me! Even now I m 
 proud of what I did. Not only did I impress 
 those old money-bags separately, but I got 
 them in communication and got them all 
 figuring together and on one eventful after-
 
 56 ARMAGH DDt >X. 
 
 noon we drove out, the three ami I, all in 
 one carriage, to meet Appleton. to examine 
 the new venture and to decide upon how 
 much they would invest. 
 
 It was just a beautiful thing to look upon 
 as we four drove up in the big carriage, for 
 which, by the way. I had paid millionaires 
 arc exceedingly thoughtful with regard to the 
 dollar or so payments of life and then to 
 see Appleton and Leander awaiting us out 
 side the building. 
 
 I noticed with a degree of surprise that Ap 
 pleton had dressed for the occasion. 1 do 
 not think he had gone so far as to change his 
 shirt; it was the same flannel shirt which he 
 had worn in the morning and, furthermore, it 
 was a shirt with a transferable collar, that is 
 to say a shirt on which the collar could be 
 changed. He had not worn a collar of late, 
 but now he had one on. I don t know where 
 he got it, but it was a linen collar and one of 
 the highest 1 ever saw; furthermore, he had 
 around it a tie. It was a brilliant thing but 
 narrow; it was what I think they call a "string 
 tie." and he had tied it very well indeed. Its 
 general effect would perhaps have been a little 
 better had he pinned it somewhere after first
 
 I DISTINGUISH MYSELF. 57 
 
 tying it, and had the bow, when we drove up, 
 been somewhere else than in such precise 
 exactness under his left ear. I would like to 
 write a treatise upon the question why neck 
 ties have such astounding tendencies toward 
 the left side of their wearer s neck. However, 
 to exhaust that subject would require a new 
 and bulky volume. 
 
 But, though fine the appearance of Apple- 
 ton, it was as nothing compared with that of 
 his subordinate, Mr. Leander O Brien. The 
 faithful but somewhat tough O Brien evident 
 ly recognizing the importance of the, occasion, 
 had simply laid himself out to meet the 
 emergency. I had never before realized the 
 resources of the ready-made clothing "Em 
 poriums" of South Halstecl Street. I think I 
 am only using the most truthful simile I can 
 think of when I say that Leander was a jewel. 
 He shone; he scintillated. His suit was what 
 is known as a "sack" and fitted him tightly. 
 The plaid of coat, pants (I say "pants" ad 
 visedly) and vest fitted him perfectly. I have 
 never had the exact measurement, but as 
 nearly as I can tell at this time and only from 
 memory, each square of the plaid was, say 
 somewhere about three-quarters of an inch on
 
 ?S AR.M.UiKDDOX. 
 
 a side, and the color was bull-dog and white. 
 Of course there isn t really any such color as 
 bull-dog, but you know what I mean. It s 
 that sort of growling color that they get into 
 plaids sometimes, apparently for the delecta 
 tion of just such fellows as O l rien. lie had 
 a high white collar on. too, and he had a tie 
 as well, but it was about nineteen times as large 
 as the one worn by Appleton and it meant 
 business. It was scarlet. 1 needn t say any 
 thing more about it. Ilis hat was one of 
 O llricn s hats an ordinary 1 )erby as to size; 
 it had the most startling straight-out rim I ve 
 ever seen in my life, but that does not describe 
 it. I can only say. it was one of those hats 
 which we had learned to recognize as pecu 
 liar to Leander ( ) I >rien. 
 
 His boots were polished to the highest de 
 gree; he had brought some fancy blacking in 
 from town. He stood four or five feet behind 
 Appleton with Fit/ glooming in the rear as 
 we drove up and, while Appleton looked 
 abashed and anxious, there wa> nothing of the 
 sort in the appearance of ( )T>rien. There was 
 a jaunt} swing to the fellow as he lounged 
 between Appleton and the building, his great 
 shoulders distending tiHitlv the coat of his
 
 1 DISTINGUISH MYSELF. 59 
 
 checked suit, and there was a look in his 
 broad, Irish-American face that showed there 
 was fight and faithfulness in him, and fight and 
 faithfulness are just as good when they come 
 from South Halsted Street as when they come 
 from any university in the world. 
 
 Meanwhile I was all anxiety and full of di 
 plomacy. I got out my capitalists and intro 
 duced Appleton, who was hesitant and 
 troubled, and we all went in together to look 
 at the air machine and to have Appleton ex 
 plain it and tell us about its possibilities and 
 its monetary promise. We were like a couple 
 of poor tugs convoying three great galleons, 
 and it is but truth to say that we felt we were 
 tugs and they felt that they were galleons. 
 
 It s funny about the men who are between 
 fifty and sixty years of age and who have be 
 come millionaires I mean it s funny about 
 most of them each seems to range himself 
 into one of three classes. Here are the three 
 sorts of millionaires: First, and I think he s 
 rather preponderant, there is the man with 
 side-whiskers and protuberant jaw and heavy 
 eyebrows and commercially dominant air. 
 Second, there is the man I forgot to say that 
 the first is always bald about three inches
 
 60 AKMAGKDDOX. 
 
 across on the top of his head second, there 
 is the man with plenty of hair, a man who 
 weighs about one hundred fiftv-sevcn pounds 
 and a half, who always wears full whiskers and 
 shaves his upper lip, who is liable to be a 
 Sunday school superintendent as well as a 
 bank president, and who, take it all around, 
 is pretty bad medicine. Third, there is the 
 big round-bellied, red-faced, double-chinned, 
 keen-eyed, well-dressed speculator and club 
 man, who bobs up, waning and waxing, one 
 out of a thousand, an unfixed millionaire, 
 answering to the law of chances of the dice 
 among his sort. Of the three, of course, the 
 latter, despite his frailties, is the one to wlmm 
 a gentleman would most incline. In fact, this 
 latter sort of millionaire is quite likely to be 
 a gentleman himself. 
 
 Well, as I have said, we five went in to 
 gether. Klihu Hammond. Jacob Arnheim and 
 William Tuttle. Appleton taking the lead, and 
 1 anxiously following. 
 
 Leander O linen lounged watchfully and. it 
 seemed to me. almost threateningly, in the 
 rear. Certainly, as we walked along toward 
 where the air machine hung, nothing had yet 
 occurred to mar the peaceful and commercial
 
 I DISTINGUISH MYSELF. 6l 
 
 aspect of the occasion, but it was evident that 
 O Brien was alert and critical of all that was 
 going- on. 
 
 Four long hours passed, four hours that I 
 shall remember always with a feeling partly of 
 rage and indignation, partly of allowance for 
 the quality of mind which is expert at pence- 
 getting and keeping, and which, in peace 
 times, gives a standing above greatness to 
 the man who can make two dollars take the 
 place of one. As we talked together, my own 
 work was introductory and general. It was 
 necessary that Appleton should do the rest, 
 and I must say that he did it well. I must 
 say, further, of the men to whom he talked, 
 that perhaps no other three men reachable 
 could have listened more intelligently to what 
 he said, could have appreciated more keenly 
 his summing up of the vast possibilities of his 
 invention, should it succeed, or his estimate 
 of his chances of success. It is only fair to say 
 this, but my blood boiled within me through 
 out all the interview. There was something 
 so lofty and so patronizing in the demeanor 
 of the millionaires toward us that my mood, 
 near the end of the interview, was not a good 
 ly nor a gentle one. Appleton became earnest
 
 62 ARMAGF.DDOX. 
 
 and eloquent and was clear and concise from 
 start to finish, but his talk and demonstration 
 diil not appeal to either one of these three 
 money-makers. I do not think that . \ppleton, 
 himself, quite understood the failure of his 
 effort. Tie was too earnest and absorbed, too 
 certain that anybody who would but listen to 
 him and hear all the facts presented must 
 agree with him. but I could see that the blows 
 of the blacksmith s hammer were falling upon 
 cold metal: even ()T>rien in his own way 
 could see that. Toward the end of the con 
 versation I saw his shoulders shift ominously 
 once or twice, and he looked at me question- 
 ingly. It was all uncertain and he was obedi 
 ent, but in that glance of his to me there was 
 a query as to whether there wasn t a remote 
 chance of having some sort of an excuse for 
 licking somebody, somewhere. 
 
 I wonder if there is anything anarchistic in 
 me? Is it right or wrong in me that there 
 should be in my own mind a sort of antago 
 nism against the smug man who had made a 
 lot of money and who thinks, because of that, 
 he knows all there is to know; 5 T am afraid 
 that, down in the bottom of my heart, I felt 
 a good deal as felt my deep-chested and short-
 
 I DISTINGUISH MYSELF. 63 
 
 haired and loudly-plaided friend, Leander, 
 who was hovering behind with that too sus 
 picious closeness. Appleton, poor boy, had 
 made every preparation he could for a good 
 showing off of our blazing old invention. 
 Evidently Leander O Brien had been hard at 
 work. The aluminum was polished and the 
 thing stood there, rather attractive in its way, 
 like a vast, glittering, almost white cigar. 
 Every expedient had been resorted to, to 
 make apparent to the laymen the nature and 
 workings of the machinery intended to oper 
 ate the craft. The mechanism was all so ad 
 justed that it could be worked and handled 
 easily; and so Appleton went on with his 
 talk, explaining, illustrating, arguing. 
 
 Once involved in the work of setting forth 
 the nature of his invention and the work of 
 any part of his machinery, Appleton forgot 
 his timidity and became enthusiastic and prac 
 tical and clearly eloquent. I forgot myself in 
 listening to him. I admired him. I saw the 
 possibilities of the thing as I never had seen 
 them before; but did the talk, even as he 
 warmed, have the same effect on the three old 
 capitalists? Not a bit of it. They stood there 
 and asked an occasional question and looked
 
 64 ARMAGKDDOX. 
 
 at each otlicr and once in a while, nodded or 
 shook their heads as the talk went on, and 
 when it was all through with and Appleton 
 looked at them, it seemed to me appealingly, 
 awaiting some comment, old Mr. Arnheim 
 looked up: 
 
 "What do yon think about it?" he said, his 
 question being addressed to his companions. 
 
 Oh, there may be something in it I don t 
 know but I don t see any immediate money." 
 said Mr. Tnttle. yawning. "It s one of the 
 dream things of men of this sort. \Yhat do 
 you think of it, Hammond?" 
 
 Mr. Hammond s red face was inscrutable 
 and he spoke slowly. "Well, I suppose you re 
 right. Bill I don t know I ve a sneaking 
 liking for the thing. However, since we ve 
 agreed to work together or not at all, I ll have 
 to side with you. I m afraid, Mr. Appleton, 
 that we can t go into the thing: Good-after 
 noon." As he spoke, Mr. Hammond started 
 for the door, the others following him, but be 
 fore he reached the outside he hesitated, 
 looked around and seemed half way inclined 
 to come back. He didn t come, though, and 
 it is a source, at this present time, of great 
 comfort to me that he didn t. It isn t exactly
 
 I DISTINGUISH MYSELF. 65 
 
 clear to me how men can kick themselves be 
 cause of failure to do what they ought to have 
 done at some certain time, but I ll venture to 
 say that Mr. Hammond has been engaged in 
 that occupation at frequent and long con 
 tinued intervals within the last year. I will 
 even go so far as to wager that he is at it 
 yet. He was the keenest of wit of the three. 
 So they passed out into the sunlight and 
 climbed, ponderously content, into their car 
 riage and gradually diminished toward the 
 east, where the smoke hung. Appleton said 
 nothing and I said nothing, and O Brien, 
 while giving signs of saying something, 
 didn t. We emerged into the sunlight to 
 gether and stood there silently looking at the 
 disappearing carriage. 
 
 As for me, my gorge rose. I am unfamiliar 
 with a gorge, how and why it rises, or any 
 thing in particular about a gorge I was al 
 ways weak in Anatomy but if getting mad 
 clear through" and getting suddenly earnest 
 and angrily enthusiastic means that a gorge 
 has performed that particular exploit of rising, 
 then my gorge had risen until it was stopped 
 by plain want of room. Appleton s face was 
 pitiful to look upon. He never lacked pluck,
 
 66 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 but there \vns a sort of blankness and some 
 thing at least reminding one of hopelessness 
 in his expression that stirred me in every fiber 
 of my behiL; . I thought very rapidly just then 
 and, I am Ldad to say, thought very sensibly. 
 Sometimes when a fel!o\v is in a flaming mood 
 he does some of his best thinking, that is, Ins 
 conceptions are snddenlv clearer. I suppose 
 it s the same way when lie has taken three or 
 tour drinks, the lapse bein^ in the latter case 
 that there is no practical carrying out of in 
 tentions. Anyhow. I had my say and it has 
 been ^ood for me that I said it. 
 
 I drew close to Applcton and spoke: 
 "As near as 1 can jnd^ e, Applcton, I am the 
 possessor of somewhere between twelve and 
 fifteen thousand dollars of assets which can be 
 realized upon at once. I am s^ oiii!^ to have 
 those dollars within my possession within the 
 next twenty-four hours, and 1 want to inform 
 you seriously, calmly and confidentially, that 
 they are gcin^ into your invention." 
 
 The old boy didn t >ay anything at all. lie 
 looked at me for a moment in a dazed sort of 
 way and then, as the quality of the situation 
 dawned upon him. he shook hands with me; 
 then I didn t like the look of his eves. Should
 
 I DISTINGUISH MYSELF. 67 
 
 a man over twenty-one ever have tears in his 
 eyes? I wouldn t give a cent for a man who 
 couldn t. Then he turned and went in alone 
 to his invention. As for O Brien, he walked 
 up to me and looked me in the face and swung" 
 his shoulders as usual and remarked in a casual 
 South Halsted Street sort of way: "That s 
 the stuff!" Then he stalked off toward the 
 stable to feed the horses and as he turned the 
 corner the loud plaid upon him cracked. I 
 could hear it distinctly. Anyhow, it seemed 
 to. 
 
 That night, as we were finishing our cigars 
 on the crazy little porch we had been dedi 
 cating a few last words to the late visitors 
 I exclaimed as a kind of conclusion to the 
 whole subject matter: 
 
 "Gold rules the camp, the court, the grove!" 
 "And it is likely to turn out," said Apple- 
 ton quietly, not smiling over my garbled ver 
 sion of the poet s line, but looking at me with 
 fire in his eyes, "that Beauty will give us the 
 same verdict as has that jury of money-bags." 
 "What do you mean, Appleton?" 
 But he would say no more. I guessed what 
 he meant, and remained silent.
 
 68 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 CIIAPTKK VI. 
 \YK MAKE PROGRESS. 
 
 \\ c had as helpers four tall, raw-boned 
 Swedes, the sons oi C)le Swanson, who tilled 
 his twenty acres of farm land a half mile south 
 west of us. The stalwart sons of Swanson 
 were sometimes reinforced by his not less 
 stalwart daughter who. added to her great 
 strength and stature, possessed a more shrewd 
 intellect than her brothers, as well as a shrill, 
 penetrating voice which could be heard from 
 an astonishing distance. 
 
 The Swanson sons were ideal for our work, 
 for they had neither interest in nor curiosity 
 about it. They bent their backs, and rounded 
 their great shoulders for us whenever they 
 were needed, and then went their way without 
 thought or comment. 
 
 Xothing surprised or disconcerted these 
 unemotional Swedes. A fall of twenty feet, 
 a scrubbing over the fields at the end of a rope 
 attached to the reeling, tumbling machine, or 
 a sudden jerk at any time, from any source,
 
 WE MAKE PROGRESS. 69 
 
 all these experiences \vere received as a part 
 of the regular clay s work, to be paid for by the 
 regular day s wages, and nothing to be said 
 about them. 
 
 Leda, the Amazon, was more human in con 
 struction and more than once Old Ole Swan- 
 son had to give her a stern lecture impressing 
 the importance of silence and secrecy as to 
 our affairs. Her chief temptation was in con 
 nection with a certain Christian Frederickson, 
 who, in his Sunday clothes, broad and red o( 
 visage and hands, came to see her regularly 
 twice a week after his day s work was over in 
 the railway machine shop, some miles away, 
 where he was employed. 
 
 Frederickson was a Norwegian. In his 
 eyes there sparkled the light of an inquiring 
 spirit, and he was, although heavily framed, 
 active and even light in his movements. 
 AYhen Leda brought him on an evening walk 
 toward our quarters the pair usually stopped 
 at a respectful distance beside a clover field, 
 where, leaning upon the fence, they looked 
 long and searching!}* at our buildings and 
 their surroundings. 
 
 Toward the end of our labors on the prairie, 
 when we were experimenting at night all
 
 7 ( i ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 of our real work of that kind had to be done 
 after dark \vc could hear, far over the fields, 
 the strident tones of Lcda s voice rising and 
 falling in the pecttliar sing-song of her people, 
 even \\hen they speak Knglish. as she talked 
 to Frederickson, and occasionally \ve noted 
 his deeper and yet thin harsh tones and we 
 knew that the couple were following our 
 movements, stumbling and running along 
 over the uneven ground, while we sailed and 
 dipped arid slanted uncertainly around in the 
 It i\\ er fields of air. 
 
 The frank interest of these lovers in us was 
 far from pleasing, as it was, of course, essen 
 tial to our success that little attention should 
 be paid to our venture by the outer world. 
 Kspccially indignant at the display of natural 
 curiosity on the part of the fair l.eda and her 
 swain was Leander OT>rien. With the natural 
 gallantry of his race, to no member of which 
 a petticoat can ever be indifferent, O Hrien 
 had not failed to try to make himself agreeable 
 to < )le Swanson s daughter, and with such 
 success that she blushed and bridled whenever 
 she met that gallant young bachelor, but all 
 other manifestations showed that her heart
 
 WE MAKE PROGRESS. 7 1 
 
 was fixed on one alone and that one, Fred- 
 erickson. 
 
 In time, the Norwegian became one of our 
 helpers at night, and a valuable aid he proved, 
 quick, alert and obedient, but he and O Brien, 
 however well they worked together, were al 
 ways when at rest, chafing and glowering at 
 each other. The trouble never reached the 
 fighting stage, though, for, in reality, O Brien 
 cared nothing for Frederickson s sweetheart, 
 it was only the galling fact that any young 
 woman could for a moment look at any other 
 fellow when he, Leander O Brien, was present 
 which rufiled his temper and at times embit 
 tered an hour or two of his careless existence. 
 
 There were times when we thought that 
 Frederickson would make exactly the third 
 hand we needed when our machine should go 
 out in the world at last for actual work, but 
 in the end we decided upon O Brien for that 
 place, as, aside from every other consideration, 
 Frcderickson was too great of weight and 
 then, before long, something happened which 
 convinced us that O Brien was too useful, 
 faithful and devoted to be dropped from our 
 service for any reason. 
 
 It was good to study the relations of na-
 
 72 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 t tire s wild things \vith each other, and it \vas 
 a sort of laxation in contrast with the work 
 on the man-killing machine with which I. had 
 become identified. J often wandered away 
 alone and lay close to the ground, so to speak, 
 becoming a part as nearly as I could of the 
 romances and the comedies and the tragedies 
 of the life of the grass. One day I especially 
 remember, and an incident of it. The country 
 road lay white and bare and dusty, but dipped 
 down into the creek and then rose again up 
 the bank on the other side to straggle away 
 to the village it was seeking. The creek had 
 a certain lustiness, and there was water in it 
 even in midsummer. There were many frogs 
 along the margin who rather prided them 
 selves on their vocal accomplishments and 
 sang much at night. There were also snakes 
 in the grass about. Of these we never spoke 
 to Helen; it might have caused us to lose our 
 much prized walks with her through the 
 quiet country, toward sundown on summer 
 days. 
 
 I heard I hardly know what to call it 
 a queer sort of squeak and tumble along the 
 road which led away from the place where I 
 was lying in front of the old barrack, and
 
 WE MAKE PROGRESS. 73 
 
 then 1 saw something very fine. Down the 
 slope of the descent toward the creek came a 
 frog gasping, poor thing, \vith each leap, and 
 leaping about seven feet at a time. He sought 
 the water, and death was behind him. Swiftly 
 and steadily, keeping pace almost with his 
 desperate leaps, came the ordinary garter 
 snake, most familiar of all the snakes of the 
 country. Neither frog nor snake noticed me, 
 although I ran out and along beside them, so 
 deeply interested were they, the one seeking 
 the chance of life and the other seeking prey. 
 As for me, I felt, as I trotted along, a curious 
 interest in noting the manner of the trail, the 
 quality of the convolution of it left by the 
 snake upon the white dust of the road. So 
 far as emotions go I don t think they were 
 aroused in me at all until, just as the frog had 
 almost reached the creek in safety, the snake 
 seized upon it by one of its hind legs and with 
 drew itself into its own coils contentedly to 
 gorge its prey at leisure; then came the blow 
 across the snake with something picked up at 
 hand and its almost instant death, while the 
 frog floundered weakly to the water and swam 
 to safety beneath the overlapping reeds. 
 Somehow 7 the incident gave me courage.
 
 74 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 "We ll docile our difficulties yet," I thought. 
 
 P>ut I am wandering away again, just as I 
 used to. from our work, and its story. 
 
 It is hard to tell in detail how the machine 
 was improving 1 . Firstly, because save in a 
 purely objective way I made slight study of 
 the scientific details of it, and secondly, be 
 cause no matter how hard mv decree of study, 
 lacking as 1 am in all abilitv in such direction, 
 I could not tell with any decree of clearness 
 that would appeal to an expert just what the 
 improvements were. I cannot tell how, with 
 his liquified or compressed air. whichever it 
 was that Applelon utilixed. we got more and 
 more of propelling power with slight weight, 
 nor can I tell as an expert could about the 
 steering apparatus, save that the propulsion 
 eventually became tremendous and the power 
 of direction at least respectable. \Ve rose and 
 fluttered and swerved, but ever with each 
 slight ascension for we never ventured far - 
 we did a little better. either in the qualitx of the 
 force applied or in the working of some gear 
 ing or some bearing. It was fascinating to 
 me. this exploration of the air depths but it 
 was so, largely as it is fascinating to a small 
 boy to see how far he can go into a grave-
 
 WE MAKE PROGRESS. 75 
 
 yard of a dark night. I went up with Apple- 
 ton in that speculative thing in the darkness 
 and in close sympathy with Leander O Brien, 
 who I firmly believe was as much scared as I 
 was. Once "upstairs," as Leander put it, w 7 e 
 two, though lacking the inventor s uncon 
 scious bravery, became somewhat brave our 
 selves, and, acquiring in a measure the calm 
 ness of utter hopelessness, performed our re 
 spective duties with some degree of intelli 
 gence and tact. Never, though, did Leander 
 and I become really and thoughtfully coura 
 geous. We were but as the driftwood which 
 thinks not at all but obeys the direction of a 
 controlling current. Yet it may be fairly said 
 of us that we did our best. One night Leander 
 O Brien did something which bound him to 
 us with more than the conventional bands of 
 steel and which settled forever the question as 
 to who in all future operations of our venture 
 should be our henchman, helpmeet and friend. 
 We had risen higher than usual that night, 
 which was a dark one, and Appleton was in 
 blithesome mood because some new gearing 
 of his had worked so well and because in his 
 own vaulting opinion he just then owned the 
 world. I was somewhat elated mvself because
 
 /f> ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 we had gone up fairlv and scjuarcly and with 
 a little less than the usual amount of sonie- 
 thing-is-g oing;-to-happen feeling. AYe were at 
 least five hundred feet above the earth, and, 
 for (Mice, were really facing a moderate north- 
 cast wind and holding ourselves in position. 
 To the east, from our ahitude. T could see 
 twinkling bravely and boldlv the lights of the 
 city of Chicago and., though in our boat we 
 seemed to be a little better off than usual, 
 there occurred to me the lines of that poet 
 who wrote something about the "Cruel lights 
 of London." and I said to mvself. "Oh, Cruel 
 lights be handed! Cruel lights mean terra 
 firma and beet s; eak" and, just then, some 
 thing happened. 
 
 It v asn t much: it was only that one of mv 
 murderous friend Applcton s gearing- had 
 become hide-bound or something of that sort 
 and that he leaned over and said to me quite 
 complacently, "\Yc are a good way up. and 
 I don t know whether the power is Coiner to 
 hold out or not." That was all there was to 
 it, but, to tell the truth, it troubled me. Then 
 we bewail to drop and dip. Then O P.rien 
 looked at me for a moment appealingly. and 
 almost under his breath began to use such
 
 WE MAKE PROGRESS. 77 
 
 choice South Ilalsted Street expressions as 
 made something simply classical, something 
 which I wish could have been taken clown in 
 shorthand; but we did our best, O Brien and I; 
 we jumped to the places which we had learned 
 were ours in such emergency as we went 
 downward at an angle all too sharp toward a 
 grove for which the air-ship at that particular 
 moment had conceived an impassioned and 
 violent affection. 
 
 There came a moment when, with our slant 
 and quality of descent and drift, and despite 
 all Appleton s wild efforts with his packed-in 
 powers, it became apparent to each of us that 
 we were going to have a close, not to say 
 touching, interview with that grove. We 
 couldn t miss it. To plunge into the top of 
 a certain looming element of it seemed our 
 certain fate. This meant disaster of a sort 
 you could describe in almost any sort of mood 
 and with almost any kind of adjectives. Some 
 how, and in some way, Appleton made our 
 unaccustomed carrier lift up its head as we 
 swooped down so that there was almost an 
 inclination to the horizontal. But it was in 
 evitable with the downward drift that, if we 
 missed ihe trees, we should drop into the Des
 
 78 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 IMaines River, which curved at this point, and 
 so involve a ]><>ssil>le end to the machine, and 
 to certain people. 
 
 We had ropes and an anchor, of course; 
 1>elow us spread out about live acres ot green 
 er}-, the tops of elm trees. Unal>le longer 
 to resist the force of gravitation, unable long 
 er to breast and remain stationary in the face 
 of the northeastern wind, the machine was 
 now close upon the grove. Should we land 
 amidst it we would be in a bad way; should 
 we miss it, we would be in worse strait still. 
 \Ye dropped our anchor and took the chances. 
 
 We caught fairly in a tree-top near the 
 southwestern edge of the grove very near the 
 river, and we caught well and firmly, while the 
 machine, tangled, slanted distressinglv toward 
 the southwest, under the prevailing wind. 
 
 There we were, three men, sitting in a little 
 boat-shaped attair. upon anything but an even 
 keel, though our frail carrier and its machinery 
 were attached firmly. We were about one 
 hundred feet above the ground and the wind 
 was gaining force, force enough to keep us 
 away up there strained loftily to the south 
 west. All at once it shifted to the east and 
 we were sorrv we had let the anchor eo.
 
 WE MAKE PROGRESS. 79 
 
 Freed now, we could land on the prairie. As 
 it was we didn t see any practicable way to 
 get out of "the hole," as O Brien called our 
 predicament, though assuredly we weren t in 
 any hole. On the contrary, a hole was just 
 what would have been appreciated just then. 
 We wanted to get down to where there were 
 holes. We weren t enamored of day s blue 
 ether nor of night s less brilliant ether. We 
 wanted terra firma. 
 
 And then one Leander O Brien, ready here 
 tofore to march any day in a procession flaunt 
 ing a green flag with a yellow harp upon it, 
 and really hopeful in his thought that The 
 Island of his kindred might possibly be al 
 lowed a personal entity among the nations of 
 the earth, despite all geographical and politi 
 cal and sensible relations one Leander 
 O Brien, each one of whose relations was a 
 policeman, a sewer-digger, a political boss, a 
 penitentiary inmate or a blessed old father 
 of a family, this Leander O Brien did some 
 thing. 
 
 "Youse just stay in here," he said, "and I ll 
 fix it! Something s got to be did and mighty 
 sudden! This tiling has got to be loosed and 
 then go somewhere. Anywhere except these
 
 8o ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 woods! Thcy s only one way to do it. Gim 
 me the axe." 
 
 He didn t wait for consent or orders. He 
 grabbed the hatchet which we carried for 
 emergencies and a moment later was over the 
 end and slipping down the anchor rope. The 
 anchor had clutched together some of the 
 outspreading lighter limbs at the very top of 
 the elm, and O Brien, as he reached the an 
 chor, could merely thrust his way into a great 
 mass of green leaves, the foliage of hundreds 
 of little limbs dragged close together as de 
 scribed, lie burrowed his way down some 
 how. I saw him with his legs and one arm 
 twined round the sturdiest of the small limbs 
 so massed, and saw the axe rise and fall, each 
 blow severing a limb and lessening the re 
 sisting force until suddenly, with a tear, the 
 machine leaped aloft, swung clear of the for 
 est and we sailed on", to land quite gallan ly 
 and gently and respectably half a mile away. 
 
 But what had become of O Brien? Had 
 he been tossed away from the tree as the 
 slender limb upon which he had entwined 
 himself swung back? 5 Tf his grip had held 
 could he still have reached the ground? There 
 was anxiety on our part, but O Bricn was all
 
 WE MAKE PROGRESS. 8l 
 
 right. We found him, ragged and scratched, 
 but not seriously hurt in any way. 
 
 "It was dead easy," O Brien insisted, in re 
 ply to our inquiries, "I hung on when the 
 thing flipped, and I slid down somehow and 
 the limbs kept getting bigger until I got to 
 the tree itself, and then, blazes! I couldn t 
 have slid down if the tree had been three 
 inches furder around !" 
 
 After that there was no question as to who 
 should be the man to go with us.
 
 82 ARMACKDDOX. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 One hot, breathless August morning we 
 awoke to a world about to plunge in war. 
 
 For months we had watched the progress 
 of events and had known a crisis was ap 
 proaching. Xow that crisis was here and we 
 could not realize it. It seemed unreal, the 
 terrific news which came. Europe, America, 
 Asia. .Africa and the islands of the seas were 
 hurrying toward desperate conflict. There 
 was upon the storm} waters or upon the 
 threatening land no place where the dove of 
 peace could rest. 
 
 The peace which had followed the Spanish- 
 Amcrican war was almost universal, but it 
 was nominal. There was unrest. The spirit 
 of change and combination was universal. It 
 permeated all classes. It agitated the capital 
 ists and reached even to the shopkeepers, the 
 last, ordinarily, to feel the influence of new 
 ideas. All through the world of trade and 
 commerce, the seeking world which supplies
 
 WAR. 83 
 
 us with what we need from clay to day, went 
 the consciousness that new conditions and a 
 new arrangement were to follow a great strug 
 gle, and that commercial steps swift and ear 
 nest should be taken with reference to the 
 outcome. 
 
 All the world knew that the relations of the 
 nations upon earth were to be readjusted. 
 All the world knew, as did the mapmakers, 
 that new forces, industrial, political, literary 
 and social, were to be forcefully applied in 
 new places and with an aim to new results 
 upon certain areas of the earth s surface here 
 tofore left, either fallow or cultivated vicious 
 ly, or, rather, to use an extenuating expres 
 sion, with an unconscious selfishness begotten 
 of whatever race or races might be respon 
 sible. 
 
 It was a vague fear but a real one. It was 
 an undefined terror hard to illustrate by a 
 simile. In a room somewhere upon the globe 
 a group of girls might have been clustered 
 dreading an approaching thunder storm. The 
 black clouds dropped from overhead and black 
 clouds rose from the horizon to meet them, 
 and the thunder peals were terrifying. The 
 girls might have been in a London suburb or
 
 * ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 in a country-house outside of Chicago or in 
 a villa outside of Vienna, or in a fragile home 
 of some Mandarin in the interior of China. 
 These girls could not have been more alarmed, 
 or more or less brave according to their quali 
 ty, than were the nations of the earth, feeling, 
 through the expressions of their statesmen 
 and their newspapers, the climax imminent. 
 The popular mind is. after all. the register of 
 what is plainly existent, or of what is immedi 
 ately threatening. 
 
 Xever in the history of the nations had the 
 pulses of so mau\ millions beat so fast: 
 never had each man, thinking for himself, re 
 garding his race, his religion and all Ins just 
 affiliations, resolved more honestly and more 
 firmly as to his acts in the immediate future. 
 It came strangely to be understood even 
 throughout the races not actively engaged in 
 the struggle. They felt it dimly in the limits 
 of the Malayan Peninsula; they telt it in ilor 
 neo: they felt it in the northern end of Japan 
 where the Japanese hardly go themselves; 
 the\ felt it to the ends of the visited parts 
 of the understanding earth. America had 
 vital interests at stake, for from the coast of 
 Kurope to the coast of China, as has been
 
 WAR. 85 
 
 told before, the United States had a bridge, 
 or, to put it better, a highway, a bridge from 
 the mainland to the Canaries, from the Cana 
 ries to Puerto Rico, from Puerto Rico to the 
 Isthmus, from the Isthmus to Hawaii, and 
 from Hawaii to the islands of the Pacific and 
 all the Asiatic coast. Such possessions had 
 made the statesmen of certain European na 
 tions think. Such possessions had resulted 
 in the development of a vast American trade, 
 a trade dependent upon highways parallel 
 with those of Great Britain, highways the 
 same in fact, to be kept clear forever as 
 against any interference of the rest of the 
 world. These highways must be defended, 
 this vast and increasing trade preserved. 
 
 Five hundred millions of Asiatic people, 
 mostly cotton-clad, and producing themselves 
 only a tithe of the cotton they required, were 
 now added to those who consumed the sur 
 plus products of America. Before the Span 
 ish-American war only five per cent of the 
 exports of the United States went westward. 
 Now the trade was more than quadrupled, 
 though only in its infancy. A procession of 
 huge steamers, heavily laden, crossed the Pa 
 cific, bearing cotton and machinery and all
 
 8d ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 the thousand products of farm or manufac 
 tory, and returned with their cargoes of sugar, 
 hemp, indigo, coffee, tobacco, woods and the 
 hundred other products of the Orient. The 
 deep rivers of China, now open to the world, 
 enabled the ships to reach the far interior and 
 load or unload at ports heretofore unap 
 proachable. The Asiatics themselves were 
 benefited, as were their unaccustomed visitors, 
 and never in the history of the world had 
 there grown so swiftly a trade so rich and full 
 of promise. With it came to America a pros 
 perity almost unexampled, even in the history 
 of that fortunate country, and now that pros 
 perity was imperiled. The United States and 
 ( ireat Britain were content with existing con 
 ditions, but not so Russia and (iermany and 
 France. They could not yet compete on even 
 terms for the great commercial prixe. and that 
 alone gave cause for inter.se jealousy and an 
 attempt at trade reprisals in the form of em 
 barrassing restrictions upon the admission of 
 goods from the countries reaping wealth in 
 the new field. They were ineffective and hurt 
 like a clumsily-thrown returning boomerang. 
 these invidious laws, but thcv made bad feel 
 ing. There were propositions to dismember
 
 WAR. 87 
 
 China and divide the territory between the 
 great powers, America included, but these 
 were rejected, while it was made clear that 
 were such partition attempted the old Empire 
 would have the assistance of Great Britain and 
 the United States in the preservation of its 
 integrity. In America, especially, the feeling 
 in favor of such course in such event was 
 something overwhelming. Should we throw 
 away what we had gained? Should we sacri 
 fice any measure of our new prosperity? From 
 the statesmen in Washington to the cotton- 
 grower of the South, the corn-grower of the 
 West, the wheat-grower of the North and the 
 manufacturer of the East the answer came in 
 chorus, and it was "No!" 
 
 There were other causes leading to a con 
 flict, but the nature of these is told elsewhere. 
 The control of the Nicaragua Canal was one 
 thing. Deeper than all was the feeling that 
 something more than trade privileges were at 
 stake. There was coming swiftly now the 
 definition of the relations of nations. Politi 
 cally and rationally speaking, the world was 
 split in twain with only one fragment lying 
 outside, that fragment being Germany, the 
 one nation whose place as the motherland of
 
 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 the Anglo-Saxon should have made her first 
 in the combination of her brood, of the mag 
 nificent spawning from the place of the au 
 rochs and the deep forests and the hides-of- 
 land folk. 
 
 Never since the world began had there been 
 such formation everywhere of companies and 
 regiments and divisions and corps of all the 
 available fighting material of a country. 
 Never before had the taxes been so raised. 
 The American Congress alone had voted, 
 without a murmur fn an the people, three hun 
 dred million dollars fur the navy. England 
 was as alert and active. Never before had the 
 supposedly great men gathered together in 
 such solemn council by day and night. Never 
 before had the great armory workshops been 
 so strained in the effort to produce efficient 
 weapons of war within the shortest practicable 
 time. Russia had been garnering her gold 
 and teaching her artisans and strengthening 
 her navy and extending her lines of railway 
 in preparation for the great emergency. In 
 Germany the vaults of Spandau were packed 
 nearly to the bursting point, and the fighting 
 strength on land and sea had been increased. 
 As for I Yance, the nation of which one, think-
 
 WAR. 09 
 
 ing of the Zola-Dreyfus madness, said, per 
 haps unjustly, "Decadence," the nation where 
 militarism controlled by clericalism had be 
 come too dominant a force, there was at 
 least a fine outward showing", there were 
 camps and maneuvers on a splendid scale, the 
 officers of both army and navy had chests 
 well bulged out and shoulders well bulged in 
 behind, and the rank and file were at least 
 decently well dressed and fed, and the mil 
 lions of francs from the provinces came pour 
 ing in, and there was, externally, a vast army 
 well equipped and bloodthirsty, and in it were 
 many gallant gentlemen who deserved a bet 
 ter setting. 
 
 As to Austria, the men who had, a few years 
 ago, yelped and struggled and made ignoble 
 exhibitions of themselves in racial debate 
 in the Austrian Reichrath became suddenly 
 men impelled by a common impulse to work- 
 together under a common flag. Germans, 
 Poles, Czechs, Magyars, Moravians and all 
 the rest came together in the spirit which 
 makes men what we call patriotic. They for 
 got their little differences and were prepared 
 to fight side by side for the Austrian Empire. 
 The gentleman who hit another gentleman on
 
 90 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 the nose one day in the course of a debate, 
 shook hands with his brother statesman and 
 dearest foe, and they resolved to die together. 
 And so it was with the other nations naturally 
 allied with these. The pot was seething. 
 
 The immediate excuses for the struggle 
 when it came were relatively insignificant. 
 They arc ever at hand when nations clamor. 
 And so, blindly, madly, yet propelled by irre 
 sistible forces, the nations were arrayed to 
 fight to the death. The lines were natural 
 except for the Germans, who were groping 
 helplessly as a people, and, so far as they were 
 natural, they were in a way satisfactory. It 
 was easy for the common soldier to know 
 where to look for friend or foe. In America 
 the German citizens as one man stood for 
 their adopted country. "It is true," said one, 
 "that we love our mother country, but we 
 have espoused America and we leave all to 
 follow her." 
 
 This was when the day of action came, the 
 day of meetings, speeches and resolutions 
 having passed. 
 
 "Your head shall fall," said a Norseman to a 
 prisoner, in the time of Harold Fairhair. "If
 
 WAR. 9 1 
 
 you know things after you die, wink your 
 eyes." 
 
 "I will do so," said the other Norseman, 
 and the blow was given but he did not wink. 
 That was the Norseman, one type of him 
 whose ancestors overran the British Isles. 
 There is no chronology in this and that is 
 the man, that is the type of the men who have 
 held the little group of islands they have won, 
 who have sent out, because it was in their 
 sons blood, groups of people who have seized 
 upon a great part of the world, who peopled 
 Northern America, though the children are 
 apart, who have made old and ancient Aus 
 tralasia to blossom as the rose, who will just 
 as surely people Africa, the lush continent so 
 long neglected by the civilized, and enlighten 
 Asia, as the world turns on an invisible in 
 tangible axis and brings about what men be 
 lieve in and know. Night and Morning. And 
 these made the Anglo-Saxon alliance.
 
 9-2 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A PATH FOR H.MIMRK. 
 
 I pon one fact the mind of every American 
 citizen rested with satisfaction at the moment 
 when the nations of the world began their 
 combat. The Nicaragua Canal lone; 
 planned lone; talked of was completed to 
 such a point as to allow the greatest ships to 
 go freely through it from ocean to ocean. 
 A few minor details remained to be finished, 
 but for practical use the canal was open. 
 
 I was especially interested in this feature of 
 the situation, for I personally knew the route 
 of the Nicaragua Canal from end to end, 
 and knew all its planning. It seemed but yes 
 terday to me, though in reality more than 
 two years had passed since I was with 
 the great engineer in charge of the vast enter 
 prise, and about to begin his work. Appleton 
 was now full of questions about this work in 
 its minutire, for he saw plainly its tremendous 
 consequences and import, and as I told him 
 the storv as I knew it, with more detail than
 
 A PATH FOR EMPIRE. 93 
 
 T had thought of before, he grew enthusiastic, 
 not only over what was now made possible, 
 but over what had already been achieved. 
 
 The Nicaragua Canal is now known in all 
 its features to everyone. Its construction is 
 a matter of history, but the human side of 
 events somehow gets lost in the pages of the 
 historian. The Wild Goose, too, has its place 
 in the record of public events as the fore-run 
 ner of the new arm nay, the wing of war 
 but its history, as it was related to men and 
 women, is now being told for the first time in 
 this imperfect way of mine. 
 
 It chanced that I saw the furious and de 
 termined beginning and the triumphant end 
 ing of the Nicaragua Canal enterprise. As 
 the story of the battle of the nations cannot be 
 told without including that of this masterpiece 
 of work, I shall tell here what I saw, and what 
 I know about it. 
 
 Soon after our war with Spain was ended, 
 and long before 1 had heard from Appleton 
 or settled down to this peaceful summer on 
 the prairie of which I have been telling, I 
 was in Greytown, Nicaragua, as confidential 
 secretary to George Strong, head of the Com 
 mission of the United States, appointed to
 
 94 A KM. \OF.nnnx. 
 
 complete at the earliest possible moment, 
 without regard to ordinary considerations of 
 economy, the Nicaragua Canal. 
 
 John Savage, the Ameiican engineer, had 
 been working away steadily for some time, 
 and had made good use of everything he had 
 at his command. ! le had planned to take live 
 years in which to do his work and was well on 
 with the preliminary part of it. with much of 
 his machinery on the ground. The work was 
 well inaugurated at either end, but that was 
 all. The great American company, to which, 
 a concession had been made, and the contract 
 ors, who were first partnvrs in the enterprise, 
 had naturally sought to estimate the length 
 of time in which the canal could be most eco 
 nomically constructed. Time was but a sub 
 ordinate consideration with them. Even the 
 estimate of the period required and of the 
 money to be expended demanded the utmost 
 engineering skill: and then only an approxi 
 mate conclusion could be reached. \\ e all 
 know of the canal in a general way, but at the 
 risk of being heavy in telling a story I must, 
 for the sake of making clear all that was done, 
 tell of the nature of the country to be crossed. 
 
 The canal lies between latitude I I and
 
 A PATH FOR EMPIRE. 95 
 
 ii 30 north, and longitude 83 to 86 west 
 from Greenwich, all in the state of Nicaragua, 
 except about forty miles which border upon 
 the state of Costa Rica. Its eastern terminus 
 is at Greytown, two thousand miles by the 
 Windward passage from New York City and 
 one thousand miles by the Yucatan passage 
 from Key West. The western terminus is at 
 Brito, twenty-seven hundred miles from San 
 Francisco. The general course is east and 
 west, the distance between the two ports being 
 one hundred and seventy miles. 
 
 The topography of the country is formed by 
 two mountain chains, the western a volcanic 
 upheaval skirting the Pacific coast at a dis 
 tance of from four to eight miles; the eastern 
 the main Cordilleras, skirting the Atlantic 
 coast near Greytown at a distance of from 
 fifteen to twenty miles. These two ranges 
 unite at the eastward in the highlands of Costa 
 Rica in a knot of volcanic peaks. They again 
 unite to the westward in the highlands of 
 Honduras and Guatemala, thus forming an 
 enclosed basin, twelve thousand square miles 
 of which drain into a system of lakes and 
 rivers which finds its outlet through the San 
 Juan River at Greytown. The main feature of
 
 96 ARMAGKDDOX. 
 
 tin s basin is Lake Nicaragua, with an area of 
 some three thousand square miles, with a low- 
 water elevation above sea level of one hundred 
 feet, and a high-water elevation some thirteen 
 feet greater. This lake is one hundred and 
 ten miles long and some sixty miles wide in 
 its broadest part, and its depth extends below 
 sea level. Twelve to fifteen miles to the west 
 ward of the lake is a second lake called Lake 
 Managua, some thirty mile s long and twenty 
 miles wide, at an elevation twenty-eight feet 
 higher, and discharging into Lake Nicaragua. 
 The outlet of Lake Nicaragua is the San Juan 
 River, beginning at Fort San Carlos, and by 
 a meandering course of one hundred and ten 
 miles making its way to the sea at (ircytown. 
 idie most considerable tributary of the San 
 Juan is the San Carlos River, which enters 
 from the south about fifty miles from the sea. 
 This drains the Costa Rica highlands and 
 starts within twenty miles of San Jnse in Costa 
 Rica, and is a torrential stream, carrying large 
 quantities of detritus. 
 
 The general situation in Nicaragua is, there 
 fore, a system of streams draining the steep 
 mountain slopes which hold the basin and 
 two lakes draining to the Caribbean Sea
 
 A PATH FOR EMPIRE. 97 
 
 through a gap in the eastern Cordilleras which 
 are here broken down nearly to sea level, this 
 gap being several miles wide. On the Pacific 
 side the Coast Range is also broken down 
 nearly to sea level, within four miles of Brito, 
 the gap at this point being only about one- 
 third of a mile wide. Between Lake Nicara 
 gua and the Pacific the distance in the narrow 
 est part is but twelve miles and the greatest 
 elevation is but fifty-two feet above the low- 
 water of Lake Nicaragua. On the Atlantic 
 slope, by the San Juan River, the descent is 
 gradual except as it is interrupted by the 
 rapids at Toro, Castillo and Machuca, all situ 
 ated within a length of twenty miles and be 
 ginning thirty miles from the lake. The situ 
 ation virtually constitutes a trough across the 
 American Isthmus one hundred and seventy 
 miles long, of which Lake Nicaragua is the 
 summit, and is the lowest gap in the hemi 
 sphere from Point Barrow in Alaska to the 
 Straits of .Magellan. This trough, fortu 
 nately, is in the axis of the northeast trade 
 winds, which are concentrated there as in a 
 funnel, giving an almost constant breeze of 
 eight to ten miles an hour. So the climate is 
 a healthy one.
 
 <;S ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 In Lake Nicaragua and nearly opposite the 
 Pacific division of the canal, at some five t<> 
 ten miles from the shore, is the island of 
 Ometepe, which contains two volcanic cones, 
 one nearly perfect in form and rising 1 to an 
 altitude of five thousand eight hundred feet: 
 the other rising to an altitude of four thousand, 
 six hundred feet. Both of these are strikingly 
 visible from all parts of the lake and the ad 
 jacent shores, and far out on the Pacific. To 
 the westward of Pake Managua are also sev 
 eral volcanic peaks, the most notable of 
 which is Momotombo, rising from the shore 
 of the lake to an altitude of over six thousand 
 feet, and the other, Momotombito, situated in 
 the lake, rising to nearly four thousand feet. 
 
 I know that this appears all guide-bookish 
 and dull reading, but what we made happen 
 there gives an interest to every feature of the 
 region. Hundreds of thousands of travelers 
 have seen them now. 
 
 The canal project was, from the first, simply 
 a proposition to extend the level of Pake 
 Nicaragua as far toward each sea as possible, 
 and then by a series of locks drop down to 
 tide level. In this proposition the Pacific di 
 vide must be cut down to the level of Pake
 
 A PATH FOR EMPIRE. 99 
 
 Nicaragua by a through cut, about eighty feet 
 deep at the summit and nine miles long, into 
 the basin of the Tola River, so that this basin 
 could be closed by a high dam at a point called 
 La Flor, some eighty feet high and seventeen 
 hundred feet long in the gap of the Coast 
 Range previously referred to. This dam 
 would be within four miles of the Pacific 
 Ocean at Brito, and the descent to the level 
 of the sea could be made by three or four 
 locks. On the Atlantic side it was proposed 
 to close the valley of the San Juan River at a 
 distance of sixty to seventy miles from Lake 
 Nicaragua by a dam or embankment abutting 
 the spurs of the Cordilleras and extending 
 across the valley. This, it was estimated, 
 would be sixty to seventy feet high in places 
 and several miles in length, thus forming an 
 artificial lake by flooding out the valley of the 
 San Juan to a depth of sixty feet or more in its 
 lower courses. 
 
 The Upper San Juan River for a dis 
 tance of some thirty miles from the lake 
 required deepening by dredging. From 
 the lower end of this artificial lake, skirted by 
 the dam at Tamborgrande, the cut was to be 
 made across the saddle in the Cordilleras. It
 
 loo ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 would be about three miles long and have a 
 maximum depth of three hundred and twenty- 
 five feet and would extend the level of Lake 
 Nicaragua into the valley of a small stream 
 called the Deseado. This valley \vas to be 
 closed by another embankment from three to 
 five miles east of the divide cut, and at this 
 point locks were to be placed, reaching down 
 to the level of the Caribbean, and the canal 
 was to be cut for some ten miles thence, at 
 sea level, to Grey town on the sea. What 
 problems for the engineer! 
 
 Here was the general plan devised for the 
 gigantic work: 
 
 Beginning at Grey town a harbor was to be 
 created by means of breakwaters extending 
 out to sea for a mile or more and by dredg 
 ing. The canal was to extend southwesterly 
 across a nearly level plain, but slightly ele 
 vated above sea level, for a distance of ten 
 miles to the foothills. At this point locks 
 were to be constructed for a distance of two 
 miles to the level of Lake Nicaragua, to be 
 fixed one hundred and ten feet above sea level. 
 At this point at the head of the locks the 
 Deseado Valley was to be closed by embank 
 ments, forming a basin three miles long, up
 
 A PATH FOR EMPIRE. IOI 
 
 to the foot .of the divide cutting. This divide 
 cutting- was to be some three miles long on 
 the base, with a maximum depth of three hun 
 dred and twenty-live feet and was the most 
 formidable part of the undertaking, and the 
 one requiring the most time. The rock from 
 this cutting was to be used for the construc 
 tion of breakwaters and for the masonry of 
 the locks. Rock and earth together were to 
 be hauled several miles to form the closing 
 embankment across the San Juan River at 
 either Ochoa or Tamborgran.de. 
 
 After passing, the divide cutting the canal 
 was to open out into the valley of a small 
 stream called the Limpio, and following it 
 down for a couple of miles find the valley of 
 the San Juan River proper. From this point 
 for a distance of forty-four miles, following 
 the course of the San Juan River to the foot 
 of Toro Rapids, no work was required except 
 the clearing out of timber and the straighten 
 ing of an occasional bend. From Toro Rap 
 ids to Lake Nicaragua the river had to be 
 deepened on the average from ten to fifteen 
 feet for a distance of thirty miles, and in this 
 stretch was some submarine rock excavation. 
 After reaching the lake at Fort San Carlos
 
 102 ARMAGEDDON 
 
 sonic deepening of the approaches to the river 
 was required for a distance of six miles fnm 
 shore; then for a distance of fifty miles across 
 the lake the water was of ample depth. 
 
 At the other end of the projected canal was 
 another theatre of action. 
 
 The Pacific division was to be nineteen 
 miles long", beginning at a point about midway 
 of the Lake opposite the island of Ometepe 
 at the mouth of the River Lajas. Following 
 up this stream and crossing the divide into the 
 valley of the Rio Grande was a distance of 
 nine miles, requiring a maximum cutting of 
 eight} feet. Down in the Rio Grande, with 
 some improvements through what is known 
 as the Tola basin, an artificial lake some six 
 miles long, was planned to be formed by a 
 dam at La Llor seventy to eight} feet high. 
 This lake was to have an area of about seven 
 square miles. From its level at La Flor. looks 
 were to descend to the level of the Pacific for 
 two miles, and the next two miles were to 
 constitute the harbor and entrance at I rito 
 entering the Pacific under a bluff rising sheer 
 from the water nearly four hundred feet. 
 
 The construction of this work, it was esti 
 mated, involved the handling of sixty to
 
 A PATH FOR EMPIRE. 103 
 
 seventy million yards of earth, about one-half 
 of which would be by dredging, the blasting 
 and removal of twenty-five to thirty million 
 yards of rock, the construction of fifteen to 
 twenty million yards of embankment, the 
 making- one and a half million to two million 
 yards of masonry, about two miles of break 
 waters, one hundred miles of railroad; and 
 the use of not less than one and a half mil 
 lion tons of coal and thirteen hundred tons of 
 dynamite! The material to be excavated 
 would fill a square mile over one hundred feet 
 deep. 
 
 The difficulties in execution would be due 
 largely to the tmpreparedness of a new coun 
 try, one to two thousand miles away from a 
 base of supplies and from regions whence 
 workmen could be drawn. The facilities for 
 transportation must be provided, there being 
 existent only the very inadequate and uncer 
 tain navigation of the River San Juan. 
 
 The Pacific end of the canal as originally 
 planned was to be worked from San Fran 
 cisco, as a base, and later it was decided to 
 work it from the Atlantic side after transpor 
 tation facilities to reach it had been provid 
 ed. There were no natural harbors on either
 
 104 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 const; therefore one that would permit trans 
 ports to land must he made at each end be 
 fore any serious work could be undertaken. 
 .Machine shops and depots of supplies must be 
 created on the ground, for no such facilities 
 were in existence. Hospitals and habitations 
 must be constructed and police service or 
 ganized. The labor supply of the country was 
 entirely inadequate, and what there was must 
 be trained to proper habits for work of this 
 magnitude. 
 
 The resources of the country were also in 
 adequate in the sense that they were not de 
 veloped and could not be developed in time 
 to serve a large purpose in the construction 
 of the canal. In short, the problem was first 
 to produce in Nicaragua a situation by pro 
 viding all necessary facilities as ports, trans 
 portation system, buildings, and an organiza 
 tion with machine shops and everything neces 
 sary to make and repair tools and machinery 
 and to put into operation steamship lines from 
 both fireytown and Hrito. All this must be 
 done before the main work itself could be 
 undertaken with vigor and prosecuted with 
 any degree of economy. 
 
 How long it would take to produce
 
 A PATH FOR EMPIRE. 105 
 
 these facilities was the uncertain question 
 in the problem; how far rainfall and cli 
 matic conditions would affect the question 
 was yet to be determined, although the 
 experience here was likely to be more fav 
 orable than at Panama. All these questions 
 would develop during the period of prepara 
 tion so that when the main work itself was 
 systematically undertaken, it could be done 
 with some certainty as to the time of com 
 pletion. The time of the main work would 
 be determined by the main cutting across the 
 spur of the Cordilleras on the eastern division. 
 This would involve the removal of over twelve 
 million yards of rock and over six million 
 yards of earth within a distance of three miles, 
 and it would be solely a question as to how 
 large a force of men and machinery could be 
 applied to it. The material must be loaded on 
 cars and hauled away as the flanks of the 
 mountains were so steep as to prohibit deposit 
 of material in the vicinity. A large fraction 
 of this material could, however, be put to 
 good use in the construction of embankments, 
 masonry and breakwaters. 
 
 The western division also involved an ele 
 ment of time, as it could not be undertaken
 
 I Of) 
 
 with economy until it could he readied hy a 
 transportation system from the C arihhean 
 coast, as San Francisco was too remote and 
 the cost of coal on the Pacific side too high. 
 This work, though, was distrihuted over a 
 much longer distance and the material could 
 he left adjacent to the cutting, and the cm- 
 hankment \vork was much less formidahle, so 
 that it could he handled in less time after it 
 was once reached. The remainder of the 
 work was well distrihuted and was simply a 
 question of the amount of facilities which 
 could he applied to it. 
 
 After having considered all these problems 
 the big American Company had gone to work 
 under government encouragement. Vast 
 amounts of money had been expended and 
 fohn Savage had done well. The harbor of 
 (ireytown had become a real harbor, and enor 
 mous appliances and a large force of men were 
 already being utili/ed. Then came the back 
 ing of two nations.
 
 THE HOUR AND THE MEN. 107 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE HOUR AND THE MEN. 
 
 All had been determined regarding the ten 
 tative alliance of Great Britain and the United 
 States. But the Anglo-Saxons are practical 
 and, even before the details of this alliance 
 were fixed, they had arranged for working 
 enormously together toward a contingency. 
 It was understood that America should con 
 trol the Nicaragua Canal but that Great 
 Britain should have the right of use, and it 
 was also arranged that Great Britain should 
 join the United States in the production of 
 available funds for securing the greatest re 
 sults within the shortest time. There was 
 conference between statesmen, and a man of 
 high standing, of admitted honesty and tact 
 and energy, George Strong, was finally se 
 lected, who was given almost unlimited power 
 as representing, in a manner, two nations, and 
 was told to build that canal at once, to build it 
 well, to build it within the shortest possible 
 time and to be inconsiderate, save in a reason 
 able way, of all expenditure, and a meeting
 
 io8 
 
 was arranged between the Commissioner and 
 Savage, the i^reat engineer, \vlio had already 
 overcome tlie iirst obstacles of the enormous 
 enterprise. 
 
 The two men met in a hotel in Grcytown, 
 the canal s eastern terminus. 1 sav "two" 
 men, for though I was with them 1 could not 
 count myself as of them in what they were 
 about to do. I was, while perhaps a social 
 equal, only a secretary to the Commission 
 er, and, necessarily, I was with him from this 
 time almost continuously. They met and we 
 all dined together and became acquainted. I 
 liked the engineer. I le was ^aunt and bronz 
 ed and his face for he wore onlv a mous 
 tache showed strong lines, his head, i^ettm^" 
 bald, was admirably shaped, and his eye was 
 clear. 1 could see that the Commissioner, old 
 er and balder and heavily bearded, liked him. 
 too. \Ye had little talk of the canal that ni^ht. 
 That was left for the morning. 
 
 I .ut the evening was not wasted entirely. 
 The two men smoked, talked and played bil 
 liards diligently. They talked not at all after 
 the- first few words that evening of a canal 
 which should split a hemisphere and which 
 should afford facilities for the An r lo-Sa.\on s
 
 THE HOUR AND THE MEN. 109 
 
 grasping of his own in what he needs for ful 
 filling- his career in the history of this planet. 
 The two men did not say much on any sub 
 ject but they studied each other at the billiard 
 table and as they lounged in the smoking 
 room. The Commissioner, who played badly, 
 won the first game of billiards. The table 
 was a trifle slanted and the lighter of the two 
 red balls was cracked, and the engineer, who 
 played even worse, won the second game and 
 then they took a drink together wondering 
 whether or not they ought to take a drink 
 at all in such a climate. Then they separated 
 and each went off to bed and, it is safe to say, 
 thought long before sleep came to him, and 
 set his teeth together and resolved that, so far 
 as in him lay, that canal, the most prodigious 
 work of modern times, should be built, and 
 well built, within the shortest number of 
 months and weeks and days and hours and 
 minutes practicable with such money and men 
 as could be commanded from all sources. And 
 it may be said here and now that, after the 
 talk, in the sunlight of the next morning, the 
 two men understood each other thoroughly 
 and thenceforth became somewhat as brothers 
 and planned and worked together faithfully
 
 until they had accomplished what all the 
 world now says was a good tiling. 
 
 Three men, well-scrubbed in water which 
 was too warm, and in clothing which was 
 scandalously thin, ate their breakfasts of egg 
 and coffee and toast, and, in all honest} , it 
 must be said of the plain hen that her egg is 
 about the same no matter how near the place 
 of its advent is to the equator. Thev were 
 good eggs eaten by those two gentlemen that 
 morning and, as to the quality of the toast, 
 it provoked profanity neither from the Com 
 missioner nor from the engineer. As for the 
 coffee, where could better coffee be had than 
 \\here coffee is grown." As for the fruit, where 
 could better fruit be had than in such a lati 
 tude? 
 
 It was a good breakfast and there was 
 smoking after it on a piazza, where there was 
 a decent breeze, then business began. 
 
 "It is scarcely necessary," said the Com 
 missioner, as he leaned back cigar in mouth, 
 .ml looked at the engineer, considering 
 thoughtfully his shape of head and quality of 
 jaw, "It is scarcely necessary to say to you 
 that as the middle-aged messenger boy of one 
 nation and, in a \vav, of another, I am going
 
 THE HOUR AND THE MEN. HI 
 
 to ask you what you can do. Can you tell 
 me about the canal?" 
 
 "I think I can," was the reply. 
 
 "Well, we ve run some things over casually 
 by correspondence and reports and, with your 
 habits of thought and conciseness of expres 
 sion, you have probably outlined things more 
 closely than could have any other man upon 
 the face of the globe. But this is what I want 
 of you: I want you to meet me, not merely 
 half-way, but with an utter recklessness; I 
 want you to have the record in future history 
 of having been a great engineer who accom 
 plished with unlimited resources the greatest 
 results within a certain time. I want you to 
 tell me what all this great matter is. I know, 
 for instance, that there is a great thing shaped 
 like an hour-glass and called the Western 
 Hemisphere; I know that where the neck is 
 narrowest the Frenchmen, under the unfortu 
 nate De Lesseps, have digged in sand and 
 have buried many men near by; I know that 
 there has been a scandal abroad and that there 
 is no canal, and that in France there are repu 
 tations torn to shreds. Now, tell me why 
 this canal is better or why we should not, if we 
 can, take up the older one partly built for
 
 112 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 those French millions could not have 1>een en 
 tirely wasted and finish it as best we can 
 with Anglo-Saxon vim. and so connect the 
 seas?" 
 
 The engineer leaned back and thought most 
 seriously. 1 le thought for many moments be 
 fore he spoke: 
 
 "The French Canal lies farther south and 
 makes a longer detour between the two coasts 
 of the United States. Its climate is unhealth- 
 ful. a tremendous factor in construction and a 
 serious one in maintenance. It is projected 
 through a streak of land between the contin 
 ents not fitted for a good and permanent 
 waterway. The stability of the deep cuttings 
 and the control of the Hoods are yet problema 
 tical for a sea level canal. As a high level 
 canal, it is not to be compared with the Xica- 
 ragnan. Undoubtedly we could connect the 
 seas in a practical wav more quickly bv com 
 pleting the Panama Canal, if we could get it. 
 than by any other method, but the route of 
 the Panama Canal is not the one which should 
 have been chosen for the wedding of the 
 oceans. The Nicaragua route offers the best 
 facilities, because across the mountain ranges 
 Xature had offered tempting natural invita-
 
 THE HOUR AND THE MEN. 113 
 
 tions for man s handiwork, and because, with 
 such close connections and such political rela 
 tions and such vast natural advantages to be 
 utilized under latest modern methods, the 
 Nicaragua route is far preferable as affording 
 a surety that the results sought will follow 
 sensible effort. It has also a salubrious coun 
 try of large extent, capable of a high industrial 
 development, which adds a local factor of 
 safety to the revenues and better insures its 
 military protection." 
 
 "I think I understand," said Strong. "I 
 have already become acquainted through your 
 preliminary reports, with the nature of the 
 situation and of the difficulties to be over 
 come. How soon can we overcome them? 
 I m going to ask a great many questions." 
 
 "Well, I ll try to answer you," said the great 
 engineer. 
 
 The other thought a moment: "Tell me as 
 nearly as you can decide at once, how much 
 money and how much time will be required 
 for the building of the canal, a deep war-ship 
 canal, taking the Nicaragua route across the 
 Isthmus." 
 
 The engineer leaned back and pressed his
 
 M4 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 left hand upon his eyes, lie- reilected for per 
 haps two minutes, then lie said: 
 
 "One hundred million dollars, and fifteen 
 hundred days." 
 
 The Commissioner was pleased. "That s 
 \\hat I wanted," he said. "Just sueli an an 
 swer to just such a proposition. Xow, sup 
 pose you have two hundred million dollars 
 to operate with, within how short a time can 
 the canal he built ?" 
 
 "Within just half of fifteen hundred days. 
 That is, in seven hundred and fifty days," said 
 the engineer. 
 
 "With four hund v ed million dollars," said 
 the Commissioner, and he had risen in his seat 
 and the look upon his face was becoming 1 
 mightily earnest now, as he leaned forward. 
 "I low soon can you do it?" 
 
 The engineer hesitated. "L can t divide the 
 time as equally as before." he said. "There is 
 a limit even to the power of money. There 
 are material limitations With a billion dol 
 lars at command 1 couldn t build a canal in a 
 month. There is a certain point where the 
 balance comes. Let me figure on this." 
 
 r \ here was a long 1 pause and the engineer 
 made many computations. Tie spoke at last:
 
 THE HOUR AND THE MEN. 1 15 
 
 "I would not quite guarantee it," he said, 
 "with my present brief estimates, but, sup 
 posing the financial resources to be absolutely 
 unlimited, the work might mind I say only 
 might be rushed through in eighteen 
 months, and if weather conditions are favor 
 able, you may save a little on that, or, other 
 wise, lose some. But lives would be sacrificed 
 and millions squandered to save the days." 
 
 "Good!" exclaimed the Commissioner, 
 "Good! It shall be done. Now give me some 
 details." 
 
 "The first thing to be done," said the en 
 gineer, "in entering upon the construction of 
 the canal, was to make an entrance across the 
 bar at Greytown into the lagoon. This bar 
 had a depth of only four feet, and even light 
 erage was precarious. The lagoon inside had 
 from twelve to eighteen feet of water. This 
 required a sea-going dredge and some pile 
 drivers and a quantity of piles to maintain the 
 sides of the channel. After this a preliminary 
 channel was to be made to a depth of eighteen 
 or twenty feet and a dock constructed to make 
 it feasible for the ordinary vessel engaged in 
 the Caribbean trade to make a landing. In 
 the meantime the eleven miles of railway, ex-
 
 n6 ARM. \CF.nnox. 
 
 tending from the landing up to the site of the 
 first lock in the Dcseado Valley. \vas to he re 
 paired, put in serviceable condition, extend 
 ed for six miles up to the main divide and the 
 rock exposure at the falls of the Dcseado 
 River. We have done the work!" 
 
 "That s where you are now? What next?" 
 "We have begun quarrying at the falls to 
 get stone for the breakwaters. A dredge is 
 being erected at the site of the first lock about 
 ten miles from the sea coast, and a second 
 dredge lias started in at the sea shore, and a 
 preliminary cut will be made throughout the 
 length of the tide-level canal across the Costal 
 plain. The northern breakwater, extending 
 for a mile or more into the Caribbean, has 
 been started from the rock quarried at the 
 divide cut." 
 
 "How about the work toward the west?" 
 "While these operations are being initiated 
 a branch railroad line is being extended over 
 to the San Juan Rive 1 , to the proposed dam 
 site for the purpose of hauling earth and rock 
 from the divide cut and depositing the same 
 in the embankment across the San Juan Val- 
 lev."
 
 THE HOUR AND THE MEN. 117 
 
 "That I suppose will largely solve the 
 problem of transporting the supplies?" 
 
 "Yes, in part. The existing steamboats on 
 the San Juan River have been taking some 
 railroad supplies and materials up the stream 
 for the purpose of constructing a railroad 
 along its northern bank up to the navigable 
 waters above Toro, which are virtually an ex 
 tension of Lake Nicaragua, and this service 
 is soon to be reinforced by tugs and barges. 
 
 "This railroad will be extended across the 
 main divide to a junction with the railroad 
 already described, as soon as practicable, so as 
 to bring Lake Nicaragua into reliable com 
 munication with the port at Greytown. Tugs 
 and barges will also be placed upon the lake 
 to take sufficient supplies to the west shore 
 so as to enable a harbor to be constructed at 
 the mouth of the River Lajas, and thence a 
 railroad will be built for nineteen miles down 
 to the Pacific as soon as possible." 
 
 "Will you not be working at Brito?" 
 
 "It was decided to send a sea-going dredge 
 around Cape Horn, and she is ready to start. 
 This is for the purpose of opening a channel 
 across the beach at Brito, forming a prelimi 
 nary harbor in the tidal reach of the Rio
 
 Il8 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 Grande at that point. The object is to pro 
 duce from sea to sea as quickly as possible, 
 a line of transportation, consisting of two 
 pieces of railroad, one from the port at Grey- 
 town to the navigable waters of Lake Xicara- 
 gua. and the other from Lake Nicaragua to 
 P>rito. with an intermediate car ferry system 
 by which trains can be run from sea to sea, 
 connecting at the two ports with steamship 
 lines of moderate onnage. \\ hen this line of 
 transportation has been provided the work as 
 a wli ( >le can be undertaken. While this line of 
 transportation is being provided, considerable 
 progress will have been made in the laying 
 out and installing" work on the Atlantic di 
 vide the diversion of streams so as to per 
 mit dry cuttings, and the beginning of the 
 embankment across the valley." 
 
 "Mow about this diversion of streams? Is 
 it an important feature?" 
 
 "The diversion of these streams will be a 
 matter of great moment in view of the tre 
 mendous effects of probable rainfall. It is 
 work which must be done." 
 
 "How about the human being s to be util- 
 ixed. In what manner will they be fed and 
 sheltered?"
 
 THE HOUR AND THE MEN. 119 
 
 "That problem is one of the most import 
 ant but easily solvable. Progress has already 
 been made incidental to the preliminary work, 
 buildings must be put up for housing the 
 workmen and a hospital service organized, and 
 a police service as well. This is not money 
 wasted. The advantage of rigid provisions 
 for health was clearly shown in the history of 
 that monster work, the Sanitary Canal of Chi 
 cago, where, for the first time in the history 
 of great public works, no epidemic disorders 
 of any kind occurred, and the death rate was 
 less than in the best wards of Chicago, not 
 withstanding an average force of seven to 
 eight thousand men was employed for three 
 years, with, perhaps, a greater number of non- 
 workers in the valley. In Nicaragua these 
 provisions will have to be still more rigid, ex 
 tending 1 to the point of sumptuary laws which 
 shall regulate, in a measure, the conduct of 
 men, and put the alcoholic liquor traffic under 
 absolute control. No one thing is recognized 
 as so detrimental to health in tropical coun 
 tries as the unrestrained liquor habit. 
 
 "It is supposed, also," continued Savage, 
 " that in the clearing out of the work there 
 will be a free zone from sea to sea, where there
 
 120 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 shall l>c no tan IT restrictions, and where all 
 shall lie under the absolute police and sanitary 
 control of those \\l\a are carrying out the 
 work. This is a requisite." 
 
 "Do you feel confident," said Strong, look 
 ing Savage squarely in the face, "do you feel 
 confident that you are the man for the place? 
 It may be that I know you are, but that 
 doesn t matter. Are you sure that you are 
 the man to work with me in a way that is prac 
 tically certain of success, for two nations?" 
 
 The engineer s moustache quivered a fHtle, 
 and he spoke somewhat emphatically: 
 
 I, and 1 alone, know best what is to be 
 done and how to do it. If you don t believe 
 it, you and the two nations may go to - . 
 P>ut I won t make a fool of myself if 1 can help 
 it. I haven t helped it always. Hut i know 
 what I m talking about." 
 
 Strong, the dominant, was mightily pleased, 
 lie reached out his hand to Savage. "I 
 haven t any doubt," he said, "but 1 wanted to 
 be sure that you were sure of yourself. Xow, 
 shall we do new things? Will there be 
 come necessarv the adoption of new methods, 
 recourse to new devices, if we are to attain 
 certain ends within a certain time? Will the
 
 THE HOUR AND THE MEN. 121 
 
 method of the work in any way be so experi 
 mental as to involve a risk? 
 
 "Hardly, with the element of economy 
 eliminated. What would be folly, commer 
 cially speaking, is folly no longer. But there 
 are limitations to overcome. The expense in 
 volved will be stupendous. For instance, there 
 must be an enormous concentration of ap 
 pliances and labor in the three miles of the 
 eastern divide. Here the force cannot be 
 increased beyond a certain point without 
 slight return for great expenditure, and even 
 a double-track railroad service from either end 
 and with all the switches that it may be 
 feasible to locate will not be adequate for 
 handling the material out of this cut in a short 
 time. 
 
 "The element of embankment across the 
 valley is also most formidable, requiring the 
 movement of vast quantities of material, as 
 well as time for the same to become settled 
 and compacted so as to be safe. As the in 
 tegrity of the entire project depends upon the 
 faithful carrying out of this embankment 
 work, it is a matter that cannot be slighted. 
 
 "Again, after the main work is fully or 
 ganized, it will be feasible to inaugurate night
 
 122 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 work. This will not double the output be 
 cause ni^ lit work is less efficient than (lav 
 work, and the whole period of twenty-four 
 hours cannot be utilized in actual working, as 
 time periods of rest are required which are- 
 taken advantage of to clean boilers, overhaul 
 and inspect machinery and make temporary- 
 repairs, so, at the best, the actual manual 
 \\orkinc; period cannot be quite cut in half. 
 Hut 1 clin^- to my proposition." 
 
 "\\V11 accept it!" almost shouted the Com 
 missioner as he sprang to his feet, "and we ll 
 show the world how work is done. I believe 
 in you and 1 hope yf/a ll come to believe in 
 me. Money an l men are mine to- provide. 
 Yon shall have them. Extraordinary utiliza 
 tion of forces is yours. 1 have no doubts! 
 And the men shook hands.
 
 A HEMISPHERE SPLIT. 123 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 HOW A HEMISPHERE WAS SPLIT. 
 
 And then began the battle of man with the 
 material. Then began the struggle of two 
 strong men with the forces of nature. Then 
 began the ripping of a way across a hemi 
 sphere. There was no rest for man or beast. 
 Understanding each other, relying upon each 
 other, Strong and Savage worked together 
 in a way titanic, and their spirit infused itself 
 into all beings about them, into subordinate 
 officials, into contractors whose fortunes were 
 at stake and even into the laborers who dug 
 and delved. It was a magnificent exhibition 
 of what the spirit of conquest is. It was a time 
 of tearing. 
 
 While it was fine it was a strain, but there 
 was no lack in the contagion of desire for 
 doing things. Even I, burdened with a thou 
 sand clerical duties, became as fierce an en 
 thusiast as any one of the hosts gathered be 
 tween the two oceans and talked loudly and 
 hopefully after supper. Already Savage had
 
 1^4 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 some seven thousand men at work; already 
 the harbor on the Atlantic 1 Coast had been 
 made practicable and the railroa.d was in good 
 shape from the harbor to the base of the first 
 runted operation. Nothing had been done at 
 the west end of the canal, but the threat dredge, 
 the biggest ever made, sailed the next dav to 
 make the perilous trip around the I lorn and, 
 if it survived the passage, to do its work at 
 Brito. 
 
 It was quite an event that morning when 
 the Musquash, for so the great dredge had 
 been christened, left the harbor. She was an 
 enormous tiling, very broad and very lone; 
 and with great s- ca-riding capacity and she was 
 towed by one of the fastest and most powerful 
 and seaworthy tugs in all the world, yet the 
 outcome of her trip was a doubtful thing. The 
 seas are high and the winds arc sharp and the 
 rocks are treacherous off the southern point of 
 the Western Hemisphere; nevertheless the 
 tug and the Musquash sailed away as gal 
 lantly as if they, combined, were some great 
 warship going off to subdue some little re 
 bellion somewhere. Perhaps it is as well here 
 as in another place to tell the brief story of 
 their journey. They reached with much tribu-
 
 A HEMISPHERE SPLIT. 125 
 
 lation, but with no great mishap, the south 
 end of the eastern coast of South America. 
 Then came the life-risking turning of the cold, 
 turbulent corner, the accomplishment of which 
 meant a haven and success. The story of that 
 turning I heard later from the captain of the 
 tug. 
 
 The seas were mountainous, but the great 
 tug was stanch and the huge steel cable the 
 best ever made, and as for the Musquash she 
 was so long that she reached across from 
 wave to wave, and so broad that she couldn t 
 capsize under any ordinary circumstances. 
 She wallowed and sloshed around beyond all 
 possible wallowing of even the great warship 
 Oregon in its famous trip in the Spanish war 
 time. The tug did reasonably well, and the 
 big dredge plunged while prayers were being 
 said by the few members of its crew who were 
 sufficiently religious; and it made the dreaded 
 curve. It rose up and dipped down the moun 
 tainous billows of the Horn and didn t sink, 
 and eventually, after much floundering, bulged 
 its way around until its nose sought the north 
 and then came gradually day by day into 
 calmer waters. Then those upon it knew they 
 had but to labor patiently to the northward
 
 120 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 across great la/y waves to the port of destiny, 
 where, with its aid, a great work was to be 
 done. 
 
 Hut the trip of the Musquash was merely an 
 incident of the undertaking. The harbor had 
 IK.VP. completed and so had the railroad to the 
 foot-hills. Kven the docks were in compara 
 tively good condition, and vessels sailing in 
 ward from the sea might be sure of ample 
 soundings. The railroad was in comparatively 
 decent shape up to the site of the first lock 
 where great work was to be done in the I)e- 
 seado Valley. Xow the quarrying at the falls 
 was to begin and the canal dug tiercel}- south- 
 westward across- the Costal plain. Xe\v sub 
 contractors from all about the world were 
 gathered; steps were taken for augmenting 
 wisely, but on a tremendous scale, the army of 
 men already at work. The telegraph was 
 working night and day. for the mail was too 
 slow a thing for such an undertaking. \Yith 
 it all there were a thousand curious blunders 
 from the beginning, though they did not 
 count in the end. 
 
 There came the sub-contractors who had 
 invented their thousands and who had made 
 va<t gambles. Thev came there, arrogant and
 
 A HEMISPHERE SPLIT. 127 
 
 overbearing, from Chicago and New York, 
 even from England, red-faced and full-bellied, 
 and hard headed hirers of working-men by the 
 thousand, and they came down like the As 
 syrian with his purple and gold, and the man 
 ner in which the demeanor of these great con 
 tractors was changed within a day or two was 
 a sight for gods and men. They had done this 
 and that, while the temperature had played 
 with and petted them and their men all the way 
 between 100 above and 10 below zero. It was 
 different now. They came, as they thought, 
 knowing all about the business. They had 
 still something to learn. They had to learn 
 that there is a difference between a heavily 
 booted and heavily undershirted spade-hand 
 ling person of the temperate zone and another 
 spade-handler, more dusky, with no overplus 
 of energy or industry, and with nothing on 
 him but an excellent head of hair and part of a 
 pair of trousers. But they were worthy of 
 consideration, this army of sub-contractors, 
 these men who had done things, and what 
 followed their advent was curious and good. 
 
 Dominant over all were Strong and Savage; 
 dominant beneath them were the great origi 
 nal contractors, earnest and enthusiastic but
 
 i- S ARM AGE n DON. 
 
 fortune-seeking and having legal rights which 
 could not be easily gainsaid. Of course they 
 could and would have been swept away like 
 straws when came the Commissioner repre 
 senting the two nations, had that been neces 
 sary, but as it was, they were looked upon as 
 valuable and intelligent factors in the accom 
 plishment of the enterprise and as men whose 
 reward must necessarily be great. Recogniz 
 ing the outcome, and subordinating them 
 selves readily, they were, without exception, 
 vigorous and practical helpers from the begin 
 ning to the end. 
 
 From Strong and Savage flamed out the 
 understanding that a certain militarism must 
 be followed, and T feel proud in saying that 
 I myself was a most ferocious sort of adjutant 
 general in distributing all commands. But a 
 little time passed before from Strong, the 
 head, representing government, and Savage, 
 the general in the field, came an understand 
 ing to the lowliest native water-carrier at any 
 point on hill-side or in valley, in all the way 
 between the oceans, that any sort of order 
 must be obeyed unquestioningly, whether it 
 were an order for men to risk their lives in 
 certain undermining or an order to prolong
 
 A HEMISPHERE SPLIT. 129 
 
 their lives by observing certain laws of cleanli 
 ness and taking certain medicines when so 
 commanded. 
 
 They came, the Porto Ricans, on colliers 
 and on transports, earnest and preposterously 
 enthusiastic Americans, though under the 
 American flag so briefly, brown and hardened 
 and lazy, adapted to the climate, which was 
 almost theirs, but as yet unaccustomed to con 
 tinuous work throughout the day and not at 
 all to working in the night, though as the 
 event proved, they more than met the ex 
 pectation. They were housed and fed and 
 cared for as they had never been housed and 
 fed and cared for before. Notwithstanding 
 the tremendous physical labor required of 
 them, and forced from them, they thrived un 
 der it physically, and acquired under it, de 
 spite themselves, what was to them, individu 
 ally, a fortune. They and the others, the half 
 naked laborers, in mud and rock and sun and 
 shade were not those to whom came the great 
 est mortality. That came to the men who 
 overlooked them, to the men with transit, and 
 theodolite and pith helmet, to the young, 
 enthusiastic sub-engineers from America 
 and England, all of whom worked careless of
 
 130 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 hours or weather, many of whom drank too 
 often and too deeply of bad water and strong 
 liquors; and those who diet! earned fairly, 
 though they lost it, such recompense as came 
 ultimately to those who lived. 
 
 Ah! but we worked, and we worked all 
 along the line and the onslaught began at 
 the cast and midway and upon the Pacific 
 Coast. Before the Musquash had poked her 
 triumphant, but unhandsome nose into the 
 water to assist in transforming it into P>rito 
 harbor, there had come from San Francisco 
 all that the gTeat dredge needed in the further 
 ance of her work, ryid there had also reached 
 I rito vast supplies and five thousand men. 
 Savage s second in the engineering work, one 
 James Cromwell, fit in force and stubbornness 
 to be ranked with his old namesake Oliver, 
 was there to take command, and there with 
 unlimited resources supplied from San Fran 
 cisco for use as early as we could make con 
 nection across the Isthmus. 
 
 They made their harbor, Cromwell and his 
 forces, a harbor which was a real one, and 
 they dug and dammed and hurried frantically 
 to meet us when we should have reached the 
 eastern crust, upholding Lake Nicaragua.
 
 A HEMISPHERE SPLIT. 131 
 
 Their work was as good as ours. Once, just 
 after our temporary transportation system had 
 been established, Cromwell sent to Savage the 
 curt message: 
 
 I can use five thousand more men." 
 He had them within two weeks. He had 
 provided for them, and for their work all 
 things necessary, and he doubled his results. 
 He met us fairly at the down-dip of the west 
 ern slope. 
 
 So they fought toward the lake well, those 
 fellows on the Pacific side, and we upon the 
 eastern slope, who were straining every nerve 
 to send to them every day all they could need 
 in their hurrying enterprise, sent to them at 
 the same time jeering and contemptuous com 
 ments, telling them that they had not compre 
 hended the first principles of digging canals 
 or riding over mountain crests, or diverting 
 rivers or crossing lakes. In return would 
 come from Cromwell the most insolent and 
 at the same lime supplicating messages. He 
 would defy his superiors to their teeth, and 
 in the same breath ask for enormous masses 
 of fresh supplies and working men. Crom 
 well was a man. I Ic was just the five foot and 
 eight-and-one-half inches of entity to come up
 
 I3 2 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 with a rush from the Pacific to Lake Nicara 
 gua and leave a great canal behind him. lie 
 was a man. I le died six weeks after his work 
 was accomplished. 
 
 As for us on the eastern side, who were play 
 ing a greater game, we were squandering 
 money and yet we were not squandering it. 
 Where a thousand men, as we wedged them, 
 could do more swiftly the work of a hundred 
 with more room, \Ve hired them and imported 
 them. We diverted the rivers, we made our 
 dams and we did the work as lastingly as if 
 we had taken years for its accomplishment. 
 
 We clustered our thousands on the great 
 rock saddles holding the lake from the low 
 lands, as bees, when swarming, are clustered 
 on a hive, and along our ways of transport 
 the locomotives snorted, not upon the two 
 tracks Savage had talked of, but on six. At 
 every available point where a man could work 
 a man was working. Between the two 
 oceans were gathered as many human beings 
 of the acclimated sort as could labor without 
 one being in another s way. 
 
 Strong raged and hurried and brought his 
 men in tens of thousands. Savage raged and 
 hurried and compelled his lieutenants, en-
 
 A HEMISPHERE SPLIT. 133 
 
 ginccrs of standing" from two continents, to 
 force the contractors into accomplishing the 
 ends sought here or there within certain days 
 and certain hours. It was wonderful. There 
 was an infectiousness to the vigor in the air. 
 \Ye made our way and we made it well and 
 permanently, from the completed water high 
 way on the level to the first lock and so on 
 forward to the lake. After the carriage af 
 forded by our first temporary highway from 
 sea to sea, we literally climbed and ripped our 
 way from the Atlantic plain to the Lake Nica 
 ragua level. \Ye made our own lakes and our 
 locks as the great engineer had defined the 
 work, and there came at last a day when we 
 knew we could lift the greatest warship from 
 the Greytown harbor into Nicaragua Lake 
 and from there let her down easily and gently 
 into the Pacific Ocean! 
 
 The canal was done and it was a good one, 
 a waterway to last through all the ages, the 
 result of an enterprise to affect the boun 
 daries and the welfare of the nations. 
 
 So the oceans were joined. So was made 
 a road across a half world for the warship and 
 the merchantman. Ten thousand miles of 
 weary travel around an inhospitable coast was
 
 saved to the mariner. The ship- of the United 
 States rind (Ireut Britain had read} for them a 
 smooth pathway from sea to sea and now 
 could sail around the globe at will and with 
 out delay. 
 
 Millions of treasure and priceless human 
 lives had been expended in the gigantic work 
 of making this pathway for mankind, but not 
 in vain. Because of it bread shall be plentiful 
 throughout the world. Famine shall cease to 
 threaten any branch of mankind, for the gran 
 aries of the North American Continent can 
 now pour their treasures into ^hips, which, 
 sailing from the great lakes and long rivers 
 into the ocean, will find a way ready for them 
 to the Pacific. The sea which bears the navies 
 of the world on its bosom so lightly the sea 
 the great carrier of man s burdens exacts 
 no such tribute of money as does man s con 
 trivance of two parallel liars of steel upon 
 which roll great wagons drawn by steam. 
 
 The great work was finished and the peo 
 ple of Kngland and the United States were 
 ready to congratulate Strong and Savage on 
 the completion of their tremendous task. But 
 the celebration never came. Before the two 
 great powers had time to dedicate the canal
 
 A HEMISPHERE SPLIT. 135 
 
 with appropriate ceremonies and rejoicings, 
 it was opened by the grim hand of war. 
 Threatening iron ships were hurried along the 
 new water way under orders to the ocean in 
 which they were to meet and give battle, and 
 so. without speech-making or banqueting, the 
 career of the Nicaragua Canal as a stern factor 
 in the history of the world began.
 
 136 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 TIIK MUSTER. 
 
 The world is made of land and water, and 
 of it water is three-fourths, if we may believe 
 our geography lessons. The water has, with 
 modern ships, become as traversable as the 
 land, and the encounters of war forces, it was 
 thought but lately by the wise, must be chiefly 
 fought upon the seas. The water owners must 
 be the world s owner-s. Xo more may the 
 greatest of struggles be upon the laud. Xo 
 longer lies Armageddon where the nations 
 battle in the vale of Ksdraelon. It lies where 
 the sea-fields give deep soundings. 
 
 ( hie night, in .Apia, in Samoa, a native girl 
 came down a pathway. Coming up the path- 
 v, ay were seamen from warships in the harbor. 
 There were three groups, the first German, 
 the second American and the third English. 
 They were all on their way to a drinking place 
 in the foot-hills. The girl coming down, 
 though brown, was clear-skinned and full 
 breasted, and there were red llowers in her
 
 THE MUSTER. 137 
 
 hair. A German sailor, looking lustingly 
 upon her, made a dash and seized her in his 
 arms. An American sailor, none too unready 
 for a fight, leaped forward to the rescue and 
 there was trouble, and other German sailors 
 came to the assistance of their comrade. The 
 American group was the smaller of the two. 
 It was not equal to a third of its opponents 
 and affairs were becoming unpleasant for the 
 Yankees when the English sailers in the rear, 
 coming upon the scene and delighting in the 
 prospect of a row, plunged in to aid their kins 
 men. There was a most spirited battle upon 
 the Samoan way. In the midst of it the Ger 
 man sailor who had seized the girl had faced 
 his first adversary, while the girl fled toward 
 the forest. There was a bout but of a moment 
 between these two men, and then, in some un 
 fortunate way, the hard fist of the American 
 sailor caught the head of the German just be 
 neath his ear, and the man thus smitten fell 
 to the ground, stone dead. After the fighting 
 was over and the dead man was buried by his 
 comrades, a sullen spirit held sway among the 
 Germans, while the English and Americans 
 were boastful. There were sharp meetings be 
 tween the German and American and English
 
 I, V s ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 consuls, and warships which could be called 
 upon came and went. The attrition made a 
 raw place. Out of necessity the matter was 
 referred to the home governments, where the 
 first sore became a broadening gangrene. 
 
 Meanwhile, one day in the waters close by 
 Hongkong, an English ship, outbound and 
 laden with teas, was run into by an incoming 
 French cruiser and the English ship went 
 down with all on board. The correspondence 
 which ensued between the British and Erench 
 authorities lacked all smoothness. The inci 
 dent was as if someone had put a seltzer- 
 like powder into water. There was a foaming. 
 
 Then came trouble of a serious nature be 
 tween Russia and Japan and the United States 
 over privileges in the Philippines granted by 
 the latter country to the Island nation, trou 
 ble of a diplomatic nature only in the begin 
 ning, but which developed into something seri 
 ous. The usual oiling processes of diplomacy 
 failed to ease the friction. There were harsh 
 passages and the scratched Russian showed 
 the Tartar. All foresaw the inevitable. It 
 was then came the Anglo-American alliance, 
 if such it may be called. 
 
 Blood relationship and self-interest com-
 
 THE MUSTER. 139 
 
 bined to promote the coalition. The unpleas 
 ant past was forgotten, just as the Americans 
 had forgotten the spirit which rose when 
 North and South were arrayed against each 
 other, and now thought of all that had taken 
 place since 1812 rose vividly in the minds of 
 each of the two peoples. To Americans came 
 thought of the time in 1815 when the "Holy 
 Alliance" of Russia, Austria and Prussia 
 threatened and England balked its far-reach 
 ing plans; as came thought more earnest still 
 of the same helpful friendship which, in the be 
 ginning of the Spanish-American war, balked 
 the ajiti-American alliance so nearly formed. 
 No Englishman forgot the day, in 1857, 
 when bluff old Captain Josiah Tatnall, 
 commanding the American squadron in 
 Asiatic waters, saw the British vessels over 
 matched in battle with the Peiho forts 
 and, walking his deck impatiently, finally 
 roared out the now historic sentence: "Blood 
 is thicker than water," and, in flagrant viola 
 tion of all laws of neutrality, took his vessel 
 sturdily into the action and was, in the end, 
 forgiven by his government. None forgot 
 the day in 1870 when there came to the Brit 
 ish Captain Lorraine, of the Niobe, lying in
 
 140 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 Jamaica harbor, news of the Yirginius butch 
 ery and \vhen, tearing up his anchor, and land 
 ing at Santiago before the tragedy was com 
 pleted, lie threatened to bombard the city, 
 and so saved the lives of the Americans not 
 yet murdered. None forgot the dreadful day 
 in Apia harbor, when ships were going down 
 before the hurricane and from the Trenton 
 and Calliope the I ritish and Americans cheer 
 ed each other in the face of death. Xone failed 
 to remember the events of the bombardment 
 of Alexandria, nor did those of the navies es 
 pecially forget the incidents of a thousand 
 hardy rescues and a thousand seamen s frays 
 in port. There were potent ties of marriage, 
 too. and immediate kinship and. above all, the 
 instinct of a common language, code of laws, 
 religion and education and plan for the world s 
 future. It was "Hands all round," as Tenny 
 son had written: 
 
 "Gi^rmtic daughter of the West, 
 
 \Ve drink to tltee across the flood, 
 We know thee most, we love thee best, 
 
 For art tliou not of Ilritish blood? 
 Should war s mad blast again be blown, 
 
 Permit not th<>n the tyrant powers 
 To fight thy mother here alone, 
 
 But let thy broadsides roar with ours.
 
 THE MUSTER. I4 1 
 
 Hands all round! 
 
 God the tyrant s cause confound! 
 To our great kinsmen of the West, my friends, 
 And the great name of England round and round." 
 
 The terms of the combination were not strict 
 and made rather an agreement than an al 
 liance offensive and defensive. It was defen 
 sive alone. Neither nation feared any other 
 single nation on the face of the earth, but it 
 was agreed that if either Great Britain or the 
 United States were attacked by more than one 
 nation, resistance should be mutual. No aid 
 was implied in any war where either the United 
 States or Great Britain was the assailant. A 
 regard for the provisions of the Bulwer-Clay- 
 ton treaty already gave each equal rights in 
 the use of the Nicaragua Canal, though this 
 had been more definitely agreed upon in a 
 later arrangement. But blood and the trade 
 of Asia were the telling factors, blood first. 
 Now conditions made the alliance active. 
 Warm were the Atlantic cables. The forces 
 were ranging themselves. All civilized hu 
 manity knew what would be the dividing lines, 
 the lines between the Latin and its divergent 
 races, still living in a past, still constant in the 
 sort of slavery which comes when church may
 
 14- ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 interfere with state between these and all the 
 hranehes from the Teutonic stem. There was 
 uncertainty as to what would happen. The 
 nations must look out for themselves. The 
 issue was defined upon the instant because 
 the circumstances leading to the definition had 
 been in a wavering equation for years. It was 
 only understood that the nations would be ar 
 rayed against each other cleanly and distinctly, 
 and that a threat strui^le was to be^in. Xor- 
 way, Sweden, Denmark and Holland, all races 
 of seamen, knew their place and took it. 
 
 The Japanese, that strange new develop 
 ment from an ancient stock, were swiftest of 
 all in their formation for the emergency. 
 They had been working well upon their navy 
 and it was disproportionately lar^e. consider 
 ing" the resources of the Island Kmpire. but 
 was well officered and well provided and a 
 powerful factor to be considered. It was soon 
 in shape and the noses of thirty warships point 
 ed at once for the western entrance to the 
 Xicara^ ua Canal. 
 
 It was wonderful, the manner in which 
 those little Japs conducted themselves. I "here 
 was work upon land as well as sea; there was 
 suift accumulation in their coast cities of vast
 
 THE MUSTER. 143 
 
 stores to support any army, and a land force 
 of one hundred thousand men, well equipped 
 and wild with enthusiasm, with transports 
 awaiting them, was organized within so short 
 a time that it puzzled the generals of other na 
 tions. The new-old country set a pace that 
 was barely equaled by the civilization it had 
 but lately imitated. Then came in, too, a new 
 element one not heretofore much considered 
 in the affairs of the world the great Austral 
 asian force. 
 
 They have money in Sidney and they have 
 money in Melbourne and in half a thousand 
 other places, and they have money away back 
 in the reaches where men have bred sheep and 
 other animals, and have made Australia but a 
 second United States. Better yet, they have 
 men, and the manner in which these Austral 
 ians came to the front was beautiful to see. 
 
 They had owned no navy heretofore, but 
 the Anglo-Saxon, tossed away into strange 
 lands, always develops an inventive genius, 
 as the Yankee has and the Australian is but 
 a Yankee. The Australian is lank and lean, 
 and inquiring and knowing, and it is best not 
 to oppose him, and the manner in which he 
 made a naw swiftlv, or, rather, the manner
 
 144 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 in which ho had made a navy a year or two 
 earlier than was really needed, looking for con 
 tingencies, will ever he one of the fine thing- 
 told in the history of the world. The Aus 
 tralian navy sailed proudly for the western 
 end of the Xicaragna Canal as the great 
 Japanese squadron loft its home port. And 
 South Africa sent a warship and a little army. 
 
 Canada had heen at work. The great Do 
 minion, now hand in hand with, and assisted 
 hy its neighhor across the border, had built 
 its own warships and the}" were good ones 
 and had built them on the Atlantic coast 
 where they were immediately available. Hali 
 fax fairly blossomed with the efflorescence of 
 thirteen-inchers, and half a hundred places 
 along the Canadian-Atlantic coast were as ap 
 prehensive as were half a thousand along the 
 American-Atlantic coast lest disaster should 
 come to thorn in the event of a wrong ending 
 to a great war. 
 
 As for the gathering of the British forces 
 upon the water, there is but little to be said. 
 Throughout the later centuries Croat Britain 
 has ridden the seas well and knows its path 
 ways thoroughly. X<>w she swittlv gathered 
 her vast armament, seeking onlv for her aid the
 
 THE MUSTER. 145 
 
 sea-going armament of her kinsmen; and the 
 admirals planned together. 
 
 The Latin combination was strong and one 
 cannot but in a way respect its coherence, 
 even in its decadence. Milliards were spent 
 upon the navy of France; it was vast and well 
 equipped and in any of the casual evolutions 
 of any one of its parts, a striking thing to look 
 upon. But, somehow, rarely has the Latin 
 fought wisely upon the water. A great navy 
 had France gathered together in competition 
 with that of the ambitious German Emperor, 
 who had taxed his subjects more deeply after 
 the navy became his fad, and had built a fleet 
 of warships by no means to be ignored, even 
 by Great Britain. 
 
 Meanwhile Austria had done her best. Un 
 willing taxes from subjects who disagreed be 
 tween themselves, from Slav and Czech and 
 German, had brought in their vast returns, and 
 the navy represented the still vast importance 
 of an empire dwindled by lack of force at its 
 head, a force diminished by devoteeism and 
 inter-marriage; but they had a navy of good 
 battleships, manned by those who could fight 
 not deftly, but to the death. 
 
 The Italian added a more dangerous force. 
 10
 
 I4 () ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 l!v great exertions, though impoverished, the 
 Italian Government had become possessed of 
 a navy which was excellent. Its ships were 
 not numerous, but they were modern, well 
 equipped and well manned. The navy of Italy 
 was one of the elements most considered by 
 the naval commanders of the Anglo-Saxons 
 who were to meet it. The poverty of the 
 Italian Government left some things much de 
 sired undone, but. on the whole, a fine show 
 ing had been made at sea. 
 
 I : rom the everlasting Slav came the great 
 est danger. They can build war>hips well now 
 at Odessa or Scbastopol, and they were build 
 ing them well in what had been Chinese waters 
 from the time the idea first dawned upon the 
 Russian Government that the war of the na 
 tions was near at hand. Their railroad rights 
 of way had been bought or fought for, and 
 in one way or another, had been established, 
 until between the Hlack Sea and St. Peters 
 burg there were no difficulties save in the mere 
 item of time or transportation. Meanwhile 
 the shrewdest diplomats of all the world, for 
 such the Russians are, by turns dallied with or 
 bullied the Sultan. They won his ear and won 
 away his judgment, and then God help him
 
 THE MUSTER. 147 
 
 for he is about paying the consequences now 
 they won the right of way for their great 
 fleet from the Black Sea down past Constanti 
 nople and through the Golden Horn and past 
 the frowning forts, the heavy fire of which 
 could, with modern artillery, destroy any fleet 
 in the world. And so they came into the 
 Aegean Sea and out into the Mediterranean, 
 where they could join the fleets of Austria and 
 Italy and France, where they waited, near the 
 Pillars of Hercules, preparatory to seeking, 
 when the navies were massed, the open At 
 lantic, and crushing the gathering fleet of the 
 Anglo-Saxons. This was the sea movement. 
 Spain, the shorn, had meanwhile sought her 
 sister Portugal, and racial and religious influ 
 ences had brought them recently even closer 
 together than they had been for centuries. 
 They were not strong, but they were fierce 
 and they wanted two things the Inquisition 
 again and the abolition of the Anglo-Saxon, 
 the creature who had made trouble for Alva 
 and for the Armada and taken Cuba and Porto 
 Rico and the Philippines. The peasants, pa 
 triotic and non-understanding, contributed 
 their pesetas amazingly, and the treasuries of 
 the nations of the peninsula, now united save
 
 148 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 in name, \vere full. They, too, built a navy 
 which was not to be despised, manned by gal 
 lant gentlemen and chivalric, with a cruel 
 streak in their makeup. They united at Barce 
 lona and joined the gathering fleet. 
 
 Meanwhile a portion of the Russian fleet, 
 that is to say. the two effective squadrons ly 
 ing in Pacific waters, was seeking eagerly an 
 opportunity to take part in the coming fray 
 upon the Atlantic ocean. lUit little chance 
 had this fleet. The Japanese and the Aus 
 tralians might cross the western continent at 
 the neck of the hour-g lass, but none else could. 
 Xone dared make even a pretense at the at 
 tempt. Huge fortresses, with great guns and 
 a thousand submarine devices under control of 
 the most expert American engineers, con 
 trolled the entrance to the canal. To enter 
 that passage was not wisdom nor bravery, but 
 dramatic suicide for any group of things ailoat, 
 however armed and armored. In the East the 
 iron hand of Kngland held Suez and the canal. 
 There was nothing left for the Asiatic-Rus 
 sian squadron save to sail for cold and stormy 
 southern seas, and round the Horn, in time, 
 if possible, to be of some avail in an emer 
 gency.
 
 THE MUSTER. H9 
 
 Now millions of Americans realized, doubt 
 less for the first time, the strength of the 
 Anglo-American position. A look at the map 
 of the world showed to even peaceable citizens, 
 however unversed in war, the tremendous 
 advantage these allied powers possessed in the 
 ownership and absolute control of the Suez 
 and Nicaraguan Canals, and the bones of Rea- 
 consfield might almost have stirred to life 
 again as the rich result of his labors became 
 so tremendously apparent. 
 
 The men who had planned and wrought so 
 to make the way across the American barrier 
 were happily alive to rejoice over the timely 
 ending of their work, and to see its usefulness 
 to the Anglo-Saxon race fully tested and 
 triumphantly established. No longer did sel 
 fish corporations or long-bearded would-be 
 statesmen, with monetary or agrarian fads, 
 have influence in the national legislature, and 
 the spirit there was one of generous patriot 
 ism. The navy had been fostered until it was 
 now a gigantic fighting machine. Never had 
 it been so strong, so well-manned, well 
 equipped, or more ably commanded; never 
 was it, from admiral to seaman, so filled with 
 enthusiasm, loyalty and the spirit of war as 
 now.
 
 150 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 APPLETON BECOMES DESTRUCTIVE. 
 
 From the moment when war became im 
 minent when all men could feel its hot breath 
 of disturbing- power Applcton had been as 
 one possessed by an idea of such absorbing 
 strength as to drive out all others. The first 
 day after the great news came he said little; 
 nevertheless, I well knew what was in his 
 mind. 
 
 At night, after hours of exhausting work in 
 the air machine, during which it behaved with 
 remarkable docility and to our great satisfac 
 tion, Appleton spoke. \Ye were lying on the 
 grass under the stars, and I could not see his 
 face, but his voice had the vibrations of 
 earnest power in it. 
 
 "\Yar is coming," he said, "and with it our 
 opportunity. The machine we have here can 
 be made the most destructive force in the 
 world to-day. \Ye must bend every sinew of 
 body and every energy of mind to fit it for 
 war on land or sea. You shall go to Washing 
 ton start to-morrow morning offer the air
 
 APPLETON DESTRUCTIVE. 151 
 
 machine to the Government, and prepare the 
 way before us. I will stay here and get every 
 thing ready." 
 
 "Appleton," I said, "what do you intend to 
 do with the machine? Of course I will go to 
 morrow, but you must spend most of the 
 night at work getting me ready." 
 
 I had, naturally, thought already of using 
 Appleton s invention for war purposes, par 
 ticularly as a scout, so to speak. It was much 
 more suited for purposes of observation than 
 the balloons in service already, especially as it 
 need not like them be hampered by the wire 
 rope attaching it to the earth, or to a ship, 
 when used at sea, and was not, by reason of its 
 size and shape, such a target for the enemy s 
 shots as a balloon with its towering air-bag. 
 "What arrested my attention was Appleton s 
 allusion to the possibilities of making our con 
 trivance a destructive force. Here I needed 
 light. 
 
 We went into our work-room, and lighting 
 the lamps sat down at our pine-board table. 
 Then Appleton showed me his plans and ex 
 plained them. I was convinced before an hour 
 was over that if we could only keep our air 
 machine under control in any half satisfactory
 
 152 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 manner when the hour of action should come, 
 we should hold the fate of armies and navies 
 in our hands. 
 
 Briefly stated, Apple-ton s plan was to carry 
 in the air machine packages containing 
 charges of high explosives, rise far above the 
 enemy, and at will, 1>y a device worked from 
 the air machine, detach the charges. Coming 
 from the altitude we could easily attain, a mile 
 or more, our bombs would shatter anything 
 and everything they touched by the mere 
 natural force accumulated in their fall, to say 
 nothing of the explosive contents of our mis 
 siles. Hspecially in naval warfare would Ap- 
 pleton s plan be valuable, and as the first great 
 battles of the approaching war would be 
 naval. Apple-ton was anxious to try conclu 
 sions at sea. and at once. 
 
 The inventor s plans were perfectly feasible 
 that I knew from my experience with the 
 machine and they had that simplicity which 
 is often the ama/.ing characteristic of great and 
 daring innovations. 
 
 Afterwards came to us both, of course, 
 thoughts of the danger which we must encoun 
 ter in managing and using the machine as a 
 battle-ship of the air, but so fascinating was
 
 APPLETON DESTRUCTIVE. 153 
 
 the work, so tremendous were its conse 
 quences, and so exciting was its nature, that 
 we could not dwell long on the idea of person 
 al risk, even when we were planning it, and 
 when once our real activity began there was 
 no room for any thought but of our present 
 duty. 
 
 It is a great experience to be for hours in 
 some situation where what is to be done is the 
 absorbing, controlling thing, allowing no 
 other thought, act, or feeling. This goes far 
 toward making that joy of battle which sol 
 diers feel in deadly conflicts. The mind, and 
 all sensations and emotions are concentrated 
 upon a given point. The private soldier has 
 not even to decide what he will do. lie is just 
 an ear to listen and an arm to strike. The 
 officer, of whatever grade, is or should be the 
 same, up to the commander-in-chief, with all 
 his energies bent upon one thing alone, to di 
 rect well the struggle going on about him. 
 
 As for us, I thought while I tossed un 
 easily upon my bed in the hours after Apple- 
 ton had bidden me good-night as for us, all 
 we would have to do would be to go up quiet 
 ly and quickly in the air-ship, find our way to 
 the point we were directed to attain above the
 
 154 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 enemy, and cut a wire. Then, when our stoek 
 of ammunition was exhausted, or we were rc- 
 ealled by our commander. \ve must come 
 down. Aye! There was the rub! But as 
 Appleton had said, it was better not to think 
 about that. Of course we could get down all 
 right, anyone could do that, the thing to 
 think about was the most effective way of do 
 ing our work. And that was simple enough, 
 too. 
 
 1 was a most set and determined man when 
 I arrived in Washington a da}- or two 
 later, and, as there were in the capital before 
 me many other men of like earnestness and 
 determination of purpose, it was a hard fight 
 to get a hearing from the over-worked au 
 thorities of the army and navy. It was not 
 a long struggle, though fierce. Before many 
 days were over I had enlisted on my side some 
 of the men who had been associated with 
 George Strong and John Savage in the Xica- 
 ragua Canal work and who knew me well. 
 Together once more, shoulder to shoulder, 
 we. comrades in a former struggle, made our 
 fight, and soon I had the satisfaction of leav 
 ing for home with promises of substantial 
 recognition and co-operation from the Gov-
 
 APPLETON DESTRUCTIVE. 155 
 
 eminent. We were to have a practical trial 
 in the United States navy, and in active ser 
 vice, too. If we could get ready we were to 
 sail, taking our machine with us, in one of the 
 war-ships of the great fleet preparing in New 
 York harbor, and 1 had a very well denned 
 opinion that we would be ready. 
 
 We settled down again to work. We were 
 now keyed up to such efforts as we had never 
 made before. There was a deadly earnestness 
 about Appleton in these days. We worked 
 and were happy. 
 
 As we toiled and rested, and toiled again, 
 we studied the situation, our strongly moved 
 natures responding readily to the war drama 
 which was being played in its first scene 
 around us. We thrilled with the spirit of pa 
 triotism which had given Americans baptism 
 as of the ancient tongues of flame, while we 
 felt too, in strong vibrations, the answering 
 within us to the mighty Macedonian cry of 
 race from across the sea. 
 
 It was fortunate for the great republic that 
 it had at this time a President who was seem 
 ingly provided by the God of nations for the 
 occasion, conservative but unafraid, a man 
 of perception and tact but, withal, swift to de-
 
 156 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 cide and act so as to compel movements quite 
 beyond mere politic consideration. The blood 
 of his race stirred within him and made him a 
 patriot in the broader sense of the term. 
 
 The time had come to act and he did not 
 make a mistake. He thought of the seventy- 
 five thousand men called for by the great Lin 
 coln at the beginning of the Civil war and of 
 the length of time needed for preparing a 
 greater army, as shown in the Spanish war, 
 and he took his lesson from these experiences. 
 In a message calmly worded but explaining 
 clearly the nation s situation, and the fact that 
 the nation s sons were needed, he called first 
 for two hundred and fifty thousand volunteers. 
 
 The volunteers called for were apportioned 
 among the states according to population. 
 The call was issued on Tuesday, and Wednes 
 day morning was effective. It had been anti 
 cipated and all day Tuesday there was excite 
 ment in city, and town and village, and farm 
 ers talked at the crossroads. The battle-bees 
 -were humming. By Tuesday noon the males 
 of the nation knew what was required of them 
 and the hum was a hum no longer, but a 
 nui filed roar. Things were happening fast 
 now. Trade was neglected and from every-
 
 APPLETON DESTRUCTIVE. 157 
 
 where came the sound of band, or fife and 
 drum, or bugle. Swift work was required, and 
 there was no rest by night or day. Friday noon 
 the first state reported to Washington its 
 quota filled, and Saturday night found a re 
 port from every state in the Union, telling the 
 same story. They had learned from the Span 
 ish war. A quarter of a million volunteers 
 were ready and as many more were clamor 
 ous for enlistment. 
 
 Then followed swiftly completer organiza 
 tions in each state and there were scenes some 
 times amusing, sometimes pathetic and al 
 ways interesting. The veterans of the 
 great Civil war, and of the more recent 
 conflict, now suddenly became men of 
 importance, although the Union veterans 
 were mostly too old for service, and had 
 been jeered at but lately for their pension 
 drawing. Thousands of old men who had 
 limped wearily in the procession of the last 
 Decoration Day, now straightened instinc 
 tively their bent backs and exhibited a certain 
 springiness even in their limping. The old 
 fire came into their eyes again, and the old 
 ring to their voices. In every town, great or 
 small, these were among the drillmasters of
 
 158 ARMAGF.DDON. 
 
 the brawny youth and men of vigor who were 
 learning the first rudiments of war. Their 
 influence was wonderful. They were men who 
 
 had fought for a principle and it was the 
 same North and South. Never had vast 
 legions of eager recruits better teachers physic 
 ally and morally in the alphabet of organiza 
 tion. Not even a little town in all the land 
 lacked one or more of these old soldiers and 
 \vhat the\" accomplished was something ex 
 cellent. As for the soldiers of the then recent 
 war with Spain the} were now in the front 
 rank and formed the nucleus. 
 
 Soon began from all quarters the movement 
 toward the front. The authorities of the army 
 and navy were well prepared and where the 
 forces should go into camps had already been 
 determined. The national capital became the 
 center of a might} gathering. 
 
 The} came from every point of the compass. 
 All means of transportation were taxed. Hven 
 the great inland seas were burdened to aid the 
 movement. The} came, the Americans. 
 I Yom the great northern tier of states came 
 thousands of the sons of the hardy Norsemen 
 who had found a home there and who now 
 felt stirring within them the instinct of their
 
 APPLETON DESTRUCTIVE. 159 
 
 ancestors. There was place for them on land 
 and sea. They made great regiments. Sail 
 ors were needed and they fed the warships 
 with the progeny of the Vikings. Dark-eyed 
 Louisianians, swarthy and black-moustached, 
 soldiers by instinct, brought with them the 
 blood of the Huguenots. Brown Texans, 
 grandsons of such men as defended the Alamo, 
 men who could ride fast and far and fight like 
 the grizzly, were camped beside regiments as 
 brawny and resolute from Kentucky and New 
 England. The Pacific Coast and the Missis 
 sippi Valley and states of all the South and 
 North sent forth their myriads of men as good, 
 and an army inexperienced but eager was soon 
 organized and prepared for active service. 
 
 Within a month from the time of the call 
 the force of two hundred and fifty thousand 
 men, well fed and prepared for movement, was 
 being distributed according to a plan con 
 ceived. 
 
 At first, of course, there was a terrific storm 
 of talk, spoken and written, for the newspaper 
 is only printed talk. There were Anti-War Par 
 ties, and Peace Leagues, and all the noise of 
 professional agitation. Old race hatreds re 
 vived and asserted themselves, and in some
 
 160 ARMAGKDDON. 
 
 (juartcrs the ugly licad of sectarian bigotry 
 was raised, but the serpent s hiss was of little 
 moment in the country the institutions of 
 which were founded on the rock of religious 
 freedom. 
 
 It seems to me that groups of people some 
 times get foolish and unreasonable just as in 
 dividuals do when digestion is out of order. 
 In America the crust yelped with amazing 
 clamor and endurance. The crust, you know 
 the crust, the shell made up almost exclusive 
 ly of importations and of those who needed the 
 imported vote, yelped shrilly now, against 
 the Anglo-American alliance, but the clamor 
 of their voices was lost in the sound of life and 
 drum. It is curious, though, about the crust. 
 
 1 elow, were the real people. Above were 
 the agitators, and the politicians who traded 
 on them. It would have been unimportant 
 but that sometimes in the past the crust had 
 carried with it the worthy elements beneath. 
 It wasn t logical; it was opposed to all physical 
 laws, but it sometimes happened politically. 
 The really guilty fools in the United States 
 were the politicians who figured only on what 
 result in votes would follow their action at any 
 time. After that the deluge.
 
 THE CHRISTENING. 161 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Till-: CHRISTENING. 
 
 I have had a moderately well rounded out 
 experience among what constitutes the rest of 
 humanity; I ought to possess some degree of 
 judgment regarding the comparative good or 
 bad fortune of a human being at any particu 
 lar time, and my estimate I hold correct when 
 I say that I never passed a happier late spring 
 and early summer than I did with Appleton 
 in that crazy old building a few miles from the 
 suburbs of Chicago, even at this time when 
 we were working so feverishly to an end. 
 
 We didn t sleep very well; there wasn t any 
 bath and I was uncomfortable and expressed 
 my opinions volubly in the morning. We had 
 water enough, though, and towels enough and 
 so I could slap and scrub myself at sunrise and 
 feel as if I were something like a remote ac 
 quaintance of a gentleman for the rest of the 
 day. 
 
 After our early breakfast we would sit to 
 gether and scheme, and in our scheming de- 
 11
 
 1 62 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 vcluped the venture of which I am telling, hut 
 the hard planning and work exhausted us, ex 
 hausted even Appleton. \\ e worked each day 
 until the cheap clock beside us said that it was 
 afier ten o clock in the morning I believe 
 that we did most of our real thinking work 
 before ten o clock for we were both convinced 
 that men think most cleanly and clearly in 
 the morning but at night we were experi 
 menting in our air machine until late, and that 
 was good work too. 
 
 it s odd how little things blend with big 
 things. A bluebird had a nest in an old oak 
 stump, possibly twenty rods from the build 
 ing in which we were working. There s hard 
 ly any bird that I love more than the blue 
 bird. There is such a joyousncss about the 
 little fellow, and he comes here so early in 
 the spring when there is sometimes ice on the 
 very gra>s spear he carries in the making of 
 his nest, and there is such blithesomeness to 
 his short song, as if he were trying to say MX 
 or eight hopeful words together, "(iod bless 
 us, and let her go Oallagher" that I like him. 
 I noted closely the love affairs of the pair of 
 birds, and admired the regularity of the little 
 husband in feeding his spouse when the time
 
 THE CHRISTENING. 163 
 
 of setting upon the eggs began, and the per 
 fect manner of his flight. The course of the 
 wind shifts and changes easily upon the prairie 
 within any fifty miles distance of the upris 
 ing evaporation of the great lakes. The bird 
 living in this area must adapt himself to swift 
 wind-drifts, and I watched him curiously, and 
 with something of envious fellowship as he 
 kept himself afloat in the air. It was so easy 
 for him. I made a study of bird flight that 
 summer and had a joyous life even when I 
 wasn t hard at work with Appleton. To the 
 west the prairie dipped and rose and was but 
 a broad rolling expanse with hillocks and with 
 creeks and crisscrossed with cheap highways, 
 made at the least cost to the township, cleanly 
 kept, but bare and white and hot in midsum 
 mer. 
 
 1 used to stroll along these country roads 
 and make friends with the chippy-birds and 
 ground sparrows that shifted along just a lil- 
 tle ahead of me, and whose nests I knew all 
 about though they didn t think I did. 1 had 
 great comfort with the quail, too. By the 
 way, a really industrious and thoughtful fe 
 male quail sometimes has as many as fifty 
 children in a year. What I mean is this: she
 
 if>4 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 sometimes lays as ninny as thirty eggs in one 
 nest and, barring accidents, lets her children 
 drift in time to have another nest and another 
 brood. It s wonderful what a creator of 
 charming little living things she is. As for 
 her mate, though vain of his whistling, he s 
 a model husband. 
 
 1 can shut my eyes now and see the yellow 
 green stretch of meadows down from Apple- 
 ton s place toward the stream. 1 can see the 
 chipmunks scurrying along the lower rails of 
 the fence. I can hear the defiance of the bine- 
 jays in the air. I can hear in the early morn 
 ing the call of the meadow-lark which means 
 so much in its hopefulness and buoyancy. Ap- 
 pleton s old barn of a place was built in the 
 midst of an area where real life was. It s all 
 sentimental, maybe, but somehow I believe 
 that, because of the reflection of all that was 
 vivid and pulsating about us, we had better 
 perceptions for the work before us than we 
 could otherwise have had, and that possibly 
 the dipping Ilight of the goldfinch or the blue 
 bird as he trimmed himself to the gale, may 
 have remotely suggested to Appleton some 
 contingency of the work we had in hand. 
 
 \Ye got on well with our air-machine in
 
 THE CHRIST KM ING. 165 
 
 those days. Difficulties began to disappear 
 under our constant hammering, and we grew 
 buoyant and light of heart. The knowledge 
 that we were soon going into active trial gave 
 us the life of enthusiasm, and our work flour 
 ished accordingly. 
 
 One day, in the flush of the full summer, 
 Mr. and Airs. Daggart and Helen came early 
 in the morning to see our experiments with 
 the air-machine and to spend the day. 
 
 Helen begged to be taken up in the flying 
 concern, but Appleton had shortly and plump- 
 ly refused to allow it, and we had left the 
 young lady sitting haughtily erect on the 
 grass, refusing even to look at us as we rose 
 in the sweet morning air and were gently 
 wafted along by the south wind. 
 
 We had an ugly time of it before our show 
 trip was over, and when we returned on foot, 
 weary and excited, Mr. and Mrs. Daggart 
 were warm in their congratulations that we 
 were still alive and equally fervent in expres 
 sions of gratitude that Helen had not been 
 with us. Helen herself said little but she look 
 ed somewhat anxiously at Appleton as he 
 limped toward our shed to make himself pre 
 sentable after the shaking up of the morning.
 
 lf>f> ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 For the first time she saw ami rcali/.ed the 
 danger of Applcton s enterprise and, all day 
 after thai, there rested upon the brave girl s 
 face a little shadow. 
 
 It was still long before midday when we 
 rested together in the shade of the nir-ma- 
 ehine as it lay on the flower-laden prairie grass. 
 \Ye had been eating a pienic breakfast, and 
 were comfortably lying or sitting about, the 
 generous hampers of dainties brought out bv 
 Mrs. Daggart adding mueh to the homely at 
 tractions of the occasion. 
 
 The meadows around us were full of bobo 
 links. I vvery few minutes one of the black 
 and yellow-white fellows would rise and (hit 
 ter and sing, and then fall back again upon 
 some tall weed or bush, and we were watch 
 ing and listening to this jolliest of birds in the 
 intervals of lazy talk. 
 
 "The bobolink is the American nation s 
 bird," said I. "A bird so happily built by 
 Providence that he grows with the growth of 
 meadows and so must increase with the ex 
 tension of the cultivated country. It is the 
 happily-plucked-out piece of original buoy 
 ancy among living things destined to live with 
 nature s changes. The queer part of it all is
 
 THE CHRISTENING. 167 
 
 that the creature \vliich inspires the soul in 
 spring and early summer, later in the season 
 inspires the stomach. The angel and the 
 butcher shake hands and are content." 
 
 "What is all this nonsense?" said Mr. Dag- 
 gart, looking up from the full length position 
 he held on a Navajo rug. 
 
 "About angels and butchers shaking 
 hands " continued Mrs. Daggart. 
 
 "Our bobolink, Mr. and Mrs. Daggart, and 
 fellow citizens, if you will allow me to proceed, 
 the same singing bird of June that you see 
 there whirling around in musical ecstacy, be 
 comes himself a gorging gourmand and, in 
 consequence, the prey of gourmands, every 
 year. These birds gather in great brown 
 flocks every autumn and fly south. On the 
 Potomac marshes they are shot by thousands 
 and served at dainty tables beneath the shadow 
 of the capitol. On the restaurant bills of fare 
 they figure as reed-birds. Then the myriads 
 that escape go farther south and devastate the 
 rice fields. There they are killed and sold as 
 rice-birds to feed the markets north and south. 
 Later they fly to the West Indian Islands 
 where they are eaten and appreciated as the 
 butter-bird. Then follows their great exploit
 
 the greatest Ilighi known to lie taken by 
 small birds the journey straight away from 
 the \\est Indies to \ enexueia, or somewhere 
 tlicreabont. There they stay auhile, and mil 
 lions of them drill southwest until in <nir own 
 autumn months they are in the Argentine Re 
 public." 
 
 "\\ ill somet >nc brine; us a ma]) " interrupt 
 ed Ilelen, a nau^ht\- twinkle in her eyes 
 
 Hut I would not be stopped; raiding my 
 voiee to full lecture pitch, I finished: 
 
 "Xow follows the return trip, over the same 
 route, and a^ ain the army ot birds ravages 
 the rice fields, the \ onni; - ])!ants this time, and 
 by way of the reedy rivers they come north, 
 arriving earlv in fune to charm men a^ain 
 ju>t as they have for countless Junes before!" 
 
 "The bobolink is a great bird." assented Ap- 
 pleton, "but thai is no reason, jack, \\hv you 
 should make bun an excuse lor burdening us 
 with useful information. It is too hot, for 
 one thing 
 
 "I protest. Mr. \Ventworth" this from 
 Mrs. Daggart "1 want to hear more about 
 tin- bobolink. It is the most characteristic 
 .American bird, 1 think." 
 
 "\Vell," broke in Appleton, "somehow the
 
 TfllC CI1RISTKNING. 169 
 
 (Inffcr has an American quality in his way; he 
 extends himself, he is joyous, he makes the 
 world better; he takes all chances and he does 
 those two great things which are the fruit of 
 the great things of this particular globe float 
 ing in space, lie dies enormously, but he mul 
 tiplies more. The English up-fluttering lark, 
 telling things to those below, is good; the 
 European nightingale, making the night bet 
 ter, is good, but and of course I am but a 
 crank, born with him and fond of him I in 
 sist that the American bobolink is the one 
 great poet-reaching and man-reaching bird of 
 all the world. He is at the same time the 
 Anglo-Saxon and Viking of all the birds of 
 all the world. lie breeds in the far north, he 
 raids all the intermediate space and there is 
 none other among all the birds of the earth 
 who is like unto him." 
 
 And we all sat still for awhile, and the bobo 
 link gurgled and pitched and crowned the day 
 with animated joy. 
 
 "Mr. Appleton, what is the name of your air- 
 engine?" It was Helen that broke the silence. 
 "Let us name it to-day. It ought to have the 
 name of a bird. \Yould you call it The Bobo 
 link? "
 
 Appleton looked at me "It has at present 
 certain motions like that of a l>o]iolink," I re 
 turned, "hut 1 don t know that 1 approve of 
 them." 
 
 A ou mean that pitching downward sud- 
 denlv," said the inventor calmlv, "hut that will 
 he all ri^ lit. Wentworth 
 
 "( )h, yes, of course," 1 had to say; hut my 
 lame arm ^rumhled where it reeei\-ed its last 
 hard di^ hecause of the said pitching propen 
 sity of Applcton s threat machir.e. 
 
 Miss Dai^art said, innocently enough, to all 
 appearance: "It reminded me more of a i^oose 
 than of any other hird, last Thursday, when 
 you were hauling it out of the muddy river." 
 
 "The Wild (loose," said Appleton, taking 
 up the gauntlet instantly, "is the most wonder 
 ful hird on its win^s in all the world. It win^s 
 from the tropics to the Arctic Circle and hack 
 every year, and has no rival in the air. The 
 name of the machine shall he The Wild 
 ( lor ise." 
 
 "I wish you mi^ ht i^ et some such steering 
 apparatus as a wild choose has, Appleton," said 
 I. "and find out how to use it." 
 
 Helen had her lap full of clover hlossoms, 
 white and red. She suddenlv stretched her arm
 
 THE CHRISTENING. 171 
 
 out and took from a willow basket near her 
 father s elbow a bottle; alas ! a cobwcbbcd bot 
 tle of old wine, and I see Mr. Daggart s dismay 
 ed face yet. The girl rose, holding in one hand 
 the gathered folds of her white gown with the 
 clover-blossoms ready, in the other the wine. 
 In a moment she turned, and crash went the 
 neck of the bottle on the frame-work of the 
 machine, while, as far as she could throw them 
 over and around it, the ilowers were scattered. 
 
 "Gallant wanderer of the air," she cried. "I 
 crown thee with clover blossoms and christen 
 thee Wild Goose! " 
 
 "Gallant wobbler of the air," I muttered. 
 
 I had leaped and stumbled, and I was 
 sprawling at the feet of Beauty when this 
 episode was over. I had to endure much 
 chaffing over my vain attempt to save the 
 good wine from its untimely end. Only Mr. 
 Daggart sympathized with my efforts. He re 
 fused to be comforted. He had carefully 
 chosen from his cherished supply, "one de 
 cent bottle," as he himself said in all frank 
 ness. This he had placed with the others in 
 one of the baskets before he left home. Helen, 
 by fell misfortune, had chanced to place her 
 eager hand on this particular bottle when the
 
 17- ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 thought of naming the machine possessed her, 
 and so came mishap to an important feature of 
 the old gentleman s repast. 
 
 The day passed with much laughter and 
 jollity, and evening found our little company 
 still together on the prairie. \Yith night came 
 a subduing inllnence, and there was talk of all 
 the serious problems that were occupying the 
 world near and far, and of course much talk of 
 the war, which was coming on so swiftly. 
 
 Appleton had already announced to Helen 
 his determination to throw himself and his 
 fortunes into the war. and as we talked, the 
 realities of his enterprise, its terrific dangers 
 and chances, took hold of the poor girl. 1 he 
 lovers had dravui somewhat aside from the 
 rest of us. and for some time their low earnest 
 voices, heard at intervals in our pauses of con 
 versation, had shown that their talk was on 
 themes which moved them deeply. 
 
 It had grown finite dark. The place was 
 lighted only by the stars, and the uncertain 
 gleam of a lantern or two which swung from 
 our porch, when suddenly Appleton called to 
 me: 
 
 "\Ventworth, what was that old Roumanian 
 poem you were repeating the other day the
 
 THE CHRISTENING. 173 
 
 one you say is the best of all patriotic poems? 
 Let us hear it." 
 
 I repeated the poem, out there in the dark 
 ness: 
 
 The soldier dying spake: 
 "Tell my mother dear to pray for me, 
 
 To pray for me with folded hands, 
 
 And my bride in the village there." 
 
 They buried him on the battle-field 
 
 And the sun looked down and smiled, 
 
 And the flowers bloomed where he was laid 
 
 And were glad they blossomed there. 
 
 And the village women prayed, 
 
 With folded hands they prayed for him, 
 
 And the soldier spake from his deep, dark grave: 
 "I am content." 
 
 And when the wind in the tree-tops blew 
 
 The soldier said: 
 "Did the banner flutter then?" 
 "Not so, my hero," the wind replied, 
 "The banner fluttered not; 
 
 Thy comrades of old have borne it hence, 
 
 Have borne it in triumph hence." 
 
 And the soldier spake from his deep, dark grave: 
 "I am content." 
 
 And the flocks and the shepherds pass, 
 
 And the soldier spake again: 
 "Is that the sound of the battle s roar?" 
 "Not so, my hero," the shepherds said, 
 "Thou art dead and the battle o er, 
 
 Thy country joyful and free." 
 
 And the soldier spake from the deep, dark grave: 
 "I am content."
 
 1/4 ARMA(iI-:i)I)C)N. 
 
 And the lovers lau^hin^ pa.-,s, 
 
 And the soldier spake a;^ain: 
 "Are those tlie voices of them that love, 
 
 That love and remember me: " 
 "Not so, ni} hero," the lovers said, 
 "\Ve are those that rememher not, 
 
 For the spring has come and the earth has smiled 
 
 .And the dead must lie forgot." 
 
 And the soldier spake from the deep, dark ^rnve: 
 "I am content." 
 
 \\ hen the last word was said there was per 
 fect silence for a lime. Then Mr. Dai^art 
 bustled about. 
 
 "Come, come, come! It is time to be ^"oin^ 
 home. Helen, child; mother, where is 
 ( )T.rien?" 
 
 "I m here, sir," said O Brien. from some 
 place near bv, and his voice was husky and un 
 natural. I joined the old gentleman and 
 O Brien on their walk to our tumble-down 
 stable, and helped them about the horses. 
 When we drove up for Helen and Mrs. 1 )a.L, r - 
 i^art the\ were standing beside Appleton. lie 
 helped them into the carriage, and our visitors 
 drove awav. There were calls of good-bye 
 and o ood-niidit back and forth, but 1 did not 
 hear 1 lelen s voice.
 
 FAREWELL TO THE PRAIRIE. 1/5 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 FAREWELL TO THE PRAIRIE. 
 
 It was a sunny afternoon in the lingering 
 summer. Coming from the city, tired and out 
 of tune with the world, I found our retreat 
 again honored by visitors no less distinguished 
 than Helen and her mother. The ladies were 
 sitting upon camp chairs placed upon a rug 
 which Appleton had spread for them on the 
 rich short grass, and Appleton was standing 
 erect and flushed of face before them. As I 
 approached the group I noticed tears upon the 
 face of the mother, but the daughter was calm 
 and apparently unmoved. Closer inspection 
 showed her face pale and her eyes almost 
 tragic in the story they told of sleepless vigils 
 and unshed tears. 
 
 Appleton turned slightly toward me as he 
 heard my footsteps, but continued speaking 
 to the women, merely beckoning me toward 
 him with his left hand. 
 
 Wondering, I stopped and listened. 
 
 "I am going and nothing can stop me," Ap-
 
 l/fi ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 pleton was saying; "I stake my all, my life 
 and my fortunes on this hour. Nothing can 
 tempt me at this time to luse the privilege of 
 giving what little I have to my country. This 
 is our last da} in this vapid place of inaction. 
 You have given me your ultimatum," turn 
 ing to Helen, "and now I give you mine. Go 
 I will. Part we must. If I must go under 
 your displeasure, leave you in anger, still I 
 must go. Xo promise of ease or happiness can 
 change my resolution!" 
 
 "Appleton! . \ppleton!" F called, for he 
 seemed altogether unlike himself, so full of 
 passion and fervor was this usually calm un 
 emotional fellow. lie turned again to me, 
 and said, "ft is nothing, (lo in, I will join you 
 soon. \Ye should he ready to leave at live 
 o clock to-morrow morning, as vou know." 
 
 I left them, and resumed my work, pack 
 ing for the journey. A half hour later Apple- 
 ton joined me at the work of the moment, 
 quiet and cool as usual, lie gave me a few 
 words of explanation and then we addressed 
 ourselves solely to our task of getting ready 
 for the nil truing. 
 
 I ItA-n and her mother had walked over from 
 the railwav station and surpri-ed Appleton as
 
 FAREWELL TO THE PRAIRIE. 
 
 he worked. The approach of the crisis in his 
 affairs, his dangerous plans and almost cer 
 tain death had broken down completely the 
 girl who loved him, and her distress had, in 
 turn, \von over to her side her parents. Backed 
 by the old gentleman s instructions the two 
 women had come out to our quarters to beg 
 Appleton to give up his plans, remain at home, 
 marry his sweetheart, and go into some sort of 
 a money-making scheme held out by Mr. Dag- 
 gart. There had been much halting and turn 
 ing 1 , and no end of talking and crying before 
 Appleton understood the drift of things; the 
 women wanted to take him home to dinner 
 with them, when the pater was to clinch 
 things, probably, in his own down-right way. 
 Above all the appeal had been made to Apple- 
 ton, one often pressed before that he should 
 change his venturesome, hazardous ways, 
 once for all, and "be practical." 
 
 Appleton, as soon as he could get his 
 breath, had essayed to show his fair visitors 
 his view of things. It was a long talk, ending 
 as I have reported. And Helen had gone 
 away pale and angry, and had said that now 
 
 she was sure Appleton cared no more for her 
 12
 
 than for the grass under his loci and those 
 were her last words. 
 
 "And that is the end," said Appleton, nev 
 er speak of her again. \\ e \vill tly freely no\v; 
 no matter \\hether we conic hack or not!" 
 
 "I have certain feelings of mv own, how 
 ever," I declared, "1 am not at all indifferent 
 about coming hack again, old man." 
 
 But Apple-ton would not even smile. 
 
 We tugged at our packing, forgetting to 
 cat until our man of all work called us to our 
 late supper. 
 
 That evening as we sat smoking our pipes 
 and looking at the moonrise, the sounds of 
 the summer night in our ears, we lieard the 
 mtiftled roll of a carriage on the soft prairie 
 road. The faint light showed a wagonette 
 driven rapidly toward us and it did not take 
 close examination for us to recognize its oc 
 cupants. Mr. Daggart was the driver of the 
 pair of bays and by his side sat I lelen. 
 
 The old boy was completely subjugated; 
 and he was a man, too. He jumped down 
 from his high seat as 1 took the horses heads. 
 lie grasped Appleton s hand. 
 
 You are all right," he said. "Helen shall
 
 FAREWELL TO THE PRAIRIE. 179 
 
 wait for you! Go and do your work like a 
 man, and you shall not lack for friends to hail 
 your success if it comes, or make up for failure 
 if you must fail." 
 
 And down came Helen, too, clinging at first 
 to her father, but he joined me, and we stroll 
 ed away together, the horses cropping at the 
 grass beside us, and so we left the lovers to say 
 what was in their hearts. 
 
 After a while we all said good-bye for the 
 twentieth time, and Appleton and I, even after 
 all that, got into the wagonette and rode as 
 far as the beginning of the boulevard with 
 Helen and her father. Then at last we said 
 good-bye in earnest, and walked in perfect 
 silence back to our dismantled quarters. 
 
 I suppose an inventor ranks with a great 
 general. We make much fuss over a great 
 soldier or a great commander of seamen. I 
 imagine all the agony of thought and doubt 
 and contemplation that goes on within the 
 minds of these as within that of an inventor, 
 doubting whether he will be thought a success 
 or a fool. In war the dreaming boy from the 
 country becomes the Grant or the Dewey. In 
 peace times the dreaming boy becomes the
 
 180 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 Kdison or the Tesla. the imported youth the 
 same as the home-horn youth, and so \ve all 
 work together. 
 
 On the morning when the serious work of 
 dismantling and preparing the Wild Goose for 
 shipment was to begin, we had looked for the 
 Swansons, to whom we had sent word a day 
 or two before that they should be on hand and 
 ready to help us. When we came out before 
 daybreak, there, standing in a row by the great 
 shed in which the Wild (loose rested, were 
 three figures, an old man, once gigantic of 
 stature, but now bent and worn, although still 
 exhibiting signs of sturdy strength, a brown, 
 withered old woman, and a straight young one 
 of powerful frame and erect, fearless mien. We 
 stopped, surprised, as our eyes took in the 
 little group. It consisted of old Swan.son, his 
 wife and Leda. 
 
 "Where are the boys?" asked Appleton, 
 looking at the old man s impassive face. 
 
 " Listed," replied the ancient Swede, with 
 out a movement or gesture of face or figure. 
 The old woman, without word or sound, put 
 her blue apron to her eyes. 
 
 "Frederickson has listed, too," announced
 
 FAREWELL TO THE PRAIRIE. l8l 
 
 Leda, looking triumphantly at O Brien, who 
 had evidently heard the news before. 
 
 "They have all gone; they are drilling this 
 morning, and go soon for the war. We can 
 help you. We will." 
 
 So spoke the vigorous Leda, and with such 
 other assistance as we could muster we were 
 fain to be content. All day we tugged and 
 strained over our task and well into the night, 
 until Appleton cried "Hold! enough!" Then 
 the silent, obedient workers went away, after 
 receiving and thanking us for their well- 
 earned wages. 
 
 I remember the remnant of that Swedish 
 family well, as last I saw it on the morning af 
 ter our farewell to Helen and her father. The 
 three stood close to the railway track looking 
 after us as we were hurried away on our plat 
 form car, a part of a long freight train. There 
 was no sign of regret or of any other emotion 
 on the faces of the two old people. Their 
 faded blue eyes looked up at us, followed us, 
 their brown hands and arms were waved at us 
 after their angular fashion and that was all. 
 Leda, the Amazon, showed a subdued but un 
 mistakable warlike excitement. Pier eyes
 
 [82 ARMAGKDDON. 
 
 shone, her checks Hazed with colr)r, her whole 
 j>erson seemed agitated with strong feeling. 
 She, too, waved her hand, with a free and 
 really noble gesture. 
 
 \Ve swung our hats over our heads, the sun 
 showed one- red streak above the red horizon, 
 and we were oil.
 
 THE WILD GOOSE FLIES EAST. 183 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE WILD GOOSE FLIES EAST. 
 
 Our departure was not imposing for two 
 such confident Americans in the very flood- 
 tide of healthfullness and, what might be call 
 ed, fightfulness of life. We have, I am glad to 
 say, since been counted as of some value to 
 our country and the world, but we were not 
 considered at our true value at this particular 
 time. There was trouble and it made us hard- 
 tip, and dipped into our reserve for emergen 
 cies. We had to take the Wild Goose from the 
 big old barn-like structure I had learned to 
 love, to the railway station a mile and a half 
 away. When we got there but it is needless 
 to tell the story of the carrying of the long 
 thing upon joined farmers 1 wagons, of the 
 break-downs, and the difficulties, merely of 
 mud and logs and little up-hill grades, and it 
 is needless also to tell how Appleton "fell 
 down," that is, how he swore as George Wash 
 ington is said to have sworn at the battle of 
 Monmouth. Only this I have to say that a
 
 184 ARMAGKDDON. 
 
 man with an engineer s training 1 don t 
 know why it s so, but it is so can, it seems to 
 me, swear better than any other man upon the 
 faee of the earth. Appleton, tin s man who had 
 thought out great things, the man who was 
 genuinely and delicately and earnestly, and in 
 all thoughtfulness in love with a woman who 
 deserved him and whom he deserved, who was 
 what we call a fine and proper fellow, swore on 
 that morning in a manner there s no use talk 
 ing" about. There was a Grecian named 
 "Homer" who did things very well in his way, 
 but in grandeur he couldn t compare with Ap 
 pleton. 
 
 Among us. and because of us, and between 
 us, we got ourselves and our charge upon the 
 cars, on a freight train sent by an unappreci- 
 ativc or only partly appreciative government, 
 in charge merely of a sergeant of marines and 
 two men who were to take care of us in a gen 
 eral way, who knew that there were greater 
 people than we, who were possessed of an in 
 satiable thirst and appetite, and whom we satis 
 fied and captured in no time. All this was 
 simple. 
 
 The trip from Chicago to the Atlantic Coast 
 is beautiful, to the ordinary traveler, but it is,
 
 THE WILD GOOSE FLIES EAST. 185 
 
 in a measure, less beautiful to thoughtful ad 
 venturers in charge of an air-machine laid 
 upon two freight cars and liable to have its 
 interior suddenly made wrong by the wrench 
 which must inevitably come when those two 
 freight cars, upon which the long machine lies, 
 turn a sudden iron-laid corner at too great a 
 speed. We had our troubles but we reached 
 the coast in excellent condition. Appleton 
 left us after the first day, to run ahead on a 
 passenger express train. He was to get things 
 ready for the transfer of the Wild Goose from 
 the railway yards to the United States ship at 
 her dock in New York. 
 
 I followed with Leander O Brien and the 
 sergeant and his men, all of us in a condition 
 equally hopeful and apprehensive and, in a 
 measure, patriotically daring. In the conclu 
 sion of the last sentence I speak for myself 
 and not for others. I had a qualm now and 
 then and almost wished I were out of the 
 whole affair more than once. 
 
 The skies were bright and the trip was de 
 lightful as we went from Chicago to the coast 
 and watched vigilantly over the Wild Goose 
 to see that it was not wrenched sufficiently to 
 affect it as it was twitched around the curves.
 
 |W> \RMAGEDnON 
 
 \\ c had rows with the trainmen and conducted 
 ourselves like commonplace, anxious Ameri 
 can citizens trying to i^et valuable freight from 
 one point to another point in t^ood condition. 
 \\ e i;"ot it there, too, and one Leander ( ) lirien 
 and one Sergeant Snedeker of the I nited 
 State s Marine Corps were the really effective 
 forces. It was they who, when we stopped 
 anywhere, leaped from the cars to the platform 
 and ran ahead and had certain conversations 
 at each station \\ith the trainmen and railwav 
 agents, loud conversations, the cch< >es of which 
 came hack from the trees ^Towini; upon the 
 adjacent hill-sides, such conversations inevit 
 ably resulting in the doini^ ly the trainmen of 
 whatever O llrien and his firm friend, Sne 
 deker, demanded. 
 
 A freight train even a "fast freight" is by 
 no means comparable to li^htniiiL; in its speed. 
 \\ e were five davs on the road to Xew York 
 where we were to board the Alaska, one of 
 the new fleet of I nited State s war-ships which 
 was under orders to sa.il into troubled seas as 
 soon as we were safelv stowed with our pre 
 cious \Yild (loose under her proiechon. 
 
 It was worth while to look from the elevat 
 ed perch on the "caboose" at the end of our
 
 THE WILD GOOSE FLIES EAST. 187 
 
 train, and see what was going on in the quiet 
 country or restless towns and cities all along 
 our way. In the level wooded lands of In 
 diana, the more richly diversified country of 
 Ohio, the mountain ranges of Pennsylvania, 
 and the placid beauty of New York, the cli 
 max of scenic loveliness being reached when 
 we came down the Hudson River, through all 
 the changes of plain, mountain and valley, 
 rivers, forests and lakes, ran the vivid and visi 
 ble spirit of war. In many a lonely mountain 
 glen or level meadow 7 where the railway had 
 built its side-tracks, we saw crowds of blue- 
 coated soldiers, lounging on the grass at mid 
 day, or leaping and playing at all sorts of 
 athletic games while they waited for the sig 
 nal for them to resume their journey again 
 toward the war camps which were springing 
 up in the East and South, camps of prepara 
 tion and drill, where green boys were to be 
 converted into soldiers. They were a buoy 
 ant lot, too. When our train hurried by one 
 of these waiting regiments there were always 
 scores of laughing fellows to swing their kats 
 in the air and wave them at us. 
 
 "Food for powder!" I would mutter. And 
 what food! The fresh unspoiled manhood of
 
 1 88 ARMACKDDON. 
 
 a nation!" Sometimes when O Hrien, who 
 was forever by me, caught the import of my 
 mutterings, he would give me a quizzical look 
 and say, "Well, and why not? I m thinkin 
 it s as good to be food for powder as food for 
 fishes, I don know!" 
 
 () I>rien had serious objections to going up 
 in the air machine over the water. He was 
 willing to risk it above the good solid ground, 
 but when it came to planning for experiments 
 at sea the good fellow, although he would not 
 own it, was shaken. He quoted to his friend 
 Snedeker, the old story of the man who said 
 that he preferred any land accident to one at 
 sea. "If your railway train runs off the track, 
 and you are thrown out, there you are! Ihit 
 if your ship is struck and you are spilled out 
 where are you?" 
 
 Hut Sergeant Snedeker of the United States 
 Marines scoffed at ( )T>rien s fears, and told him 
 the best place to live or die was on salt water. 
 Mis words may have had more or less eftect, 
 but not even the terrors of the salt sea could 
 really keep OTrien from following our for 
 tunes to their end, no matter what that end 
 might be. lie was loyal even to his tongue, 
 and maintained the honor of the navv gallantlv
 
 THE WILD GOOSE FLIES EAST. 189 
 
 always, when once our journey was ended, and 
 we were through being jerked and "snaked" 
 along after a hooting, puffing, soft-coal-burn 
 ing railway engine. 
 
 The honest fellow had been well tried, and 
 I knew that there was no back-down in him, 
 notwithstanding his brag and bluster. He 
 had a steady head, and a cool set of hardy 
 nerves. High in the clouds he could stand on 
 our frail foot space, and look down calmly, 
 taking note minutely of whatever was passing 
 below. Furthermore, he could walk about 
 and climb like a cat, and hang over a rope net 
 ting or wire guard in such apparent peril as 
 took away the breath of the looker-on, but in 
 no way affected the respiration of O Brien 
 himself. I had no fears for him if there should 
 come the time when far under him at his post 
 in the air-machine the ocean heaved in place 
 of the solid ground. When the hour for ac 
 tion comes fear has no place in the make-up of 
 such fellows as Leander O Brien. 
 
 Appleton met us in the freight yard at the 
 end of our journey. He was ready to transfer 
 the Wild Goose to the Alaska, and with such 
 help as he had secured, the task was not a 
 hard one.
 
 i<;o ARMAGEDDON 
 
 \\ e were met courteous! v by tlie command 
 er of the United States ship, introduced to his 
 officers, and assigned our quarters, OTmen 
 having his place in some part of the ship al 
 lotted to men of about his standing in naval 
 circles, whatever it may he. Ik-fore dark on 
 the day of our arrival on hoard ship, the 
 Alaska put to sea with sealed orders. The 
 next morning we \vere well out of sight of 
 land hut in the midst of a threat fleet of war 
 ships we had joined in the night. 
 
 Appleton and 1 were fairlv fascinated hy the 
 near presence of a vast section of the navy. 
 \Ve were never tired of watching from our 
 ducks the iron-clad, uirreted monsters, and of 
 discussing their various death-dealing contriv 
 ances. The great ships kept well away from 
 each other, hut there was always one within 
 plain reach of our glasses, often more, and 
 they were ever suhjects of our study and ad 
 miration. 
 
 As for us, we were treated hy the naval offi 
 cers of our ship and of the squadron with pa 
 tient, respectful politeness in which we could 
 not but discover a slight but keen edge of tol 
 eration and even amusement. 
 
 O Urien in his quarters below caused the
 
 THE WILD GOOSE FLIES EAST. 191 
 
 sailors amusement without toleration even, to 
 say nothing of politeness. Loud and angry 
 were his expressions against the "sea chumps" 
 as he miscalled the critics. Eventually a series 
 of desperate conflicts lightened his existence 
 and that of his companions of the "foke sl," 
 and then began O Brien s conquests. He soon 
 had a half a dozen steadfast friends, men he 
 had soundly thrashed in fair fight, and from 
 this time on his life on board the Alaska was 
 one long holiday, broken only by temporary 
 soreness of spirit when the Wild Goose was 
 slightingly spoken of, but always his bruised 
 feelings could be immediately salved by bruis 
 ing the flesh and bones of his tormentors, and 
 so he enjoyed his holiday with a light heart 
 and with practically no interruptions.
 
 1 92 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 ON BOARD Till-: ALASKA. 
 
 Nothing could lia\c been more radical than 
 the change from our camping outfit on the 
 Illinois prairie to the plunge we now made into 
 the great \yorld struggle. Our work and ex- 
 periments had hecn so ([tiietly conducted, and 
 were of such a practical nature, even common 
 place except for the constant presence of grave 
 danger, that, in retrospect, the time during our 
 summer of preparation seems to me, at least, 
 like some unmatched piece out of a life which 
 has in every other phase heen full of stir and 
 stress. 
 
 When we were once at sea with the war 
 fleet, the prospect of action looming large 
 directly on the morrow, the time at hand when 
 our venture must he made for good or ill, Ap- 
 pleton seemed to awake as from a troubled 
 .and anxious dream. Ilis preoccupation and 
 abstraction fell from him like wornout gar 
 ments. There was in him no trace of excited 
 hopefulness or nervous dread over the trial
 
 ON BOARD THE ALASKA. 1Q3 
 
 just before him. Instead of the care and 
 anxiety which might have been expected to 
 overwhelm him, there was absolute freedom 
 from anything of the kind. He was as care 
 less and joyous as a boy, in higher spirits and 
 with more complete abandon to the hour than 
 I had ever seen him in before, or since. Every 
 cloud was gone from his face, even the slight 
 stoop in his shoulders vanished; his spare 
 frame gained in flesh, and his limbs in muscle, 
 during our voyage. 
 
 It was delightful to see the inventor s spirit 
 and body flourish in the forcing atmosphere of 
 certainty of action, after long continued and 
 even agonizing experiment, argument and 
 anticipation. It was the old story over again 
 of the youth singing as he goes to battle. 
 
 Following loyally Appleton s example, after 
 the first onslaught of seasickness was over, be 
 it remarked, Leander O Brien, under the cir 
 cumstances already described, also exhibited 
 new and cheerful phases of character. He had 
 reached an undreamed of height of glory and 
 delight. His fighting blood was humming all 
 the time under the stimulus of his war-like 
 surroundings. His pride in the Wild Goose 
 
 was unbounded. Nothing could dim his con- 
 is
 
 194 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 fidcnce in the ultimate success of Appleton 
 and his invention, and before the end of our 
 voyage he had made many converts to his 
 opinions among the warm hearted tars of the 
 Alaska. 
 
 Upon the warship the Wild (loose had been, 
 it seemed to me, almost a trifle grudgingly 
 given tint place upon the huge deck whence 
 it could most ea-ily depart when its time 
 should corae for making an ascent. I know 
 very little about the lashings of the machine, 
 or about the way they adjusted it, but, though 
 thev might look more or less contemptuously 
 upon it. L know that the machine was as well 
 placed as could be devised by the officers in 
 charge, with a due regard to the quick releas 
 ing of a thing which might, within the range 
 of possibility, be of some possible good in a 
 po>>ible emergency. To the end of our stay 
 upon the warship we constantly received 
 courteous treatment from the officers, and our 
 suggestions were received politely. As to the 
 first adjustment upon deck of the queer device 
 which might become suddenly an uplifting 
 thing, our advice was asked, and then gener 
 al!}- ignore !, but after much fussing and 
 stanchioning and bindins/ and bracing the
 
 ON BOARD THE ALASKA. 195 
 
 Wild Goose seemed to be reasonably secure. 
 
 Appleton and I, as having a certain govern 
 mental dignity, messed with the officers of the 
 Alaska and were treated by them with all com 
 radeship and good feeling, though they laugh 
 ed at us aside, we were sure. Captain Hillis, 
 a man of many parts, an accomplished and ex 
 perienced officer of the navy, and one who 
 would not have neglected any duty he thought 
 due his country even in the way of caring for 
 a thing he did not believe in, but which had 
 been forced upon him by his superiors, treat 
 ed us as social equals though we felt that in 
 his estimation he had been burdened with 
 some extra freightage and two cranks and 
 their helper. Nevertheless, at table, and at all 
 times, he endured us patiently, and made us 
 comfortable in a manly way. 
 
 Of course it was impossible that two men 
 situated as we were, though hitherto civilians, 
 could be daily at table with these American 
 naval officers without certain allusions to our 
 strange enterprise. There were often buoyant 
 remarks from the younger officers regarding 
 the nature of our mission, and it was inevit 
 able that I should chaff back again or that Ap 
 pleton should become fiercely earnest and en-
 
 n/> ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 thusiastic. The elder officers never committed 
 themselves, though they had something to 
 say in our larkings and debates. Among the 
 younger ones, though, we gradually found 
 some stanch admirers and one or two who had 
 great belief in us. ( )ne of these was a lieuten 
 ant named Goodman, a descendant, perhaps, 
 of the famous captain named in the saucy na 
 tional song, and another, also a lieutenant, 
 though a junior one, named Garrity, who 
 could make good jokes and Irish bulls and 
 wa.i altogether a delicious fellow. And so we 
 sailed southeastward toward summer seas. 
 
 One day while Appleton, O Brien and I 
 were fumbling over the Wild Goose, as was 
 our custom almost daily, there was always 
 something that needed, or we thought needed, 
 looking to 1 suddenly remembered O Brien s 
 dog, and asked what had become of Fitz. I 
 had not even seen him during the last day or 
 two before we left the prairie. 
 
 Appleton looked up inquiringly, at my ques 
 tion, lie, also, had evidently forgotten poor 
 Fitz so entirely as not even to miss his some 
 what oppressive presence. 
 
 O Brien, as we looked at him after an ap 
 parently innocent querv, showed Mgns of em-
 
 ON BOARD THE ALASKA. 197 
 
 barrassment, which in him were so rare as to 
 be astonishing if not alarming. His face be 
 came a deeper red than the permanent hue 
 the sun and the sea winds had already painted 
 there. He almost turned his back on us and 
 tied and untied, uneasily, a bit of rope he had 
 in his hands. 
 
 "Why, O Brien," said Applcton, "you 
 haven t smuggled your dog aboard, have 
 you?" 
 
 Neither of us could help laughing at such 
 a freak, but from O Brien s demeanor we had 
 both jumped to the conclusion that, rather 
 than part with Fitz, his master had brought 
 him along in defiance of fate. 
 
 "Xaw, sir," O Brien spoke up quite readily 
 now, "Fitz is back west all right. He ain t 
 no sea-going dog." 
 
 "Where, what did you do with him?" 
 
 O Brien gave his trousers a hitch, a trick he 
 had learned of the sailors, and approached 
 me. Lowering his voice so that Appleton 
 could not hear, he said in my ear: 
 
 "I made a present of Fitz to Miss Daggart. 
 A fine young lady she is, and she promised to 
 take the best of care of the dog, and give him 
 back to me if 1 should ever want him, al-
 
 though. ( nice giving him a> a present, never 
 would I think of asking him hack, good 
 h^hter as he is! I ain t no Injun giver. See?" 
 
 "I low in the world did you get Fit/ to Miss 
 naggart;" said I, aloud, so that Appleton 
 could hear. 
 
 "I tuck him to her house," O P>rien declar 
 ed, and then, with a deprecating look at Ap- 
 pleton. he muttered that he had left something 
 indispensable to his immediate duties below, 
 and disappeared. 
 
 \\ hen our laugh was over, for the picture 
 conjured up in our minds of Helen in her 
 serene and perfect beauty, with Fit/, the epi 
 tome of all ugliness, as her charge and pet, 
 convulsed us. we sent for () l rien. Xow 
 that his secret was out he told us readily 
 enough how he had taken Fit/ to Helen on 
 the dav of his last visit to Chicago before we 
 left, and how Helen had accepted his gift mo>t 
 graciously and appreciatively, and how >he 
 had comforted his honest heart by assuring 
 him that she would see personally to the com 
 fort and well-being of the dog. 
 
 "I hit after all." concluded ()T>rien, a 
 shadow crossing his glowing face, "It ll be a
 
 ON BOARD THE ALASKA. 199 
 
 hit (lull for poor Fitz. There s little chance 
 for a fight at Daggart s!" 
 
 "Well, he ll soon be out of condition, any 
 way," I assured the worried owner of this hull- 
 dog doomed to a life of inactivity. "He ll he 
 fat and lazy and you wouldn t want him to 
 fight anyway, now that he belongs to Miss 
 Daggart." 
 
 "Sure!" assented O Brien, brightening up 
 again. 
 
 On another day Appleton, Lieutenant Gar- 
 rity and I were sitting after dinner smoking 
 listlessly and enjoying the effect of moonlight 
 upon the long white limb of the inverted V of 
 foam which stretched out on either side as the 
 ship rushed through the water. Appleton and 
 I chatted concerning something inconsequen 
 tial, but Garrity had lapsed into a brown study. 
 Suddenly he broke out: 
 
 "It s a droll thing, anyway." 
 
 "What s a droll thing?" I asked. 
 
 "Why, my being here at all." 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "Why man, it s plain as a pikestaff, it s Irish 
 all the way through- my course, I mean. 
 Here I am, an Irishman, as there are thou 
 sands of other Irishmen in this fleet, going
 
 200 
 
 ;ome!y into a fray \vith the express ob 
 ject of knocking; into smithereens the oppon 
 ents of the Anglo-Saxon rare. Kh! but we re 
 a queer ! t, we irishmen. \\Vve been too 
 fond of fight in and oilier divarshin since cen 
 turies before I rian Uoru s great-great-great- 
 grandmother was a baby. We ve won thou 
 sands of victories, but got credit for might v 
 few ol them save \vhcn we \vere fighting 
 among otirselves, and now we re tumbling in 
 shoulder to shoulder with the hated Sassenach, 
 as usual. It s national suicide we re commit 
 ting, nothing short of it." And he heaved a 
 sigh, at the same time ^"ivhu: me a deprecat 
 ing, and mo. 1 coiniutl look, aside. 
 
 "Nonsense, " said Ajipletun. "it isn t a 
 stni^ide bel\\een th.e An^lo-Saxon and the 
 rest of the world, the Anglo-Saxons are Teu 
 tons, anvhow, and if I m not mistaken, we ll 
 presentlv be ^ettit 1 .^ liard Teutonic thumps. 
 If it were a clean division, as i seems to be just 
 now, it \\onld be ninvise. raciallv considered, 
 as between the Kiudish sneaking and other 
 races; but it isn t e\"en that. f<>r those blessed 
 Japs are going to gi\ e an account of them 
 selves on our side, and we haven t a thing in 
 the world against the Shah of I ersia and a
 
 OX BOARD THE ALASKA. 2OI 
 
 lot of others. "Why, man, I don t bclic\ c 
 there s a pure blooded Celt or Saxon in all our 
 force. "We re so mixed and intermingled, 
 you Irishmen are so deft at love-making", and 
 the rest of us travel so far, that there s no 
 telling any more what s what. It would be 
 better, peniaps, if we were all of one religion. 
 Of course, that s what has made most of the 
 trouble. In my opinion either Henry VIII. 
 should have remained a good Catholic or have 
 licked you more thoroughly into his way of 
 thinking, but religions don t cut the figure 
 they did once in the affairs of nations. Just be 
 content. What more could an Irishman want 
 than a fight, and, my boy. you ll get it. How 
 ever," lie concluded, reflectively, "this will 
 be the last great war; there are reasons for 
 saying it." And he smoked away silently. 
 
 "Of course you are thinking of your wobbly 
 old sky-scraper," said Garrity. Well, I don t 
 want to cast a shadow over you, but when a 
 man fall^ a mile and hits the water he s Hat, and 
 the fishes bite into him and cat him from the 
 side as they would a pie!" 
 
 And so we, Celt and Saxon, chaffed and 
 imagined things together. We talked, Ap- 
 pleton and I, of our boyish midnight exploits
 
 2O2 
 
 in the country, rind (iarrity told of the (|ueer 
 things aliove the boq-s and of tlie Panshce 
 which scream:; when death is to come in Irish 
 castles or anywhere in particular where Pan- 
 shees may roam. And then we leaned hack 
 indolently and smoked and said nothing and 
 looked southward, where the outlook from 
 our side < >f the ship Mended, despite the moon 
 light, into darkness. 
 
 A thin fo;j: came up and the lights of other 
 ships were hare!} visible. All at once, away 
 off to the ri;; ht loomed up something white 
 and ghostly. I*, seemed rushing hy in a direc 
 tion opposite our own. though this effect was 
 produced chielly l>v the speed of our own 
 jin eat craft. It was nut a sailing vessel, one of 
 the few vagrants Mill left upon the ocean. \\ e 
 all knew what it was, but the effect remained. 
 It recalled to my mind the old legend of the 
 sea and I mumbled out something about the 
 Flving I )utchman. 
 
 "1 \\i-h it were, by Jove I do!" said (lar- 
 rity. It would do one - eyes ^ ood to have 
 a MLdit of it. I have a sympathy for her. Poor 
 <ild tiling; sheV ^ ( in^ to be nni;hly lonesome 
 in the future. There may be piratc> a^ain, 
 there mav be tragedies galore on .shipboard
 
 ON BOARD THE ALASKA. 203 
 
 and, for aught 1 know, there may be another 
 ship destined to everlasting wanderings; but 
 the Flying Dutchman and she wouldn t 
 recognize each other as ships, were they to 
 meet. Imagine one of these iron steamships 
 turned into a Flying Dutchman! You d hear 
 reports from time to time from seafaring men 
 who, in latitude this and longitude that, saw 
 a mysterious old whaleback with a rusty turret 
 on, wallowing about and trying ineffectually 
 to sink, not a man visible, of course. No 
 spectral sails and no long-bearded men you 
 can see through on the deck below, nothing 
 but an old tub awash ! There s no romance, no 
 mystery, nothing to raise the hair on a man s 
 head in the idea! You might as well try to 
 make a Flying Dutchman out of a ware 
 house!"
 
 204 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 It was a morning of dazzling sunshine when 
 we met the llritish fleet off the "blue Ca 
 naries," those i>lands known to most Knglish 
 speaking people mainly through an old song. 
 It is a bine world down there; the water and 
 the sky are Hue as no\\h.ere el.-e in the At 
 lantic, ii seems to me, and the islands ri^e 
 misty and dreamy in another shade of blue 
 from the ocean s bosom. 
 
 All the world knows of that meeting of the 
 allied tleet< on that sunny morning. The dav 
 is already the ehox/ii theme ol poets and paint 
 ers, and has been described bv a thousand pens 
 with varying degree.- of enthnsia>m and truth. 
 
 Xo man ever saw a more impressive sight. 
 I can remember every detail of it as it looked 
 to me. but 1 am glad it docs not remain to me 
 to docribe it. 1 stood silently by Appleton 
 when we came in close view with our glares 
 of the iron mongers of the Ilriti.-h navy. As 
 the grim line of battle-ships gave forth their
 
 ARMAGEDDON. 205 
 
 din of salute to our flag-ship my heart jumped 
 into my throat, and tears found an unaccus 
 tomed place in my eyes. It was beautiful, but 
 with the beauty of terror, that assembly of 
 naked metal fighting machines lying there on 
 the strongly heaving yet unbroken sea of blue 
 water. How our men cheered as we swept 
 into that remote companionship which naval 
 custom prescribes for r-hips, and what deep, 
 loud cheering came across the water from our 
 kinsmen after the roaring cannons were still 
 and the flag dipping was over. 
 
 Then there was a great wig-wagging of sig 
 nals, and trim boats with jaunty crews clad in 
 snow-white went dancing about, carrying the 
 commanders to our Admiral s ship and him 
 to the British Admiral, who stood awaiting 
 his visitors on the deck of his own great bat 
 tle-ship. 
 
 I stood still on the Alaska s deck in a sort of 
 trance, so great and bewildering was the mo 
 ment of time in which I was living, and I re 
 member little more of that day or night, so 
 profound was the impression of that meeting 
 of giants on the heaving ocean. 
 
 Then that other storied morning when our 
 allied fleets met the cnemv, came in few days
 
 206 ARMA(;KI)1K)N. 
 
 or man\ ; it mattered not to us, so busy were 
 \ve, and so hot over the coming fight. \\ e 
 steered straight for Gibraltar, and the Latins 
 came out to meet us, as all the world knows, 
 and offered us battle before the German Ad 
 miral with his shi])S had joined them. \Ye 
 were prepared. \Ye had been awake all night, 
 and so had every soul in our allied squadrons, 
 and before the first streak of dawn, every man 
 was at his post on his ship read} for action. 
 
 Appleton was anxious about one tiling only, 
 an! that was, which way the wind was blow 
 ing. It meant evervthing to him, and to me; 
 nothing to anyone else around us. 
 
 There was no confusion nor disorder. 
 Kverything was so perfectly arranged for the 
 coming- fight that the officers and men near 
 us were idly curious over our getting away; 
 so free were their minds from cares of detail, 
 and their gallant hearts from any question as 
 to the outcome of the tremendous struggle in 
 which they were soon to be engaged. I!y the 
 growing light we worked, and I will admit 
 that I was one of the most frightened men 
 in the world when we began preparations for 
 lifting our miserable little air-machine from 
 the deck of the Alaska. There was nothing in
 
 ARMAGEDDON. 207 
 
 the surroundings to encourage a fellow. Even 
 the sailors grinned at us, though there may 
 have been a trace of pity in the expression of 
 some of their countenances because, of course, 
 they thought we would be drowned. But I 
 was the only funking man; as for Appleton, 
 he was so earnest and active and unthinking 
 of anything but success, that he was irritating 
 to me. O Brien was, as always, brimming 
 over with confidence, lie replied briskly to 
 the chaffing, and was happy. He had not yet 
 learned that lie was not to be taken with us 
 on the trip. Despite my own alarm, I found 
 occasion to get mad and wanted to throw at 
 Appleton one of the thole-pins which lay so 
 easy to my hand. I was quivering with anger 
 and impatience all the time I was aiding 
 him and disentangling and getting ready to 
 iloat aloft our preposterous old silvery-brown 
 cigar of a tiling, just a piece of impertinence 
 to be plumped up into the sky and intended, 
 with all arrogance, to set a new pace for the 
 war-prancing of the world, and to suggest new 
 premises and new ideas for the statesmen of 
 the world. 
 
 All the time Garrity danced about us and 
 did intelligently at least more work than I in
 
 JoS ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 the releasing of the air-machine and probably 
 as much as did Appleton. 1 think I fell more 
 in love \vith that wild Irislnnan on that partic 
 ular occasion than at any previous period of 
 (Mir acquaintance. There v;as something so as 
 tonishing in his activity in the cause with 
 \\hich he disagreed, and soniething so lovable 
 in his desire for immediate light, that I re 
 gretted from the bottom of my heart that he 
 \vas not to rise aloft with us. \\ e had. finally, 
 the assistance of the sailors, and at la>t the 
 Wild Goose began to put on airs. It lifted 
 itself from its ignoble place upon the deck and 
 exhibited anxiety to go somewhere. Some of 
 the uftlccrs of the vessel stood about us, and 
 the comments they made, even then, were 
 scandalous, ileing friend.-;, we chaffed at each 
 other in a way which could not otherwise have 
 been endured. Heing men about U> take our 
 lives in our hands, \\ e talked lightly of what 
 was about to happen. Those blaxing good fel 
 lows in bedecked uniforms laughed in my 
 face when I told them, jauntily and laughing 
 ly, that we were probably all that could save 
 them, although my heart was not a great way 
 from my mouth when I was doing all this 
 boasting. As for them, thev <implv counted
 
 ARMAGEDDON. 209 
 
 Applcton and me as dead men. We were 
 already instinctively relegated to the list of 
 those who must disappear in the action about 
 to follow. 
 
 Meanwhile Appleton was puttering around 
 and looking after details. Even at this late 
 day 1 question the course of that gentleman 
 at that particular juncture. lie should have 
 risen a little more to the heroic aspect of the 
 occasion. He didn t rise at all. He simply 
 trotted around with some small tool in his 
 hand, looking after the little things we were 
 to have with us and giving directions to 
 O Brien and the other fellows in a low and 
 pleasant voice. 
 
 When all was arranged for cutting loose, the 
 officers of the big warship gathered about 
 us, and I will say for them that then, at that 
 last moment, they showed a little feeling, for 
 there was a strong grip in the hand shakes 
 [ got. They thought us lunatics, but they 
 knew that so far as the United States of 
 America was concerned, our hearts were in 
 the right place and that, even though we 
 failed, we were brothers in arms and meant all 
 right. It was all good, but, by Jove! the airs 
 I ve put on over those officers when I ve met 
 
 14
 
 210 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 them since! The} didn t know the kind <f 
 people the} were taking leave of! They were 
 nieivlv good hearted, plucky and half-sorrow 
 ful fellows seeing us, as they thought, depart 
 to death. 
 
 Poor O nrien! At the last day Appleton 
 had decided against his going with us, and he 
 was disconsolate. The risk" was too great, and 
 then the weight of one more person counted 
 in (Mir frail lighting machine. 
 
 And then, just then, as if to spoil our mo 
 ment of farewell. O P.rien, the faithful, who 
 had been working inside the carrier, on the 
 machinery, discovered some defect in one of 
 the automatic air-pumps. Appleton sprang 
 impatiently into the carrier, and l>egan fu- 
 rinusly examining as to the trouble. An 
 hour s delay might mean everlasting failure. 
 Then there 1 came a signal, and in a moment 
 we were forgotten, we three forlorn land-luh- 
 hers. l>v everyone on that ship. 
 
 The advance ships of the enemy were in 
 sight. 
 
 \Ve fumed and fretted, unheard and un 
 noted, and neither knew nor cared what was 
 going on around us. ( hir ship, we realized, 
 was under increased speed, and after a while
 
 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 we heard the deep roar of distant guns, Japan 
 ese, as we learned later. O Brien, who was 
 at Appleton s side, just lifted his head and 
 said : 
 
 "It s begun!" 
 
 Now the little break in machinery had 
 been repaired, although not to O Brien s 
 satisfaction. He begged to be taken with 
 us. 
 
 "Youse ll need me, Air. Appleton; won t 
 you, Mr. AYentworth?" he said earnestly. "Let 
 me go." 
 
 But Appleton had decided once for all. 
 Something in the look he gave O Brien made 
 me understand why he ordered him to re 
 main. It made me quake a little for a mo 
 ment, but Appleton called to me to take my 
 place in the carrier of the machine, and the 
 quaking was over. 
 
 Just as we got under way the Alaska, which 
 had wheeled into her place in the line of 
 action, let go one of her great guns, and as if 
 impelled by its shock and roar, we rose swift 
 ly into the air. \Ye were still practically un 
 noticed and unconsidered, though people 
 ordinarily watch the rising of a balloon or any 
 thing like it, and we attracted no attention
 
 212 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 fmm the other ships. Those aboard had too 
 much on their minds to devote anv attention 
 to the cx])erimcnt of a eonple of presumable 
 fools. They had a fight on hand, the result 
 of which would be to test the soundness of all 
 theories eonnected with the fighting of men in 
 iron ships. Our experiment might do to talk 
 about afterward. Neither friend nor foe 
 thought of us at all. \Ye gave much thought, 
 however, to the enemy. A shot from them 
 would have been an unwelcome visitor to us 
 just as we left the ship, and we could not help 
 knowing that at first we were a fair mark. \Ye 
 rose quickly, once started, and then wavered 
 and hung above the Alaska, not yet out of 
 range, and for the moment far from safe.
 
 APPLETON BECOMES "PRACTICAL." 213 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 APPLETON BECOMES "PRACTICAL." 
 
 It is not injustice to say of the \Yilcl Goose 
 that immediately after her swift departure 
 from the warship, though she carried two 
 Qrsars and their fortunes, she behaved in a 
 most unpatriotic, not to say uncertain, man 
 ner. Something" did not work well I don t 
 remember now just what it was but it did not 
 work, and the question was imminent for a 
 second or two as to whether we should "seek 
 the ether," a proceeding which we had often 
 alluded to in our conversations, or suddenly 
 drop flatly or sideways, or any other way, into 
 what I had been accustomed to describe in 
 talks of anticipation with Appleton, as "a 
 watery grave." Appleton had hitherto replied 
 to such allusions irrelevantly, though in a loud 
 and resonant voice. Now we both thought a 
 good deal, but said nothing about the ether 
 or the water. The machinery yielded to Ap- 
 pleton s coaxing at last, after a fashion, and 
 just in time, and then the Wild Goose seemed
 
 rather to seek the companionship of the li^ lit 
 el m<ls that were hovering far above, than of 
 the sharks whose fins were cutting the water 
 below. Onee under way we arose steadily, 
 surelv and safely, and with all the propellers 
 driving furiously at command. \Ye cheeked 
 our course, I judged, about a mile above the 
 ocean. Then came the problem, the first i;Teat 
 test, as to how practically dirigible we were 
 under such conditions. We had an amazing 
 amount of doubt about ourselves, and our 
 feelings of uncertainty were subsequently 
 justified, but, fortunately for civilization, not 
 at that moment. We rose after dipping once 
 or twice, and somehow llmindered though 
 lloundered doesn t seem a s^ood word in de 
 scribing the way of t^ettin^" alon^ r in the upper 
 depths on to the eastward, then steered to 
 reach a position over the enemy s ships, and 
 faced what we had hoped not to find a push- 
 in L;" upper wind from the cast. Could we over 
 come it? \Ve didn t km>w. and upon the issue 
 of a little flight. away rp in the sky, between 
 liquified air, adapted to a use bv the brain 
 which (iod has inven man, and the fierce air 
 currents which (iod sends around the world, 
 depended a i^rcat issue. It was clear it was
 
 AI PLETON BECOMES "PRACTICAL.- 215 
 
 in one way air against air, but the fight was 
 unequal. The vast ocean of air remained still 
 barren of an idea. The air opposing it had 
 been impregnated and turned into a force 
 through the medium of man s intelligence. 
 
 Fluttering, pushing, almost at a standstill, 
 far above the sea, hung the Wild Goose, a mile 
 or two away from our own fleets upon the 
 waters and seeking to attain just the position 
 we wanted above the Slavs and Latins. It 
 nosed and pushed and bustled, while we did 
 all we could with all the forces at hand, but 
 still the fierce wind from the cast, fighting 
 valorously against us as did the stars against 
 Sisera, kept us high in the air between heaven 
 and earth, hanging, to quote the hack simile, 
 like Mahomet s coffin, though I hope that in 
 Mahomet s coffin has never been used such 
 language as was used by us yet we kept 
 fumbling along toward the place we sought. 
 
 It was wonderful, what lay beneath us, when 
 we had dug our way against the upper wind 
 to a standstill above the fighting fleets, for the 
 battle was on. Very beautiful was the scene. 
 There lay upon the water the two navies, one 
 to the east, the other to the west, rushing 
 toward each other and, so great are the carry-
 
 216 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 iug powers of modern cannon, belching forth 
 sliots which wrought deadly mischief when the 
 ships were yet miles apart. And all this under 
 a summer sky, with the air blowing well, too 
 well almost for us in its upper depths, and the 
 sun shining brightly. Tossing and glittering 
 beneath the radiance were the ships but what 
 use is there in talking about it? Overhead, 
 far overhead, hung the Wild Goose, laden 
 with explosives and trying to reach the center 
 of operations. Upon the sea at one point the 
 Slav and Latin watched angrily and fought 
 bravely with no thought of surrender, unmind 
 ful still of two unknown and unsung individ 
 uals who were about to drop things from 
 above. In one of Macaulay s poems he tells 
 of the great Twin brethren who assisted in 
 some fight between the Romans and other 
 Latins of the outlying provinces. Pshaw! 
 They or any other twin brethren were but as 
 thistledown compared with us up there in that 
 throbbing machine, scared but hopeful. 
 
 Suddenly the east \vind fell. Maybe a 
 waterspout had sucked something down or 
 lifted something up away off in the wide ocean 
 of waters. Somehow the wind fell and the 
 "Wild Goose, slowly at first, crept into the face
 
 APPLETON BECOMES "PRACTICAL." 217 
 
 of the current and eventually hung almost 
 stationary over the opposing fleet. Then be 
 gan the trouble between Appleton and me, 
 trouble entirely personal and meaning nothing 
 save the wrangling between two fellows who 
 loved each other, and who were working with 
 every force of mind and nervous energy to 
 gether, life or death to ourselves being entire 
 ly out of mind. 
 
 It had been arranged that Appleton, know 
 ing how to handle the air-machine he was 
 rather vain over it, I say it now again rather 
 vain that Appleton should hold the machine 
 above the object of attack and that I should be 
 the aerial marksman whose business it would 
 be to drop things accurately. 
 
 Xow that we found ourselves hanging just 
 where we wanted to be, namely, over one of 
 the enemy s great warships, came the hurried 
 debate, a debate as to the manner in which 
 from a point a mile high in the air, a certain 
 substance called dynamite should be dropped 
 most accurately upon a ship floating on the 
 water directly below. 
 
 Fur such fame arid reputation as may come 
 to a man who has devised the best way of 
 dropping dynamite, and steering it straight
 
 2l8 ARMAGK1 >!>( >.V 
 
 downward, I want, at this point, to put in an 
 earnest claim. Applcton is all right in his way. 
 of course; he invented tlus luting tiling, but it 
 was I. I who am writing this story, who de 
 vised the gun \\hich shot with no nonsense 
 about trajectories, and the gun which alwavs 
 hits its mark unless tliere was some fault in 
 the human aiming, \\diile \\ e had been argu 
 ing I had been aiming. an<l Appleton had been 
 examining with his glass what lay directly be 
 neath us on the water. lie stopped all talk 
 ing bv quictlv saying that our mark was the 
 Russian flagship, the Russian Admiral being 
 evidently in supreme command of the engage 
 ment then going on between the lleets of the 
 w< >rld. 
 
 "The time lias come," said Applcton. 
 
 The big gun of this warship of the sky was 
 a >imple thing. It was but a hole in the bot 
 tom of the carrier, a sort of a trap-door, three 
 feet square, which turned back on lunge-. 
 And we had a sort of plummet arrangement 
 invented, as alreadv intimated, by me, in 
 which I took great pride. It was only a 
 slender rod of lead, with rear and fore sights 
 upon it, and it located a point below to a nice 
 ty. \Ve hung thus, far above the Czar, and
 
 APPLETON BECOMES "PRACTICAL." 219 
 
 Appleton managed the craft, moving here and 
 there as I called out to him. Then, finally, I 
 got what seemed a reasonably good aim and 
 dropped one of the great charges of explosive. 
 
 \Ye watched the descent of the mass with all 
 anxiety and there came to me, a little later, a 
 sensation of astonishment and deep disgust 
 commingled. For what I saw was this: The 
 thing rushed downward until it disappeared 
 from sight and then, close beside the Czar, 
 rose a vast mountain of snow! I knew what 
 had occurred. I had missed the ironclad, but 
 the impact upon the water of the mass 
 dropped from a height so great had been such 
 that the dynamite had exploded as if hurled 
 downward upon a field of iron. The moun 
 tain of snow was but the water of the Atlantic 
 torn into a feathery mass and thrown into all 
 directions. For a minute the Czar was in 
 visible. Then the snow mountain disappeared 
 and the ironclad was riding the ocean still; 
 but tossing as if upon a tidal wave. 
 
 I was enraged. Something; of what men 
 have called the lust of battle seemed to come 
 upon me. I must strike the Czar, and there 
 were not too many packages of the dynamite
 
 ARMAGKDIX >N. 
 
 remaining! I was an^ry with Appleton. un- 
 reasi >nal >lv. 
 
 "\\ hy don t you stead}- her?" I roared. 
 "\\ hy don t you show that you can manage 
 your own craft? You ve nothing" to hra^ 
 about !" 
 
 Appleton not blamable at all was hu 
 miliated deeply. "I ll try to do better next 
 time." he said, and I seixed another package 
 of dynamite, adjusted it, .and prepared for 
 another cast. The slight was taken a^ ain and 
 the terrible tiling dropped. 
 
 \\"hat happened then changed what will be 
 the story of all wars of the future. Yet I can 
 tell little of it. There was the mountain of 
 snow a^ ain; that was all. P.ut when it dis 
 appeared there was no C xar riding the waters 
 of the Atlantic ( )cean. 
 
 I was wild: "Drive her ahead!" 1 shouted. 
 "1 )rive her over that bi^ ship to the left !" and 
 he did as I demanded. A^ain there was the 
 steadvin^ r and aiming. a 4 ain the discharge and 
 a repetition of the awful tragedy below. I 
 was mad as any Hersekcr. Applcton turned 
 to me exeitedly: 
 
 "What shall we do? Look out for our flag 
 ship and see what they are doini; below there!"
 
 APPLETON BECOMES "PRACTICAL." 221 
 
 We looked through our glasses and saw 
 what made our hearts heat wildly and made 
 us shout together. Xo longer came white 
 puffs of smoke from any of the army of iron 
 monsters. Instead there was a Mutter of white 
 Hags to the cast and a, to us, soundless con 
 centration of the navies which we guessed 
 meant not further battle, but surrender, sur 
 render partly, it may be, because of the havoc 
 wrought by the Anglo-American and Japan 
 ese fleets upon the enemy, but chiefly because 
 of this dreadful creature of the skies. The bat 
 tle upon the seas was ended. Our shot had 
 thrown everything into confusion by demol 
 ishing the enemy s flagship, to say nothing of 
 our second victim, and I looked across the 
 narrow 7 space into Appleton s face. Its ex 
 pression was inscrutable. I inferred that he 
 was as puzzled regarding my own look for he 
 remarked, apropos of nothing: "\Yhat is the 
 matter, old man?" and a moment later ex 
 claimed: "We must get down." 
 
 We had accomplished our mission; we felt 
 in our hearts that we were the only people of 
 prominence existing, and the next thing was 
 to get back to glory and the Alaska. We 
 prepared to descend in one of those long
 
 222 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 graceful sweeps, l.nt \\hen we started to de 
 scend the long graceful sweep somehow dis 
 appeared from the practical work of my friend 
 Appleton, who, I still insist, is a good engi 
 neer. Something had given way again and 
 this time seriously. I don t know what the 
 matter was; I didn t know then, but it was 
 plain that we were in desperate straits. I only 
 know now that the tiling of the air, the terri 
 ble \\ild (.loose, did not come down in any 
 graceful sweep at all: I know that the men 
 upon it felt themselves going sudden! v to 
 their doom and I mean a doom with a big D. 
 There was a little power left somewhere 
 among the parts of the machinery; some pro- 
 pellor was still whirling in a vague and kindly 
 helping but weak way, and I. wondering what 
 Appleton was thinking about, was painfully 
 aware that we were slipping down the air 
 bank into the Atlantic ( )cean. Personally 
 1 felt, considering the slant we had, that the 
 Wild ("loose would, before it stopped, burrow 
 its nose in among some mermaids with sea 
 (lowers in their hair, ami then dive deeper and 
 lie still in the mush of rotting galleons lost 
 centuries ago. Something gave way again, 
 and we slanted less and fmallv shot down into
 
 AFI LETON BECOMES "PRACTICAL." 223 
 
 the sea with a vigor which was wonderful. 
 The details of this disaster are scant in my 
 mind. I remember that an admirable thing 
 devised and managed, up to a certain point, 
 by two good Americans dived and that one 
 Mr. Appleton and I leaped away as the thing 
 pierced the ocean; and, our eccentricity and 
 uncertainty having been observed from the 
 Alaska and not only observed but construed 
 correctly as to what it meant, that almost as 
 soon as we had leaped and gone under and 
 then come gasping to the surface a boat 
 reached us and we were taken aboard and 
 hurried to the warship. I remember that our 
 clothes fitted us with too exceeding closeness 
 and that, helpless and wet, with these clinging 
 garments upon us, with our hair hanging lank 
 and flat beside our faces, and with our two 
 selves badly scared and out of breath and 
 wondering what we had done, and the Wild 
 Goose resting on the ocean s floor I remem 
 ber that as we came up, still dripping, from the 
 boat to the deck, there wasn t any discipline 
 upon the ship of war Alaska, that is, for the 
 moment. I think the officers were even worse 
 than the men. They came tumbling toward 
 us in a lump and the language they used
 
 22 \ ARM AC. KD DON. 
 
 well, it was such as fellov. s use to other fel- 
 lo\vs \vho arc thought to have done a good 
 thing. 
 
 I \vas surprised at Appleton. \Ye had lost 
 the \Yild (loose. \Ye were half drowned, shat 
 tered in nerve, and did not, even now, know 
 \vhat had really happened on the waters about 
 us. and yet that arrogant inventor put on as 
 many airs, as he clambered over the rail and 
 braced himself opposite me on the deck, as it 
 he were the admiral of all the licet. As for 
 me. 1 will say that, imitating, as a good sub 
 ordinate >hould, the manner of my superior. 
 I assumed at once, though wet and cold and 
 shaken, a proud and haughty air, somewhat 
 marred by my inclination to laugh when 1 saw 
 OT.rien among the throng pressing toward 
 us and giving vent to the shri .i whoop of 
 South Ilalsted Street. However, we did very 
 well, and Appleton certainly maintained the 
 manner of one of those gentlemen to whom 
 the Romans were accustomed to give a tri 
 umph, and who rode down the Roman streets 
 with leaves about his head, and a lot of prison 
 ers and plunder tailing after him. 
 
 I was taken to my cabin and got into clean 
 clothes, as did Appleton, and later I met the
 
 APPLETON BECOMES "PRACTICAL." 225 
 
 officers of the Alaska. I was affable, simply 
 affable, that was all there was to it. I ought 
 to have been kicked from one end of that 
 battle-stained ship to the other because of my 
 patronizing demeanor. Appleton was too 
 earnest to be foolish, but the calm and lordly 
 manner in which I talked with those officers, 
 commenting upon the weather or whether 
 they thought Smith s latest book better than 
 that of Jones, or what they guessed would be 
 the result of the coming election in the Four 
 teenth Congressional District of Iowa the 
 manner in which I did that I shall always think 
 was fine. There wasn t an officer on board the 
 Alaska who had not an earnest and whole 
 some desire to get me out somewhere and lick 
 me, and there wasn t an officer on board the 
 Alaska who wasn t justified in this impulse 
 because of the quiet, but almost dcmigodly 
 way I had assumed. I have been informed 
 since, confidentially, by certain officers of the 
 ship, that I escaped by only a hair s breadth, 
 and I have been equally confidential in telling 
 them that, even in my own opinio-n, the slay 
 ing would have been justifiable. 
 
 Meanwhile Appleton and the captain were 
 conferring in the cabin, and there was much
 
 226 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 si^ nalini; between the admirals of the fleets. 
 An hour later a boat was lowered and Apple- 
 ton and the captain of the Alaska went away 
 to a conference of commanders on board the 
 American ila^ ship. 
 
 I thought of Helen Da^^art, as I looked 
 after Appleton. "lie has become practical, 
 1 said, under my breath, addressing myself, 
 for want of a better listener.
 
 AFTER THE BATTLE. 227 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 AFTER THE BATTLE. 
 
 Before morning Appleton and I had 
 learned, and taken to heart, what had hap 
 pened on the water while we were hovering 
 above the fighting fleets. 
 
 We missed some faces from among our 
 naval comrades and associates. A shell had 
 struck the Alaska, killing and wounding offi 
 cers and men, and there was a great hole 
 where the missile had torn its way through 
 wood and iron. There were wounded men 
 below and dead to be buried in the sea. 
 
 As we slowly regained a normal condition 
 of mind, we realized that in our shaking, 
 quivering sky machine we had simply given 
 the last stroke to a series of blows by which 
 the enemy had been disastrously and com 
 pletely defeated and about reduced to uncon 
 ditional surrender. When our shot dropped 
 from above, sinking their flagship, their losses 
 had already been appalling, and our second 
 charge had sunk the finest Italian ship afloat.
 
 228 ARMAGKDDOX. 
 
 The great guns and dynamite tubes of the 
 Americans and English had already sunk 
 man\- a gallant cruiser and battleship. Others 
 had limped away to the rear of their lines, dis 
 abled or sinking. Thousands of lives had been 
 yielded up there that day on both sides 
 brave men s lives, all. The Russian Admiral 
 had been, as we had surmised, in supreme 
 command, and our play in the game came just 
 in time, not only sinking the flagship, but in 
 terfering witli the rally of its forces. There 
 must have been a panic among the French, 
 Italians and Russians, Austrians and all in the 
 great fleet. Anyway, they struck their flags 
 and flew the emblem of submission, and so 
 the end came, and the details, to the last item, 
 all the world knows. 
 
 Our eyes opened wide as we heard for the 
 first time the now oft repeated story of the 
 fight. Especially were we delighted over the 
 pluck of the Japanese. Their bold return of 
 the fire of the enemy, when they were sudden 
 ly attacked on their way to meet us, tickled 
 our whole fleet. Anyone else would have 
 run away, but not the Japs. That they simply 
 turned and fought until we came up with them
 
 AFTER THE BATTLE. 229 
 
 was something which endeared them at once 
 and forever to the Anglo-American navy. 
 
 We were told, too, that there was good 
 prospect for a struggle to come as nothing 
 had been seen of the formidable German 
 fleet, the one from which the most of a fight 
 was expected, and the admiral of which, we 
 had believed, would command the enemy. It 
 is a matter of history now, how the German 
 Admiral did not arrive in time, and how he was 
 forestalled by the Russians and French, 
 backed up by their allies. We were, of course, 
 ignorant of the real situation but we expected 
 battle with the Germans at once, and every 
 effort was put forth by our forces to give the 
 German Admiral a reception fitting such a dis 
 tinguished and self-satisfied commander. 
 
 \Ye had, now, a new impression of our com 
 bined navies, and the enemies fleets. While 
 we had been wavering up and slanting down, 
 and struggling for our lives on the Wild 
 Goose, we had caught views which remained, 
 instantaneous pictures, imprinted on the mind 
 forever. It was like a great city upon the 
 water, stretching away for miles, that gigantic 
 collection of ships. The English navy alone 
 was so immense simply measured by the space
 
 230 ARMAGKDDON. 
 
 it covered, as to bewilder us. The American 
 licet showed strong and great \\hen alone on 
 the seas, and was an impressive sight, but be 
 side the tremendous gathering of ( /reat I>rit- 
 ain s sea forces, it looked small. In mere num 
 bers the Anglo-American licet had been over 
 powering before the fight, and now, when so 
 many of the enemies ships had been added 
 by conquest, the Armada was such as the 
 world had never seen before, nor even dreamed 
 of. 
 
 When darkness fell over the waters on the 
 night after the battle the Alaska was one of 
 this immense coinpanv of great iron sea mon 
 sters on which there was little rest. During 
 the night, our wounded having been trans 
 ferred to the hospital -Oiip and our dead hav 
 ing been given a sailor s burial, we got under 
 way and when morning broke our ship was 
 one of a long line, far out cm the seas, making 
 a wide detour to assist in closing in on the 
 ( iermans. We saw nothing of the actual 
 operations by which the great ( ierman licet 
 was brought to terms. We were too far on 
 the outer rim of the victorious lines. It was 
 a foregone conclusion, however. Nothing 
 could withstand the forces gathered under the
 
 AFTER THE BATTLE. 231 
 
 Anglo-American and Japanese banners there 
 in the East Atlantic. We were so sure of the 
 result that it was not even a matter of discus 
 sion, and no one was surprised when, early on 
 the following morning, the German surrender 
 was announced. 
 
 \Yc imagined, even then, the rage of the 
 German Emperor, over the jealous haste of 
 his allies, and the balking of his plans. I have 
 often thought since that it was all as if well 
 planned for the ultimate unity and glory of 
 our race. The Germans accepted the situa 
 tion with commendable perspicacity and self- 
 control. The event of that day taught a last 
 ing lesson. Germany began to see where her 
 true interest lay and where was her place in 
 the affairs of mankind according to her ethical 
 relations and her traditions. The first steps 
 she took toward Anglo-Saxon solidarity were 
 through the bitter ashes of defeat, but they led 
 toward the paths of wisdom and the calm 
 heights of peace at last. 
 
 It is strange how little one may know of 
 great events when they are passing near, even 
 tinder one s eyes. Much of what we saw on 
 those last days in European waters we had to 
 interpret by the light of future developments.
 
 2 $2 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 The days passed, and \ve led the lazy life of 
 the homeward hound. A \var>hip after a hat- 
 tie, especially after war discipline is relaxed, 
 teems with talk and story and gossip as fairly 
 as does a clnh. Kveryone has something to 
 tell and everyone has time to listen. 
 
 Our officers had many a eonfah of starrv 
 nights and on lone;, uneventful (lavs, and Ap~ 
 pleton was hy far the most thoughtful man 
 on hoard the Alaska, lie hore his hon<>r> 
 with manly modest} ; wa< frank and open in 
 explanations of his views as to the outcome 
 of mechanical devices in war hut never gave 
 an inkling of the secret of the Wild Goose. 
 That remains his own, shared alone with me. 
 to this day. 
 
 We were often questioned concerning the 
 details of the light as we saw it. Of course 
 no one ever before had such a chance for a 
 birdseyc view of a battle, and equally, of 
 course, no one who had such a point of view 
 could ever, tinder such circumstances, have 
 seen anything definitely. We had seen some 
 thing, though, and knew what we were talk 
 ing about, and when we said that what we saw 
 was groups of dark spots lying on the water 
 beneath us, and told how like tov Xoah s arks
 
 AFTER THE BATTLE. 233 
 
 the great ships looked when we were so far 
 above the water, there was a general laugh 
 of incredulity. It seemed too much to believe, 
 just the plain truth. 
 
 One day when we were spinning yarns on 
 deck Appleton asked junior lieutenant, Gar- 
 rity: What was that chase we saw the be 
 ginning of, toward the end of the fight the 
 other day?" 
 
 "Yes," I chimed in, "I have thought of that 
 a dozen times! What yacht was that skipping 
 away, with a fast cruiser after it? No one 
 seemed to pay any attention to the chase 
 we ourselves didn t, after the first moment. 
 \Ye had other matters to attend to." 
 
 "So did we," said Garrity, "but that yacht 
 you saw running away was The Gauntlet or 
 the Gore-Gulper, as some prefer to call the 
 craft." 
 
 "Oh! said Appleton, a great light breaking 
 in on him, and "Oh!" said I, and we all 
 laughed together. 
 
 The yacht Gauntlet had been chartered by 
 a syndicate of two or three sensational news 
 papers of the class run shrewdly to skim the 
 cream from the sea we call the masses, news 
 papers necessarily on the frothy and generally
 
 234 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 wrong side, but with plenty of money and 
 energy. The Gauntlet was \vcll equipped. 
 The "Commissioner," as they called the news 
 paper man in charge of the boat, and the 
 group of reporters who accompanied him 
 had done some exceedingly clever work in the 
 literary world and was a right good fellow. 
 Through the pages of his books and. maga 
 zine stories he had posed somewhat as a man 
 of blood and iron and his hat had become a 
 trifle tight. Tie was most blood thirst} in his 
 newspaper dispatches now. and so it came 
 that throughout the fleet the name Gauntlet 
 had been dropped and the vacht was gener 
 ally alluded to as the "Gore-Gulper." She 
 was certainly a fast yacht and whatever may 
 have been the seamanlike or unseamanlike 
 qualities of the popular writer, the hired cap 
 tain and crew were sea-dogs equal to an emer 
 gency and the yacht was as staunch as she 
 was fast. The commander-in-chief or "Com 
 missioner" of the Gauntlet had looked upon 
 the Wild Goose and upon Appleton and me 
 with contempt from the beginning. The fact 
 of our proence upon one of the warships had 
 been barely mentioned, with some supercil 
 ious comment, in one of his dispatches, and it
 
 AFTER THE BATTLE. 2 
 
 may be that there is a shadow of prejudice 
 what 1 say. I think not, though. 
 
 Then Garrity told us the story of the begin 
 ning of the wild flight of the Gauntlet a 
 story, as has since appeared, without an end 
 ing. As Garrity went along with it we were 
 able to supplement the tale, from our brief 
 observations, at least so far as the beginning 
 
 o o 
 
 of the race was concerned. 
 
 Hovering about the fleet during the pro 
 gress of the light and keeping, with much dis 
 cretion and good sense out of the varying lines 
 of fire, the Gauntlet seemed to be getting most 
 valuable information of the sort to enable a 
 grand description of a grand sea fight. This 
 was her enviable condition up to a certain 
 time. Then suddenly out from the mass of 
 warships to the far left darted a small cruiser 
 which evidently regarded the Gauntlet as its 
 particular prey. Of course it was infamous 
 and a shame that a fast yacht carrying gentle 
 men of large brains, whose mission it was to 
 tell such a story of a sea fight as had never 
 been written on sea or land before, should be 
 chased by a beastly warship with guns poking 
 out threateningly. However, let it be said 
 of the great representatives of unreliable
 
 journalism that not for an instant did thev 
 lose their seli"-])os>es>ion. The (lar.ntlet turned 
 and fled, fled fast and far, and the fast cruiser 
 followed. The name of this cruiser, a Span 
 iard. Garrity declared, was the Polo y P>arnebe 
 J )oin el Santa Kosabelle. 
 
 Away they went, straight for the northeast, 
 far, far from scenes of battle and disaster. 
 From our vast height in the \Yild Goose we 
 could note them \\ell. The Gauntlet fairly 
 (lev/, but then so did the Santa I\o.-abelle and 
 the distance between them seemed to neither 
 increase nor decrease until the} slipped from 
 sight. 
 
 AS a matter of fact, both vessels were picked 
 up by a vagrant American cruiser a week 
 later, the Kosabelle still in pursuit of the 
 Gauntlet, while sloshing about in the Hay of 
 Fundy: but this story is not accepted by a 
 large proportion of the seafaring world. 
 
 As time passed, long after our voyage was 
 ended, strange talcs came filtering up from 
 seaport towns of what had been seen by 
 veracious sailor men in various portions of the 
 seven seas. They all tended to one end; that 
 somewhere there was dread flight and fierce 
 pursuit by two modern craft of modern sixe.
 
 AFTER THE BATTLE. 237 
 
 From all kinds of reliable seamen of all nation 
 alities the stories came and from various seas 
 and ports. The crew of some sardine fishing 
 boat of the Mediterranean would sec passing 
 them in the night, first a craft resembling the 
 Gauntlet and next the one recognized as the 
 Santa Rosabelle. Then the honest French fish 
 ermen would cross themselves and wonder 
 what it meant, and tell the story in Lyons and 
 Marseilles. Next some Norwegian captain 
 would report that, off Iceland, just in the trail 
 of the black water across which danced to first 
 discovery of America Red Eric and his cock 
 leshells, beneath the shadow over the sea from 
 hills where the Norns sit knitting things he 
 had seen, slipping along, the Gauntlet with 
 the Santa Rosabelle just out of range behind. 
 Again some desperate adventurer, seeking the 
 South Pole, would report that in latitude 
 mighty near the end, and in longitude almost 
 nothing, across a great open sea which he 
 couldn t reach because his ship was locked in 
 and his sledge dogs dead and his crew down 
 with scurvy, he saw, through the frosty mist, 
 what seemed to be a flight and a pursuit, and 
 he described the vessels and what excellent
 
 238 ARMAGKDDON. 
 
 time they were making in the distant open 
 water \vhilc the sea lions yelped. 
 
 Then from la/y latitudes, where the women 
 don t wear much and the men wear less, where 
 the beachcomber has a family of forty and 
 makes his grandchildren do all the work, there 
 would come, and still come, tales of this ever 
 lasting chase, with the Santa Rosabella ever 
 on the Gauntlet s water trail. Or, it may be, 
 that some tramp steamer, skirting the Sargos- 
 sa Sea in some trade adventure, reports that, 
 away off among the weeds of the waveless 
 ocean, its lookout discovered a pair of craft, 
 one evidently in pursuit of the other, which 
 cut through the mass of vegetation as though 
 it were but skim milk, and so passed out of 
 view. 
 
 1 dun t know what to think of the story my 
 self. I m becoming impressed. I m getting in 
 clined to have an interest in it and am making 
 no absolute assertions. All I know about the 
 chase is that I saw the start. 
 
 Other incidents as grotesque, among the 
 manv tragical, were told of the great sea fray, 
 and there was much overflow of spirits among 
 the conquerors homeward bound. So must 
 have been ruggedly joyous the Greeks sailing
 
 AFTER THE BATTLE. 239 
 
 back from Salamis, the men of Drake turning 
 reluctantly from the flanks of the storm-driven 
 Armada, or those sailing homeward from Tra 
 falgar. And, looking at the sun-browned 
 sailors I thought of how they would "make 
 Rome howl" as did the sailors fresh from Ac- 
 tium, only it would not be Rome literally 
 where would occur the blithesome "howling" 
 this time, but Liverpool and London, and 
 New York and Chicago, and Tokio and Yo- 
 kohoma and a thousand other cities, coast and 
 inland. It was a buoyant company on every 
 ship, but there was thought among the offi 
 cers. Did they foresee the time when, possi 
 bly, their occupation would be gone?
 
 240 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 THE ANGLO-SAXON UNION. 
 
 The world was in perplexity. The war had 
 practically ended and the Anglo-Saxon was 
 now dominating the world. All was hesi 
 tancy and apprehension and the greater minds 
 of all the nations civilized were active to seize 
 or save. Unt there came no grasping in the 
 mediaeval way; broader thoughts, Christian 
 thoughts, greater comprehension in the mind 
 of the human being, all tended toward the 
 making of what was best. There was no 
 startling new alignment of the boundaries be 
 tween countries. The map-maker, in chang 
 ing his maps, had only to put a dot here and 
 there upon his islands of the seas and upon his 
 continents dots insignificant, but represent 
 ing so many Cibraltars, and indicating the im 
 mediate coming government of the globe. 
 This was done swiftly, though only after a 
 hurriedly convened and, in one sense, forced 
 Congress of the great powers. 
 
 Never were negotiations more pregnant for
 
 THE ANGLO-SAXON UNION. 241 
 
 the future; never came together statesmen 
 more keen of edge and arrogant or hopeful, 
 as the case might be; never before had the 
 assembled politicians or the men of war who 
 were representatives, faced a problem the 
 equations of which were so indefinite. That 
 the Anglo-American alliance would now be 
 extended to become comprehensively Anglo- 
 Saxon was understood by all, but under what 
 conditions? There were other problems to be 
 considered as well. 
 
 The Congress met in Amsterdam. Geneva 
 was first suggested, as a matter of habit, but 
 this was a gathering where salt sea winds 
 should be felt and an atmosphere of intel 
 lectual freedom and practicality. There has 
 been a flavor of freedom and practicality in 
 the Low Countries since long before Alva 
 learned how keen were Dutch blades and how 
 deep Dutch water. 
 
 The deliberations of the Congress were 
 earnest and long-continued. There were, 
 speaking broadly, arrayed on one side Great 
 Britain and her dependencies, the United 
 States, Germany allowed Japan, the Neth 
 erlands, Norway and Sweden and Denmark. 
 
 In opposition and in comparatively submis- 
 ic
 
 - 4-2 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 sive opposition, were arrayed France and 
 Spain and Portugal and Jtaly and Russia and 
 Austria, and at heart -most of the republics 
 of South America. Racial and religious in 
 stincts had full sway in the convention. It is 
 hut justice to say that the lately successful in 
 war were more than indulgent in the quality 
 of demands made, much discussed and ulti 
 mately enforced in the convention. 
 
 The conquerors said, "\Ye are the conquer 
 ors. Rightly or wrongly, we consider our 
 selves the approved of Providence in directing 
 most of the affairs of the world, and we pro 
 pose, for the present, to direct them. We do 
 not intend, to take your territory, hut we do 
 intend to establish our authority as para 
 mount, and centuiics may pass before you 
 a^ r ain acquire the position you lately held rela 
 tively, even if you develop a ditYerent growth. 
 We believe that we are the people most 
 adapted for the population of new lands and 
 propose to act in accordance with this idea. 
 We hold, for instance, that the development of 
 Africa, the new continent, to be civili/ed is best 
 in our hands, and \ve piefer that as it is i^radu- 
 . .lly populated in its richer portions by the 
 huropean overflow, that overflow shall not be
 
 THE ANGLO-SAXON UNION. 243 
 
 Latin. The French, Spanish and Portuguese 
 occupancy of that continent must cease with 
 the signing of this contract. We have fancies 
 about the idea of a railroad which shall run 
 from Alexandria to Cape Town. The adminis 
 tration of the long neglected continent has 
 passed from your hands entirely as one of the 
 results of the late encounter. This is under 
 stood between the Americans and Britons, 
 and the details arc left to Great Britain and her 
 European colleagues in the Congress. As to 
 other fields, America, with her millions and 
 millions of unoccupied square miles, demands 
 at this time no land which she has not already 
 taken. She has territory enough, a roadway 
 around the world, and offers a home and more 
 to all of her kind who may come. No longer, 
 though, will she allow the addition to her pop 
 ulation of ignorant, helpless millions, hope 
 lessly pauperized, alien in race, language and 
 affiliations. There is room for the Hun and 
 Latin steerage loads in South America, where 
 there is a continent not yet half conquered 
 from nature, and where the immigrants may 
 become pioneers and men instead of parasites 
 and dependents. The immigration laws of the 
 United States will henceforth be distinctly -par-
 
 244 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 tial. There will be an exercise of the law of 
 might, but, none the less, will it be one of self- 
 preservation. 
 
 To the Russian representative, to the Slav, 
 baftled again as has happened to him so often 
 within the later centuries, a tone was adopted 
 even more distinct : "You may be the coming- 
 force in the history of the world." it was said, 
 "but your time has not yet come. We propose 
 to hold the Bosphorus, propose to say what 
 ships you may for the next ten years build in 
 the lllack Sea or at any of your lately gained 
 Asiatic ports. You must wait." 
 
 There was protest, but it was vain, for what 
 argument could be made by a group with no 
 efficient navies behind it to a group controll 
 ing the warships of the world? There was lit 
 tle disappointment, though, for the terms were 
 better than the defeated nations had reason to 
 expect. They congratulated themselves that 
 there was. at most, slight dismemberment of 
 territory. What did the new possessions 
 matter? Only the Russian chafed. 
 
 (iermany was the nation which had most 
 cause for satisfaction. Never before in history 
 had racial recognition stood a people in such 
 stead. There was little of the military swag-
 
 THE ANGLO-SAXON UNION. 245 
 
 ger about the German representative who 
 came to take what he could get, and take it 
 gladly, a new attitude, it was remarked, in the 
 conduct of recent German affairs. Hard 
 would it have been and even the "War Lord" 
 recognized it now had Germany been left to 
 her fate, to be crushed gradually between the 
 Slav and Latin on either side of her. But she 
 was given a place among the Anglo-Saxons. 
 The prodigal was admitted to the house, but 
 the fatted calf was as well as ever the next 
 morning. Even thus, it was well for the Ger 
 man. It seemed as if the old gods Thor and 
 Woden, who had their birth where groups of 
 skin-clad men, awaiting Caesar, talked to 
 gether in the glades of green German forests, 
 had arisen to direct the affairs of Germany and 
 force her into her rightful place among the 
 nations. 
 
 But in the debates of the Congress, when 
 shrewd and patriotic men representing the 
 vanquished were striving eloquently for better 
 terms, came to the surface speculations which 
 were more than interesting. "Can you hold 
 what you have won?" passionately declaimed 
 the representative of France. "Did your vie-
 
 246 ARM. \GKDDON. 
 
 tory really come upon the water, or from the 
 sky? And who can monopolize the skies!" 
 
 All recognized, at heart, that his point was 
 well taken. The statesmen and thinkers of the 
 world were puzzling over the problem of 
 whether or not human intelligence had newly 
 deviled such means for utilizing existent 
 forces that former methods of warfare must 
 be soon abandoned. In such event all the 
 navies of the world were but costly things to 
 be done away with; all the fortresses in the 
 world were but as the mud pies built by 
 children, and throughout the civilized world 
 the greatest scientists and inventors were at 
 work to determine whether or not what Ap- 
 pleton had accomplished clumsily could be 
 done again elsewhere by Frenchman or Rus 
 sian or Italian up to the same degree of ac 
 complishment, or even better. Should the blue 
 seas in all the future be traversed only bv pas 
 senger and merchant craft? Should there be 
 no strongholds defending the great cities and 
 the great military highways of the nations, and 
 which nation would have advantage in such 
 case? That was the problem. It is the prob 
 lem yet, though, in my opinion, nearly solved. 
 
 The Congress reached peaceable conclusion.
 
 THE ANGLO-SAXON UNION. 247 
 
 It had no alternative. As between England 
 and the United States, they had friendly prob 
 lems of their own. The spirit of their original 
 alliance was maintained.
 
 248 ARM. \GKDDON. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Till-: PRAIRIE AGAIN. 
 
 The bees were humming. I but know of it 
 that the bees \vcrc humming and that T was 
 wondering vaguely whether they liked better 
 the red or tlie white clover. There I sat again 
 in an easy chair upon the little porch of the 
 building on the prairie whence went the Wild 
 Goose to its flight above the blue eastern 
 Atlantic and to its rest in the bottom of the 
 ocean there. I hope it rests, as it deserves, 
 upon the crumbling battlements of some for 
 tress of the lost continent, .Atlantis. 
 
 That day I was thinking of little save that I 
 was very comfortable, that my cigar was good, 
 and that a prominent official of the I nited 
 States Signal Service was at work inside the 
 old shed under the direction of a man named 
 Applcton. with half a hundred men assisting 
 him, including his immediate clerks, draughts 
 men, and general helpers, with some of the 
 cleverest young men of the army and navy.
 
 THE PRAIRIE AGAIN. 249 
 
 That was the situation inside, and I, sorrow 
 ing for Appleton, was loafing outside. I, at 
 least, was not under stress of labor and disci 
 pline to the extent that he was, though, cor 
 respondingly and properly, I was not the re 
 cipient of such favors as came to him. When 
 the United States government ordered the 
 new engine of destruction, which has already 
 been named The Valkyr," Appleton had 
 chosen as his working place our old site on the 
 prairie west of Chicago, and there the officers 
 and men of the signal corps and the expert 
 civilians engaged on the work were busy. 
 
 What the Valkyr could do when completed 
 upon the lines laid out was now a matter of 
 confidence to all of us. Appleton himself ad 
 mitted, grumblingly, that he thought it was 
 about right. Take the group of us there to 
 gether and we felt and, furthermore we knew, 
 that we were building a stanch and dirigible 
 machine which, under ordinary circumstances, 
 could and would carry up into the air a great 
 load and drop portions of that load at any 
 time, and, we felt confident, at any place, so 
 sure were we of the means of steering the 
 queer machine satisfactorily. We were the
 
 25 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 mechanically celestial, and felt that \ve domi 
 nated or soon should dominate the terrestrial. 
 I hat is the sort of people we were in the 1 
 building on the prairie 1>eside the stream 
 which, in midsummer, when it isn t too ln\v, 
 has a sort of "How Gently Sweet Afton" way 
 to it until it gets into the stream which seek- 
 more swiftly and less qnietlv the way to the 
 Mississippi, though, in passing. I may remark 
 that neither stream would by its noise awaken 
 the lightest sleeper. 
 
 What had happened after the threat battle 
 and the general adjudication following force 
 of arms? Nothing. The nations had settled 
 down, as farmers do. after the termination of 
 a lawsuit determining boundary lines. There 
 had been a settlement from which, for long, 
 there could be no appeal and now the object 
 of the races was growth in numbers and in 
 power. There had come one of the breathing- 
 places in history. 
 
 As for me, 1 was not thinking of such 
 things. My reflections, when they wandered 
 from the bees, became all sordid: "The 
 mechanism of the butt of a great gun which 
 cost thousands of dollars in its making," 1
 
 THE PRAIRIE AGAIN. 251 
 
 considered, "will soon be sold for only four 
 teen dollars and eighty cents, as old iron. 
 "\Yarships, even the submarine ones, are but 
 old iron." Even the genius of men of thought 
 and energy and patriotism, spent in devising 
 ways of driving ships under water and thus 
 succeed in destroying enemies floating upon 
 the water had been largely wasted. Opposi 
 tion to the law of gravitation rather than to 
 that of flotation had won. ""Warships," I con 
 sidered, "will be quoted on the market, so 
 many thousand dollars a warship, possibly, 
 but doubtfully, available for commercial pur 
 poses, and so many pounds of turrets and big 
 rifled guns will be worth so much in any mar 
 ket according to the quality of the iron of 
 which they were constructed and of the sort 
 of demand it is in for commercial ends." 
 
 And I was earnest in my thinking. I regret 
 to say that among Appleton s engineering 
 friends there are half a hundred men who ex 
 pect to make fortunes under this extraordi 
 nary condition of things. I regret more mildly 
 to say that I, also being human, seek a moder 
 ate fortune myself. I have mentally specu 
 lated in iron, or steel which has been tested
 
 and tried under llie keenest supervision of the 
 keenest military experts of all the world. The 
 price of iron even thus developed is liable to 
 drop under the panic of a prospect of dyna 
 mite from more or less thousands of feet 
 above. And so, hein^~ human, as already said, 
 1 have speculated and the one who shall be 
 distantly referred to later in this chapter shall 
 have clocks on her silk stockings. 
 
 And this brings me back, this allusion to 
 "the eternal feminine," to Applcton s love 
 story, \\hich had been, like many another love 
 storv. interrupted bv war. Appleton was now, 
 on this da\ when I sat idling on our crazy 
 little platform of a piaz/a the new buildings 
 of the new regime ir.uch interfering with my 
 peaceful landscape the husband of Helen, 
 and yon may be sure that Helen was not far 
 distant. She was. in truth, but a mile or two 
 awav across the river, in the country house 
 \\herc the voting people were spending the 
 summer, and I knew that, before sunset. I 
 should sec her driving jauntily up and asking 
 
 m<_^ but assured proprietorship which is so be 
 comin and delicious in a votin wife.
 
 THE PRAIRIE AGAIN. 253 
 
 Furthermore, I knew that another woman, 
 another newly made wife, she whose story is 
 mine and the story I am not going" to tell 
 would call at the old barrack that afternoon 
 and that, before we parted for the night, we 
 four would stroll about the place, deserted 
 then by workmen and tenanted only by its 
 guards, and that we would talk and laugh 
 there together in the waning day. 
 
 Now came our old friend Fitz to me as I 
 sat in the shade, for Fitz had shamelessly de 
 serted Helen for his former master when 
 O Brien came back from the wars. 
 
 "O Brien," I called, for, without looking 
 up, 1 knew that O Brien was not far away, 
 "Fitz does not look like the fighting dog you 
 left behind you. He s been fed too much. I 
 am afraid he s spoiled." 
 
 "Naw, sir!" emphatically replied O Brien, 
 "Youse can t spoil a bull-dog! Fitz ain t quite 
 himself, but he ll be all right." 
 
 Fitz was looking interestedly toward the 
 river, and as we had become great friends, the 
 dog and I, we left O Brien to his work and 
 went away together to look for muskrat holes 
 and oversee the affairs of nature generally.
 
 254 ARMAGF.nnON. 
 
 "Fitz," said I to my companion, as \vc 
 sauntered along over the scented carpet of the 
 prairie, "it is my belief that despite my many 
 goodly qualities, I am esteemed the least of all 
 the beings who are gathered about the old 
 building here, yourself included. It is only 
 the engineer that counts just now. The man 
 \vlio isn t a mechanical genius, Fitz, is no 
 where. He but cumbers the earth It is true 
 that in a perfunctory sort of a way, I have 
 quite a status in the community. Appleton 
 and his wife are nfiable with me even my own 
 wife goes as far as that occasionally but then 
 we are newlv married 
 
 Fitz growled savagely, and darted toward a 
 woodchuck hole, and no further conversation 
 was possible with him at that time. 
 
 It was green and shady under the oaks, and 
 I lav at full length on the short grass and 
 woodland growth of tlowers and weeds by the 
 river. Turning after awhile toward a mass of 
 hazel brush through \\hich the swish and 
 rustic told some one was coming, I saw, rising 
 above the louer bushes, a round red face. It 
 looked like the full moon of harvest, and was 
 as promising and cheery. At my call, the face
 
 THE PRAIRIE AGAIN. 255 
 
 advanced again and the blue-cotton clad figure 
 of Old Swanson s daughter emerged from the 
 greenery. She came along cheerily, the fair 
 Leda, with a glance of recognition at the 
 doubtful Fitz, and I rose to shake her work- 
 hardened hand. 
 
 All of the Swanson sons had returned from 
 their soldiering save one, and he had died in 
 camp, where the great armies of America had 
 awaited the signal for grim war on land, 
 which, happily, never came. 
 
 "And how about Frederickson?" I asked, 
 without fear, for I knew nothing could have 
 happened to the Amazon s lover, so jolly and 
 full of content was her presence. 
 
 A scarlet wave swept over the already suf 
 ficiently florid face of the Swedish girl and she 
 half turned away: 
 
 "Oh, Frederickson, he s all right! 1 
 
 Then after a pause she continued, "I hear 
 that you was married already, Mr. Went- 
 worth. I wish you joy." 
 
 The hearty, old fashioned words of congrat 
 ulation went straight to the place they were 
 aimed at. Again I shook the girl s hand, and 
 she walked quickly along the path by the river, 
 humming an old tune, and disappeared.
 
 256 ARMAGEDDON. 
 
 Fit/ toiled long and earnestly at the wood- 
 chuck hole, and the clover blossoms about 
 were buried beneath the upllung sandy soil in 
 which he dug , while I looked on with languid 
 interest in the proceeding. After all I had 
 seen and undergone, and knowing what I did 
 of the work in progress, but one subject could 
 ordinarily be uppermost in my mind, the gi 
 gantic results of the change in war methods 1 
 knew to be impending. I thought of Apple- 
 ton again in the role of a warrior. I thought 
 that if the almost inconceivable should some 
 day happen and men should dare to battle in 
 the skies, the Valkyr would surely be the bat 
 tleship of one aerial squadron, and that the 
 name of Appleton would outlast the names of 
 most generals and admirals. Thinking, de 
 vising", planning, wrestling of mind, these have 
 their enduring triumphs in war and in peace. 
 
 lUit Appleton says that this triumph of war 
 can never be, ought not to be, and shall not 
 be, even though he is working hard to perfect 
 a death-dealing machine, destructive beyond 
 all others ever invented. This is what Apple- 
 ton said to me that day, later on, when the 
 woman who has not been named and I were 
 talking with him and his wife:
 
 THE PRAIRIE AGAIN. 257 
 
 "Civilization has reached a point where war 
 is suicide. When one hundred thousand men 
 meet another one hundred thousand men and 
 the only possible sequence of their meeting 
 means that one hundred thousand of the two 
 hundred thousand men must be slain, there 
 isn t going to be any fighting. If there be any 
 such thing as religion or a future, it must be 
 wrong. If there be any such thing as a re 
 gard for personal safety, it must be wrong. 
 The chances in war will be, at the best, less 
 than one in two for safety to the individual. 
 Never in any battle fought in all the history 
 of the world have the bravest of all the men 
 of the world faced such dreadful chance. They 
 could not unless they were fools. 
 
 "War, suppose it conceivable under the 
 coming conditions, must be but a gamble; it 
 must be but dice thrown in the air. A little 
 accident and the army fighting for the right 
 or the army fighting for the wrong will have 
 disappeared. Both armies may disappear to 
 gether. 
 
 The time of powder and ball has gone by. 
 In war, already, tons of high explosives are 
 hurled, and every mechanical device of man in 
 his greatest development of control over na- 
 
 17
 
 ^5^ ARMAGEDDON 
 
 ture is employed in this manner to destruv 
 human lives. \\ hen aerial warfare is added, 
 the end will have come. Think of thi- one 
 feature: The Hmperor in his palace, the Par 
 liament or Congress within its doors, will be 
 attacked. There can be no safety for anyone, 
 and the heads of nations will hesitate betoiv 
 they declare war. A kind s crown will then 
 be in as much peril as the helmet of the pri 
 vate soldier. It will be as easv has been as 
 easy to sink a battleship in all its J^lory at 
 se; as to sink a rowboat on a placid river." 
 
 The voice of Helen broke in after a minute s 
 silence. 
 
 "Why do we make tiiese killing machine- 
 then, if they are not to be used?" 
 
 "The armies and navies of Kurope preserved 
 the peace of Kurope for years during the latter 
 half of the nineteenth century." replied Ap 
 pleton. "The menace of fatal war must pre 
 serve alive, as it has heretofore, many a nation, 
 and keep it in peace. To have a world at 
 peace there must be massed in the controlling- 
 nations such power of destruction as may not 
 be even questioned. So we shall build our 
 appliances of destruction, calling to our aid 
 everv discoverv and achievement of science.
 
 THE PRAIRIE AGAIN. 
 
 When there are but chances about war, when 
 it means death to all, or the vast majority of 
 all who engage in it, there will be peace." 
 
 Appleton paused for a moment, and the two 
 women looked at each other, half protesting, 
 but half understanding, too. And Appleton 
 said, earnestly and quietly: 
 
 "There shall be no more war. 
 
 THE END
 
 A 000128928 9