The Yellow Danger E-Book

M. P. Shiel

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Not all invasion threats were purported to come from the Germans, the French or from Anarchists: in M.P. Shiel’s Yellow Danger it is an army of Chinese who invade Europe. In „The Yellow Danger” Mr. Shiel described in lurid colors the possibilities of the overwhelming of the white world by the yellow man, a possibility for the imagining of, which he claimed no originality. „The Yellow Danger” has been the bugbear of the Russians ever since the days of Tamerlane. But it must be admitted that in his new story. This made Shiel’s popular reputation and was almost certainly the most commercially successful of the twenty books published during his first creative period, 1889-1913.

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I. THE NATIONS AND A MAN

CHAPTER II. THE HEATHEN CHINEE

CHAPTER III. RUMOURS OF WAR

CHAPTER IV. FIRST BLOOD

CHAPTER V. HOW ENGLAND TOOK THE NEWS

CHAPTER VI. HARDY

CHAPTER VII. IN THE CHANNEL

CHAPTER VIII. THE BATTLE

CHAPTER IX. JOHN HARDY GIVES AN ORDER

CHAPTER X. JOHN HARDY AMONG WOMEN

CHAPTER XI. JOHN HARDY AMONG THE NATIONS

CHAPTER XII. THE AWAKENING

CHAPTER XIII. JOHN AND YEN

CHAPTER XIV. THE VANISHED FLEET

CHAPTER XV. THE SUICIDE OF EUROPE

CHAPTER XVI. THE LOVE WHICH FOO-CHEE BORE TO AH-LIN

CHAPTER XVII. THE CHINESE IRON

CHAPTER XVIII. SIN-WAN

CHAPTER XIX. ‘THE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY’

CHAPTER XX. ‘WHAT A FACE!’

CHAPTER XXI. MURRAY’S DIARY

CHAPTER XXII. MURRAY’S DIARY (CONTINUED)

CHAPTER XXIII. THE FROWN OF ENGLAND

CHAPTER XXIV. BEFORE THE BATTLE

CHAPTER XXV. THE GREATER WATERLOO

CHAPTER XXVI. THE YELLOW DANGER

CHAPTER XXVII. THE THREE GOSPELS

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE YELLOW TERROR

CHAPTER XXIX. THE WEAK POINT

CHAPTER XXX. THE CHINESE SCREAM

CHAPTER XXXI. THE MEETING

CHAPTER XXXII. ‘TO-DAY’

CHAPTER XXXIII. THE ‘CRIME’ OF HARDY

CHAPTER XXXIV. THE BLACK SPOT

CHAPTER I. THE NATIONS AND A MAN

As all the world knows, the Children’s Ball of the Lady Mayoress takes place yearly on the night of ‘Twelfth Day,’ 6th January. In the year ‘98 the function was even more successful than usual, owing to Sir Henry Burdett’s fine idea that the children should be photographed in support of the Prince of Wales’ Hospital Fund. The little Walter Raleighs, Amy Robsarts, flocked in throngs to the photographer’s studio adjoining the grand salon of the Mansion House; while all that space outside between the Mansion House, the Bank, and the Stock Exchange was a mere mass of waiting, arriving, and departing vehicles.

If anything tended to take a little of their exuberance from this and other New Year jubilations, it was a certain cloudiness in the political sky; nothing very terrifying; yet something so real, that nearly every one felt it with disquiet. An Irish member, celebrated for his ‘bulls,’ was heard to say: ‘Take my word for it, there’s going to be a sunset in the East.’ Men strolled into their clubs, and, with or without a yawn, said: ‘Is there going to be a row, then?’ Some one might answer: ‘Not a bit of it; it’ll pass off presently, you’ll see.’ But another would be sure to add: ‘Things are looking black enough, all the same.’

It was just as when, on a clear day at sea, low and jagged edges of disconnected clouds appear inkily on the horizon-edge, and no one is quite certain whether or not they will meet, and whelm the sky, and sink the ship.

But the horizon had hardly darkened, when, again, it cleared.

The principal cause of fear had been what had looked uncommonly like a conspiracy of the three great Continental Powers to oust England from predominance in the East. First there was the seizure of Kiao-Chau, the bombastic farewells of the German Royal brothers; then immediately, the aggressive attitude of Russia at Port Arthur; then immediately, the rumour that France had seized Hainan, was sending an expedition to Yun-nan, and had ships in Hoi-How harbour.

All this had the look of concert; for within the last few years it had got to be more and more recognised by the British public that centuries of neighbourhood had fostered among the Continental nations a certain spirit of kinship, in which the Island-Kingdom was no sharer.

In the course of years the Straits of Dover had widened into an ocean. Europe had receded from Britain, and Britain, in her pride, had drawn back from Europe. From the curl of the moustache, to the colour and cut of the evening-dress, to the manner in which women held up their skirts, there was similarity between French and German, between German and Russian and Austrian, and dissimilarity between all these and English.

It is true that the Russian hated the German, and the German the Russian and the French; but their hatred was the hatred of brothers, always ready to combine against the outsider. This had been begun to be suspected, then recognised, by the British nation. Alone and friendless must England tread the wine-press of modern history, solitary in her majesty; and if ever an attempt were made to stop her stately progress, she was prepared to find that her foe was the rest of Europe.

But very soon after the unrest had arisen, it began to subside. France denied the annexation of Hainan; the semiofficial Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, inspired by Wilhelm, painted Germany as the patron of commerce, with an amiable weakness for theatrical displays; Russia was defeated in the matter of the removal of Mr. MacLeavy Brown, and seemed sufficiently limp after it; while spirits were raised by the probable guarantee of a Chinese loan by the British Government.

But meanwhile, at the children’s ball at the Mansion House, events were working in a quite different direction from that of peaceful settlement.

Ada Seward was the presiding deity in the nursery of Mrs. Pattison of Fulham. On the night of the 6th, Dr. and Mrs. Pattison had to be present at a ball in the West End, and Ada on that night was busy; for it was necessary for her, first of all, to convey Master Johnnie Pattison, costumed as Francis I., to the Mansion House; and then to hurry homeward again to take Miss Nellie Pattison to a children’s evening with charades in South Kensington.

The fact that it was wet when she reached the Mansion House may have had something to do with her troubles. The landing-place was occupied by some other carriages, and dismounting with her charge, an umbrella over him, she cried to the coachman in a hurried manner through the drizzle:

‘Wait till I come back.’

The man afterwards declared that he understood her to say:

‘Go away, and come back.’

At any rate, when Ada again came forth into the crush to look for the Pattison brougham, it was nowhere to be found.

And now her lips went up in a pout of vexation. ‘What on earth is any one to do now?’ she said. She was pressed for time, and yet at a loss.

The throng of private carriages seemed to have banished all cabs from the region of the Mansion House. She looked and saw none; then into her pocket, and found only sixpence. These two circumstances decided her against the cab. Instead, she ran a few yards, dodging among the carriages, and at the entrance to Poultry, skipped into a moving ‘bus.

She sat in a corner for five minutes, with agonised glances out of the door at the slowly receding clocks. Then some one–a man sitting nearly opposite, whom she had not noticed–addressed her:

‘Why, Miss Ada, is that you?’

‘Oh!’ she cried, ‘Mr. Brabant, is that you? It’s a long time since–how are you?’

‘Well, I’m pretty fair, Miss Ada, as times go, you know. Hope you are the same.’

‘Still in the army?’

‘Oh yes–the Duke of Cambridge’s Own, you know. You living in London now?’

‘Yes–at Fulham.’

Here conversation flagged; and in that minute’s interval, Brabant, with a sudden half-turn to his left, said:

‘Just allow me to introduce you to my friend here–Miss Seward–Dr. Yen How.’

In the light of the ‘bus lamp Ada Seward saw a very small man, dressed in European clothes, yet a man whom she at once took to be Chinese. With a wrinkled grin, he put out his hand and shook hers.

He was a man of remarkable visage. When his hat was off, one saw that he was nearly bald, and that his expanse of brow was majestic. There was something brooding, meditative, in the meaning of his long eyes; and there was a brown, and dark, and specially dirty shade in the yellow tan of his skin.

He was not really a Chinaman–or rather, he was that, and more. He was the son of a Japanese father by a Chinese woman. He combined these antagonistic races in one man. In Dr. Yen How was the East.

He was of noble feudal descent, and at Tokio, but for his Chinese blood, would have been styled Count. Not that the admixture of blood was very visible in his appearance; in China he passed for a Chinese, and in Japan for a Jap.

If ever man was cosmopolitan, that man was Dr. Yen How. No European could be more familiar with the minutiae of Western civilisation. His degree of doctor he had obtained at the University of Heidelberg; for years he had practised as a specialist in the diseases of women and children at San Francisco.

He possessed an income of a thousand tael (about £300) from a tea-farm; but his life had been passed in the practice of the grinding industry of a slave. Nothing equalled his assiduity, his minuteness, his attention to detail. He had once written to the Royal Observatory at the Cape pointing out a trifling error in a long logarithmic calculation of the declension of one of the moons of Jupiter, originating from the observatory.

In the East he could have climbed at once to the very top of the tree–even in the West, had he chosen. But he chose to lie low, remaining unnoticed, studying, observing, making of himself an epitome of the West, as he was an embodiment of the East.

In whatever country he happened to be–and he was never for many years in any one–he was most often to be found in the company of people of the lower classes; and of these he had a very intimate knowledge. So great was his mental breadth, that he was unable to sympathise with either Eastern or Western distinctions of class and rank. He often struck up chance friendships with soldiers and sailors about the capitals of Europe; and these patronised and exhibited him here and there.

Yen How knew that he was being patronised, and submitted to it–and smiled meekly. In reality, he cherished a secret and bitter aversion to the white race.

He had two defects–his shortness of sight, which caused him to wear spectacles; and his inability, in speaking without effort, to pronounce the word ‘little.’ He still called it ‘lillee.’

On that date of 6th January, when he drove westward with Brabant and Ada Seward, he was perhaps forty years of age, but seemed anything between sixteen and sixty; a hard, omniscient, cosmopolitan little man, tough as oak, dry as chips.

Yet in that head were leavening some big thoughts; and his heart was capable of tremendous passions.

In reality, could one have known it, as he fared onward through the drizzle in the trundling ‘bus, smiling behind his spectacles, he was the most important personage in London, or perhaps in the world.

Dr. Yen How was capable of anything. In him was the Stoic, and the cynic, and the tiger; with a turn of the mind he could become a savant or a statesman, or a crossing-sweeper, or a general. He possessed this excellence: a clear brain.

By one of those extraordinary freaks of nature for which there is no accounting, this man wanted to see Ada Seward a second time after parting with her that night.

Brabant, who had known her in her native town of Cheltenham, accompanied her to the gate of the Pattison villa, Yen How with them.

As he was leaving her, the little doctor put his mouth to her ear, and whispered hurriedly:

‘I will wait here to-morrow night at eight for one lillee kiss.’

The girl was astounded.

‘Well, the idea!’ she just gasped.

Before she could proclaim her indignation, the two men turned off.

Till he reached his home in Portland Street, Yen How was engaged in one long, continuous, secret smile–a smile at his own expense. This outburst of his in the role of lover was new to him, absolutely. His relations with women hitherto had consisted in the business of curing their sicknesses. By what subtle physiological or psychological affinity this one particular English girl had been able to evoke from this particular dry Chino-Japanese a request for ‘one lillee kiss,’ he was unable to divine. Such an affinity there undoubtedly was; but its origin lay among reasons far too abstruse for the unravelling of Yen.

Yen How smiled that first night, but he presently found that this was no smiling matter.

At eight the next evening he was duly at the Pattison gate; but, alas, no Ada was to be seen. Ada, however, was there, though invisible. She, with the Pattison cook, whom she had brought out to enjoy the fun, was hiding behind a shrubbery, and peering through, shaking with laughter at the futile waiting of the little doctor.

And now Yen How, for the first time in his life, began to suffer on account of a woman.

He loved; and in his love was the concentrated passion of many other men. Melted rock is lava–and he suffered.

He used at night to hang about the house, which was lonely at that hour, waiting. To his patience there was no end–to his resolution to possess her, by fair means or foul, no end.

Even in the matter of love the Eastern is essentially different from the Western. It is impossible for us, in anything, to understand them, so foreign are they. With us love is frequent, a powerful mood; with them the whole man is involved, and love becomes a passion having all the characteristics of ordinary flame.

One night, as he lurked about, he met her returning from some shopping. By this time Yen How had become a standing joke for Ada in the kitchen and the servants’ bedroom. He walked to her.

‘Ah,’ he said with sideward head, and a cajoling smile, ‘you are here, then? You will give poor Yen How one lillee kiss?’

The whole idea of courtship possessed by this clownish and unpractised lover consisted in asking for one little kiss. Ada Seward’s views of the matter were more elaborate. She despised his strong simplicity.

‘Perhaps you are not aware whom it is you are talking to,’ she said.

Yen was aware; he could have shut his eyes and drawn an exact picture of her face.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘not even one lillee–’

‘I’ll give you one lillee box of soap to wash your face, if you like!’ she cried, running and looking back. The house was near; he could not overtake her.

Perhaps it would have been impossible for Miss Seward to utter words more calculated to drive Yen to madness than this reference to ‘soap.’ If his suit was hopeless, it was now borne in upon him that it was hopeless on account of his race. The girl did not listen to him, and reject him; she rejected him without taking him into consideration at all. It was as though a mule, or a cat, had asked her to be his.

But his persistence did not fail. He flung his other pursuits to the winds, and the Pattison villa became for him the centre of the world. Sometimes he caught bright glimpses of her. Once again he met her in the street, and once again she overwhelmed him with jeers. So passed January, February, and March.

To Yen How, the bourgeois, the thought never at all occurred that the girl was below bourgeois class. He was a great man, and merely saw in Ada the eternal woman. Dukes marry duchesses; but the Goethes, the Mahomets, wed cooks and water-carriers. On that very plan was built Yen How.

At the beginning of April he stood one night outside the Pattison gate, when he saw her. It was eleven o’clock; she was coming from the theatre, leaning on the arm of Private Brabant. Brabant, since their meeting in the ‘bus, had several times been ‘out’ with her.

As the two approached, Ada saw the little doctor.

‘There’s that little Chinaman again, John,’ she said, pressing Brabant’s arm. ‘It’s getting too much of a good thing now, isn’t it?’

‘Confound the little rat,’ said Brabant; ‘he wants his nut cracked, I should think, doesn’t he?’

The doctor tripped up to them, smiling nervously. Before he could speak, Brabant, who had had a glass, said:

‘Come, come, Mr. Yen How, get out of this. Can’t you see the young lady doesn’t want you fooling round her?’

‘Well–but–my soldier friend,’ said Yen, ‘there is no harm done–’

‘Come, get out of it!’ said Brabant more roughly.

‘No, no, you go too fast, you see,’ began Yen apologetically.

‘Are you going–yes or no?’ said Brabrant, now flushing angrily.

‘Go away, why don’t you?’ put in Ada.

‘Ah! I–I am here to see my lillee girl,’ hazarded Yen.

‘Oh, don’t be a stupid little goose of a Chinaman! Just fancy!’ she said.

This was the most unkindest cut of all for Yen. He winced, touched with anger.

‘Are you going or not?’ said Brabant, an ultimatum in his tone.

‘No!’ said Yen; then, more decidedly, ‘No, no!’

Brabant put out his arm and pushed him on the shoulder.

It was not a violent push, but in an instant the doctor’s face was almost black with rage. He had in his hand a stout bamboo stick, which he at once lifted and slashed with terrible force across the soldier’s cheek, leaving a bruised weal which Brabant bore with him to the grave.

In retaliation the soldier lifted his large and bony fist, and sent it into the doctor’s face. Yen How dropped.

The street was deserted. Not knowing what to do, the girl and the soldier bent over him for five minutes, when, to their surprise, Yen How raised himself slowly, placed his handkerchief against his red and dripping face, and slowly limped away without a single word.

Once he stopped deliberately as he moved off, turned, and looked at them; and in the moonlight they distinctly saw him ‘twice shake his forefinger warningly in their direction.

Then he went on his way.

Between that night and the beginning of May he never once stepped outside the house in which he lived. He had resumed his close and far-reaching studies.

At the beginning of May he was on board the Peninsular, bound for the East.

By the end of September he was a member of the Japanese Parliament.

In December we find him a leading spirit in the Tsung-li-Yamen, or Chinese Foreign Office, and making voyages between Tokio and Pekin.

CHAPTER II. THE HEATHEN CHINEE

Yen How was nothing if not heathen. He was that first of all.

His intellect was like dry ice. Though often secretly engaged in making The Guess, on the whole, he despised all religions–the faiths of the West, the superstitions of the East, he despised them all alike. He was full of light, but without a hint of warmth; and so lacked the religious emotion.

It is not likely that ordinary ethical considerations would much influence the aims of such a man. He was like an avalanche, as cold, and as resistless.

What was Dr. Yen How’s aim? Simply told, it was to possess one white woman, ultimately, and after all. He had also the subsidiary aim of doing an ill turn to all the other white women, and men, in the world.

If the earth had opened and swallowed him, then he would have renounced his hope; but for no lesser reason. He went coolly and patiently to work to secure his desire.

But no man, surely, ever employed means so huge to an end so small. A European, perhaps any other man, having once conceived the means, would quickly have forgotten the end in the tremendous interest of the means themselves. But in all that Yen did the face of Ada Seward was always consciously ‘before his eyes.’ The nature of this man was as simple as the elemental rock.

His career in the East, from the first hour of his return, was meteoric. He rose like a rocket. The order of the day in China, and especially in Japan, was Western modernity; and here was a man who simply breathed Western modernity, and who yet was an Eastern of the Easterns. His skin was more yellow than the yellow man’s, and his brain was more white than the white man’s. When the English Inspector-General of Roads and Bridges at Tokio asserted that the Imperial tax in Britain on railway passenger traffic was, he believed, Per cent Yen How’s face wrinkled into a chaos of smiles. ‘No–two,’ he said quietly; and no one doubted which was right. Yen introduced a new method of protecting bridges during the daily earthquakes of Japan, by means of articulated joists and sleepers. When the Naval Director at Pekin introduced a specification for a new battle-ship to be mounted with two 111-ton guns, Yen proved by statistics (which he quoted from memory) that the tendency of the most modern shipbuilding was rather in the direction of quick-firing guns than of heavy armaments. The 111-ton became 45-ton. He was soon invaluable.

At this time the people of Japan were strongly excited against the freebooting of Russia and Germany in China, and strongly animated in favour of England. England was, in fact, the beau-ideal, the Great Pattern, of Japan. It required no great force of imagination for her to call herself ‘the Britain of the East’; this notion at once occurred, of itself, to every one; and, of course, the copyist sympathised with her original rather than with others. With England predominant in China, moreover, there would be an assurance of free trade; and Japan was a trader. So strong was the enthusiasm in favour of England, that the nation was even willing to put its fleet at the disposal of its Big Model in case of need.

The ulterior purposes of Japan, of course, remained in doubt. She was even then building in various parts of the world an additional fleet, which, when finished, would make her a sea Power far in advance of any nation in the whole earth, with the exception of England herself. What in the hour of her manhood, when she had cast her leading-strings, she would do with this vast force was a disturbing question to many; but, meanwhile, it was clearly her intention to use England as an ally–till the years ripened.

Under the Marquis Ito’s Ministry Yen How was offered a post of Under-Secretary, but he refused it. He suggested that he should become Secretary to the Minister as his private servant; and this was arranged. He knew that high public rank in Japan would exclude him from high public rank in

China, if his double personality should become known–and China was the chief field of his labours. Meanwhile, he was drawing large revenues as a mandarin, and lived, for his own purposes, in a style nearly princely.

‘Poh!’ he said to the Marquis Ito, sipping tea among rugs, ‘there are no statesmen now. Statesmen!–there are no such things. Not here–not in Europe. An ordinary man is a man who thinks in days; a statesman proper thinks in thousands of years. The outlook and computations of a statesman should be as much vaster than those of a private person, as a country is vaster than a tea-house. Believe me, there are no statesmen.’

‘Come, doctor, why do you say that?’ asked the Marquis.

‘Look forward five hundred, a thousand years, Marquis, and what do you see?’ answered Yen How. ‘Is it not this?–the white man and the yellow man in their death-grip, contending for the earth. The white and the yellow–there are no others. The black is the slave of both; the brown does not count. But there are those two; and when the day comes that they stand face to face in dreadful hate, saying, “One or other must quit this earth,” shall I tell you which side will win?’

‘Which do you think?’

‘The white will win, Marquis.’

‘Perhaps I differ from you,’ said the Marquis Ito.

‘Ah! you differ from me. But I am right all the same; and I mean, sooner or later, to prove it to you abundantly, abundantly! The white will win, I tell you! You great men in Japan are trying to copy them, straining your poor necks to come up with them; but I have passed my life in studying them–and I’ve got something to tell you; listen to it: you cannot, Marquis, you cannot, you cannot!’

‘Our Navy already–’ began the Marquis.

‘Poh! your Navy! Who built it for you? It was they. Your Navy is like a razor in the hands of an ape which has seen its master use it. The brute may or may not cut its own throat with it. And as soon as they build a navy for you, they will build one twice as big for themselves, and twice as good. There is no reason why you should not follow them, and go on following them–only understand that you cannot catch them. And this is another thing that you should understand–that the longer you follow them, the farther they get away from you. Their rate of progress is continually increasing. Every day that passes over the world gives them an additional advantage over you. To-day their guns can mow you down by hundreds; in a hundred years they will mow you down by thousands; in five hundred years by millions. Can’t you see?–you are losing time!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Ah, I mean that there are no longer any statesmen, Marquis. The eye of the statesman ranges far, far into the tracts of the future, doesn’t it? But we! Here are we now–we Japanese, we Chinese, we yellow men–playing about in little diplomatic mud-puddles with French, and Russian, and English, and German, as if all that mattered two sen! And all the time we know well, yet seem not to know, that French, and English, and the rest, are equally our foe, and tyrant, and vulture, one not more than the other! That if we do not eat them all now, at once, they all will swallow us whole some day, soon–soon. And to see China fighting with Japan in such a case, and Japan banging into China–is it not childish enough to make a donkey, or even a Grand Lama, laugh? There are no statesmen any longer, Marquis.’

‘Well, come, I see something in what you are driving at,’ said Ito. ‘We and China are like two birds’ pecking at each other on a bough, when suddenly they are both down the belly of a serpent, which has been calmly watching them. Well, but what are we to do? By your own showing, the birds can do nothing against the serpent.’

‘Did I say that?’ asked Yen, lifting his eyebrows in innocent surprise. ‘Oh, I didn’t mean it! There are many birds, you see, and few serpents. In the world to-day there are 408,000,000 Christians and–mark the figures– 1,004,000,000 non-Christians. I can see that you are startled.’

‘You think that by sheer force of numbers–’

‘Yes, if we had taken our opportunity in time–if we had struck two hundred–a hundred years ago. Even to-day I believe that it is hardly too late, if the yellow race can find a great leader. I am perfectly sure that in a hundred years time it will be too late.’

‘Why so?’

‘I have told you. By that time the white man will have something like a magician’s power over all nature. He will say to the mountains and the seas: “Be removed!”–and at his mere whisper they will obey him. We yellow men, too, will have advanced, but they will have vastly outstripped us. We cannot follow them, I tell you. The day will come when our mere numbers will no longer be of any importance in baulking and overthrowing them.’

‘You talk of big things, my friend,’ said Ito. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes, Marquis, I am serious.’

‘You advocate a League of the yellow races?’

‘I do.’

‘He! he! the idea tickles me; it is so very far from realisation–there are so many obstacles–’

‘No, really–I think not. I believe it is very near to realisation. Events are at this moment in progress at Pekin which will force it to accomplishment–soon. Suppose I tell you that I, personally, have laid those events in train?’

‘You, doctor? What, are you going to lead us all, then, against Paris and London? He! he!’

‘Perhaps, Marquis.’

‘What, to face the Nordenfeldts, and the Maxims, and the Krupps? The Chinese will run from the first twelve-pounder!’

‘There may not be any twelve-pounders there when they get to Paris and London,’ said Yen How with absolute coolness, yet with an emphasis and an intonation of solemnity in his voice which held the Marquis from answer for a minute.

‘Really, I don’t understand you,’ he said at last.

‘Yet my meaning should be clear.’

‘No–do explain yourself.’

Yen How rose to his feet before he answered.

‘Marquis,’ he said, ‘is it possible you do not see that China has it in her power to turn Europe into an exhausted waste within, say, three months from to-night, without firing a single shot, or spending a single tael?’

CHAPTER III. RUMOURS OF WAR

As the year wore on, some of the International difficulties centring round Kiao-Chau, Port Arthur, and Hainan reopened. In England more than all the old unrest revived.

What added to this unrest was the fact that some of the items of the rapidly-succeeding batches of news were quite inexplicable.

From the beginning of the year it had been known that Germany had not made so brilliant a bargain in the acquisition of Kiao-Chau as she had imagined. The territory placed under her ‘sovereign rights’ had been strictly limited by China, and granted only as a ‘lease.’ When Prince Henry of Prussia arrived with the Deutschland and Gefion, he found that there were no ‘laurels’ to win, and nobody at whom to strike out with his absurd mailed fist.

Moreover, on much the same terms as Germany obtained Kiao-Chau, and, later in the year, Russia obtained Port Arthur, Britain obtained Wei-hai-Wei and Mirs Bay.

What, then, was the surprise of the world, including the Germans themselves, when, in the middle of December, came the news that China had ceded a large additional region to the Kaiser, absolutely without conditions!

There was not a single brain in Europe which could divine the motive of this virtual gift.

At this time Li Hung Chang, recalled to power by the Emperor at the beginning of the year, was still at the head of affairs in Pekin. But in the short space of two months he had acquired the habit of taking no step without the suggestion of the new element in Chinese politics, the far-seeing Oriental European, the much toiling member of the Tsung-li-Yamen, the omniscient Yen How. Already Yen had swung himself into the position of the virtual ruler of China.

Yen How seemed to Li Hung Chang, haunted as the old statesman had always been by the vision of dismemberment and downfall which overhung China, something like an angel of light. Here was another brain which saw as his had all along seen–only far more clearly, and with powers of invention far vaster to avert the catastrophe.

‘Let us be definite,’ Yen had said, in words which old Li long remembered, one night as they smoked together alone on a moonlit veranda. ‘Do let us be honest with ourselves, your Excellency! You agree with me that the yellow man is doomed–if the white man is not; in your heart you think it. Then let us say it in definite words; for as soon as ever we have said it, we have gone half-way toward grappling with our fate.’

‘Ah, I have said it often and often,’ answered Li, ‘but to what good?’

‘If you believe that now is the time for action, as I do, you have the matter in your own hand.’

‘How so?’

‘To me it is clearer than the moonlight there. The facts of the situation seem to stare me in the face.’

‘Speak, Yen How.’

‘I will speak, your Excellency. To me it seems that if we could supply a motive to the combined Japanese and Chinese nations to traverse Asia and the Caucasus, and then to overrun the Europe of to-day, there is no power on earth that could permanently check the overwhelming momentum of their progress.’

‘It is nonsense, my son,’ said Li, with a pull at his long pipe.

‘Note this,’ replied Yen–’ I only say that I believe–for who can be sure? The white man is strong and stern; his frown is dreadful. I only say that I believe–though a host of four hundred millions cannot be mown down in a day, your Excellency. The throats of the Maxims might grow hoarse and burst at this task. Still, perhaps you are right–perhaps I talk nonsense. I did not seriously mean to propose a march against the Maxim thunder. But I have a thought–a thought.

Suppose China and Japan can take away the Maxims first, and then march afterwards.’

‘Speak your meaning, Yen How,’ said Li; ‘all is dark to me.’

‘We wish the white races killed,’ answered Yen; ‘well, there are two ways, are there not? We might kill them ourselves–that, you say, is nonsense. The other way is to get, them to kill one another.’

Li’s lips came from his mouth, and the outer corners of his eyes screwed up into an expression of the most exquisite enjoyment.

‘What is left alive of them after their mutual slaughter,’ Yen How went on, ‘we can kill. Their lands will be weak with loss of blood, their treasuries will be exhausted–there will be no Maxims there any more.’

At these last words his own eyes, too, wrinkled up into delicious merriment.

‘The trump card is in the hand of China,’ he said.

How the white races were to be made to destroy one another Li never asked, though the conversation lasted far into the night. He knew well. That, at least, was simple.

‘England,’ said Yen as they parted, ‘she is the worst. All the others against her.’

A few weeks afterwards the cession of large additional territories in China to Germany was rumoured.

And now followed, in rapid succession, a series of the most startling, the most inexplicable reports.

It seemed as if China, was not waiting for dismemberment from abroad, but was dismembering herself wilfully, with precipitate frenzy.

First came the intelligence that France had been besought by the Chinese Government to assume the Protectorate, without conditions, of Hainan and Yun-nan.

These few lines of telegram threw Europe into a state of fever. It was decided by every one that, if the intelligence was true, no earthly consideration of risk would keep the rapacious hand of the Frenchman from grasping at this plum.

In a week or so it was definitely known that the news was true, and that France had accepted the offer. Rumours of war filled the air. The world was agog, and every spot was an arena for discussion. Only one man was silent–the British Foreign Secretary. The newspapers besought him for a word; he remained wrapped in taciturnity. A deputation of merchants waited upon the Under-Secretary; he answered only with a few strong words of hope.

At this time Yen How’s name got into the papers. It was said that this mysterious man, whose dazzling rise in the Celestial Empire was sketched, had recently taken a fresh journey to Tokio. Then a vague telegram, printed in England in small nonpareil type, appeared, stating that the probable object of Yen How’s renewed journey was to conclude a secret treaty between China and Japan. But the report was unsubstantiated.

The real bomb was yet to burst into the midst of Europe. It was hurled by the St Petersburg correspondent of the Daily News.

China had offered to Russia the protectorate of the Yangtse Valley.

It was now, for the first time, that it entered two or three of the shrewdest heads in Europe that China was deliberately seeking to plunge the world into war by working upon the rapacity and selfish greed of the nations.

One gentleman, living at a country-house in Hampshire, wrote to the Times to this effect. But his letter attracted no attention.

Yet, looking back now, it seems strange that the idea did not occur to others. For it must be remembered that the Yangtse Valley had been regarded as peculiarly the sphere of English power. More than this, England had now partly guaranteed a Chinese loan of twelve millions sterling, and it was agreed that the security for this should consist of the land-tax and the unpledged part of the Customs dues. Now, the chief source of both land-tax and Customs dues was the Yangtse Valley.

Yet the next day the Russian Novosti published an inspired article, stating that on no account could Russia withdraw from the prominent place into which events had forced her in the East.

The feeling in England was one of horror at the blind and criminal cupidity of the Continental nations. The word ‘war’ was on every tongue. Twice in one day there were hurried meetings of the Cabinet. Thousands of private letters poured in upon the Foreign Office, urging patience and firmness.

But the hand of the Government was forced in an unexpected manner.

Two items of news followed each other rapidly.

First, that on the 21st day of the 12th moon of the 24th year of Kuang Hsu–that is to say, on the 14th December 1898–the Yellow Jacket had once more been taken from Li Hung Chang; and that the dominant talents of the man, Yen How, had triumphed over all obstacles, and raised him to the very head of affairs at the Court of Pekin.

The next day a telegram from Sir C. M. Macdonald, the British Minister in China, reached the Foreign Office. This was at once made public.

It stated that China professed herself unable to meet the next accruing interest-instalment on the loan, though the Minister had information from Sir Robert Hart, the Controller of the Imperial Maritime Customs, which led him to doubt the avowal of inability.

Whatever else this might mean, it certainly seemed to mean war. The security for China’s default, real or pretended, which was due to England, had already been placed under the control of Russia.

In the House of Commons the Under-Secretary stated that there was still a hope of peace–a hope that ‘the Empire of Russia would act with that spirit of fairness and magnanimity in this crisis which alone could prove her worthy of her great traditions.’ These words were borne at a run by dozens of excited members to interested individuals among the crowd which surrounded the House from Westminster Bridge round to the Aquarium.

London went to sleep with some degree of quietude that night, Mr. Curzon’s reply having been published in an eagerly bought-up 10 o’clock edition.

But the next morning, Mr. Goschen being abroad at an early hour, it was suddenly discovered that, by some extraordinary means, Malta was telegraphically isolated from England; and a hurried telegram was at once despatched from the Admiralty to Admiral Sir Michael Culme-Seymour, the Flag-Officer in Commission at Portsmouth.

CHAPTER IV. FIRST BLOOD

Before eleven o’clock the Majestic, the flag-ship of the Channel Squadron, was leaving Portsmouth harbour behind her at the rate of ten knots. She was under the command of the senior officer in command of the squadron, Vice-Admiral Sir Henry Stephenson, and with her went the little gunboat Halcyon.

The mystery underlying the sudden journey of this couple was not difficult to unravel. The truth was, the Government was greatly startled by the event of the morning. The Majestic was, in reality, a convoy to the Halcyon; the smaller vessel was acting as a despatch-boat to Malta, and the battle-ship was seeing her on her journey till she was deemed to be out of danger of molestation.

It had come to that already.

At the Government offices the words ‘treachery’ and ‘war’ had risen to more than one agitated lip. Europe, it was felt, was drifting, drifting–whither?

The task of the Halcyon was to warn the Governor of Malta, and to order the mobilisation of the Mediterranean Fleet near the Straits of Gibraltar. It might be necessary at a few hours’ notice to block the entrance of the Mediterranean; it might even be necessary to hurl back a foreign invader from the shores of England, and the Channel Squadron was woefully limited in weight of metal.

During the day business in London came practically to a standstill. Wholesale withdrawals of foreign securities were reported from the City. By 3 p.m. it was generally known that a military attaché to the Embassy at Paris had arrived by private yacht with a sealed despatch from Sir E. J. Monson, and had hurried to the Foreign Office.

A day of almost breathless tension reached its climax when, at 9 p.m., Mr. Curzon made the announcement to a full House that peaceful negotiations were still in progress with Russia, but that, late in the afternoon, Germany had made demands of England and China with respect to the recently-ceded territories, with which England, as he might say at once, would certainly be unable to comply.

The next morning, before break of day, England found herself telegraphically disconnected with the Continent.

About this precise hour, the Majestic, having her small companion some half a mile or more away on her starboard quarter, was butting her way about S. by W. through a rough Biscay sea. It was a cold and squally morning, still dark, though a chill hint of day now mingled bleakly with the East. The sea was handling both ships rudely, and the Majesties ponderous lurching through some six or seven degrees brought the acrid green sea washing about the base of her forward barbette, while from the bows of the Halcyon it went hissing aft in a continuous rain of spray.

It was just after five bells in the morning watch, at an hour when the gloomy gray of the morning had lightened a little, that the look-out man of the Majestic reported a big ship astern steaming leisurely south about seven miles away. The rate of the Majestic was ten knots, that of the stranger about six; but immediately after her coming into sight, a black cloud of redundant smoke revealed the stranger’s will to improve her pace.

That she had been lurking about with some object of search was clear. That she was now getting up steam seemed to indicate, if anything, that she had found what she was looking for.

In a few minutes it was made out that she was La Gloire, a French battle-ship of about the weight and armature of the Majestic.

La Gloire’s cloud of smoke was premature–it occasioned a suspicion of her motives. The first thing which Sir Henry Stephenson did was to order the Halcyon by trumpet-call to steam at full speed S.W. a distance of six miles. The Halcyon, at all events, had to be kept out of danger.

Yet he could hardly have expressed his reason for giving this order. Was any one at war with any one? He was ignorant of the fact, if so.

He was not long in doubt. La Gloire, even while getting up steam, had pricked off her course three points to starboard. It seemed as if she was about to give chase to the Halcyon.

‘What! Are we in for a fight then, Captain?’ said the Vice-Admiral with a smile of surprise, and a puckered brow.

‘It almost looks like it, certainly,’ replied Fleet-Captain Hardy.

‘Well, come now, we shall see,’ said the Vice-Admiral.

By this time La Gloire had not only hoisted her colours, but had extra colours on masts and stays. The Majestic wore the ordinary single ensign.

Captain Hardy had ordered steam for full speed. The next moment the Majestic swung round to starboard about six points. She was still ahead of La Gloire. At her present course and speed she would interpose between the English gunboat and the French ship.

For quite half an hour the two ships continued to approach each other slowly and obliquely, having started from a separating interval of about five miles. On this course the sea was more aft, and the rolling and sullen plunging of the ships less marked.

On board the Majestic, meanwhile, all was bustling action. Decks were cleared, magazines were opened, ammunition and projectiles got out; water-tight doors were closed. The dawn lightened to a chill and drear twilight.

The real object of La Gloire was to intercept and capture any despatch-boat from the Channel, which might attempt to take intelligence through the Straits. The sending out of the battle-ship with such an object was, however, a breach of international law, and an act of treachery; for no one had declared war against England, though declarations of hostilities were already in the bureaux of more than one of the ambassadors at London.

That the despatch-boat should be convoyed, and by a first-class battle-ship, was unexpected. La Gloire found herself checkmated. There before her lay her prize; but between her and it was the thunder and lightning of England.

But, though checkmated, she showed no intention of being checked. She kept on her way with rising speed. The two ships, in malign silence, like two red-eyed planets rushing to jarring combat, drew nearer. When their speed had increased to thirteen knots, they were about two miles apart. Decks ont both were cleared, collision-mats were ready, preparations were made for rigging torpedo-nets in an emergency. Nearer, in awful silence, they drew, two giants with limbs oiled for battle; and the bleak and raw sea-wind of the dawning made hoarse sounds above their funnels.

But one of the ships was still in doubt whether there was to be fighting, and, if so, why. There was a brief consultation on board the Majestic, and then she signalled: ‘Are we combatants?’ There was no reply.

To this silence the Majestic sent aloft the answer: ‘Trafalgar.’

And now the baleful silence recommenced. Both commanders had stationed themselves in their conning-towers. On either ship not a soul was to be made out by the glasses save the crews of the quick-firing guns on the hurricane decks, and of the machine-guns on the tops. By five minutes past seven the fleet-engineer of the Majestic announced that he had steam enough to drive the vessel at her utmost trial speed.

The strategy of the French commander in riot answering the Majesties question was soon apparent, for Sir Henry Stephenson felt himself bound to wait for the first shot, being uncertain how matters stood on shore. And the first shot in modern naval warfare must often mean victory.

The two vessels slowly converged, La Gloire on the other’s starboard side, steering S. by E.; the Majestic on the other’s port bow, heading S. by W. Suddenly La Gloire sharply altered her course by several points to the eastward, and impetuously bore down upon the Majestic.

‘Well,’ said Sir Henry Stephenson to himself, ‘that is uncommonly like an act of hostility. Well, then, Mr. Frenchman–’

Immediately the Majestic, too, pricked off eastward, her after-pair of 67-ton guns being kept trained on the enemy as she manoeuvred. The ships were now so well within effective range that the Majestic’s thin smoke, blown into a wide hovering fog by the east wind, half concealed her movements from La Gloire.

For a time it seemed as if the British ship were in retreat, and the French giving chase; then suddenly both ships were hidden from each other. Sir Henry, taking advantage of his windward position, had thrown overboard some twenty casks of smoke-producing tow and naphtha and tar, which at once separated the two ships with a blackness of thick brown reek, mingled near the water with bickering tongues of flame. The commander of La Gloire, fearing that in this fog of fume the Majestic might suddenly turn about and ram him, at once changed his course south-west, and was immediately the retreating ship. The English admiral had guessed his thought, and when the region of the smoke-making composition was passed, the beam of the Majestic was abreast of La Gloire’s poop.

It was the lieutenant in charge of the fore-barbette of the Majestic who first woke the thunder of this winter-morning tragedy.

Simultaneously, with one bang of wrath that shook the Majestic herself from stem to stern, both the 67-tonners of this barbette went crashing into La Gloire’s quarters.

At this moment the ships were not much more than half a mile apart. When the smoke cleared it was at once seen that the whole stern armament of La Gloire was in ruins, her after-barbette shattered, the two heavy guns unshipped. One of the shells had penetrated abaft her after-armoured tube and there burst, killing fifty men, and rending into a chaos of debris all it met. From the poop of the French ship rose a wide hurry of white smoke. At the same time a steady bombardment of quick-firing guns was opened from both vessels. In three minutes all unarmoured or unsheltered spots in each ship were cleared of every living thing. Twelve-pounders, six-pounders, three-pounders mingled in swift-cracking uproar, punctuated by the brut growl of the Gardners and the more rasping detonation of the Nordenfeldts. All the air was war, and all the intervening sea a commotion of hissing foam.

But now the machine-guns in the tops were silent, their protecting shields had been shot away, and their crews annihilated. One of La Gloire’s funnels was gone, and the other pierced, while three projectiles from her had burst their way through shields of six-inch nickel steel, and put three of the Majesties central battery guns out of action, striking them fairly on the chase. Within three minutes the two ships had belched forth a flaming hail of some twenty-two thousand rounds of shot, riddling all except the most heavily-armoured parts of each other, tearing to shreds all light gun-screens, and turning unarmoured ends and box-batteries into shambles.

Already it seemed improbable that either ship, unless the other were at once destroyed, could come out of this anarchy of thunder and live.

The starboard side of the Majestic was still presented to the port of La Gloire, but La Gloire’s speed had been greatly reduced, owing to injuries to her funnels, and the Majestic had forged forward abreast, then somewhat ahead of the other.

Vice-Admiral Stephenson was every moment awaiting the second crash of his after-barbette into the French ship’s beam, when La Gloire’s two fore-barbette guns sent out their voices simultaneously.

One of the shots glanced against the centre armour-belt of the Majestic at the water-line, leapt, struck her fore-armoured tube, and went driving far forward into the sea, where it burst in a high water-lily of spouting foam.

The other wrought terrible havoc. It struck the Majesties central battery at the height of the deck, burst inside, blew away the chief part of the hurricane deck, and turned all the guns in that battery into a mere heap of twisted and crumpled metal.

But as the British ship staggered at this blow, her bluejackets sent up a cheer, for the next instant the after-barbette in their own ship was talking, too; and a few seconds afterwards it was seen that La Gloire’s forecastle was on fire, that she had gone down by the bows, and that her screws, half out of the water, were furiously revolving in a broad mound of wheeling spume.

Was she sinking, then? The British Vice - Admiral expected now to see her strike her flag. But even as he looked, he was undeceived.

Yonder, a hundred yards astern, somewhat to his port side, he saw a sight which might have made even the heart of a Nelson leap. It was a small object, looking like a cubical box; and even as he glanced at it, it disappeared utterly beneath the waves.

He knew this to be one of the ingenuities from the Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée. It was a submarine boat, and the object which he had seen for a moment was the top of her conning-tower as she rose for an observation of distances and directions.

The submarine boat had been secretly lowered into the water from La Gloire’s starboard side. Her motor was electric, supplied from storage batteries, and her speed, even at some depth, considerable. Vice-Admiral Stephenson knew that her aim was to pass under his torpedo-nets, carrying an electrically-fired torpedo, to be attached to his already half-ruined ship.

At once he went circling at full speed to starboard, crossing the bows of the now slowly-progressive La Gloire, one of whose fore-barbette guns was useless, and the other unready to fire.

At the same time he had rapidly lowered from his port side a second-class torpedo boat which he then carried on deck. By means of hot water from the Majesties boilers, she was already under steam, and with careful handling, in spite of the parent ship’s now headlong, wheeling flight, she touched the water in safety, and at once went fretting fussily through the billows, a mere cloud of hurrying spray, at a speed of fourteen knots. Like some buzzing bee with deadly sting, she drove straight upon La Gloire.

The alarm on the French ship at this hasting ruin resembled panic. Disregarding the movements of the Majestic, her commander at once put his helm a-port, and turning upon his small foe the comparatively uninjured armament of his starboard side, poured forth, in one continuous roll of artillery, a bombardment of some twelve thousand pounds per minute. La Gloire was now, however, well in the trough of the sea, which flowed in bulky swells from east to west; the greater portion of her huge outburst of fire failed to take effect; and still the puffing thing came near and yet nearer, overwhelmed, but steadfast, drowned, but headlong, tiny, but terrible.

The climax of the fight was near. It had lasted but a few minutes: it had seemed like an eternity in hell.

At about three hundred yards from La Gloire the little torpedo-boat launched a Whitehead.

As the oiled and gleaming needle of steel slid swiftly into the water, it passed straight through the body of a great swell, and came instantly out on the other side, making directly for La Gloire’s quarter; but before it could reach her, the ship manoeuvred slightly to starboard, and the projectile slipped hurriedly under her stern, and exploded harmlessly some distance away.

But even as it did so, another torpedo came shooting through the waves from the little boat.

At the same time the crew of the torpedo-boat were seen to be wildly leaping at random over her sides into the waves. Seen–but dimly seen–for the whole craft from stem to stern, as well as all that region of the water into’ which she was now plunging on her last voyage, was enveloped in one hissing white cloud of stinging vapour. Two of her men instantly sank scalded to death. A twelve-pounder, shot upwards, had burst into her boiler.

It had not come from La Gloire. It had come from the unseen thing which was cruising darkly beneath the sea in search of the Majestic.

Immediately the submarine boat rose again, and the man in her conning-tower, looking a moment abroad, saw the Majestic–or rather he saw a vast mass of smoke which utterly concealed the Majestic and the direction of her bow. All he could note was that she was fearfully and wonderfully near to La Gloire; that she was approaching La Gloire–rapidly, rapidly–with horrid impetuosity.

He did not hesitate a moment, but, putting his fins into play, instantly sank, and made for a point at which he believed he would intercept the rushing ship.

The mass of smoke which he had seen around the Majestic had been intentionally caused by her commander. The Vice-Admiral had ordered every gun which still worked to be discharged, whether they bore upon the French ship or not, and enveloped in the mantle of ascending reek which poured from the hot weapons, he put his helm hard down, suddenly left the evolutionary curve of sixteen points through which he had been circling, and drove straight upon La Gloire. He was going to ram.

At that great moment expectation stood in horror. ‘Prepare to ram!’ went forth the command from the conning-tower, and every man on the Majestic fell flat to his face, as though at the sound of the trump of doom. And now, while the clock might tick, and tick again, the men on La Gloire became aware of what was coming. Up out of her envelope of vapour suddenly loomed the Majestic upon them, near and huge, like a monster rising from the deep. Just then the remaining fore-barbette gun of La Gloire was being discharged, and the ships being nearly bow to bow, the shell went forth with disastrous havoc, shattering the thickly armoured fore-barbette of the Majestic, battering the conning-tower, destroying the funnels, and shocking the Vice-Admiral into a state of insensibility.

But even as it did so, the crash came. The ram of the Majestic touched La Gloire on her starboard bow, glanced a little, then with a horrid z-z-zip-p! z-z-zip-p! then with a bursting and rending uproar like the cracking asunder of an arsenal, went tearing and smashing a shapeless hole 20 feet in length along her beam. The sea poured into the doomed ship; and at once she lurched bow-ward to starboard.

But the ram of the Majestic was not yet clear of La Gloire, when the most stupendous hubbub of the whole battle, drowning every other sound, rent the heavens. It was a double detonation, yet the two reports followed so closely one upon the other, that they seemed almost like one.

They were the sounds of two torpedoes.

The 28,000 tons of the two great ships half-leapt from the water, and started apart, shivering to their keels; and two immense pillars of white cloud, which soon were one, rose high, shutting them from each other.

One of these torpedoes had been affixed by the crew of the submarine boat beneath the bow of La Gloire, which they had mistaken for the Majestic; the other was the second of the two which had been despatched from the Majesties torpedo-boat before she had sunk. It had caught on to the keel of La Gloire aft, and its explosion had been delayed, perhaps half a minute, till now.

When the smoke cleared a little, the commander of La Gloire was seen, with blood-soaked clothes, and haggard face, and eyes staring with horror, standing on the wreck of his after-barbette, frantically hauling down his colours. He sent forth to the wreck which he had made of the Majestic this cry of terror–

Au nom de Dieu!–we are sinking –for God’s sake ...’

The captain of the Majestic at once lowered his only boat which was capable of floating, though half of her port-side, too, was smashed away. The whole crew of the British vessel had hurried to deck, ready, even as they cheered in victory, to aid in the work of rescue.

But as the boat pushed off, men were seen leaping hurriedly from La Gloire, in a vain attempt to escape her suction as she went down. She gave them little time. The bursting of the two torpedoes fore and aft had simply turned her into a skeleton of disconnected ruin. She lurched a little aft–up went her bows like two hands laid together in prayer–then her whole length settled evenly lower; she lurched aft again, obliquely, clumsily; then, as if with sudden resolve, she skipped forward, dived her nose briskly into the sea, and disappeared.