THOUGH her love for George never faded, Arabella could not take kindly to life on the island. She bore herself cheerfully until she was with child, and then, when she began to plan careers for her son, she was oppressed by the absence of opportunity which that life could afford. She told herself that when she was dead and Siebenhaar was dead and George was dead the boy would be left alone with the Captain, who was only a common man. She had another two months to go when the Captain disappeared one night with his ship and a cargo of rubies and emeralds. The blow was too much for her: the only means of communication with the world of Bishops and white slaves was gone; she sank into a profound melancholy: the boy was born before his time; and she died.
George flung himself on the sands and wept and swore he would call the boy Judas, because he had betrayed him. However, Siebenhaar protested, saying that, as the boy could not be christened, it was not right to give him a Biblical name. He said that he personally should call him Ultimus as he bade fair to be the last of his line, unless, as had happened before, the island should insist on its population being continued. For that was how, after much cogitation, the philosopher had come to explain the previous strange adventure. George was indifferent, but from hearing Siebenhaar call the boy Ultimus he also adopted the name, not knowing its sad significance. Bearing deeply imprinted in his soul the marks of his unhappy contact with the world, George forbade all mention of it in his son’s presence. Never was he to know of the hateful race who inhabited Fatland, and of the indomitable Fatters whose admiral had so shamefully treated his mother. However, Siebenhaar used to talk in his sleep, and he often slept in the middle of the day. When he was six years old little Ultimus came to his father and said:
“What is God? What is an engine? Is the world round? What is a mother? Who is Siebenhaar’s father? What is a professor? Why does Siebenhaar talk in two ways? If you helped me to be born why can’t I help some one else? Is a Bishop a kind of man? Did I kill my mother, and how did I do it if I never saw her? Is this your island? What is an island? Are there other sorts of land? Are the stars land? Is the moon land? Is the sun land? If you are my father, why isn’t Siebenhaar some one’s father? Are all big men fathers? How do they do it? There are two kinds of goats, why aren’t there two kinds of men? If there are she-goats, why aren’t there she-men? What is a ship? Siebenhaar is always talking about ships. What is money? Are you a King? There is a King in Fatland. When is a father grand?...”
George gave one despairing look at his son. He groaned:
“Arabella, my love, my love.”
Then he walked out into the sea and disappeared. A few hours later his body was washed up on the shore, and Siebenhaar had to explain to the boy that his father was dead. Ultimus said:
“He walked out into the sea.”
“To such peace,” replied Siebenhaar solemnly, “do we all come.”
IF the boy’s questions were fatal to his father they were a delight to Siebenhaar, who had no further scruple about giving instruction, for, in the hardship and solitude which had been his fate since his encounter with George, his philosophy had matured and he saw that the remaining years of his life might be spent in the instruction and preparation of a disciple.
They would sit for hours together on the sands drawing maps and diagrams for illustration. Siebenhaar had no knowledge which he did not communicate to Ultimus, who by the time he was seventeen was a master of mathematics, German philosophy, the rudiments of physics, chemistry, geology, physiology, biology, psychology, botany, meteorology, astronomy. They made wind and stringed instruments and played duets composed of what Siebenhaar could remember of Beethoven. The boy was a good sculptor and painter, a carpenter, a cabinet-maker, a mason, a cook, an engineer, a weaver, a tailor, a cobbler. He could read and write five languages, was familiar with the geography of the whole world, and knew the situations of the best brothels in all the first-class ports. When he began to have needs which there was no means of satisfying, Siebenhaar explained them to him:
“You are now reaching that state of man which reveals the futility of all knowledge, since you are awakened to desires which no knowledge can satisfy. Rest assured that in the world your case would be no better, but rather would be aggravated by opportunity and failure. You are, at any rate, spared the tragedy of your father whose love destroyed the object of his desire and reduced him to a morbid condition in which your healthy wish for knowledge was more than he could bear. It is right to wish for knowledge, because only through that can we recognise our ignorance, and see the humour of our position. If you can see that you can be happy and glad that you have lived.”
Poor Ultimus tried hard to do so, but he often retired from their conversations to weep, and Siebenhaar would find him sitting in the water consoling himself with music. The unhappy youth became a prey to boredom and wearied of the arts and sciences and discussions with which they filled the day. They had long ago arrived at the conclusion that there was no God, no ascertainable purpose in the universe, and nothing in life but the fun or nuisance of living. He became romantic and plagued Siebenhaar for stories, love-stories, bawdy experiences, the tale of his meeting with George, and the deathless fable of the love of George and Arabella. From that he came to delight in the idea of war, and Siebenhaar explained to him how wars came about: how in the first place men were obsessed by superstitions about God, each community believing itself to be specially favoured and inspired by the unseen powers, and ignoring all the evidence to the contrary, as poverty, disease, corruption, bad art, inefficiency, and domestic unhappiness. As a consequence each community was jealous of every other, and supported its claims to moral superiority and divine favour with a great show of force, of armed ships on the sea and trained men on the land.
To illustrate his remarks Siebenhaar concocted explosives and Ultimus found such great amusement in them and was so busy destroying the houses he had built, the statues he had made, the engines he had contrived, that the philosopher was forced to change his theory of war and to see that it has its roots in boredom.
Thereafter Ultimus was alternately busy with the arts and sciences and with destroying all his works when he was bored with them and could not help recognising their futility. As his explosives upset Siebenhaar’s nerves and the tranquillity he required for his contemplation, they made an arrangement that Ultimus should give notice of his destructive intentions when he felt them coming on. Then Siebenhaar would retire to the other side of the island and leave him to it.
The boy made a careful study of explosives and experimented with them until he could send huge palm trees hundreds of feet into the air. It became his ambition to blow up the mountain. He made several attempts, but could not succeed. He blew great holes in it and discovered mines of gold and diamonds and platinum and various new earths which, when mixed with his explosive, increased its power. But the mountain seemed to be capable of absorbing any shock. He had just given up his experiments in despair when Siebenhaar came rushing over in a great state of excitement to say that the island had moved a degree and a half.
The two men looked at each other incredulously, not daring to believe in what was thumping in both their minds. They prepared a new charge, took their bearings, exploded it, and found that they were moving at the rate of twenty-three knots an hour, N.N.W. The next charge they placed so that the island moved W.N.W.
They could then navigate and go whither they pleased. They embraced, danced, killed a goat, and drank heavily to celebrate their triumph.
THE north point of the island was a rocky headland, a precipice hundreds of feet above the sea-level. Beyond it jutted three jagged rocks. One morning Siebenhaar found on one of these rocks the hull of a vessel, and when he looked closer he saw a man sitting disconsolate upon it. He fetched Ultimus, who threw stones to attract the man’s attention. It was impossible to make him hear. They gesticulated to tell him to swim to his right, and at last he caught their meaning, stripped and plunged into the sea. They had already stopped the island, which was now making only a gentle way, so that there was no danger of his being run down.
By the time they reached the shore the man was already sitting on the sands drying himself and eating a cocoa-nut. He was above middle age, and had a little fat belly and long thin legs. Siebenhaar addressed him in Fattish, and the man said he was a Rear-Admiral in the Fattish Navy and would like to know what in hell they meant by ruining his battle in which he had got the Fatters fairly on the run.
“Battle?” said Siebenhaar.
“Yes. Four cruisers, six destroyers, and torpedo craft. All gone on the rocks. The most amazing thing in all my long experience. Not a sign of a rock on the chart. You must have got the Fatters first, for their firing suddenly ceased. Who are you? What are you?”
Siebenhaar told him it was Samways Island.
The man’s jaw dropped.
“I spent the best part of three years after that,” he said. “I originally annexed it for the Empire.”
“Not,” cried Siebenhaar. “Not Mr. Bich?”
“Bich is my name.”
Siebenhaar disclosed his identity and Rear-Admiral Bich covered his amazement and emotion with a volley of expletives. He asked after George, and when he was told that both he and Arabella were dead he could not check his tears.
He shook Ultimus warmly by the hand and said he was the very spit of his father, with a strong look of his mother. Then he added: “I must not forget my duty as an officer, and, as a matter of form, I claim the island once more for the Empire.”
“If you do,” said Ultimus quietly, “I shall blow you in pieces. I know how the Fattish Empire treated my father, and, but for your kindly thoughts of my mother, I would send you to join the ships which I am only too happy to have destroyed if such a disaster can cause any genuine commotion in Bondon. I will further caution you to be careful what you say, as I am unaccustomed to society other than that of the wise Siebenhaar, and already feel my soul filled with dislike and contempt for you. This island is my island by inheritance, it is moving by my will and I shall allow you to stay on it just as long as you are useful to me.”
Rear-Admiral Bich saw the strength of Ultimus’ position and was silent until Siebenhaar asked him for news of civilisation, when he expressed surprise that they had not heard of the war.
“War?” said Siebenhaar. “Are they still at that game? Why, we were told that the Fattero-Fattish war was to be the last.”
“That,” replied the Admiral, “was a mere skirmish. There are six or seven nations at war with Fatterland.”
“Alas! my poor country!” cried the philosopher. “I knew how it would be. Their infernal greed and conceit, their confusion of mind, their slothfulness, their desire for discipline, their liking for monuments and display, their want of tact, all these defects needed but success for them to grow into active vice and plunge them into disaster. To any nation a period of successful peace is fatal. The employment of commercial cunning unredeemed by any other exercise of the mind is, after a time, unutterably boring, and the most obvious relief from it is found in the ideal of a nation in arms. Now that is a barren ideal. To train men for so stupid and brutal a trade as the soldier’s is to increase the already excessive amount of stupidity and brutality in the world. To maintain large bodies of stupid and brutal men in arms is in the end to be forced to find an excuse for using them. Human nature, I fear, is incurably pugnacious and destructive. I have had to amend many of my more optimistic opinions concerning the human race since I have had the privilege of watching the development of our young friend yonder. He is normal, healthy and intelligent, and acquainted with all the resources of civilisation, physical and mental. There is hardly a practical discovery of modern science that I have not placed at his disposal for his use and amusement, but these do not satisfy him. He is not exposed to the nervous pressure to which in our crowded modern states I used to ascribe outbreaks of hostility. No. In the absence of an enemy he must declare war upon his own handiwork, upon the elements, upon the very earth itself.”
“Before you go any further,” said the Rear-Admiral, “I should like something to eat, and I should like to explain that on our side in the war is the right. The Fatters have behaved like savages. They have burned cities, murdered old men and children, raped women and committed every outrage.”
“I have seen something of warfare myself,” said Siebenhaar. “It is a bestial occupation. When a man has become accustomed to slaughter by license, what is there to make him stop at minor offences such as theft, rape, and wounding? Soldiers who are unchaste in peace do not become chaste when war is declared. In a friendly country the women consent. In a hostile country some of them protest, generally because they are panic-stricken and in terror of worse happening to them.”
“This war,” said the Rear-Admiral, “is holy.”
“I am a Fatter,” replied Siebenhaar, “and the Fatters have been taught for generations that all war is holy and sanctifies all that is done in its name.”
“We,” said the Fattishman, “fight like gentlemen.”
“And,” retorted the philosopher, “like gentlemen you burn and rape and pillage.”
“Your conversation,” said Ultimus, “has interested me extremely. I am filled with a burning desire to see civilisation, war, soldiers, and, above all, women. We will go to the centre of civilisation, and if I do not like it I shall blow it in pieces.”
“Two can play at that game,” said Bich. “We have explosives too.”
For answer, Ultimus reached out and pressed two wires together. There was a rumble, a crash, a thud, and hundreds of tons of rock were torn away from the side of the mountain and hurled into the air to fall, miles away, into the sea.
AS a sailor, Charles Bich, though middle-aged, liked nothing better than to talk about women. He was sentimental about them, but at the same time sensually appreciative of their beauty. To such an extent did he inflame the young man’s imagination that Siebenhaar had to protest.
“It is a shame,” he cried, “that the son of such a father should be polluted with the obsessions of civilised men.”
With the air of leaving no more to be said, Ultimus remarked:
“I like them.”
“So do all unintelligent men,” replied Siebenhaar, “and they are driven mad by them and hope against hope for the day when all restraint will be removed. This is another potent factor in the production of war. Women are not to the same degree subject to these terrible obsessions, but they do regret their limited opportunities in the organised society of peace. Further, in times of war they like to think that men are fighting for them, and they love to be regaled with stories of violence and outrage, especially those who have been entirely chaste, and have no hope of anything else.”
The Rear-Admiral blushed.
“When we fight,” he said, “we fight for our country, our King, our Empire, for the all-red map of the world.”
“These,” replied Siebenhaar, “are words. Country, King, Empire, are protective ideas. What you love and what you defend is your mode of living, which you have adopted partly because you have a prejudice in favour of it, partly because you like it better than any other you can conceive. Your living consists in eating, drinking, consorting with women, and rearing any family you may produce. Everything else is introduced merely to disguise any unpleasantness there may be in the exercise of those functions. For the most part they are lies, illusions, hallucinations, obsessions, which you find convenient to cloak your unimportance. As a naval officer you justify the absurd occupation by which you procure your livelihood. My young friend here is under no such painful necessity and I wish him to be spared all mental confusion.”
“Personally,” interrupted Ultimus, “I do not wish to be influenced by either of you. You, sir,” addressing Siebenhaar, “have given me all the knowledge and wisdom you have stored up in your adventurous life, and you, sir, have out of your life of duty, given me a new interest in the two things, war and women, which have hitherto been denied me. I am much obliged to you, and, if you don’t mind we will continue the erection of the wireless installation we began yesterday, because I am anxious to establish communication with the world as soon as possible.”
Ultimus and Bich retired to the top of the mountain leaving Siebenhaar sadly tracing on the sands a rough caricature of a woman. So horrible was it to him that he could not finish it and obliterated it with his foot.
EVERY day brought messages from the world. The Fattish had made a glorious retreat of sixty miles. The Waltzians were offering a glorious resistance to the Grossians. With the help of God the Fatters had gloriously evacuated their trenches on the west, and heroically withdrawn from a river on the east. With assistance from above the Fattish navy had swept the Fatter flag from the seven seas. The Bilgians had been nobly extinguished, though their flag was still flying and their King ruled over a flooded country. Hundreds of thousands of men were killed, wounded, and lost. From country to country General congratulated General, Admirals sent their applause to Field-Marshals, Statesmen exchanged bravos, and monarchs thanked each other and God for timely assistance.
Rear-Admiral Bich said: “Isn’t it glorious—glorious?”
“At present,” replied Ultimus, “I am so confused that I can make nothing of it. Why are they all so pleased with themselves? Do they like to think of thousands of men dying?”
“They have died for their country. They are heroes.”
“I don’t see that. I cannot imagine myself going out of my way to die for my island, and Fatland is also an island.”
“Ah!” said the Rear-Admiral. “But there are no women on your island, no little ones, no homes.”
“There is Siebenhaar who has been father and mother to me, master and instructor.”
“Well! Suppose you saw men designing to murder Siebenhaar, would you not raise a hand to defend him?”
“Not if I saw there was not the remotest chance of saving him. But that is nonsense. No one would want to murder Siebenhaar.”
“I don’t know about that. There are times when he is so exasperating that I hardly dare answer for myself.”
“That is absurd,” replied Ultimus. “You know that I should destroy you at once if you did anything to Siebenhaar. The case might be different if you were in such a position that there would be consequences. But why deal with hypothesis when you are confronted with facts?”
The simple sailor was no hand at an argument, and just at that moment there came the news of the loss of a Fattish fleet after an encounter with the Fatters, with an account of the heroic death of the Commander, Rear-Admiral Sir Charles Bich.
Unfortunately the island was not yet in a position to transmit messages and the unhappy Bich had to rest inactive, crushed with the burden of the news of his own death and his inability to contradict it.
“You see,” said Ultimus, “you have died for your country, you are a hero, and you do not like it at all.”
THE point was argued for many days. Bich would not withdraw from his assertion that it was glorious to die for his country, but at the same time he could not disguise his distress at having done so.
“If I had died,” he said, “it would have been glorious.”
“Only in the eyes of your countrymen,” said Siebenhaar. “You already have that, and if you had died you would not have known anything about it.”
“There is a heaven above,” cried Bich.
“Which you could never have entered. Has not Heaven enjoined you not to kill and not to resist evil?”
“In the service of my country!”
“What does heaven know of your country? Heaven is eternal. Its laws are for eternity. Your country, your Empire are mere temporary arrangements for the convenience of a few millions of men and women who wish to profit by the labours of people less fortunate than themselves. You are therefore contending that it is glorious to die for a man’s material advantage, or, in other words, for political and financial vested interests.”
“I am prepared at any moment to die for my country.”
“You have died.”
“I have not.”
“You have died and been given the glory attaching to such death.”
“That is what I cannot bear.”
“Then,” said Ultimus, “I will give you a root which will procure you a perfectly painless death. I see that you do not mind dying for your country so long as you do not know about it.”
“And that,” put in Siebenhaar, “is where he is consistent. He is like all the men of his time and condition; he does not mind living, in fact he quite likes it, so long as he knows nothing about it and is not called upon to realise what he is doing. When he is faced with the consequences of such insensibility he is so appalled that he welcomes the idea of death, if he can find some excuse for it. Therefore he has invented a myth called his country and proposes to die for that. According to his prejudices it is cowardly to draw a fire-arm upon himself, but it is right and brave to place himself in the line of some one else’s fire. Such a condition of imbecility is extremely infectious. It sweeps through crowds of men like a disease through cattle. But, as men are indomitably hopeful, they do not destroy each other, as you, Ultimus, might suppose. No, they wait until they can discover another crowd of men in the same lamentable condition, and fall upon them in the hope of a victory which shall restore their self-conceit and once more blind them to the appalling consequences of their own ill-doing. And here, at last, we do touch upon one of the prime causes of war. Superficially it looks as though the immediate cause was this, that the governors of States make such a mess of the affairs with which they are entrusted and reduce their people to so lamentable a condition that they must seek war as an outlet, and to give the male populace as soldiers the food which they have made it impossible for them to earn as workers. There is also the consideration that a large proportion of the male populace will be removed from all possibility of making trouble. That is an interesting but a superficial view which attaches more blame to the rich than they deserve. No. A more profound analysis gives us the result I have previously indicated, that wars are invariably due to moral epidemics. And, since the human race will always be subject to them, there will always be war.”
Ultimus had withdrawn at the beginning of the discussion. Having no knowledge of men in herds, he could not follow the line of Siebenhaar’s argument. He returned now to say that he had obliterated another battle. On this the Rear-Admiral was excited and wished to know what ships he had seen and what flag they were flying.
“I do not know,” replied Ultimus, “but there were nine ships attacking three and that struck me as so unfair that I decided to make an end of it.”
“But they may have been Fattish ships! Have you no regard for human life?”
Said Ultimus:
“There was no sign of anything human. They looked like flies on the water. When I see three scorpions attacking a smaller insect I always kill the scorpions for their cowardice and the insect for having called down their anger upon itself.”
Rear-Admiral Bich drew himself up to his full height and said:
“As a Christian I protest. As an officer and a gentleman I must ask you to put me ashore at the first opportunity. They may be Fattish ships which you have destroyed. My King and country need me.”
“Come, come,” interposed Siebenhaar, “your King and country are probably doing very well without you. They have an immense geographical advantage which only the blind jealousy of the Fatters makes it impossible for them to admit. You are already a hero; poems have in all probability been written to your memory. You had better stay with us. It will be much more amusing to see what effect Ultimus has on civilisation than to plunge back into the fever which has seized it.”
The Rear-Admiral looked scornful and very proud and said:
“Herr Siebenhaar, on our previous acquaintance only the protection of the late heroic Mr. Samways prevented me from denouncing you as a Fatter spy. I have not forgotten.”
“What,” asked Ultimus, “is a spy?”
“Spies,” replied Siebenhaar, “are corrupt and useless people who are sent out to frighten a hostile nation by making them think that the enemy knows more about them than they do themselves. They are only used when the desire for war is very strong. They exercise a paralysing effect upon the civil population and deliver them up to the guidance of their own military authorities. They are like microbes which carry the war fever from one country to another. I regret that Sir Charles should have so small an opinion of my intelligence as to think that my country would make so trivial a use of me.”
“I can’t stand all this talk,” muttered the Rear-Admiral, and he went away and all night long paced up and down the sands on the other side of the island, imagining that he was once more serving his King and country on his own quarter-deck.
IN secret the indomitable servant of his country made himself a boat, a coracle of palm branches and mud, and when, a week later, they came in sight of land and Ultimus put in close to have a good look at it and the little white city built by the mouth of a river, he put off in it without so much as saying good-bye or thank you for the hospitality he had received.
“He will come back,” said Siebenhaar; “he will come and try to annex the island. No Fattish officer can resist an island and the Fattish have been known to waste thousands of lives in order to add a bare rock or a pestilential swamp to their Empire. It is an amiable lunacy which my unhappy race, who cannot appreciate their geographical disadvantage, are trying to emulate. What is the news of the war to-day?”
“The official reports all agree in saying that there is no further development. Every capable man in every country is now bearing arms. All other activity is at a standstill. Stern measures have had to be taken by the various governments to stop the emigration of pregnant women to the peaceful countries on the other side of the world.”
“Ah!” said Siebenhaar, “I thought that would happen, I thought the women would revolt as soon as war ceased to be an excitement and became a trade.”
“Some of the Governments,” added Ultimus, “are paying women over forty-five years of age to go.”
Siebenhaar chuckled.
“It is time we interfered, Ultimus. When they lose their sense of humour so far as that, it is time for action. We will go to Fatland. Where are we now?”
“Off the coast of Africa.”
“We will lie out to sea until we have prepared the island against all dangers. First of all we will blow up the harbour. Then we will mine the shores all round. We will prepare the rocks on the tops of the mountains for missiles and we will lay in a great stock of your new transmissible explosive. We will then block the mouth of the great Fattish river, and we shall see what we shall see. An intelligent use of explosives should be able to counteract and if necessary to crush the fatuous use of them that is now being made. We will try persuasion, threats, and violence in that order to stop the war, and if then we cannot succeed we will abandon the human race altogether and return to our own Southern Seas.”
“You forget,” expostulated Ultimus, “that I was drawn here out of curiosity as to something else besides the war, and that is, woman.”
“A man,” said Siebenhaar, “bears a grudge against woman for his birth; he is a fool to burden himself with others against her.”
“As I imagine them,” replied the young man wistfully, “they are beautiful.”
“Lord, Lord,” cried Siebenhaar, “if only a young man would be content with his imaginings.”
THE island moved proudly up the Fattish channel, until they came within sight of the land on either side of it. Here was drawn up a great array of ships like those which had been destroyed in the Southern Seas. On the foremost of the ships were hoisted a number of little flags which Siebenhaar interpreted as saying:
“Good morning. Welcome home.”
Now, the fragmentary message recorded by the wireless gave the clue to the purport of this signal. There had been a great rally of the Fattish Empire, one colony had sent sacks of flour, another black currants, another black men, another brown sugar; all came to the aid of the motherland in her need, all forgot their grievances and vowed that they never would be slaves. In the face of such a demonstration no doubt as to whether the Fattish empire really existed could survive. Men who would not admit black, brown, or yellow men to their clubs welcomed them to their trenches. Such unity, such loyalty, such brotherhood, must lead to victory. But victory was slow in coming and it was becoming difficult to maintain interest in the war, when, suddenly, there burst upon the Fattish public the news that the lost island was responding to the call and even now coming to place its unique powers of motion at the service of the Emperor-King. The miraculous had happened. Once more it was obvious that the right was on the Fattish side. Once more the streets of Bondon were thronged as on the eve of the declaration of war. The map of the world with the red blot made by George Samways was taken down and copies of it were sold for the Imperial relief fund. It was supposed that George Samways, the only hero of the last war, was on the island and had induced it to return to the fold. His downfall was forgotten, his heroism remembered.
Ultimus stopped the island and entered into communication by wireless with the Fattish fleet.
“Is that Samways Island?”
“Yes.”
“Is George Samways aboard?”
“No. His son and his friend, Siebenhaar.”
“What nationality is Siebenhaar?”
“Fatter.”
“Nonsense. He is an ex-engineer, now a philosopher.”
“Fatter philosophers are writing the most scurrilous abuse of the Fattish.”
“Siebenhaar has been for the last twenty years on the island.”
“Tell him to change his name before landing, or he will have to register.”
“We have no intention of landing.”
“We did not get your last message correctly.”
“We have no intention of landing.”
“Don’t understand. May we send a deputation?”
Ultimus replied:
“I will receive one Cabinet Minister and the most beautiful woman in Fatland. I shall be in the mouth of the river by two o’clock. You had better move your ships and be very careful of the backwash. I understand that the shores of the channel are strewn with wrecks.”
Frantic messages then passed between the ships and the Admiralty in Bondon. It would be extremely awkward to have the island in the river, blocking the channels to the port, but the public were thinking of nothing but the island, and, in default of George Samways, were quite prepared to take his son to be their darling. There must not be a hint anywhere of the possibility of the island’s being, after all, disloyal. The Fattish had been very reticent about their relations with God, whereas the Fatters had claimed him as their ally. The Fattish had been favored with miracles, even as the Children of Israel. It was decided to retain the miracle in the face of all risks and Mr. Samways was promised that a Cabinet Minister accompanied by the most beautiful woman in Fatland should call at four o’clock on the following day.
The fleet turned and steamed away out of sight.
THE acknowledged most beautiful woman in Fatland was none other than Arabella’s sister. She was fifty-three, but had managed to preserve her reputation by the discreet publication of her connection with illustrious men. She had one rival for the honour of the visit to the island, a lovely creature, a brilliant singer of popular ballads, who, during the crisis, had carried all before her and swept hundreds of young men into the army with her famous ditty: “Won’t I kiss you when you come back home?” However, her claims were disposed of by Arabella’s sister astutely pointing out that she was the aunt of the young man on the island, and therefore, if necessary, could be alone with him in perfect propriety.
In a motor launch she came out with the Lord High Chief of the Admiralty in full-dress uniform.
No sooner did she set eyes on Ultimus than she burst into tears and cried that he was the living image of Arabella. She kissed him and he drew back outraged and cried:
“Don’t do that again.”
Siebenhaar explained:
“Your nephew, madam, has never seen a woman before and is naturally alarmed. Your voice must sound strangely to his ears and your costume, if you will forgive me, leaves room for considerable doubt as to the normality of your anatomy. I think it would be as well if you made no attempt to reassure him, but allowed him to look at you and to grow accustomed to you while I engage your companion in conversation.”
With that he turned to the Lord High Chief and said:
“You can imagine that I am astounded to return after a long absence to find civilisation plunged once more in the barbarism of war. Surely no single one of the combatants has anything to gain by it.”
“The war, sir, was not of our seeking.”
“But you were prepared for it?”
“By God we were. I had seen to that.”
“Then you were prepared to join issue in any quarrel that might be sought?”
“We pledged our word to the Grossians and the Bilgians. Besides, sir, apart from all that, the Fatters are jealous of our Empire, and they have deliberately plotted for years to oust us commercially and politically. They want us wiped off the map. But when it comes to wiping——”
“Does it ever come to that?” asked Siebenhaar. “Is Athens dead while Plato lives? Is Rome forgotten while Virgil and Lucretius live in the minds of men? Was there ever more in Spain than lives in Cervantes?”
“I don’t know about that,” said the Lord High Chief; “but the Fatters want to dominate the world.”
“So did Alexander: so did Napoleon: but they wrought their own ruin.”
“This is too deep for me,” replied the politician. “I want something that the newspapers can get hold of. I want to know what you are up to, how you found the island, how it came to move again, and, if it isn’t a miracle of loyalty, what is it? Also I want to know what your intentions are, because if you are not here to support us we shall have to place you both under arrest,—er—that is, after you have moved the island out of harm’s way.”
Ultimus took Siebenhaar aside and said: “I want to go away. I have been looking at the woman, and I think she is horrible.”
THE Lord High Chief towards the end of the interview adopted a peremptory tone and ordered the island to be taken through the enemy’s minefield and then to blockade the enemy’s fleet. The island was to be called H.M.S. Samways, to be manned with the crew of a first-class battleship and commanded by a senior admiral. Ultimus refused point-blank. He owed nothing to Fatland, and was not going to have his island or his inventions used in a cause which he as yet did not understand. The Lord High Chief stormed and blustered until Siebenhaar told him the truth about Bich’s battle and the nature of the invention of which Ultimus had spoken. The Lord High Chief went pale and muttered that he should have thought his country’s cause good enough for any man. However, since they were so obstinate, he invited the islanders ashore and undertook to satisfy their curiosity with regard to the war, or the events which immediately preceded it. Arabella’s sister proposed that they should stay in her house, but her invitation was refused.
No sooner had the visitors put off in the launch than Ultimus moved the island further up the river until all channels were blocked and no ship could get either in or out.
“Now,” said Ultimus, “they will treat me with respect, and will not rest content until they have satisfied me and persuaded me to move the island once more.”
The effect he desired was produced. They were taken up to Bondon in one of the Royal motor-cars, and a whole floor in one of the most expensive hotels was placed at their disposal. For the first time in his life Ultimus slept in a bed and was so hot that he could not bear it. He rang the bell in the middle of the night and a little chambermaid appeared.
“Take that thing away,” said Ultimus.
The little chambermaid stared at him.
“I don’t want it. I don’t like it,” he said, glowering at the girl’s face. It was like a flower, like a star; it was beautiful. Ultimus could not take his eyes off it. Her eyes smiled back at his amazed curiosity. He stood and reeled and said:
“I love you.”
“Yes, sir,” replied the little chambermaid.
“My father said the Fattish were false. I asked them to send me the most beautiful woman in the land and they sent me a hideous old creature.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ah! Why did they not send you? We could have gone away at once, away, away, where there are no old women, no battleships, no beds.”
The little chambermaid by this time was fascinated, and she stayed with Ultimus all night, while he talked and told her how he had desired to see a woman and was now satisfied and never wished to see another, and how when he had seen the war he and she would retire to the island.
“Oh, sir,” said the little chambermaid. “And shall I be a Queen? And won’t the Fatters ever be able to get near the island? They all say the Fatters do awful things to women.”
Ultimus took her to his breast and they were joined in the mystical union of a kiss; and for many hours no word passed between them.
In the morning they were disturbed by Siebenhaar, who came in unsuspectingly, saw what had happened and withdrew discreetly, gave orders to the management that Mr. Samways was not to be disturbed, and went out to see Bondon in war-time.
THE streets were full of young men in uniform. In the parks were young men without uniform being drilled. Except for policemen, hall-porters, street-scavengers, the town was empty, and when Siebenhaar asked a policeman why it was so, he was informed that everybody had gone to look at the island.
Said the constable: “There was nothing like it since I was a boy, when the war began.”
Siebenhaar was taken aback.
“How long?” he said.
“Well! It’ll be a matter of fifteen years now, though it’s difficult to remember. It goes on. Things get quiet in the winter. Then it begins again with the fine weather, with a new list of Fatter atrocities. Then there’s a new promise from the Emperor of Grossia; then we have another rally of the Empire and things become livelier.”
“I am astonished,” said Siebenhaar, “that a great free nation like the Fattish should tolerate such a state of affairs.”
“Bless you,” said the policeman, “I’ve forgotten what peace was like. There’s a few old gentlemen hold meetings to talk about it, but we’re used to it by now. I remember there used to be scares about our being invaded, but they soon came to an end. We all take our spell at the fighting, and, if we come home, settle down to work of one sort or another. There’s no doubt about it, the Fatters would make a nasty mess of things if we didn’t keep them bottled up.”
Siebenhaar protested: “Surely you yourselves are making a nasty mess of things?”
“Oh!” replied the policeman. “That’s over the water. You soon forget about it when you get back home. It would be funny, sir, if that there island were to put a stop to the war. We’d hardly know what to do with our young men.”
Siebenhaar’s blood boiled. A great nation, with a tradition of freedom, could acquiesce in such arrest of its life, such wanton sacrifice of its youth!
He visited the Lord High Chief and found him just out of his bed in a suit of blue silk pajamas. Breakfast was laid before him and he offered Siebenhaar coffee. It was refused.
“I am come, sir, to tell you that the island will not be used to assist you. It will be used to stop the war.”
“Stop the——?”
“As I say.”
“Come, come, sir. The war cannot be stopped until all parties to it agree to our terms of settlement. It is a matter of high politics, which it takes an expert to understand. We have the matter well in hand. The country was told at the beginning that it was to be a long war. It will be finished when our terms are agreed upon and not before.”
“And those terms are——?”
“They are known to my colleagues and myself. When the settlement is concluded they will be laid before the country.”
“And have you, sir, during the last fifteen years ever risked your life on land or sea? Have you suffered in pocket or in health? Have you been deprived of even a luxury?”
“For fifteen years I have been the hardest worked man in the country. I have practically lived in this office. When things were going badly with us I made speeches up and down the country.”
“Asking young men to give their lives and thank God for the privilege of dying before they had tasted the full sweetness of life.”
“It is their country’s life against theirs.”
“You say so.”
“The Fatters will make an end of us if they don’t.”
“Have you made an end of the Fatters?”
“No. But we will before we have done.”
“Are the Fatter women all stricken with barrenness?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Then you cannot make an end of the race.”
“We can smash their Empire.”
“A word. Can you smash a word? You seem to me, sir, to talk and act as though a nation were an abstraction instead of a collection of human beings, bound together by language, manners, and religion.”
“It is a matter of high politics.”
“It seems to me, sir, that war is the logical outcome of your view of national life, and that a nation without a war is not a nation. I should imagine that a war greatly facilitates the task of government. The rich can always be trusted to look after themselves, but the poor are rendered impotent. I cannot raise a hand to support either such a view or such a condition. You have attained the ideal of high politics, the sacrifice of domestic affairs to international relations. I congratulate you. I decline all further hospitality at your hands. My young friend has already realized one of his ambitions. I shall request the Emperor of Fatterland to satisfy the other. We shall go to Fatterland to-morrow and see the war which you have been able to confine to other countries.”
“Herr Siebenhaar,” shouted the Lord High Chief, “you shall do no such thing. The public has taken the island to its heart. You will consider yourself under arrest.”
Siebenhaar smiled sweetly:
“I have seen the Fattish public take Mr. George Samways to its heart and I have seen it reject him. I do not think you will arrest me, for, before leaving the island we arranged an explosion to take place two days from now in case of our non-return. Such an explosion would project thousands of tons of rock over your city.”
ULTIMUS refused to be separated from the lady of his choice, and when Siebenhaar said he must return to the island the little chambermaid declared her willingness to go if she could be married first.
“You need not worry about that,” grumbled Siebenhaar. “There will be no other women on the island, no one to care whether you are married or no, no one to bully you if you have dispensed with the ceremony, and Ultimus has no relations except his aunt, who will never forgive him for his frankness. I warn you that on our island you will find none of the excitements of the great hotel, neither the advantages of society nor its disadvantages.”
“I will come,” said the little chambermaid, “if you will let me tell my mother that I am married. It would kill her if she thought I was not.”
“A lie more or less in a community is no great matter, since its existence depends upon lies,” said Siebenhaar.
So the chambermaid wrote to her mother, packed her belongings in her tin box, and with Siebenhaar and Ultimus was driven in the royal motor-car to the docks. The last few miles they drove through enormous cheering crowds, men, women, and children, singing as they went.
“Won’t I kiss you when you come back home,
My soldier boy!
For my heart is with you as you cross the foam,
My soldier boy!
You are big and you are brave,
From the Huns our homes to save,
Or to find a hero’s grave.
Won’t I kiss you when you come back home!”
A motor launch took them swiftly out to the island and there Ultimus was proud to show the little house he had built and the gardens he had made.
In the afternoon they went up to the top of the mountain, where an amazing sight met their eyes. Through the smoke loomed the towers and domes and chimneys of the great city, and on the banks of the river for miles stretched the crowds of people, and others came along the roads, pouring in on foot, in carts, and wagons. Ultimus was seized with nausea, which soon gave place to rage and he stamped his foot on the ground and cried:
“There are too many of them. Let me destroy them.”
But Siebenhaar wept and said:
“Rather destroy those heartless men who herd them like cattle and rob them of the fruits of their labour and bid them believe in a God whom they deny, a national idea which they can maintain only by the destruction of life and the ruin of the nation. Destroy those who sacrifice beauty to their pleasures, and love to their obstinate pride. See, the city must be empty now, destroy it.”
Ultimus moved his hand and in one moment the domes, towers and chimneys of the city disappeared. The island moved and the crowd, seeing that which they had come to see, clapped their hands and shouted until the island disappeared.
IN a few hours they were off the coast of Fatterland, and had blocked up the harbour where the Fatter fleet lay in hiding from the overwhelming superiority of the Fattish. The Emperor himself, who had already heard of the destruction of Bondon, came out to greet them. He had information as to Siebenhaar’s previous career and he decorated him at sight with a Silver Eagle. To Ultimus he handed an Iron Cross.
The Emperor was dressed in a large brass helmet, a white suit with a steel cuirass, and enormous shining boots. He was a little man and very pompous.
“God,” he said, “has blessed you.”
“How do you know?” asked Siebenhaar.
“God,” said the Emperor, “has preserved the Fatterland, through me.”
“On this island,” retorted Siebenhaar, “we are accustomed to talk sense. There would have been no need for God or anybody else to defend Fatterland if you had not so wantonly destroyed peaceful relations with other countries.”
The Emperor removed his helmet.
“What a relief!” he said. “No one has ever talked sensibly to me before. You don’t know how sick I am of being an Emperor with everybody assuming that I don’t wish to think of anything but my own dignity. I am not allowed to think or talk of anything else.”
“Has it ever occurred to you,” asked Siebenhaar, “that a dignity which requires over a million soldiers to maintain it is hardly worth it? Have you ever thought that the million soldiers are maintained not for your dignity, but because their housing, their feeding, their equipment are all exceedingly profitable to a few men?”
“I have often thought that,” replied the Emperor, “but I have never found a soul willing to discuss it with me. When I meet other Emperors the same dreadful thought haunts all of us, but none of us dare speak of it, for we are watched night and day, and what we are to say to each other is written by young men in the Government Offices.”
The Emperor began to cry.
“Four million men have been killed since the war began, and everybody says it is my fault. I didn’t make the war, I didn’t, indeed I didn’t. It was not in my power to make war, any more than it is in my power to stop it. Horrible things have been done by the soldiers.”
“Poor wretches!” said Siebenhaar. “How can they be anything but bestial, deprived as they are of all that makes life sweet?”
“How, indeed?” asked the Emperor. “Thousands have died of dysentery, or cholera, and enteric and typhoid. Hundreds of thousands more of starvation and exposure. It is impossible, I tell you, impossible to prevent organisation breaking down. Contractors!” He shook his fists. “Ah! There is nothing contractors will not do, from sending bad food to insisting on being paid for food they have never sent. Ah! the villains! the villains! And to think that my name is being execrated throughout the world.”
The Emperor looked about him uneasily.
“And now, Herr Siebenhaar, what am I to tell them on my return? That your marvellous island is the gift of God to the Fatter people?”
“Say nothing,” replied Siebenhaar, “except that Mr. Ultimus Samways wishes to see the war. We are neutral territory. If we have damaged Bondon we have in coming here cleared your minefields and we propose to keep your fleet bottled up and shall destroy it unless Mr. Samways returns in safety within a week.”
“We have had a delightful talk and it has been refreshing to me to discover a philosopher who is greater than an Emperor.”
Siebenhaar laughed and said he looked forward to the day when capitalists and contractors discovered that the world contained a power greater than their own.
“I also,” said the Emperor, “possess an island. I shall be happy when the war is over and I can retire to it and live in peace and devote myself to the delightful and harmless pursuit of painting bad pictures.”
He promised that an airship should be sent for Ultimus, and said good-bye cordially and regretfully. As he put his helmet on he said:
“I have to wear this infernal thing, though it always gives me a headache.”
“Now,” said Siebenhaar to Ultimus, “you have seen the unhappy individual who is called the man-eater of Europe.”
“Was that the Emperor?” asked the chambermaid. “Why, they told me he had a tail and always walked about with bleeding baby’s legs in his hands!”
THE airship was a great delight to the inventive genius of Ultimus. He had it brought to earth on the shore and examined the engines and propellers, and its ingenious steering apparatus. The officer in charge of it was discreet and silent, a stiff martial gentleman whose intelligence and humanity were completely hidden by his uniform. He had brought a declaration to be signed by Ultimus, saying that he was a non-belligerent and did not represent any newspaper. For Siebenhaar he had brought a bundle of newspapers of every country so that he might read what the nations were saying of each other.
At last Ultimus’ curiosity was satisfied, and he stepped into the observation car, the engines started purring and the great fish-shaped balloon rose into the air.
Ultimus was surprised to see how little his island was and when they passed over into Fatterland he cried:
“Why, there is room for everybody! How wrong I was to hate the Fattish for being so many! Why do not some of them come and live here if there is no room for them on their island?”
“They’d have a warm time of it if they did,” said the officer.
“Why? Don’t you like the Fattish?”
“They are pirates and thieves. They are jealous of our honest commercial success. They and they only are responsible for this war. They have set half the nations of Europe to attack us, but they attack in vain. We are glorious warriors, but they are only commercial travellers.”
“In Fatland,” replied Ultimus, “they say that they are glorious warriors, but you are only machines. And they say that you are jealous of their Empire, and for years have been planning to destroy their fleet.”
“What nonsense!” said the officer.
They had been thousands of feet in the air, often above the clouds.
“We are approaching the western frontier.”
They descended. A booming and roaring came up and a queer crackling sound. There were flashes of light and puffs of smoke, but nowhere were there signs of any men save far, far away on the roads behind the lines of smoke and flashes of light.
“That,” said the officer, “is the war.”
“But where are the men who are doing it?”
The officer pointed to black zigzag parallel lines in the ground.
“They are there. Those are trenches. They are impregnable. Years ago, at the beginning of the war there was some barbarous fighting with bayonets, but since we took up those positions there is nothing but what you see. Each year makes those positions stronger, nothing can move the armies from them. While the war lasts, they will be held. Is it not splendid? It is just the same on the eastern frontier, though the line there is a hundred miles longer. Ah! It is the greatest war the world has ever seen.”
They came lower until they could see into the trenches. There were men playing cards, others sleeping; another was vomiting. Another was buttoning up his trousers when his head was blown off. His body stood for a moment with his hand fumbling at his buttons. Then it collapsed ridiculously. One of the men who was playing wiped a card on his breeches and then played it. Another man went mad, climbed out of the trenches and rushed screeching in the direction whence the missile had come.
“I have seen enough,” said Ultimus. “Why do they go there?”
“Because if they did not Fatterland would be overrun with the savages hired by the Fattish.”
“Would that be worse?”
“It would not last so long,” replied the officer, “but we should have lost our honour as a nation.”
“That,” said Ultimus, “is exactly how the most beautiful woman in Fatland talks. What is this honour?”
“It is holy,” said the officer with so fatuously fervent an expression that Ultimus laughed.
“Does your Highness wish to see the eastern frontier?”
“No, thank you. That is enough.”
The airship soared up. It was now night. The stars came out and Ultimus mused:
“Out of all the planets why should this be tortured with the life of men? Is it their vast numbers that drive them mad? Or are they so vile that war is their normal condition and peace only a rest from it?”
For the first time Ultimus responded to the beauty of the world. They flew low over mountains, and great rivers and wide valleys. The variety of it all entranced him, accustomed as he was to the monotony of the sea and the narrow limitations of the island. Apart from the horror of war it was amazing to him that men should desert such loveliness to spend their days in holes dug in the ground.
MEANWHILE on the island the philosopher and the chambermaid lived through difficult hours. The girl wept without ceasing and said if she had known how dull it was going to be she never would have come. Remembering Arabella’s dissatisfaction, Siebenhaar said:
“Women have no resources within themselves. They take life too seriously. It is never amusing to them. Society is organised for their protection and amusement and they take no interest in it, and let men, who are only worried or irritated by it, bring it to ruin without a protest. Women are the criminals who are responsible for everything, for they encourage men in their vanity and weaken them in their power. They desire safety, and detest originality, intellect, imagination.”
The chambermaid sobbed: “I thought it was going to be fun to be a Queen, but there is no fun in reigning over sticks and stones.”
“Women,” said Siebenhaar, “want their lovers and their babies and their fun. When they have to choose between the three, they choose their fun. No. They are not the criminals; it is men who are that for letting them have their fun to keep them quiet. Oh! Ultimus, that was a true instinct of yours to destroy them in their thousands!”
ULTIMUS was gone exactly a week, during which time he saw all the preparations for the war, the countless widows and orphans created by it, the stoppage of other business, the immense activity at arsenals, boot factories, and cloth mills, and chemical laboratories, the soup kitchens for the starving, among whom he was horrified to see thousands of men who had returned maimed from the trenches. What perhaps appalled him most was the gaiety of the children.
He mentioned this to Siebenhaar on his return. The philosopher said:
“They have been born since the war began and do not conceive of life being otherwise.”
“It must end,” said Ultimus, and he sank into a deep reverie. The strangest result of his experience was that the sight of the little chambermaid filled him with disgust. When he thought of the peaceful and profoundly stirring existence out of which he and Siebenhaar had come he could not but contrast it with the obscene excitement in which he had found her. That she could accept and welcome his embraces when she knew, as he did not, the bestiality towards maintaining which the energies of Europe were devoted, filled him with so bitter an anguish that he could hardly endure the sight of her. When he thought that he and she might be bringing another life into a world made so unworthy of human life, then he thought that he could never forgive her. His impulse was to escape, to leave the benighted nations to their fate, but, when he thought of the suffering he had seen, he found that he was bound to them by more than curiosity. He had seen war and could not rest until he had done his utmost to expunge it from the minds of men. He had lived in a pure happiness familiar with all the intellectual discoveries of the human mind; now he had gained the love of beauty and a more passionate incentive to live. What room was there now among all those millions of men for intellect and beauty?
Siebenhaar had made good use of the newspapers.
“It is clear to me,” he said, “that this war happened through stupidity and jealousy. They all invented excuses for it after the outbreak of hostilities. There is no reason why it should not end as suddenly as it began. It is too much to expect men debauched by fifteen years of war to see reason, but they will understand force. We will use force.”
Together they drew up the following manifesto:
SAMWAYS ISLAND,
OFF EUROPE.
We, the undersigned, lately arrived in Europe, on discovering its unanimous betrayal of civilisation, hereby declare as follows:
(1) We have destroyed Bondon.
(2) The power which did that will be used against any of the present belligerents not consenting to lay down their arms.
(3) Upon the declaration of peace the fleets of the hostile nations are to be collected and sunk, the guns and ammunition of the various disbanded armies having first been laded in them. Neutral nations will then be invited by us to destroy their fleets and disband their armies.
(4) Nations in future will have no high political relations with each other except through a central government.
(5) Recognising the natural pugnacity of the human race and its love of spectacular effect, we suggest that in future nations which arrive at a complete misunderstanding should, with the consent of the central government, declare war on each other for a period of not less than one week and not more than one month, the nations to place in the firing line only the incurably diseased, the incorrigibly criminal, the lunatic and the imbecile, and all of those convicted of exploitation and profit-sharing.
(6) Not more than two thousand men are to be employed on either side, and the sphere of operations is to be narrowly limited. If desired, and to encourage a knowledge of the horror of war, we suggest that such wars be paid for by admitting spectators at a price.
(7) Wars are only to take place in August.
(8) Naval war is to be prohibited altogether as too barbarous. The central government will maintain an armed fleet for the suppression of pirates.
(9) Weapons and machines designed for the destruction of human life are only to be manufactured by the central government.
(10) Acknowledging that follies do not die easily and that nations at war will always desire territory as a trophy, we are willing to place the island at the service of the central government as the prize to be fought for. It can always be found by wireless.
(11) We submit that there shall be no discussion of the terms of settlement until the central government is set up and a proper tribunal is constituted to deal with all claims. The first step in the interest of parties is disarmament, and upon that we insist.
(SIGNED) IGNATZ SIEBENHAAR.
ULTIMUS SAMWAYS.
THIS manifesto was transmitted by wireless to all parts of the world. It was published in the newspapers of America, and therefore could not be suppressed by the various National Committees for Keeping the Public in the Dark. Ultimus received invitations to all the capitals of the belligerent nations. He said that if they had anything to say they could say it by wireless. Meanwhile if nothing was said the Fatter fleet would be destroyed within a week: the Fattish fleet immediately after it: and the various ports and capitals would one by one meet the fate of Bondon.
A great deal was said. Almost every day mean little men, who looked as though they had been fat only a short time before and then scorched, arrived to offer Ultimus his own price for his new explosive. They all said the same thing: the enemy alone was responsible for the war and it would never end until the enemy was destroyed. Therefore, in the interests of civilisation and universal peace, Mr. Samways ought to sell, nay, give to humanity the secret of his invention.
“I am using it in the interests of civilisation,” said he, “and, as you see, I am resisting all temptation to make money out of it. The proper use of an explosive is that for which I made mine, namely, to destroy every ugly and useless thing I had made.”
And the mean little men went away. Two of them committed suicide on their way back to shore, so troubled were they at being deprived of the monopoly which had enabled them to drive millions of men to the slaughter that the rest might be miserable slaves in their hands.
As a matter of fact, these two had been ruined by the destruction of Bondon, upon which they had been dependent for the world-wide circulation of their credit.
Day after day brought the news of the suicide of one great financier after another, and the army contractors, realising that they might not be paid for their efforts, abandoned them. No food or supplies reached the armies, which came home in search of food. The Emperors of Fatterland and Grossia fled to their country estates. The Emperor of Waltzia had been dead for ten years, though his death had been concealed.
Before long a number of intelligent men from every country had met in Scandinavia and a central government was proclaimed. The Fattish, Fatter, Grossian, Waltzian, and Coqdorian fleets were collected in the North Sea, and Ultimus had the great satisfaction of driving the island through them.
XVIII: THE RETURN OF THE ISLAND
AND now Ultimus could breathe again. Came the news every day of tremendous rejoicings in all the countries, and in all the name of Ultimus Samways was blessed. He was asked by every one of them to anchor his island off their shores, but he replied:
“Not until the lunatic that is in every European is dead, can I dwell among you. It is easy for you, whose lives are shallow to forget. But I have seen and suffered and I cannot forget. When you have discovered the depths in your own lives and each man recognises the profound wonder of every other, then will the thought of the philosopher Siebenhaar be as fertile seed among you and you will reap the harvest of brotherhood.”
When he had sent this message to the United States of Europe he sought out the little chambermaid and said to her:
“I beg your forgiveness. I have let the horror of war break in upon my devotion to you. We are making for the Southern Seas. If you prefer it you can retire to Bondon, though I must warn you that your luxurious hotel is now a hospital for the cure of astute business men.”
The little chambermaid replied:
“I did want to go to see the fun when peace was declared, having seen the fun in the streets when they declared war. But it’s come over me now that I love you and only you, and I want to be by your side to give you all the happiness you have brought into my heart.”
And Siebenhaar said:
“This is a mystery past the understanding of men, but the understanding is its servant.”