I do not know what tongue or what spirit speech he used, or what he said, but the bloated-faced brute turned pale. Yes, he drew sick with fear.
"I think there are spirits in this place," he said with a German oath.
"I could have sworn that something told me that I was going to die.
Mount!"
The Uhlans mounted and began to ride away.
"Watch," said Oro.
As he spoke out of a dark cloud appeared an aeroplane. Its pilot saw the band of Germans beneath and dropped a bomb. The aim was good, for the missile exploded in the midst of them, causing a great cloud of dust from which arose the screams of men and horses.
"Come and see," said Oro.
We were there. Out of the cloud of dust appeared one man galloping furiously. He was a young fellow who, as I noted, had turned his head away and hidden his eyes with his hand when the horror was done yonder.
All the others were dead except the officer who had worked the deed. He was still living, but both his hands and one of his feet had been blown away. Presently he died, screaming to G.o.d for mercy.
We pa.s.sed on and came to a barn with wide doors that swung a little in the wind, causing the rusted hinges to scream like a creature in pain.
On each of these doors hung a dead man crucified. The hat of one of them lay upon the ground, and I knew from the shape of it that he was a Colonial soldier.
"Did you not tell me," said Oro after surveying them, "that these Germans are of your Christian faith?"
"Yes; and the Name of G.o.d is always on their ruler"s lips."
"Ah!" he said, "I am glad that I worship Fate. Bastin the priest need trouble me no more."
"There is something behind Fate," I said, quoting Bastin himself.
"Perhaps. So indeed I have always held, but after much study I cannot understand the manner of its working. Fate is enough for me."
We went on and came to a flat country that was lined with ditches, all of them full of men, Germans on one side, English and French upon the other. A terrible bombardment shook the earth, the sh.e.l.ls raining upon the ditches. Presently that from the English guns ceased and out of the trenches in front of them thousands of men were vomited, who ran forward through a hail of fire in which scores and hundreds fell, across an open piece of ground that was pitted with sh.e.l.l craters. They came to barbed wire defenses, or what remained of them, cut the wire with nippers and pulled up the posts. Then through the gaps they surged in, shouting and hurling hand grenades. They reached the German trenches, they leapt into them and from those holes arose a h.e.l.lish din. Pistols were fired and everywhere bayonets flashed.
Behind them rushed a horde of little, dark-skinned men, Indians who carried great knives in their hands. Those leapt over the first trench and running on with wild yells, dived into the second, those who were left of them, and there began hacking with their knives at the defenders and the soldiers who worked the spitting maxim guns. In twenty minutes it was over; those lines of trenches were taken, and once more from either side the guns began to boom.
"War again," said Oro, "clean, honest war, such as the G.o.d I call Fate decrees for man. I have seen enough. Now I would visit those whom you call Turks. I understand they have another worship and perhaps they are n.o.bler than these Christians."
We came to a hilly country which I recognised as Armenia, for once I travelled there, and stopped on an seash.o.r.e. Here were the Turks in thousands. They were engaged in driving before them mobs of men, women and children in countless numbers. On and on they drove them till they reached the sh.o.r.e. There they ma.s.sacred them with bayonets, with bullets, or by drowning. I remember a dreadful scene of a poor woman standing up to her waist in the water. Three children were clinging to her--but I cannot go on, really I cannot go on. In the end a Turk waded out and bayoneted her while she strove to protect the last living child with her poor body whence it sprang.
"These, I understand," said Oro, pointing to the Turkish soldiers, "worship a prophet who they say is the voice of G.o.d."
"Yes," I answered, "and therefore they ma.s.sacre these who are Christians because they worship G.o.d without a prophet."
"And what do the Christians ma.s.sacre each other for?"
"Power and the wealth and territories that are power. That is, the King of the Germans wishes to rule the world, but the other Nations do not desire his dominion. Therefore they fight for Liberty and Justice."
"As it was, so it is and shall be," remarked Oro, "only with this difference. In the old world some were wise, but here--" and he stopped, his eyes fixed upon the Armenian woman struggling in her death agony while the murderer drowned her child, then added: "Let us go."
Our road ran across the sea. On it we saw a ship so large that it attracted Oro"s attention, and for once he expressed astonishment.
"In my day," he said, "we had no vessels of this greatness in the world.
I wish to look upon it."
We landed on the deck of the ship, or rather the floating palace, and examined her. She carried many pa.s.sengers, some English, some American, and I pointed out to Oro the differences between the two peoples. These were not, he remarked, very wide except that the American women wore more jewels, also that some of the American men, to whom we listened as they conversed, spoke of the greatness of their country, whereas the Englishmen, if they said anything concerning it, belittled their country.
Presently, on the surface of the sea at a little distance appeared something strange, a small and ominous object like a can on the top of a pole. A voice cried out "Submarine!" and everyone near rushed to look.
"If those Germans try any of their monkey tricks on us, I guess the United States will give them h.e.l.l," said another voice near by.
Then from the direction of the pole with the tin can on the top of it, came something which caused a disturbance in the smooth water and bubbles to rise in its wake.
"A torpedo!" cried some.
"Shut your mouth," said the voice. "Who dare torpedo a vessel full of the citizens of the United States?"
Next came a booming crash and a flood of upthrown water, in the wash of which that speaker was carried away into the deep. Then horror! horror!
horror! indescribable, as the mighty vessel went wallowing to her doom.
Boats launched; boats overset; boats dragged under by her rush through the water which could not be stayed. Maddened men and women running to and fro, their eyes starting from their heads, clasping children, fastening lifebelts over their costly gowns, or appearing from their cabins, their hands filled with jewels that they sought to save. Orders cried from high places by stern-faced officers doing their duty to the last. And a little way off that thin pole with a tin can on the top of it watching its work.
Then the plunge of the enormous ship into the deep, its huge screws still whirling in the air and the boom of the bursting boilers. Lastly everything gone save a few boats floating on the quiet sea and around them dots that were the heads of struggling human beings.
"Let us go home," said Oro. "I grow tired of this war of your Christian peoples. It is no better than that of the barbarian nations of the early world. Indeed it is worse, since then we worshipped Fate and but a few of us had wisdom. Now you all claim wisdom and declare that you worship a G.o.d of Mercy."
With these words still ringing in my ears I woke up upon the Island of Orofena, filled with terror at the horrible possibilities of nightmare.
What else could it be? There was the brown and ancient cone of the extinct volcano. There were the tall palms of the main island and the lake glittering in the sunlight between. There was Bastin conducting a kind of Sunday school of Orofenans upon the point of the Rock of Offerings, as now he had obtained the leave of Oro to do. There was the mouth of the cave, and issuing from it Bickley, who by help of one of the hurricane lamps had been making an examination of the buried remains of what he supposed to be flying machines. Without doubt it was nightmare, and I would say nothing to them about it for fear of mockery.
Yet two nights later Oro came again and after the usual preliminaries, said:
"Humphrey, this night we will visit that mighty American nation, of which you have told me so much, and the other Neutral Countries."
[At this point there is a gap in Mr. Arbuthnot"s M.S., so Oro"s reflections on the Neutral Nations, if any, remain unrecorded. It continues:]
On our homeward way we pa.s.sed over Australia, making a detour to do so.
Of the cities Oro took no account. He said that they were too large and too many, but the country interested him so much that I gathered he must have given great attention to agriculture at some time in the past. He pointed out to me that the climate was fine, and the land so fertile that with a proper system of irrigation and water-storage it could support tens of millions and feed not only itself but a great part of the outlying world.
"But where are the people?" he asked. "Outside of those huge hives," and he indicated the great cities, "I see few of them, though doubtless some of the men are fighting in this war. Well, in the days to come this must be remedied."
Over New Zealand, which he found beautiful, he shook his head for the same reason.
On another night we visited the East. China with its teeming millions interested him extremely, partly because he declared these to be the descendants of one of the barbarian nations of his own day. He made a remark to the effect that this race had always possessed points and capacities, and that he thought that with proper government and instruction their Chinese offspring would be of use in a regenerated world.
For the j.a.panese and all that they had done in two short generations, he went so far as to express real admiration, a very rare thing with Oro, who was by nature critical. I could see that mentally he put a white mark against their name.
India, too, really moved him. He admired the ancient buildings at Delhi and Agra, especially the Taj Mahal. This, he declared, was reminiscent of some of the palaces that stood at Pani, the capital city of the Sons of Wisdom, before it was destroyed by the Barbarians.
The English administration of the country also attracted a word of praise from him, I think because of its rather autocratic character.