WHEN the island was absorbed in the productions of this new literary or pioneering era, its attention was suddenly called to its immediate surroundings. Out of eternity they were jerked into the passing moment to defend their own little plot of earth. Mere existence was endangered if they did not at once withdraw their powers from their march through the future. It had been the result of their humane and lenient policy towards their exiles that every few generations rebellion and menace rose in the archipelago against their mysterious isolation. Fear of the isle of demons awed the imaginations of the other islands for a century or two, and then foolhardy prosperity, or conquest, demanded a new lesson.
Half a century had not passed since the romance of Choktroo’s rise and fall; and unaided and unstimulated, the other inhabitants of the archipelago would have grovelled in helpless fear and hate of the central isle. The discipline applied in the repulsion of Choktroo’s fleet would have sufficed for several centuries, but for a new power which had insinuated itself within the circle of mist.
One of the days when the book of Emigration was holding the stage of Loomiefa, the spectators were startled by realistic transference of their drama to the sky above them. Just as the opalescent faleenas were about to land on the new star, every eye was suddenly drawn away from the stage to the blue spreading above the valley. Across it was passing a strange airship of huge proportions and ungainly structure. I recognised it as a development of the balloon, with which I had been familiar in my European experience. There was the immense inflated globe, or rather pear, with the car hung underneath; but there was something new in the motions of this balloon. It seemed to be dirigible, for it tacked this way and that across the direction of the wind. And still more strange, the car was filled with implements of war; I could see their great muzzles pointed over the sides.
The Limanorans were startled by this anticipation of their science, but only for a moment; and as soon as the apparition sailed out of sight, they bent their senses as eagerly on the spectacle before them. They knew that their sentries were at their watch-posts on Lilaroma, and nothing hostile to the interests of the civilisation could occur in air or sea or upon earth without stirring their attention, and so placing the whole island on the alert. They waited till the publication of the book was finished and then streamed off to their various businesses and pursuits. As we flew across the upper slopes of the mountain we found out that the aërial stranger had settled upon one of the lonelier heights of the island of Broolyi. No action was taken by the Limanorans against the singular invader of the archipelago, except to set a special watchman who should observe his movements through the idrovamolan, and should report to the elders anything out of the common that might occur.
The stranger had evidently been disabled away to the east of the circle of fog; his steering-gear had ceased to act, and before a tornado he was hurried away from the great continent over which he had hovered. The impetus bore him helpless above and across the ring of mist, and within its calmer sphere the steering-gear was again adjusted. It was then that the watchers on Lilaroma saw his purpose to make for their island, and they sent through the lilaran a blast which would carry him away from their shores, not rude enough to harm him, yet sufficiently strong to defeat his intention. Feeling himself borne again farther away from his home he tacked for the nearest peak that he thought he could reach. This was evidently Klimarol. But the blast of the lilaran was too much for him; and to save himself from drifting still farther west he grappled one of the heights of Broolyi as he passed over it, and settled there.
It became one of the amusements of the younger Limanorans to observe the behaviour and the fate of the newcomer in the isle of peace. The crew of the airship was numerous; they were taken prisoners not long after they had descended from their car, and their captain was hurried off to the court of the new ruler. Before long the balloon was brought to the capital and carefully guarded; and, anchored firmly to the earth, it made ascents with the royal engineers under the direction of the balloonist. His every movement was watched lest he should release the captive by cutting the rope that bound it, and sail off with the officers of his Broolyian majesty. But as the months and years passed on, the newcomer with his strange new ship came to be trusted by the king and his advisers. He saw an arena for his ambitions and talents, and bent his whole energies to his new purpose.
We could see him from day to day and week to week add to the aërial fleet, which he at once began to build in imitation of the balloon he had brought with him. His original subordinates and companions were at first his only assistants, but the Broolyian engineers and mechanicians afterwards joined in the work in great numbers, and became as deft at it as the strangers. Every new balloon that was made was tested in the air. At first there were accidents, which for a time prejudiced the court and the people against the aërial monsters. But by carefully selecting his men from the army the director was able at last to furnish every airship that he made with a complete and efficient crew, able under the leadership of one of his companions to manipulate the vehicle and every implement on board of it. It even became the favourite pastime of the court to make voyages across the island in these swift frigates of the sky.
Ultimately the king so thoroughly trusted the master of this new style of transportation that he abandoned himself to his guidance and allowed him free use of all the resources of the island. He came to see the marvellous possibilities that lay in warfare carried on by such a navy. Though the Broolyians had, after Choktroo’s deportation, lost one by one all the conquests that that audacious warrior had made, and had at last been confined again to the limits of their island, they never gave up their ambitious dreams. And the monarch who could fulfil them would be certain to fix his empire in their hearts. The new king looked round for some means to gratify this passion for conquest. But their old methods were now comparatively useless; for the other large islands, warned by their past experience, built fleets as large and formidable as the Broolyian, and the smaller groups confederated for the purposes of defence. It was vain then to think of re-mastering the archipelago in any attempt by sea.
With extreme delight then did the monarch watch a demonstration of the warlike possibilities of the new air craft. The director had some old hulks moored out at sea in sight of the king and his court. Then he entered one of his new balloons, well provided with guns and explosives and well-manned, and bade the crew let go. They sailed straight out till they rose high over the remains of the antiquated navy. As they approached their prey, several guns belched out their fires from the car, and their shot struck and sank three of the ancient ships. But two tough old hulls resisted all their attempts. So the balloon rose straight over them, but much higher in the air. Out of the car was seen to fall two packages, which made for the decks of the old tempest resisters. In the twinkling of an eye, before we could realise that the packets had reached their destinations, there was a thunderous roar, and the air was filled with jets of water and with the flying fragments of the shattered hulks. When the commotion settled, nothing but floating planks and spars and shreds of the vanished ships was to be seen on the surface of the water. And away out of reach of the fierce convulsion rode the airship majestic and unharmed in the blue.
The monarch need no further demonstration. He gave up to the master of the new power the use of his whole army and navy. Before many months were over a vast aërial fleet was equipped and manned ready for the first emergency, and this emergency arose at once. The sullen jealousy which ever smoulders and rankles between two powerful and neighbouring empires took substance and outward shape between Aleofane and Broolyi. The old enemy knew nothing of the new instruments of war which had been forged, and prepared with cheer and good hope for the struggle. Her fleet was in excellent order, well equipped and manned, but within a few weeks it had completely vanished before the wrecking terror of the air. Continuous torrents of lead and iron streamed from above onto their decks, making those of their gunners that survived helpless and inert. And when their captains invented methods of pointing their guns at the aërial ships and of floating fire-kites against them to set them on fire, then the most tremendous engines of the navy in the air were brought into train; and with appalling explosions the Aleofanian ships and their crews vanished in atoms.
No such destruction of a nation’s war material had ever occurred in the history of the archipelago. The Aleofanian marine force was swept from the face of the sea. One or two other islands were bold enough to attempt the struggle with the new power, but with the same disastrous results to themselves. Over the whole archipelago except its central island the air-fleet passed, inspiring terror and reducing the peoples to servitude. It was the same all-conquering story as was told under Choktroo’s leadership.
And now the Broolyian army and people were willing to worship the maker and manipulator of these balloons as a god. He had plenty of ambition; but he was by nature and acquirement only a mechanician and not a born leader of men. He had none of the self-confidence made monstrous by success, or of the unscrupulousness, that forges the masterful will. He did love power, but he hesitated before those audacious measures which give a conqueror the highest vantage-ground. He yearned to rule widely. But he had not the self-mastery and the leavening imagination which secure command over the minds of human aggregations. He was but an average nature with complete mastery over the newest and most masterful invention.
The Broolyian monarch saw the peril of his too great success, and set the stranger and his balloons aside in time to let the popular enthusiasm cool. Alone with his fleet and his army the king completed the round of conquests. He knew that when the power of Aleofane and one or two other chief islands was broken, there was nothing to fear from the others, and his task, though brilliant, was easy. He took care that there were several great and sanguinary battles that put heart and pride into his soldiers and sailors. Thus by the time the war was finished, the newcomer and his appalling fleet were almost forgotten.
But the monarch himself did not forget them. He knew that the climax of this new era of national conquest and pride was certain to come soon. Never had the Broolyians been continuously successful in war without losing their traditional fear of the isle of devils, and demanding its subjugation. He set his house in order against the day of vainglory. He would develop his new method of warfare. He made the stranger again his commander-in-chief, urging him on towards the increase of the aërial fleet and of its terrorising weapons. Then, fearing from his knowledge of the past that there was little chance of success, he gave him complete command of the expedition, so that all the blame of failure should be on the shoulders of another. In order to complete the contrast, he kept rebellion smouldering in one or two of the adjacent islands, and took care that it broke out simultaneously with the attack upon the isle of devils.
Ignorant of the conditions he had to meet, and puffed up by his past successes, the stranger thought that all he had to do was to add to the number of his fleet and the deadliness of his weapons. We saw him set out with banners flying amid the applause and enthusiasm of the people, whilst the wily king led off his own forces, quietly to embark from an opposite shore of the country against the rebels of neighbouring coasts. Success seemed to follow the aërial navy, for favouring winds bore them swiftly and majestically over the horizon out of the range of Broolyian vision. For myself, as I sat at an idrovamolan, I feared the strange new torrential guns and the showers of deadly explosives that would rain down from these aërial ships, and my heart sank as I saw them sail like great vultures nearer and nearer to their prey.
But my compatriots were tranquil and free from all anxiety. Everything was really in readiness and they were only awaiting the exact moment for action. It came, and the huge balloons fell suddenly away before the blast from the lilaran, like a flock of storm-beaten birds. I could see them struggling, many of them half disabled, to stand up to the wind. But it was vain; they whirled like snowflakes before an arctic tempest. Their helms became entangled in their snapped cordage, and I could see their guns roll and pitch with fatal effect upon the crews, till from many the suicidal weapons were tumbled overboard into the sea below.
Yet the expedition by no means acknowledged itself defeated. Guided by some experienced Broolyian adviser the admiral of the fleet changed its formation. Evidently from knowledge that the blast from Lilaroma could play upon only one point at once, he divided his air-navy into three squadrons, and making the central face the blast, he sent the other two in different directions round the island. He thought that these two would be able to bring their explosives and guns to bear upon the lilaran by this flank movement. It was as unsuccessful as his other efforts. Both sections came almost within firing distance of the shore, when suddenly their gaseous spheres were seen to collapse. A slight and silent flash was all that told whence the disaster had come. Electric rockets had issued from magnetic ejectors of great power and almost invisibly punctured the spherical supporter of each airship.
It seemed as if the whole of the three squadrons would soon be in the sea, and with the weight of their war material they were certain to sink to the bottom and carry all their crews with them. But the invaders promptly threw overboard their weighty cargoes, and with their usual humanity the Limanorans now did their best to save their enemies. The punctures in the balloons were so minute that it would take some time to exhaust them. So the lilaran sent its blast underneath them and buoyed them up like thistledown, at the same time blowing the three sections of the navy off in different directions. It was amusing to watch the alternate rise and fall of the various airships as it turned its blast from one squadron to another, like a game of battledoor and shuttlecock played by giant jugglers. The warriors in the cars kept crouching in panic and holding onto the cordage, as they rose or fell in the air upon the billows of wind. Their cars danced and leaped and jerked like corks in an eddy where currents meet, and they were too panic-stricken or too paralysed with terror to see that with all the tumult of their movements they were gradually approaching solid earth. We saw each squadron land on the shores of a separate island; and after their terrible voyage the crews threw themselves upon the earth and seemed to clutch it, in fear lest they should be torn again from its sweet anchorage into the warring whirlpools of the upper air.
After a few days they collected their wits and the shattered fragments of their air-fleet, and, hiring boats from the islanders, sailed homewards. As they entered the main harbour of Broolyi crestfallen and dispirited, the army and fleet of the king were returning from their victories with triumphal music and with banners flying. The contrast was striking, and set the monarch more firmly on his throne for another generation.
Yet matters could not remain where they were. The defeat of the new methods of warfare stirred hope in the breasts of the conquered peoples; and muffled sounds of rebellion came from many of the islands. The king knew that he must make some other move, and held long councils with the defeated balloonist.
The result of the conferences soon became manifest. The stranger had seen that his aërial fleet was useless against tempests and electric missiles, such as the isle of demons had command of, and he willingly handed it over to his superior to use against the threatened revolts. With the blind obstinacy of the average mind placed in a position greater than its powers, he ran counter to the traditions of the archipelago, and uttered loud resolves that he was not to be beaten; he would show them how fertile he was in resources; he had no fear of their bag of winds.
The king again gave him free scope with all the material and forces of the country, and the ingenious mechanician forged huge guns that would throw their projectiles enormous distances, and built great ships to hold them. As he launched one vessel after another, he practised his crews on board of it, and taught them how to handle the marvellous artillery. The people stood in awe, as they heard the thunder of their fire dozens of leagues away, and saw their missiles fall in the sea miles and miles from the ship whence they had issued; and they shook their heads wisely and said to each other: “Now, we shall see at last an end to this isle of demons.”
When the great armada was all ready after long years of work, and the ships lay at anchor in the harbour, their magazines filled, their guns in train, and everything prepared for the final expedition, the people were so overjoyed at the sight that they organised a festival to the sailors of the wonderful fleet. They had such confidence in the destructive powers of these ships and their guns that they resolved to pre-celebrate with magnificent pageantry and feast the triumph they were so assured of. And as the monarch had already defeated the incipient rebellion by his aërial fleet, and the mutterings of the subjugated were stifled or unheard, there could be no danger in inviting all the sailors on shore to take part in the festivities. So the great fleet lay peacefully at anchor unmanned, whilst their crews were being lauded to the skies for their intrepidity and the certainty of their success.
The night was moonless and deep darkness was flecked only by the occasional blaze of sky-daring illumination. Everything had gone off with brilliancy, and the banquet to the sailors was nearing its climax and close. Suddenly the hubbub of jubilance was hushed; there was a series of appalling detonations, shaking the banqueting edifice to its foundations; many thought that the world had come to an end so terrifying and ear-deafening was the continuous roar. The people in the streets at first fell on the earth and prayed to their gods. But they soon saw what had occurred. There out on the harbour the pyrotechnic display overshadowed anything they had ever seen or even thought of. The great ships were all of them in flames; the magazine of each had exploded, and sent decks and fittings and armaments sputtering in fragments against the black of the sky. The brilliancy of the spectacle overcame the natural alarm and regret. Such titanic catherine-wheels they had never seen, such rending of the heavens, such flame-lit jets of water rising in columns above the doomed ships. But the spectacle was brief. Ship after ship rose high above the scene of its devastation, its banners of fire all flying against the darkness, and then plunged into the extinction and gloom of the depths. The breach in the side close to the magazine sucked in the waters most swiftly, and sent the bow-end of each first to the watery assuagement of her fires. In an hour after the first deafening paroxysm all was still and dark again on the face of the waters, but for a flaming fragment here and there, hissing and sputtering against the night.
Then came terror again. The Broolyians, jubilant over the invincibility of their marvellous fleet, knew not whence the disaster had come or who had been the enemy. And they now crouched in fear, or ran for shelter, lest the invisible foe should take advantage of their palsy and reap his harvest of blood. But no enemy came. No carnage followed the strange catastrophe. The morning dawned, and the waters of the bay shone as peacefully in the level rays of the sun as if no fleet had ever been there, as if no conflagration had occurred. Not a boat or sign of an enemy was to be seen. Out crept the soldiers and sailors from their shelters, the people in their rear, and soon the harbour was alive with craft, seeking relics and explanation of the disaster.
But no explanation could be found in all the babel of theories that chattered and echoed over the water. A council of the royal advisers was called; they consulted and questioned every admiral and general; but all in vain. The stranger, who had brought the fleet and its equipment into existence, failed to account for the occurrence. He refuted all charges of negligence, and appealed to the desire of the people and the command of the king as his warrant for withdrawing the crews from the ships for the night. Treachery there must have been; there were a thousand conjectures, but no sure knowledge as to whence it came. With the irrationality and ingratitude which mark all panic in nations or other aggregations of men when unexplained disaster has overtaken them, they broke out in fury against the very hero of the night’s festivities. They had to find a scapegoat and his figure was foremost in every man’s mind; the destructive magnetism of the crowd gathered round the name that was on every lip, and the cry arose that he was the traitor. The mob howled outside the council-room for his blood. He had to be bundled off by a secret passage to the outskirts of the city and thence into the mountains, and to appease their frantic passions the king had to proclaim his exile, and to promise that no such engines of war should again be forged in the royal armories. Fear of the isle of demons again crept over the superstitious hearts of the people. As they brooded over the mystery, they felt that somehow or other it was connected with that inexpugnable centre which had defied all their efforts at its invasion.
And this was right. For the Limanorans had watched the long preparation for the assault, and made calmly ready to defeat it. They knew that, if they ever allowed the fleet to sail, they could not well beat it off without loss of life amongst its crews. It could lie in the shelter of an island some miles distant from their shores and rain great projectiles upon them. The repulse must be accomplished long before this had been reached. They therefore waited till the ammunition was on board each ship. Then, in order to avoid the destruction of life, they sent into the air of Broolyi the exhilarative magnetism required, and into the minds of the inhabitants the suggestion that the whole fleet should be fêted. When the ships had been deserted and not a human being was within reach of them, they launched through the air in its direction a series of electric shocks, which, as soon as they came in contact with the metals of the magazine, ignited the ammunition. Most of the ships were set on fire in this way, the rest by the falling fragments and sparks from their exploding sisters.
Thus was the new threat to Limanoran civilisation frustrated without loss of life or breach of the mystery that sealed the central isle. But the waste of time and progress upon such threats by the withdrawal of so many Limanorans from their ordinary pursuits was an evil not to be tolerated. Something must be done to prevent the recurrence of these expeditions. It was generally from Broolyi they came, the result of warlike ambition. It would be a service to the whole archipelago to reduce this military people to insignificance and silence. There was no security in their subjugation by the people of another island, for the war-fanaticism would surge up again in a later generation. The conversion of them to a religion of peace would mean no change in the blood; it would only transform the method and cue of attack.
What was needed was the elimination of the ambitious and military natures from the Broolyians. For only the aristocracy and the descendants of the original conquering exiles had set their hearts on military pursuits; the conquered and many of the families that came to the island at later dates than the great purgation, were not unwilling to keep to their own bounds, and preferred possession to dispossession. There was no need of extermination of the people, but only decimation. Nor would the Limanorans endure any shedding of blood in the process. It must be gradual, peaceful, free from torture and bloodshed, and almost unobservable.
The physiological and physicist families worked out a scheme that would fulfil all these conditions, and yet finally eject the disturbers of peace from the archipelago within a generation. The scare they had just suffered and the exile of the balloonist ensured to Limanora freedom from their attacks for some years. But they aimed at permanent immunity and this could be secured by nothing less than the sterilisation of the warlike element in Broolyi.
The end was accomplished in the next aggression upon a neighbouring island. The expedition was formidable, and included all the bellicose males of the offending people. After landing, it lay encamped in the open air; then a band of Limanorans set out on wings by night, armed with a new surgical instrument, called the idlumian, which could give an electric shock to any part of the human system and paralyse it either for a time or permanently, according to the power put into it. They approached the whole army as it lay asleep, and by the whiff of a soporific which they diffused through the air, they steeped the systems of the sentinels in lethargy and by the same means ensured the depth and continuance of the slumbers of the embattled host. Before a single soldier had awakened from his deep sleep, the whole Broolyian army was defertilised without being in the least conscious of any loss of vitality or manhood or enjoyment of life. When the sentries awoke and the troops began to move about in preparation for their struggle, the medical embassy had winged its way back to Limanora. Not till twenty or thirty years after did it strike the Broolyians that the fountain of their military power was dried up, and soon they began to attribute the strange infecundity of their aristocratic and warlike families to the witchcraft of the isle of demons, a belief that finally sealed that centre of the archipelago as with walls of adamant against aggression on the part of their neighbours.
My Western instincts, in spite of all my training, would reappear at intervals--which happily became longer and longer--and for a time I could not repress my instinctive disapproval of the use of this idlumian or electro steriliser. Yet my reason told me that it was the only effective method of permanently stopping the horrors of war in the archipelago. Heredity and circumstances would have circumvented any other bloodless attempt at relief from the Broolyian nightmare. A few discussions with my proparents made this rational view of the matter dominant over the conservative instinct in me, and before many years my instinct was quite the other way; it became the ally of the reason; and I had no need to argue with myself on the point or confirm my faith by arguing with others who knew better than I.
There was another Western instinct of mine which gave me frequent though lessening trouble and came into conflict with the reason of the community at this time and on this topic. It was my approval of propagandism. Into my blood had grown through the centuries of Christendom the feeling that a faith could not well prove itself unless it spread out amongst new and alien peoples. It is the prerogative and principle of belief to yearn for universality of acceptance amongst human beings. And it urges on the devotees of any faith to spread it through the world at all costs. After centuries of propagandism the habit becomes an instinct, and it seems to be a dictate of nature to attempt to convert the world to the tenets which have grown up in us from infancy and been incorporated into our very life. The Christian has ever been from its outset a great missionary religion, and it is difficult for one brought up in Christendom to get rid of the missionary attitude of mind which assumes every alien to it to be sunk in wickedness and unprofitableness, and certain to lose all the future blessings promised to true believers.
I could not obliterate this instinct wholly from my nature, and whenever I reflected on the wisdom and nobleness of the Limanoran civilisation, or noticed the marvellous progressiveness of some new phase of it, I found myself longing to go back to the Western world with my knowledge. Thus I often drifted into appeals to the propagandist spirit which I assumed to exist in the breasts of my friends and fellow-citizens, but I was not allowed to rest long in such dreams. Each time I uttered or even thought over my missionary desire, I was brought to book with the widest of knowledge and the keenest of penetration into human nature and its history. I felt that it was almost as useless for Europeans to go out amongst the tribes of monkeys and spend their lives trying to bring them up to such a level of intelligence as is implied in the appreciation of the Christian religion, as for the Limanorans to apostolise amongst mankind, and struggle to drag them up to the stage of progress these islanders had reached.
But now, whenever my missionary mood returned upon me, my friends would point with a smile to the new invention, the electro-steriliser; and if pressed by the disapproving skepticism of my thoughts, they would urge in words the omnipotence of this little instrument as the apostle of progress. By this and this alone was the snail-pace advance of mankind likely to be quickened. Without more rapid elimination of the unfit than was afforded by natural selection, sexual selection, and the accidents of surroundings, there was little hope of wise propagation of the human race. The blunders and defects and maladies of every new century were treasured up by heredity in the tissues of mankind along with any feeble tendency to advance that might appear. The struggle was a losing one in spite of the development of science and wealth. And all reforming theories and efforts were but stumblings in the dark till there had been a thorough purgation of traditional and epidemic diseases, moral as well as physical. Nine tenths of the race, as at present constituted, were unworthy to hand on their natures to posterity. Under the régime of propagational license universal among all peoples of the earth, the evil and diseased multiplied at a much greater rate than the sound in mind and body. The progressive element in mankind was dragged back by the dead weight of the criminal, the diseased, the habitually pauper, and the naturally incompetent. Some religions even set themselves to encourage the vitalisation and propagation of the last. It was noble and good to assuage the evils that heredity had accumulated in their systems; but it was anything but noble and good to encourage them to perpetuate their misfortunes throughout a wide posterity. “Multiply” should be the last word of an advancing civilisation instead of the first, unless there be added to it the condition “only the best.” And who cares or dares to preach this true gospel of progress, when it touches a theme that all are ashamed to mention? If ever there was a sacred mission upon earth it would be that of the man who should go to the wise and good men of all nations and put into their hands the secret of the idlumian, or who should himself pass round the world and sterilise all the morally or physically diseased amongst rich and poor, amongst gentle and simple. Within two generations the races of humanity would take such a leap into light and noble vitality and love of progress as would make the most brilliant civilisation of the past seem barbaric. Then would they take command of their own destiny, and look unflinchingly into the future for the path they should take. Advance in material or in the accumulation of force is vain, unless it goes hand in hand with such universal moral and intellectual advance. It is progress in the human system through all its parts that should be the aim of every race.
I gradually came to understand the importance they attached to this new instrument as the most humane and effective of missionaries. Had it come before their great series of purgations, there would have been little need for the expatriation policy. If they had had to eject, they would have taken care that the different sections of exiles should vanish in a generation. They shrank from extinguishing the individual life that had already been brought into being. They would have had no scruple in giving euthanasia to an evil race or a section of a race; for this meant only preventing a posterity coming into existence to take up their burden of evil. And even now it was a question to be seriously discussed and answered whether they would not sweep out the pollution from the rest of the archipelago by the help of this humane little doorkeeper of posterity. Would it not prevent the lifelong evil of thousands? Where lay the humanity or love in allowing a retrogressive and unhappy race to hand on to myriads to come the evil they had received from their ancestors?
