They exchanged a firm clasp; then Neeland descended and entered the
boat; the Inspector of Police took the tiller; the policemen bent to
the oars, and the boat shot away through a mist which was turning to a
golden vapour.
It was within a few boat-lengths of the landing stairs that Neeland,
turning for a last look into the steaming golden glory behind him, saw
the most splendid sight of his life. And that sight was the British
Empire assuming sovereignty.
For there, before his eyes, militant, magnificent, the British fleet
was taking the sea, gliding out to accept its fealty, moving
majestically in mass after mass of steel under flowing torrents of
smoke, with the phantom battle flags whipping aloft in the blinding
smother of mist and sun and the fawning cut-water hurrying too, as
though even every littlest wave were mobilised and hastening seaward
in the service of its mistress, Ruler of all Waters, untroubled by a
man-made Kiel.
And now there was no more time to be lost; no more stops until he
arrived in Paris. A taxicab rushed him and his luggage across the
almost empty city; a train, hours earlier than the regular steamer
train, carried him to London where, as he drove through the crowded,
sunlit streets, in a hansom cab, he could see news-venders holding up
strips of paper on which was printed in great, black letters:
THE BRITISH FLEET SAILS SPY IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS CHARLES WILSON, M. P., ACCUSED MISSING MEMBER SUPPOSED TO BE KARL BRESLAU,
INTERNATIONAL SPY
And he noticed knots of people pausing to buy the latest editions of
the papers offered.
But Neeland had no time to see much more of London than that--glimpses
of stately grey buildings and green trees; of monuments and palaces
where soldiers in red tunics stood guard; the crush of traffic in the
city; trim, efficient police, their helmets strapped to their heads,
disentangling the streams of vehicles, halting, directing everything
with calm and undisturbed precision; a squadron of cavalry in
brilliant uniforms leisurely emerging from some park between iron
railings under stately trees; then the crowded confusion of a railroad
station, but not the usual incidents of booking and departure, because
he was to travel by a fast goods train under telegraphed authority of
the British Government.
And that is about all that Neeland saw of the mightiest city in the
world on the eve of the greatest conflict among the human races that
the earth has ever witnessed, or ever shall, D. V.
The flying goods train that took him to the Channel port whence a
freight packet was departing, offered him the luxury of a leather
padded armchair in a sealed and grated mail van.