The Dark Star

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.