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ADA\ACE

STANLEY \VATEBLGD


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ARMAGEDDON


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ARMAGEDDONA TALE OF LOVE, WAR, ANDINVENTION.

STANLEY WATERLOO,AUTHOR OF

THK STORY OF An, " " A MAN AND A WOMAN," AN ODD SITUATION," KTC.

CHICAGO AXD NFAV YORK:KAN I). \h XAI.LV vV CO.MI AN V.

PUBLISHERS.


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ARMAGEDDON.

CHAPTER I.THE REDDENING HORIZON.In the first years of the present century the

nations were in turmoil. The nineteenth century had flickered out in something like racialwarfare, and, while there had been an adjustment, while there was nominal peace throughout the hemispheres, there was an undercurrent of fear, and mighty preparations weremaking among the nations which were dominant. The whole world was afoot and girding itself for threatening war.The wonder was, not so much that such acondition should exist as that there shouldhave been maintained so long even a sort ofsemi-equilibrium in international relations.When the Spanish-American war ended allpoints of contact between the nations were inflamed. Something must happen. It is true

2138SS7


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ARMAGEDDON.that nothing absolutely I have more than scouted across my continent. 1 have occupied even its western shore


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8 ARMAGEDDON.and bred my children there. They, cast andwest, are among the great thinking, actingpeoples of the world, and must have all duerights and privileges. Across the broadest ofoceans, the eldest of empires is threatenedwith division and, whether divided or not, itis about to make available as a business prizeto the advanced nations of the world its vastcommercial privileges. I have built a tradebridge arranged a row of stepping-stonesacross the Pacific; I must maintain the stationI have taken and have the means of defendingmy highways and my byways.

"I need the facilities for best fighting hereand there, anywhere about the globe whereit may become necessary for me to fight, butI grasp no more than that which is enoughfor my single purpose, and T have no thoughtof seeking to seize more until my people shalloverflow my own broad land. Then theymust do as best they can. Then they must doas their Viking ancestors did. Then theymust have it in them, or fail to have it in them,to say to what degree might is right. Forthe present, they have demanded nothing andsought nothing, but to implace themselvesand do it well and strongly upon such points


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THE REDDENING HORIZON. 9about the globe as may make it somewhateasier in life for their great-great-grandchildren. Should the occasion come sooner forthe utilization of these vantage-places so muchthe better for us of this age who are thinkingout this thing and who have a decent degreeof readiness for any sort of fight to-day."

Meanwhile the idea of an Anglo-Saxon alliance had grown and broadened. It had beenfostered by thinking men of both Great Britainand America. Those who could best foreseethe future of races favored it, and those whohad only clannish memories in mind opposedit. But a tentative alliance, at least, it wasevident, must come.Of course bitter opposition to the growing

spirit of Anglo-Saxon alliance was at oncemanifested by a large number of Americancitizens" possessed of fine lungs, foreign birthor teachings, world-reforming ideas, and greatflux of words. It was almost droll, but theamiable American laws gave to each of theseeloquent men of other than American traditions a vote, and votes secure election andCongressmen want to be elected again. Ourschool books, too, had long taught our children to think of Englishmen as enemies and,


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TO ARMAGEDDONespecially, in the country, the ancient prejudice somewhat prevailed. These inthienc.eshad a certain potency.

There was exerted, also, in opposition tothe contemplated alliance, informal thoughthe alliance might be. one force more potentthan all others put together, that exerted bythe clement composed of those who exploitthemselves as "The hereditary foes of Kupland," a bnovant, illogical and too impressionable class, led often astray by the more foxy,self-seeking and overtopping representativesof their own race. Very well did these leadersunderstand, though they didn t mention it,that their own reasonably regular and moreor less full and easily gained incomes were indanger if there were to be an abandonmentof the race enmity brought across the Atlantic to be engrafted, if possible, upon theAmerican people.They did their w>rk cleverly, the agitators:they were g ib talkers and their fullowings hadlong been organi/ed. A few adroit Americanofiice seekers whimpered and whined beforethem and cast their lot with them for a time.but only for a time. There is no room hereto tell the storv of the airitator who had lived


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THE REDDENING HORIZON. IIso well for years, nor of his following in thelower grades of American politicians. Whenthe great culminating wave came they wereall swept into the movement, and let it besaid to the credit of the Irishman, that whenthe time came, he sprang into the ranks andfought for his adopted country. The averagecongressman or other politician whose coursethe agitator had influenced was found ordinarily among the home guards.Of course, with the Anglo-Saxon combination in sight, the European nations were agitated by doubts. They were not quite abrotherly group, for heretofore, as chancesfell, they had fed upon each other. Naturally,as facing the combination the Russian shouldcome first. lie is the great growing, creeping - southward - and - eastward threateningforce. Naturally, the Russian wanted no combination of America with Great Britain. liewas inclined to make much, just then, of hisskin-deep friendship with the United States,for there was India. It must be said of thisSlav, too, that, notwithstanding what has happened and is to be here related, he is a forcegreat in the present and perhaps to be fargreater in the future, lie is millions; his


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12 ARMAGEDDON.priestly domination is being regulated andmodernized by Tolstoi and other thinkers ofRussia; he learns languages more readily thandoes ;my one of any other race, and he fightswell in a sort of kismet \vay.

It may be possible that the Slav, developingon ne\v lines, is to be the successor of tin-Anglo-Saxon in a material and philosophicway, his strong spirit, enforced by militarismand its new-born religion, may yet direct thealtairs of the world, but whatever his fntnremay be, the day of the Slav has not yet come,lie but struggled toward his triumph or hisfate, as the event might prove. as was natural. The Russian Kmpire moved towardthe Anti-Anglo-Saxon alliance.

That the ( ierman Kmperor should have-been even tempted toward such an alliancewas a thing extraordinary. It was strange, itwas remark-able and uncouth, an unconscionable thing, that he should be for a momentwith the Slav and the Latin in this combination, though there are other strange inconsistencies in the world s affairs. The landwhich gave birth to the founder of Christianitybows to the prophet Mahomet, and the


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THE REDDENING HORIZON. 13temples of India know not the gentle religionof Buddha.Why, the Emperor of Germany ought to

have been proud and defiant in the matterand, since he liked to pose, to have posed asthe dean of the Anglo-Saxons! Of course,we are all Teutons. Ancient Germany was toGreat Britain as Great Britain is to America.In the area of acres including what is nowconsolidated Germany, lies the land fromwhich upsprang the fellows who made troublefor Qesar there was one Vergincetorix whowas a beauty and they were Teutons who,in the fury of seizing and populating land,forced themselves northwestward until theyreached what we call the English Channel,and then, with Hengist and Horsa and therest, flung over to an island and found Anglesand wolves and seized upon the land washedby the Gulf Stream and made a new race oftheir own, the race that broadened the Christian religion, the race that has peopled withstrong men the wild places of the world; therace that did rather a neat thing at Waterloo;the race which, when its sons fighting amongthemselves, as in the Cromwellian wars, orthe war of the Revolution, or the American


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M ARMAGKDDON.Civil war. has a1\vays done exceedingly well,and under stress loo. lint the (ionium Fm-peror and some of his advisers failed, at animportant moment, to see the logical attitudef< >r his country.

As for France, her attitude was not unexpected save to the ignorant, those who, having read old school hooks alone, still dreamedthat France and Russia were natural allies ofthe United States, regardless of nature, training, belief and blood. As a matter of fact, andvery consistently, in heart. France had beenwith Spain throughout the Spanish-Americanwar. Firstly, and most dominant, religioustraditions and influences trended that way;secondly, financial relations, and lastly, bloodand family relations. A somewhat like explanation would apply to Austria, thoughwith that unhappy empire the time for changeand experiment had come. Here too. bloodand religion counted, and, in addition, complications were such that war with the outsider was at least less bad than the civil warimpending.

It was so with Italy, though in a lesser degree. As for Spain, all the desperate vengeance-seeking venom which could be bottled


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THE REDDENING HORIZON. 15up in a proud and belittled nation, was hers,and Portugal was with her, as a matter ofcourse, racially and religiously. The tottering Austrian and the beaten inhabitant of thesouthwestern European peninsula were together. The Anti-Anglo-Saxon combination, perfect save for the grumbling of a portion of the German people, began to assumea definite form. The great men who organized it were men of earnestness and power;men of weakening race though individuallystrong, recognizing the decadence, and struggling persistently against the evanishment ofracial potency which some inexorable lawr haddecreed.

Great Britain, the isolated, recognized thesituation. She fostered and not altogetherin selfishness, be it said her closer growingrelations with the United States. And in therecognized impending emergency her liberally governed colonies drew nearer to her.There was arming in Australia and in Canada,and there were significant movements of bodies of troops in India and on the Nile. Yetthe Foreign Office was reticent, and thePremier blandly informed all questioners thatGreat Britain was at peace. But ever, as in


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if) ARMAGH!)!)! >.\.America, was heard the M>und of hammerupon rivet in tlic shipyards, and ever, day am 1night, tires llashud forth red.ly from the foundries.As the statesman walked, the earth heaved

underneath his feet, though hardly enoughto unbalance or really frighten him. lie wondered and pondered and guessed, as did allthinking men. but hardly conceived the magnitude of the coming e;irtht. As a beginning of what I have tosay to you I \vill summarize the situation.

"1 have succeeded, after a fashion, as aninventor. 1 have some thousands of dollars.I have a threat enterprise in which I shall needan assistant who will be a friend and confidant. There are labors aside from the sheerthought to be productive and there is manualwork to be done. I must have a brother tohelp me in a legitimate and straightforwardconduct of the enterprise. There arc moneyconsiderations. My success from a worldlypoint of view is involved, and that affects mylife at its core as it touches the possibilities ofthe future with the woman I have told youabout. I suppose 1 must be an isolated person. Anyhow, you arc the only man in theworld to \\hom 1 felt I could appeal.

"I have abandoned my regular business.which was successful, and am working upon aweights into the air, and holding them therewithout support from below. I have a newthought an idea of entirely new applicationin this connection, and since I abandoned myself to this particular undertaking there have


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DAVID APPLETON. 23arisen new difficulties and perplexities, but Iam right in my idea. Will you help me? Asto your helpful ability, so far as my purposegoes, it largely consists of your nerve and perfect understanding of me. As to that, I vealready made up my mind. I can offer yousome money, enough at least to make yousafe, and of course you will prosper shouldthe undertaking succeed, as I firmly believeit will. You will have plenty of hard work,an opportunity for the exhibition of yourfriendship, and a chance to meet infinite bodilyperil. \y:m will share with me at last whatcomes to the large gambler upon a large scale,whether he be one in cards or stocks or in thebroader and better game where minds arestrained to some purpose, where even the future affairs of nations may be affected. Probably this sharing will be to your good, butyou must take your chances. The details Iwill tell you. After that, you can determine.I know that I have thought of what no otherman has conceived, and have done that whichhas not been done before."

.Ml this and more Appleton said, and thatnip-ht 1 could think and dream of nothing but


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24 AR.MAGKDDOX.him and his enthusiasm. The next day hepiloted me out through the western verge ofthe city and to the prairie where he was atwork.

It was a quiet place, on the western bankof the Des Plaines River. Looking towardthe water one saw the gracious outlines of thewaving elms and strong-limbed oaks whichlined the shallow stream, and toward thenorth, west and south, the prairie rolled,broken in the distance occasionally by an orchard-surrounded farmhouse, a greener islandin the sea of green.

From rough boards Appleton had built along wide shed, or rather barn, for it was lofty,and in this his treasure was enclosed, most ofthe room being used as a workshop. A smallspace at the south end of the building had beenfitted up as an office and living rooms, andfrom this end a rude pia/./a extended but afew feet over the unbroken prairie sod.

\Ve passed through the rooms directly tothe space provided for the machine. Thelong room was open on one side, being fittedwith great sliding doors on the west, and there-was a framework outside resembling somewhat the platform of a boat house. It was all


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DAVID APPLETON. 25strange and new to me, and I was interestedwhen Appleton proceeded, directly and simply, to the explanation of his invention interms suited to the comprehension of a layman.


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26 ARMAGEDDON.

CHAPTER If!.

It s pretty hard work, trying to tell aboutApplcton s invention. lie had engaged theservices of some elever fello\\/., all of one fami-ly, I think, and they were working for himand were of great service to us, to the end ofour >tay on the prairie, though not confidcn-tiallv so as was an odd fellow who came later.I suppose that I am not a good person to tellwhat the invention was. I can only do so ina general way and within my limitations.The main feature was a great torpedo-shaped thin^ with an aluminum exterior. Thethickness of this aluminum covering was amatter of constant and violent debate betweenAppleton .and me, after I became identifiedwith the enterprise. With no weight to speakof, it meant vast buoyancy; with a greaterweight it meant less buoyancy and more disaster following the inevitable experimentalalighting. Appleton, after much thought andnumberless experiments, had decided to take


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ON THE PRAIRIE. 27chances with this buoyant thing, to make itas light as possible, and to rely upon theutilization of the vast force he had at his command, and which was now being first tried,in driving in a certain direction somethingfloating in a surrounding the same above asbelow, something entirely immersed in oneelement. Appleton had gathered together asfar as he could, the forces necessary lor theaccomplishment of his work. He had storedelectricity; he had reservoirs of compressedand liquified air; he had wonderful contrivances for the reduction of friction and thereduction of weight as compared with force.I was doubtful at first, but I ve long had faithin aerial navigation I ve always had since atalk years ago with the most famous of livinginventors, when he gave his views on the subject, and I saw plainly that Appleton s " Lifting machine," as he modestly called it, lookedtoward some new venture in aerial experiments. Up to this time 1 had felt no grounded and established faith in Appleton. lie was,I had thought, too much of a dreamer. But,dreamer though he was, he had sense and hehad the accretion of much learning in his shortbut full years of work and study. What other


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26 ARMAGED DOX.

CHA1TKR III.OX Till-: PRAIRIE.

It s pretty hard work, trying to tell aboutAppleton s invention. lie had engaged theservices of some clever fello\\s. all of one fami-ly, I think, and they were working for himand were of great ser\ ice to us, to the end ofour >tay on the prairie, though not confidentially so as was an odd fellow who came later.I suppose that I am not a good person to tellwhat the invention was. I can only do so ina general way and within my limitations.The main feature was a great torpedo-shaped tiling with an aluminum exterior. Thethickness of this aluminum covering was amatter of constant and violent debate betweenAppletoii and me. after I became identifiedwith the enterprise. With no weight to speakof. it meant vast buoyancy; with a greaterweight it meant less buovancy and more disaster following the inevitable experimentalalighting. Appleton. after much thought andnumberless experiments, had decided to take


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ON THE PRAIRIE. 27chances with this buoyant thing, to make itas light as possible, and to rely upon theutilization of the vast force he had at his command, and which was now being first tried,in driving in a certain direction somethingfloating in a surrounding the same above asbelow, something entirely immersed in oneelement. Appleton had gathered together asfar as he could, the forces necessary for theaccomplishment of his work. He had storedelectricity; he had reservoirs of compressedand liquified air; he had wonderful contrivances for the reduction of friction and thereduction of weight as compared with force.I was doubtful at first, but I ve long had faithin aerial navigation I ve always had since atalk years ago with the most famous of livinginventors, when he gave his views on the subject, and I saw plainly that Appleton s "Lifting machine," as he modestly called it, lookedtoward some new venture in aerial experiments. Up to this time 1 had felt no grounded and established faith in Appleton. lie was,I had thought, too much of a dreamer. But,dreamer though he was, he had sense and hehad the accretion of much learning in his shortbut full years of work and study. What other


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28 ARMAGHDDON.iiHMi lind learned rind what he had devised hiin-self were his. Tie knew the quality of theproblem. The famous inventor had said thatnight I so well remembered:

"(liven the power, with sufficiently less relatively of the carried weight at present neces->ary to produce the ])ower. power to riseabove the earth and maintain a fixed position is an accomplished tact. At present,we do not produce a machine which canbe connected with some gas-lifted tiling,and which has not at the same time suchweight as will oltset its driving power.What is lacking to make a dirigiblething iloating in the air is something withvast power ot propulsion and weight so lightthat the weight is not a counterbalance tothe effect produced."

As a wondering lad 1 had heard this statement from a source which commanded respect, and now I saw clearly that the inventorhad. as usual with him, told the simple, genius-b< n-\] truth. Applet< >n had some idea. 1 le hadsought something which would have strongpropulsive machinery of the lightness desired.He had succeeded, after a fashion.Aluminum is a good thing. It was worth


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ON THE PRAIRIE. 29eighteen dollars a pound a while ago. It isworth a dollar or two a pound now, becausesome clever young fellows of Cleveland, freshfrom college, invented a new process, and themetal which lies in every clay bank is nowgiven to the world for a moderate price whichwill be lower still. Appleton s main reliancefor the initial lifting shall I call it floatingmedium? was made of aluminum. He hadtaken the Cleveland men into his confidence,and in that city the machine was practicallybuilt, though put together in the prairie barnwhere I now beheld it. The thing was aboutseventy feet long and fifteen feet across andit looked, as said, like a torpedo. The metalwas as thin, and strong at the same time, asanything of its kind could be. Filled withgas, it would float of itself with quite an upward pulling power in addition. Pluggedclose to it, attached rigidly and barely liftedwhen let loose with the torpedo-shaped thingwas a sort of boat or carrier, and in this wasthe powerful driving force upon which Ap-pleton relied. Here the motive power, whichI must not too clearly specify, comes in again.I cannot describe the device; J am a bunglerat it, anyway, and, in any case, 1 have no right


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30 ARMAGEDDON.to describe it with accuracy, hut I do knowthis, that the force was altogether of the air,although Appleton was experimenting muchwith electricity, too. The manner in which,when Appleton touched certain buttons, theluting or the forward driving or the backward-putting screw blades revolved, was aspectacle worth seeing;. The steering- apparatus was such that Appleton could makethe device go up or down at his pleasure, andhe had at his command such enormous resources in the \\a\- of driving power that hecould, under certain favorable conditions,make it go this way or that way at his command. Of course, all this presupposed thecalmest weather. There had been other inventions of the sort almost as good in mostways, it seemed to me. except for the newmotive power here employed. The tiling oncelifted up into the air did much that AppletonImped for. \Ylicn a wind came, though,"things were different." as Appleton said.

It doesn t matter, k rom the moment 1 sawthat machine and heard Appleton tell aboutit. 1 had but one ambition to help it along,aid as 1 might in perfecting it, and be liftedup over that green prairie in it. 1 resolved to


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ON THE PRAIRIE. 3 1join the earnest man s working force, andstand by him to the end. I became an enthusiastic dreamer with him. Dreamers makethe world progress, after all. Ninety-nine outof the hundred fail. The hundredth becomesone of the world s exclamation points. Certainly here was a chance.

Within a week I had moved out to the bigbarn-like structure on the prairie, and wasas absorbed in the new idea as Appleton himself. There were difficulties worth overcoming.

There came trouble. I shall not give details, but there were the usual troubles of inventors. We could never, proud as we wereof our machine, quite adapt ourselves to thewinds of the upper air. They were too muchaddicted to carrying us away with them. We,necessarily, accepted the situation and drifteddownward, with such gradual slope as wecould command, to the peaceful prairie, alwayswithin a mile or two of home, and one of uswent over to the cabin and made arrangementsfor bringing back the paraphernalia. The twohorses which we kept in the old shed outsidethe big building had become accustomed todragging the great invention back and forth.


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32 ARMAGEDDON.riiey were not harnessed as horses of the firedepartments of ^reat eities may be, in a moment, lint they were pretty nearly that way.They knew instinctively when disaster hadcome and almost Miorted in their stalls whenthey saw ()T>ricn whom I will tell of latercoming in to hitch them to the old waLn>n

with its derrick all ready for use. They knewthat the} had to drai; that preposterous torpedo tiling hack a^ ain to its resting place inthe bii; building. Don t tell me that a horsehasn t intelligence. Those horses, somewhatindignantly, entered into the spirit of the greatstruggle. 1 was worried, but nothing affectedAppleton. That big brute, with that big headof his, knew that he owned a coming moreor less practicable air traverser and wentahead stolidly. Really. I was the sufferer.Really. I am the one man who outfit to havea medal of some sort, but Appleton is gettingmost of the praise, and I am. as I tell him,nobodv. However, it doesn t matter.

( )ne day a day of hard work when wereached our haven at night, we found sittingat ease on our stoop 1 suppose I should saypia/za, but that sounds too ambitious astranger, lie was voung, broad ot shoulder.


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ON THE PRAIRIE. 33deep of chest and a trifle below the mediumheight, lie arose as \vc approached and introduced himself as O Brien, "LeanderO Brien, son of old man O Brien, of SouthHalsted Street."

Appleton, looking- at the newcomerthoughtfully, seemed to remember vaguelythe ancestral O Brien, and seated himself onthe steps to talk with the visitor. I seatedmyself as well, and examined Leander O Brienat leisure. He had a queer hunch to hisshoulders at times and, when enforcing aproposition, a defiantly appealing turning outward of his hands which was most effective.His hair was cut short and so was his coat.His eyes were of the watchful sort, but steady.They were gray and the lashes and eyebrowswere not well defined, but the general aspectof the face was that suggesting a combination of faithful follower and aggressive citizen.The young man seemed a sort of blithesomefighting animal.

"Are youse the fellows getting up a flyingmachine?" he demanded of Appleton.

Appleton told his questioner that we wereprobably the men he sought, although wewere not flying much just now.

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34 ARMAGEDDON."Arc youse the man who helped niy father,old man O lirien?""I am I )avid Appleton.""Can I go \vilh yousc?" implored O Brien.Then thrusting his hat far hack on his head,

he announced, looking at first one then theother of us:

"Youse must take me; I ll go anyway!"I can t help it 1 must digress about that

hat. It is part of things. \\Vre a great country, a beautiful country lying between twoenormous oceans, and there are vast blue inland seas and forests and mountains andprairies and, in fact, everything pertaining tolandscape even until you get down to boskydells and sparrows and worms, and we havea great signal service system and we think weare clever, but, honestly, I believe that if, instead ot the signal service stations which costso many thousand dollars apiece a year, we dhad a lot of Leander () linens, we d be better off. Talk about your (lags which lly fromthe top of some signal service station! thevweren t "in it," are not in it and never will bein it in comparison with that aggressivestraight-rimmed Derby hat of his. \Yhv. theilau s on the signal service station are dumb


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ON THE PRAIRIE. 35thing s compared with that! It set fair or itset stormy or it set doubtful with a deadly accuracy beyond anything all the officers of thesignal service have ever yet been able to devise. For instance, suppose it were set fair,that is if things were going well with us inthe estimation of Leander O Brien, then thehat would sit lightly and jauntily upon theback of his head at an angle of about forty-five degrees, and his face would beam out soroundly and glowingly that if the morninghappened to be a little crisp you wanted towarm your hands before it. Contrariwise, iftilings hadn t gone in our estimation as theyshould have gone, and our attitude regardingthe rest of the world was either defensive oroffensive, then Air. O Brien s hat had a long,low, rakish tilt to the front, with the greatestdepression immediately over the left eye. Inoticed that this particular tilt of his hat came,usually, with the purple twilight, but I thinkit was rather an action of habit than of hours.As a matter of fact, Air. O Brien had probablynever before known anything about a sunsetor a purple twilight. J lis idea of eight o clockin the evening had consisted of some bad gaslights on South Ilalsted Street and of start-


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36ing (Hi adventures with "the boys" with thehat adjusted as described. It is true therewas something incongruous in that rakishly-tilted hat among the sweet surroundings ofa gentle country morning or midday or occasionally somewhat foggy gloaming. Itseemed out of place. It was, in a sense, asif a man should casually throw a brick at hisgrandmother or turn handsprings down themiddle aisle of a church in the midst of service; still, I came to like and even to lovethe air with which O lirieii wore his hat. Allthese habits grow on us. It became so that Ieven studied the degree of tilt and the angleover his head in any direction. When I sawit set on the back of his head I became elated;when I saw it cocked deeplv forward in a lowand lurking manner I became to put it mildly apprehensive.

I might as well say here. that, from themoment of enlistment, Lcandcr O Brien neverleft us. lie slept on our porch that night,with many blankets for his bed and covering,and the next morning at davlight as I looked


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ON THE PRAIRIE. 37Behind him stalked a dog", not noticed by

me the night before, though without doubthe was then present with his master. It was adog that belonged distinctly to a class, butwith an individuality I ve never seen excelled.He was a beautiful dog, that is, a beautiful dogin the sense that, like Victor Hugo s Gwynp-laine, he was so ugly as to be entrancing". Healways seemed to me green in color. He waswhat is called a brindle bull-dog, but he wasexceptionally intense. The yellow and blackand a certain bronze were so intermingledthat the dog seemed to me almost a green,though there wasn t much sense in the impression. I think the shape of the dog appealed to me even before his color or generalexpression. It was alarming, but fascinating.In a general way, the figure was rakish whileat the same time broad and short.

I will try to describe the dog in detail. AsI have already said, he was a brindle, but therewas a great white spot on one side of himwhich I was given to understand had been theresult of a most delightful pit-fight at the stockyards, the hair upon the hcaled-up, torn-outplace having come in white some weeks afterthe encounter. The face of the dog was very


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40 ARMACiKDDON.

CHAPTER [V.

I don t know how to describe the girl. Idon t A R MAC, I DDONis when the sirocco looms

u]>in the far dis

tance. \Ve were as the Kansas fanner is whenthe cyclone comes twirling" over the prairieand he knows that \\itiiin the next fiveminutes one end of his house and his wife scousin and his two best mules and his barnare all going to be wafted into the next county. That s what \ve were when that girl came.Yet, we were glad to see her coming. Kvery-thing became then a little brighter and a littlebetter. Men arc weak creatures.The manner of their love-making1 was al

ways most interesting to me. Appleton hasa sort of dominant way with him, but therewas no dominance apparent when Miss I )ag-gart and he were together at least, there wasno dominance on his side of the house. Thatcharming young woman simply arose and wastall. She had the wisdom of the college andthe firmness of her convictions. She was inlove with Appleton there was no doubt ofthat as 1 have said, something in his queercharacter had appealed to her. but she thoughtof him partlv. I believe, a> a great lump ofmost excellent marble to be >haped into aheroic and mo>t symmetrical figure by herown fair hands. You know what I mean.


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THE LOVERS. 47Lots of women poor things take fellows tomold em and then the fellows don t mold,and there are broken hearts sometimes; butthis case was different.

Helen Daggart was the only child of AsaphDaggart, a man of substantial fortune, warmheart, and active brain. Appleton liked Mr.Daggart and admired him, but we both remarked, from time to time, that it seemedlikely that Mr. Daggart did not return in verygreat measure, the warm admiration of theyounger man.

Helen s mother was a woman with whomno one could be long acquainted without afeeling warmer than admiration. I no soonerknew her, even distantly, than I wanted, unselfishly, her friendship. The charming oldlady and her husband were still in love witheach other, and Helen was as the heart s coreof each.

Neither father nor mother ever showed displeasure nor dissent at the affair between theirdaughter and Appleton. One or the otherusually accompanied Helen when she came toour prairie quarters; there was a calm and apparently comfortable acceptance of the situation, and yet Appleton knew, and the old


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48 ARMAGEDDON.couple knew that he kne\v, that they weresolidly and tirmlv set upon in some way breaking np tlie love-match which seemetmaterial." said Appleton one day, after anabject faihire in an experiment. "That iswhat ails the machine from end to end. Ineed the best metal, wood, silk. rope, wire,everything \Yentworth, old boy, I ve donemy best, bnt I need more money!"The bi^r man sat down on the i^rass with alook somewhat drooping, for him. bnt afterall there was nut a line of real discouragementin his face < *r ti^ tire.

\\ e talked for a loiiL,r time, going over theproblems in hand one by one. and when tin-palaver was over we neither of us knew very


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I DISTINGUISH MYSELF. 53well what to do, but we had resolved thatsomething must be done, and at once, and wewere sure that the something to do was tomake an effort at least to raise a reasonablesum of ready money.Of course the features of the situation werealmost pitiful. Here was a man of great brainseeking to do something which should be notfor his own advantage alone but for the goodof the world, yet hampered and barred fromaccomplishment for lack of money. Off tothe east of us loomed darkly a cloud upon thehorizon. That was the smoke hanging aboveChicago. Underneath that smoke, amongthe two or three millions of people, were twoor three hundred vastly successful moneymakers, men who had possession of millionsof dollars and any one of whom, without embarrassment, could carry Appleton throughto at least an ultimate test of the result ofall his thinking. There was but one courseto be pursued now. Some of these men mustbe reached, and I, of course, was the one toreach them.

There is no necessity for going over in detail what happened within the next three orfour days. I selected eight or ten of the most


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54

promising of those who had made vast fortunes in railroads or lard or \vheat or oil orcorsets and stockings .and things, or horses,and 1 was snnM>ed three-fourths of the timewith much vigor 1>ut great clumsiness l>y thecapitalists upon whom I called. 1 kept getting more and more indignant and more determined.

I got to he mightily honey-tongned. Iwould go into the ante-room of a capitalist soffice and, as I walked along the corridor, alittle wohhly as to my legs and a little shakyas to what the result of the encounter wouldhe, I would say to myself: "Well, after all,why shouldn t you override this other tellow.Jlie is your equal neither socially nor intellect-nail}-, and if some one were to tell him thatSam Weller was uncle to Paul and Virginia hewould helieve it. simply hecause he had neverheard of any of the three. Xow. 1 trace yourself up and he a man when you go in."Then I would reach an ante-room and meeta hoy and finally get into the next room whereI was confronted, almost uniformly, hv a clerkof ahout forty-five years, \\ith a clean-shavenface except for a tuft of side-whiskers dang-


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I DISTINGUISH MYSELF. 55It s odd, isn t it, how those ante-room clerksalways have that thing below and in front ofthe ears? and I want to say of all of them,and I suppose they knew their business, thateach of them on every occasion which I cancall to mind, treated me as if I were an angleworm and as if it were a favor that I shouldbe allowed to go in and have converse withhis old millionaire, whose trousers generallybulged below the waistline and whom I couldhave thrashed in a minute and a half if I couldhave persuaded him to go out into the alleyway with me.

Well, I saw millionaire after millionaire andstood so much snubbing that it seemed to meI had attained a callous on my manhood, but,eventually, out of all the lot of the successfulbusiness men I could reach, I had three moreor less hypnotized. Talk about kissing theBlarney Stone! Why I would have tried tokiss every paving block in Chicago and to doit on my hands and knees if I had thoughtit would have helped me! Even now I mproud of what I did. Not only did I impressthose old money-bags separately, but I gotthem in communication and got them allfiguring together and on one eventful after-


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56 ARMAGHDDt >X.noon we drove out, the three ami I, all inone carriage, to meet Appleton. to examinethe new venture and to decide upon howmuch they would invest.

It was just a beautiful thing to look uponas we four drove up in the big carriage, forwhich, by the way. I had paid millionairesarc exceedingly thoughtful with regard to thedollar or so payments of life and then tosee Appleton and Leander awaiting us outside the building.

I noticed with a degree of surprise that Appleton had dressed for the occasion. 1 donot think he had gone so far as to change hisshirt; it was the same flannel shirt which hehad worn in the morning and, furthermore, itwas a shirt with a transferable collar, that isto say a shirt on which the collar could bechanged. He had not worn a collar of late,but now he had one on. I don t know wherehe got it, but it was a linen collar and one ofthe highest 1 ever saw; furthermore, he hadaround it a tie. It was a brilliant thing butnarrow; it was what I think they call a "stringtie." and he had tied it very well indeed. Itsgeneral effect would perhaps have been a littlebetter had he pinned it somewhere after first


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I DISTINGUISH MYSELF. 57tying it, and had the bow, when we drove up,been somewhere else than in such preciseexactness under his left ear. I would like towrite a treatise upon the question why neckties have such astounding tendencies towardthe left side of their wearer s neck. However,to exhaust that subject would require a newand bulky volume.

But, though fine the appearance of Apple-ton, it was as nothing compared with that ofhis subordinate, Mr. Leander O Brien. Thefaithful but somewhat tough O Brien evidently recognizing the importance of the, occasion,had simply laid himself out to meet theemergency. I had never before realized theresources of the ready-made clothing "Emporiums" of South Halstecl Street. I think Iam only using the most truthful simile I canthink of when I say that Leander was a jewel.He shone; he scintillated. His suit was whatis known as a "sack" and fitted him tightly.The plaid of coat, pants (I say "pants" advisedly) and vest fitted him perfectly. I havenever had the exact measurement, but asnearly as I can tell at this time and only frommemory, each square of the plaid was, saysomewhere about three-quarters of an inch on


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?S AR.M.UiKDDOX.a side, and the color was bull-dog and white.Of course there isn t really any such color asbull-dog, but you know what I mean. It sthat sort of growling color that they get intoplaids sometimes, apparently for the delectation of just such fellows as O l rien. lie hada high white collar on. too, and he had a tieas well, but it was about nineteen times as largeas the one worn by Appleton and it meantbusiness. It was scarlet. 1 needn t say anything more about it. Ilis hat was one ofO llricn s hats an ordinary 1 )erby as to size;it had the most startling straight-out rim I veever seen in my life, but that does not describeit. I can only say. it was one of those hatswhich we had learned to recognize as peculiar to Leander ( ) I >rien.

His boots were polished to the highest degree; he had brought some fancy blacking infrom town. He stood four or five feet behindAppleton with Fit/ glooming in the rear aswe drove up and, while Appleton lookedabashed and anxious, there wa> nothing of thesort in the appearance of ( )T>rien. There wasa jaunt} swing to the fellow as he loungedbetween Appleton and the building, his greatshoulders distending tiHitlv the coat of his


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1 DISTINGUISH MYSELF. 59checked suit, and there was a look in hisbroad, Irish-American face that showed therewas fight and faithfulness in him, and fight andfaithfulness are just as good when they comefrom South Halsted Street as when they comefrom any university in the world.

Meanwhile I was all anxiety and full of diplomacy. I got out my capitalists and introduced Appleton, who was hesitant andtroubled, and we all went in together to lookat the air machine and to have Appleton explain it and tell us about its possibilities andits monetary promise. We were like a coupleof poor tugs convoying three great galleons,and it is but truth to say that we felt we weretugs and they felt that they were galleons.

It s funny about the men who are betweenfifty and sixty years of age and who have become millionaires I mean it s funny aboutmost of them each seems to range himselfinto one of three classes. Here are the threesorts of millionaires: First, and I think he srather preponderant, there is the man withside-whiskers and protuberant jaw and heavyeyebrows and commercially dominant air.Second, there is the man I forgot to say thatthe first is always bald about three inches


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60 AKMAGKDDOX.across on the top of his head second, thereis the man with plenty of hair, a man whoweighs about one hundred fiftv-sevcn poundsand a half, who always wears full whiskers andshaves his upper lip, who is liable to be aSunday school superintendent as well as abank president, and who, take it all around,is pretty bad medicine. Third, there is thebig round-bellied, red-faced, double-chinned,keen-eyed, well-dressed speculator and clubman, who bobs up, waning and waxing, oneout of a thousand, an unfixed millionaire,answering to the law of chances of the diceamong his sort. Of the three, of course, thelatter, despite his frailties, is the one to wlmma gentleman would most incline. In fact, thislatter sort of millionaire is quite likely to bea gentleman himself.

Well, as I have said, we five went in together. Klihu Hammond. Jacob Arnheim andWilliam Tuttle. Appleton taking the lead, and1 anxiously following.

Leander O linen lounged watchfully and. itseemed to me. almost threateningly, in therear. Certainly, as we walked along towardwhere the air machine hung, nothing had yetoccurred to mar the peaceful and commercial


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I DISTINGUISH MYSELF. 6laspect of the occasion, but it was evident thatO Brien was alert and critical of all that wasgoing- on.Four long hours passed, four hours that I

shall remember always with a feeling partly ofrage and indignation, partly of allowance forthe quality of mind which is expert at pence-getting and keeping, and which, in peacetimes, gives a standing above greatness tothe man who can make two dollars take theplace of one. As we talked together, my ownwork was introductory and general. It wasnecessary that Appleton should do the rest,and I must say that he did it well. I mustsay, further, of the men to whom he talked,that perhaps no other three men reachablecould have listened more intelligently to whathe said, could have appreciated more keenlyhis summing up of the vast possibilities of hisinvention, should it succeed, or his estimateof his chances of success. It is only fair to saythis, but my blood boiled within me throughout all the interview. There was somethingso lofty and so patronizing in the demeanorof the millionaires toward us that my mood,near the end of the interview, was not a goodly nor a gentle one. Appleton became earnest


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62 ARMAGF.DDOX.and eloquent and was clear and concise fromstart to finish, but his talk and demonstrationdiil not appeal to either one of these threemoney-makers. I do not think that . \ppleton,himself, quite understood the failure of hiseffort. Tie was too earnest and absorbed, toocertain that anybody who would but listen tohim and hear all the facts presented mustagree with him. but I could see that the blowsof the blacksmith s hammer were falling uponcold metal: even ()T>rien in his own waycould see that. Toward the end of the conversation I saw his shoulders shift ominouslyonce or twice, and he looked at me question-ingly. It was all uncertain and he was obedient, but in that glance of his to me there wasa query as to whether there wasn t a remotechance of having some sort of an excuse forlicking somebody, somewhere.

I wonder if there is anything anarchistic inme? Is it right or wrong in me that thereshould be in my own mind a sort of antagonism against the smug man who had made alot of money and who thinks, because of that,he knows all there is to know;5 T am afraidthat, down in the bottom of my heart, I felta good deal as felt my deep-chested and short-


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I DISTINGUISH MYSELF. 63haired and loudly-plaided friend, Leander,who was hovering behind with that too suspicious closeness. Appleton, poor boy, hadmade every preparation he could for a goodshowing off of our blazing old invention.Evidently Leander O Brien had been hard atwork. The aluminum was polished and thething stood there, rather attractive in its way,like a vast, glittering, almost white cigar.Every expedient had been resorted to, tomake apparent to the laymen the nature andworkings of the machinery intended to operate the craft. The mechanism was all so adjusted that it could be worked and handledeasily; and so Appleton went on with histalk, explaining, illustrating, arguing.Once involved in the work of setting forththe nature of his invention and the work ofany part of his machinery, Appleton forgothis timidity and became enthusiastic and practical and clearly eloquent. I forgot myself inlistening to him. I admired him. I saw thepossibilities of the thing as I never had seenthem before; but did the talk, even as hewarmed, have the same effect on the three oldcapitalists? Not a bit of it. They stood thereand asked an occasional question and looked


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64 ARMAGKDDOX.at each otlicr and once in a while, nodded orshook their heads as the talk went on, andwhen it was all through with and Appletonlooked at them, it seemed to me appealingly,awaiting some comment, old Mr. Arnheimlooked up:

"What do yon think about it?" he said, hisquestion being addressed to his companions.Oh, there may be something in it I don tknow but I don t see any immediate money."said Mr. Tnttle. yawning. "It s one of thedream things of men of this sort. \Yhat doyou think of it, Hammond?"

Mr. Hammond s red face was inscrutableand he spoke slowly. "Well, I suppose you reright. Bill I don t know I ve a sneakingliking for the thing. However, since we veagreed to work together or not at all, I ll haveto side with you. I m afraid, Mr. Appleton,that we can t go into the thing: Good-afternoon." As he spoke, Mr. Hammond startedfor the door, the others following him, but before he reached the outside he hesitated,looked around and seemed half way inclinedto come back. He didn t come, though, andit is a source, at this present time, of greatcomfort to me that he didn t. It isn t exactly


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I DISTINGUISH MYSELF. 65clear to me how men can kick themselves because of failure to do what they ought to havedone at some certain time, but I ll venture tosay that Mr. Hammond has been engaged inthat occupation at frequent and long continued intervals within the last year. I willeven go so far as to wager that he is at ityet. He was the keenest of wit of the three.So they passed out into the sunlight andclimbed, ponderously content, into their carriage and gradually diminished toward theeast, where the smoke hung. Appleton saidnothing and I said nothing, and O Brien,while giving signs of saying something,didn t. We emerged into the sunlight together and stood there silently looking at thedisappearing carriage.As for me, my gorge rose. I am unfamiliarwith a gorge, how and why it rises, or anything in particular about a gorge I was always weak in Anatomy but if getting madclear through" and getting suddenly earnestand angrily enthusiastic means that a gorgehas performed that particular exploit of rising,then my gorge had risen until it was stoppedby plain want of room. Appleton s face waspitiful to look upon. He never lacked pluck,


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66 ARMAGEDDON.but there \vns a sort of blankness and something at least reminding one of hopelessnessin his expression that stirred me in every fiberof my behiL; . I thought very rapidly just thenand, I am Ldad to say, thought very sensibly.Sometimes when a fel!o\v is in a flaming moodhe does some of his best thinking, that is, Insconceptions are snddenlv clearer. I supposeit s the same way when lie has taken three ortour drinks, the lapse bein^ in the latter casethat there is no practical carrying out of intentions. Anyhow. I had my say and it hasbeen ^ood for me that I said it.

I drew close to Applcton and spoke:"As near as 1 can jnd^ e, Applcton, I am the

possessor of somewhere between twelve andfifteen thousand dollars of assets which can berealized upon at once. I am s^ oiii!^ to havethose dollars within my possession within thenext twenty-four hours, and 1 want to informyou seriously, calmly and confidentially, thatthey are gcin^ into your invention."The old boy didn t >ay anything at all. lielooked at me for a moment in a dazed sort ofway and then, as the quality of the situationdawned upon him. he shook hands with me;then I didn t like the look of his eves. Should


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I DISTINGUISH MYSELF. 67a man over twenty-one ever have tears in hiseyes? I wouldn t give a cent for a man whocouldn t. Then he turned and went in aloneto his invention. As for O Brien, he walkedup to me and looked me in the face and swung"his shoulders as usual and remarked in a casualSouth Halsted Street sort of way: "That sthe stuff!" Then he stalked off toward thestable to feed the horses and as he turned thecorner the loud plaid upon him cracked. Icould hear it distinctly. Anyhow, it seemedto.

That night, as we were finishing our cigarson the crazy little porch we had been dedicating a few last words to the late visitorsI exclaimed as a kind of conclusion to thewhole subject matter:

"Gold rules the camp, the court, the grove!""And it is likely to turn out," said Apple-

ton quietly, not smiling over my garbled version of the poet s line, but looking at me withfire in his eyes, "that Beauty will give us thesame verdict as has that jury of money-bags."

"What do you mean, Appleton?"But he would say no more. I guessed what

he meant, and remained silent.


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68 ARMAGEDDON.

CIIAPTKK VI.\YK MAKE PROGRESS.

\\ c had as helpers four tall, raw-bonedSwedes, the sons oi C)le Swanson, who tilledhis twenty acres of farm land a half mile southwest of us. The stalwart sons of Swansonwere sometimes reinforced by his not lessstalwart daughter who. added to her greatstrength and stature, possessed a more shrewdintellect than her brothers, as well as a shrill,penetrating voice which could be heard froman astonishing distance.The Swanson sons were ideal for our work,for they had neither interest in nor curiosityabout it. They bent their backs, and roundedtheir great shoulders for us whenever theywere needed, and then went their way withoutthought or comment.

Xothing surprised or disconcerted theseunemotional Swedes. A fall of twenty feet,a scrubbing over the fields at the end of a ropeattached to the reeling, tumbling machine, ora sudden jerk at any time, from any source,


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WE MAKE PROGRESS. 69all these experiences \vere received as a partof the regular clay s work, to be paid for by theregular day s wages, and nothing to be saidabout them.

Leda, the Amazon, was more human in construction and more than once Old Ole Swan-son had to give her a stern lecture impressingthe importance of silence and secrecy as toour affairs. Her chief temptation was in connection with a certain Christian Frederickson,who, in his Sunday clothes, broad and red o(visage and hands, came to see her regularlytwice a week after his day s work was over inthe railway machine shop, some miles away,where he was employed.

Frederickson was a Norwegian. In hiseyes there sparkled the light of an inquiringspirit, and he was, although heavily framed,active and even light in his movements.AYhen Leda brought him on an evening walktoward our quarters the pair usually stoppedat a respectful distance beside a clover field,where, leaning upon the fence, they lookedlong and searching!}* at our buildings andtheir surroundings.Toward the end of our labors on the prairie,when we were experimenting at night all


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7 ( i ARMAGEDDON.of our real work of that kind had to be doneafter dark \vc could hear, far over the fields,the strident tones of Lcda s voice rising andfalling in the pecttliar sing-song of her people,even \\hen they speak Knglish. as she talkedto Frederickson, and occasionally \ve notedhis deeper and yet thin harsh tones and weknew that the couple were following ourmovements, stumbling and running alongover the uneven ground, while we sailed anddipped arid slanted uncertainly around in theIt i\\ er fields of air.The frank interest of these lovers in us was

far from pleasing, as it was, of course, essential to our success that little attention shouldbe paid to our venture by the outer world.Kspccially indignant at the display of naturalcuriosity on the part of the fair l.eda and herswain was Leander OT>rien. With the naturalgallantry of his race, to no member of whicha petticoat can ever be indifferent, O Hrienhad not failed to try to make himself agreeableto < )le Swanson s daughter, and with suchsuccess that she blushed and bridled whenevershe met that gallant young bachelor, but allother manifestations showed that her heart


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WE MAKE PROGRESS. 7 1was fixed on one alone and that one, Fred-erickson.In time, the Norwegian became one of ourhelpers at night, and a valuable aid he proved,quick, alert and obedient, but he and O Brien,however well they worked together, were always when at rest, chafing and glowering ateach other. The trouble never reached thefighting stage, though, for, in reality, O Briencared nothing for Frederickson s sweetheart,it was only the galling fact that any youngwoman could for a moment look at any otherfellow when he, Leander O Brien, was presentwhich rufiled his temper and at times embittered an hour or two of his careless existence.

There were times when we thought thatFrederickson would make exactly the thirdhand we needed when our machine should goout in the world at last for actual work, butin the end we decided upon O Brien for thatplace, as, aside from every other consideration,Frcderickson was too great of weight andthen, before long, something happened whichconvinced us that O Brien was too useful,faithful and devoted to be dropped from ourservice for any reason.

It was good to study the relations of na-


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72 ARMAGEDDON.t tire s wild things \vith each other, and it \vasa sort of laxation in contrast with the workon the man-killing machine with which I. hadbecome identified. J often wandered awayalone and lay close to the ground, so to speak,becoming a part as nearly as I could of theromances and the comedies and the tragediesof the life of the grass. One day I especiallyremember, and an incident of it. The countryroad lay white and bare and dusty, but dippeddown into the creek and then rose again upthe bank on the other side to straggle awayto the village it was seeking. The creek hada certain lustiness, and there was water in iteven in midsummer. There were many frogsalong the margin who rather prided themselves on their vocal accomplishments andsang much at night. There were also snakesin the grass about. Of these we never spoketo Helen; it might have caused us to lose ourmuch prized walks with her through thequiet country, toward sundown on summerdays.

I heard I hardly know what to call ita queer sort of squeak and tumble along theroad which led away from the place where Iwas lying in front of the old barrack, and


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WE MAKE PROGRESS. 73then 1 saw something very fine. Down theslope of the descent toward the creek came afrog gasping, poor thing, \vith each leap, andleaping about seven feet at a time. He soughtthe water, and death was behind him. Swiftlyand steadily, keeping pace almost with hisdesperate leaps, came the ordinary gartersnake, most familiar of all the snakes of thecountry. Neither frog nor snake noticed me,although I ran out and along beside them, sodeeply interested were they, the one seekingthe chance of life and the other seeking prey.As for me, I felt, as I trotted along, a curiousinterest in noting the manner of the trail, thequality of the convolution of it left by thesnake upon the white dust of the road. Sofar as emotions go I don t think they werearoused in me at all until, just as the frog hadalmost reached the creek in safety, the snakeseized upon it by one of its hind legs and withdrew itself into its own coils contentedly togorge its prey at leisure; then came the blowacross the snake with something picked up athand and its almost instant death, while thefrog floundered weakly to the water and swamto safety beneath the overlapping reeds.Somehow7 the incident gave me courage.


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74 ARMAGEDDON."We ll docile our difficulties yet," I thought.

P>ut I am wandering away again, just as Iused to. from our work, and its story.

It is hard to tell in detail how the machinewas improving1 . Firstly, because save in apurely objective way I made slight study ofthe scientific details of it, and secondly, because no matter how hard mv decree of study,lacking as 1 am in all abilitv in such direction,I could not tell with any decree of clearnessthat would appeal to an expert just what theimprovements were. I cannot tell how, withhis liquified or compressed air. whichever itwas that Applelon utilixed. we got more andmore of propelling power with slight weight,nor can I tell as an expert could about thesteering apparatus, save that the propulsioneventually became tremendous and the powerof direction at least respectable. \Ve rose andfluttered and swerved, but ever with eachslight ascension for we never ventured far -we did a little better. either in the qualitx of theforce applied or in the working of some gearing or some bearing. It was fascinating tome. this exploration of the air depths but itwas so, largely as it is fascinating to a smallboy to see how far he can go into a grave-


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WE MAKE PROGRESS. 75yard of a dark night. I went up with Apple-ton in that speculative thing in the darknessand in close sympathy with Leander O Brien,who I firmly believe was as much scared as Iwas. Once "upstairs," as Leander put it, w7etwo, though lacking the inventor s unconscious bravery, became somewhat brave ourselves, and, acquiring in a measure the calmness of utter hopelessness, performed our respective duties with some degree of intelligence and tact. Never, though, did Leanderand I become really and thoughtfully courageous. We were but as the driftwood whichthinks not at all but obeys the direction of acontrolling current. Yet it may be fairly saidof us that we did our best. One night LeanderO Brien did something which bound him tous with more than the conventional bands ofsteel and which settled forever the question asto who in all future operations of our ventureshould be our henchman, helpmeet and friend.We had risen higher than usual that night,which was a dark one, and Appleton was inblithesome mood because some new gearingof his had worked so well and because in hisown vaulting opinion he just then owned theworld. I was somewhat elated mvself because


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/f> ARMAGEDDON.we had gone up fairlv and scjuarcly and witha little less than the usual amount of sonie-thing-is-g oing;-to-happen feeling. AYe were atleast five hundred feet above the earth, and,for (Mice, were really facing a moderate north-cast wind and holding ourselves in position.To the east, from our ahitude. T could seetwinkling bravely and boldlv the lights of thecity of Chicago and., though in our boat weseemed to be a little better off than usual,there occurred to me the lines of that poetwho wrote something about the "Cruel lightsof London." and I said to mvself. "Oh, Cruellights be handed! Cruel lights mean terrafirma and beet s; eak" and, just then, something happened.

It v asn t much: it was only that one of mvmurderous friend Applcton s gearing- hadbecome hide-bound or something of that sortand that he leaned over and said to me quitecomplacently, "\Yc are a good way up. andI don t know whether the power is Coiner tohold out or not." That was all there was toit, but, to tell the truth, it troubled me. Thenwe bewail to drop and dip. Then O P.rienlooked at me for a moment appealingly. andalmost under his breath began to use such


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WE MAKE PROGRESS. 77choice South Ilalsted Street expressions asmade something simply classical, somethingwhich I wish could have been taken clown inshorthand; but we did our best, O Brien and I;we jumped to the places which we had learnedwere ours in such emergency as we wentdownward at an angle all too sharp toward agrove for which the air-ship at that particularmoment had conceived an impassioned andviolent affection.There came a moment when, with our slant

and quality of descent and drift, and despiteall Appleton s wild efforts with his packed-inpowers, it became apparent to each of us thatwe were going to have a close, not to saytouching, interview with that grove. Wecouldn t miss it. To plunge into the top ofa certain looming element of it seemed ourcertain fate. This meant disaster of a sortyou could describe in almost any sort of moodand with almost any kind of adjectives. Somehow, and in some way, Appleton made ourunaccustomed carrier lift up its head as weswooped down so that there was almost aninclination to the horizontal. But it was inevitable with the downward drift that, if wemissed ihe trees, we should drop into the Des


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78 ARMAGEDDON.IMaines River, which curved at this point, andso involve a

]>ssil>leend to the machine, and

to certain people.We had ropes and an anchor, of course;1>elow us spread out about live acres ot greener}-, the tops of elm trees. Unal>le longerto resist the force of gravitation, unable longer to breast and remain stationary in the faceof the northeastern wind, the machine wasnow close upon the grove. Should we landamidst it we would be in a bad way; shouldwe miss it, we would be in worse strait still.\Ye dropped our anchor and took the chances.We caught fairly in a tree-top near thesouthwestern edge of the grove very near the

river, and we caught well and firmly, while themachine, tangled, slanted distressinglv towardthe southwest, under the prevailing wind.There we were, three men, sitting in a little

boat-shaped attair. upon anything but an evenkeel, though our frail carrier and its machinerywere attached firmly. We were about onehundred feet above the ground and the windwas gaining force, force enough to keep usaway up there strained loftily to the southwest. All at once it shifted to the east andwe were sorrv we had let the anchor eo.


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WE MAKE PROGRESS. 79Freed now, we could land on the prairie. Asit was we didn t see any practicable way toget out of "the hole," as O Brien called ourpredicament, though assuredly we weren t inany hole. On the contrary, a hole was justwhat would have been appreciated just then.We wanted to get down to where there wereholes. We weren t enamored of day s blueether nor of night s less brilliant ether. Wewanted terra firma.And then one Leander O Brien, ready here

tofore to march any day in a procession flaunting a green flag with a yellow harp upon it,and really hopeful in his thought that TheIsland of his kindred might possibly be allowed a personal entity among the nations ofthe earth, despite all geographical and political and sensible relations one LeanderO Brien, each one of whose relations was apoliceman, a sewer-digger, a political boss, apenitentiary inmate or a blessed old fatherof a family, this Leander O Brien did something.

"Youse just stay in here," he said, "and I llfix it! Something s got to be did and mightysudden! This tiling has got to be loosed andthen go somewhere. Anywhere except these


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8o ARMAGEDDON.woods! Thcy s only one way to do it. Gimme the axe."He didn t wait for consent or orders. He

grabbed the hatchet which we carried foremergencies and a moment later was over theend and slipping down the anchor rope. Theanchor had clutched together some of theoutspreading lighter limbs at the very top ofthe elm, and O Brien, as he reached the anchor, could merely thrust his way into a greatmass of green leaves, the foliage of hundredsof little limbs dragged close together as described, lie burrowed his way down somehow. I saw him with his legs and one armtwined round the sturdiest of the small limbsso massed, and saw the axe rise and fall, eachblow severing a limb and lessening the resisting force until suddenly, with a tear, themachine leaped aloft, swung clear of the forest and we sailed on", to land quite gallan lyand gently and respectably half a mile away.

But what had become of O Brien? Hadhe been tossed away from the tree as theslender limb upon which he had entwinedhimself swung back?5 Tf his grip had heldcould he still have reached the ground? Therewas anxiety on our part, but O Bricn was all


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WE MAKE PROGRESS. 8lright. We found him, ragged and scratched,but not seriously hurt in any way.

"It was dead easy," O Brien insisted, in reply to our inquiries, "I hung on when thething flipped, and I slid down somehow andthe limbs kept getting bigger until I got tothe tree itself, and then, blazes! I couldn thave slid down if the tree had been threeinches furder around !"

After that there was no question as to whoshould be the man to go with us.


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82 ARMACKDDOX.

CHAPTER VII.

One hot, breathless August morning weawoke to a world about to plunge in war.For months we had watched the progressof events and had known a crisis was approaching. Xow that crisis was here and wecould not realize it. It seemed unreal, theterrific news which came. Europe, America,Asia. .Africa and the islands of the seas werehurrying toward desperate conflict. Therewas upon the storm} waters or upon thethreatening land no place where the dove ofpeace could rest.The peace which had followed the Spanish-Amcrican war was almost universal, but itwas nominal. There was unrest. The spiritof change and combination was universal. Itpermeated all classes. It agitated the capitalists and reached even to the shopkeepers, thelast, ordinarily, to feel the influence of newideas. All through the world of trade andcommerce, the seeking world which supplies


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WAR. 83us with what we need from clay to day, wentthe consciousness that new conditions and anew arrangement were to follow a great struggle, and that commercial steps swift and earnest should be taken with reference to theoutcome.

All the world knew that the relations of thenations upon earth were to be readjusted.All the world knew, as did the mapmakers,that new forces, industrial, political, literaryand social, were to be forcefully applied innew places and with an aim to new resultsupon certain areas of the earth s surface heretofore left, either fallow or cultivated viciously, or, rather, to use an extenuating expression, with an unconscious selfishness begottenof whatever race or races might be responsible.

It was a vague fear but a real one. It wasan undefined terror hard to illustrate by asimile. In a room somewhere upon the globea group of girls might have been clustereddreading an approaching thunder storm. Theblack clouds dropped from overhead and blackclouds rose from the horizon to meet them,and the thunder peals were terrifying. Thegirls might have been in a London suburb or


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* ARMAGEDDON.in a country-house outside of Chicago or ina villa outside of Vienna, or in a fragile homeof some Mandarin in the interior of China.These girls could not have been more alarmed,or more or less brave according to their quality, than were the nations of the earth, feeling,through the expressions of their statesmenand their newspapers, the climax imminent.The popular mind is. after all. the register ofwhat is plainly existent, or of what is immediately threatening.

Xever in the history of the nations had thepulses of so mau\ millions beat so fast:never had each man, thinking for himself, regarding his race, his religion and all Ins justaffiliations, resolved more honestly and morefirmly as to his acts in the immediate future.It came strangely to be understood eventhroughout the

races not actively engaged inthe struggle. They felt it dimly in the limitsof the Malayan Peninsula; they telt it in ilorneo: they felt it in the northern end of Japanwhere the Japanese hardly go themselves;the\ felt it to the ends of the visited partsof the understanding earth. America hadvital interests at stake, for from the coast ofKurope to the coast of China, as has been


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WAR. 85told before, the United States had a bridge,or, to put it better, a highway, a bridge fromthe mainland to the Canaries, from the Canaries to Puerto Rico, from Puerto Rico to theIsthmus, from the Isthmus to Hawaii, andfrom Hawaii to the islands of the Pacific andall the Asiatic coast. Such possessions hadmade the statesmen of certain European nations think. Such possessions had resultedin the development of a vast American trade,a trade dependent upon highways parallelwith those of Great Britain, highways thesame in fact, to be kept clear forever asagainst any interference of the rest of theworld. These highways must be defended,this vast and increasing trade preserved.

Five hundred millions of Asiatic people,mostly cotton-clad, and producing themselvesonly a tithe of the cotton they required, werenow added to those who consumed the surplus products of America. Before the Spanish-American war only five per cent of theexports of the United States went westward.Now the trade was more than quadrupled,though only in its infancy. A procession ofhuge steamers, heavily laden, crossed the Pacific, bearing cotton and machinery and all


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8d ARMAGEDDON.the thousand products of farm or manufactory, and returned with their cargoes of sugar,hemp, indigo, coffee, tobacco, woods and thehundred other products of the Orient. Thedeep rivers of China, now open to the world,enabled the ships to reach the far interior andload or unload at ports heretofore unapproachable. The Asiatics themselves werebenefited, as were their unaccustomed visitors,and never in the history of the world hadthere grown so swiftly a trade so rich and fullof promise. With it came to America a prosperity almost unexampled, even in the historyof that fortunate country, and now that prosperity was imperiled. The United States and( ireat Britain were content with existing conditions, but not so Russia and (iermany andFrance. They could not yet compete on eventerms for the great commercial prixe. and thatalone gave cause for inter.se jealousy and anattempt at trade reprisals in the form of embarrassing restrictions upon the admission ofgoods from the countries reaping wealth inthe new field. They were ineffective and hurtlike a clumsily-thrown returning boomerang.these invidious laws, but thcv made bad feeling. There were propositions to dismember


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WAR. 87China and divide the territory between thegreat powers, America included, but thesewere rejected, while it was made clear thatwere such partition attempted the old Empirewould have the assistance of Great Britain andthe United States in the preservation of itsintegrity. In America, especially, the feelingin favor of such course in such event wassomething overwhelming. Should we throwaway what we had gained? Should we sacrifice any measure of our new prosperity? Fromthe statesmen in Washington to the cotton-grower of the South, the corn-grower of theWest, the wheat-grower of the North and themanufacturer of the East the answer came inchorus, and it was "No!"There were other causes leading to a con

flict, but the nature of these is told elsewhere.The control of the Nicaragua Canal was onething. Deeper than all was the feeling thatsomething more than trade privileges were atstake. There was coming swiftly now thedefinition of the relations of nations. Politically and rationally speaking, the world wassplit in twain with only one fragment lyingoutside, that fragment being Germany, theone nation whose place as the motherland of


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ARMAGEDDON.the Anglo-Saxon should have made her firstin the combination of her brood, of the magnificent spawning from the place of the aurochs and the deep forests and the hides-of-land folk.

Never since the world began had there beensuch formation everywhere of companies andregiments and divisions and corps of all theavailable fighting material of a country.Never before had the taxes been so raised.The American Congress alone had voted,without a murmur fn an the people, three hundred million dollars fur the navy. Englandwas as alert and active. Never before had thesupposedly great men gathered together insuch solemn council by day and night. Neverbefore had the great armory workshops beenso strained in the effort to produce efficientweapons of war within the shortest practicabletime. Russia had been garnering her goldand teaching her artisans and strengtheningher navy and extending her lines of railwayin preparation for the great emergency. InGermany the vaults of Spandau were packednearly to the bursting point, and the fightingstrength on land and sea had been increased.As for I Yance, the nation of which one, think-


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WAR. 09ing of the Zola-Dreyfus madness, said, perhaps unjustly, "Decadence," the nation wheremilitarism controlled by clericalism had become too dominant a force, there was atleast a fine outward showing", there werecamps and maneuvers on a splendid scale, theofficers of both army and navy had chestswell bulged out and shoulders well bulged inbehind, and the rank and file were at leastdecently well dressed and fed, and the millions of francs from the provinces came pouring in, and there was, externally, a vast armywell equipped and bloodthirsty, and in it weremany gallant gentlemen who deserved a better setting.As to Austria, the men who had, a few yearsago, yelped and struggled and made ignobleexhibitions of themselves in racial debatein the Austrian Reichrath became suddenlymen impelled by a common impulse to work-together under a common flag. Germans,Poles, Czechs, Magyars, Moravians and allthe rest came together in the spirit whichmakes men what we call patriotic. They forgot their little differences and were preparedto fight side by side for the Austrian Empire.The gentleman who hit another gentleman on


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90 ARMAGEDDON.the nose one day in the course of a debate,shook hands with his brother statesman anddearest foe, and they resolved to die together.And so it was with the other nations naturallyallied with these. The pot was seething.The immediate excuses for the strugglewhen it came were relatively insignificant.They arc ever at hand when nations clamor.And so, blindly, madly, yet propelled by irresistible forces, the nations were arrayed tofight to the death. The lines were naturalexcept for the Germans, who were gropinghelplessly as a people, and, so far as they werenatural, they were in a way satisfactory. Itwas easy for the common soldier to knowwhere to look for friend or foe. In Americathe German citizens as one man stood fortheir adopted country. "It is true," said one,"that we love our mother country, but wehave espoused America and we leave all tofollow her."

This was when the day of action came, theday of meetings, speeches and resolutionshaving passed.

"Your head shall fall," said a Norseman to aprisoner, in the time of Harold Fairhair. "If


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WAR. 9 1you know things after you die, wink youreyes."

"I will do so," said the other Norseman,and the blow was given but he did not wink.That was the Norseman, one type of himwhose ancestors overran the British Isles.There is no chronology in this and that isthe man, that is the type of the men who haveheld the little group of islands they have won,who have sent out, because it was in theirsons blood, groups of people who have seizedupon a great part of the world, who peopledNorthern America, though the children areapart, who have made old and ancient Australasia to blossom as the rose, who will justas surely people Africa, the lush continent solong neglected by the civilized, and enlightenAsia, as the world turns on an invisible intangible axis and brings about what men believe in and know. Night and Morning. Andthese made the Anglo-Saxon alliance.


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9-2 ARMAGEDDON.

CHAPTER VIII.A PATH FOR H.MIMRK.

I pon one fact the mind of every Americancitizen rested with satisfaction at the momentwhen the nations of the world began theircombat. The Nicaragua Canal lone;planned lone; talked of was completed tosuch a point as to allow the greatest ships togo freely through it from ocean to ocean.A few minor details remained to be finished,but for practical use the canal was open.

I was especially interested in this feature ofthe situation, for I personally knew the routeof the Nicaragua Canal from end to end,and knew all its planning. It seemed but yesterday to me, though in reality more thantwo years had passed since I was withthe great engineer in charge of the vast enterprise, and about to begin his work. Appletonwas now full of questions about this work inits minutire, for he saw plainly its tremendousconsequences and import, and as I told himthe storv as I knew it, with more detail than


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A PATH FOR EMPIRE. 93T had thought of before, he grew enthusiastic,not only over what was now made possible,but over what had already been achieved.The Nicaragua Canal is now known in allits features to everyone. Its construction isa matter of history, but the human side ofevents somehow gets lost in the pages of thehistorian. The Wild Goose, too, has its placein the record of public events as the fore-runner of the new arm nay, the wing of warbut its history, as it was related to men andwomen, is now being told for the first time inthis imperfect way of mine.

It chanced that I saw the furious and determined beginning and the triumphant ending of the Nicaragua Canal enterprise. Asthe story of the battle of the nations cannot betold without including that of this masterpieceof work, I shall tell here what I saw, and whatI know about it.Soon after our war with Spain was ended,and long before 1 had heard from Appletonor settled down to this peaceful summer onthe prairie of which I have been telling, Iwas in Greytown, Nicaragua, as confidentialsecretary to George Strong, head of the Commission of the United States, appointed to


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94 A KM.\OF.nnnx.complete at the earliest possible moment,without regard to ordinary considerations ofeconomy, the Nicaragua Canal.John Savage, the Ameiican engineer, had

been working away steadily for some time,and had made good use of everything he hadat his command. ! le had planned to take liveyears in which to do his work and was well onwith the preliminary part of it. with much ofhis machinery on the ground. The work waswell inaugurated at either end, but that wasall. The great American company, to which,a concession had been made, and the contractors, who were first partnvrs in the enterprise,had naturally sought to estimate the lengthof time in which the canal could be most economically constructed. Time was but a subordinate consideration with them. Even theestimate of the period required and of themoney to be expended demanded the utmostengineering skill: and then only an approximate conclusion could be reached. \\ e allknow of the canal in a general way, but at therisk of being heavy in telling a story I must,for the sake of making clear all that was done,tell of the nature of the country to be crossed.The canal lies between latitude I I and


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A PATH FOR EMPIRE. 95ii 30 north, and longitude 83 to 86 westfrom Greenwich, all in the state of Nicaragua,except about forty miles which border uponthe state of Costa Rica. Its eastern terminusis at Greytown, two thousand miles by theWindward passage from New York City andone thousand miles by the Yucatan passagefrom Key West. The western terminus is atBrito, twenty-seven hundred miles from SanFrancisco. The general course is east andwest, the distance between the two ports beingone hundred and seventy miles.The topography of the country is formed bytwo mountain chains, the western a volcanicupheaval skirting the Pacific coast at a distance of from four to eight miles; the easternthe main Cordilleras, skirting the Atlanticcoast near Greytown at a distance of fromfifteen to twenty miles. These two rangesunite at the eastward in the highlands of CostaRica in a knot of volcanic peaks. They againunite to the westward in the highlands ofHonduras and Guatemala, thus forming anenclosed basin, twelve thousand square milesof which drain into a system of lakes andrivers which finds its outlet through the SanJuan River at Greytown. The main feature of


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96 ARMAGKDDOX.tin s basin is Lake Nicaragua, with an area ofsome three thousand square miles, with a low-water elevation above sea level of one hundredfeet, and a high-water elevation some thirteenfeet greater. This lake is one hundred andten miles long and some sixty miles wide inits broadest part, and its depth extends belowsea level. Twelve to fifteen miles to the westward of the lake is a second lake called LakeManagua, some thirty mile s long and twentymiles wide, at an elevation twenty-eight feethigher, and discharging into Lake Nicaragua.The outlet of Lake Nicaragua is the San JuanRiver, beginning at Fort San Carlos, and bya meandering course of one hundred and tenmiles making its way to the sea at (ircytown.idie most considerable tributary of the SanJuan is the San Carlos River, which entersfrom the south about fifty miles from the sea.This drains the Costa Rica highlands andstarts within twenty miles of San Jnse in CostaRica, and is a torrential stream, carrying largequantities of detritus.The general situation in Nicaragua is, therefore, a system of streams draining the steepmountain slopes which hold the basin andtwo lakes draining to the Caribbean Sea


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A PATH FOR EMPIRE. 97through a gap in the eastern Cordilleras whichare here broken down nearly to sea level, thisgap being several miles wide. On the Pacificside the Coast Range is also broken downnearly to sea level, within four miles of Brito,the gap at this point being only about one-third of a mile wide. Between Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific the distance in the narrowest part is but twelve miles and the greatestelevation is but fifty-two feet above the low-water of Lake Nicaragua. On the Atlanticslope, by the San Juan River, the descent isgradual except as it is interrupted by therapids at Toro, Castillo and Machuca, all situated within a length of twenty miles and beginning thirty miles from the lake. The situation virtually constitutes a trough across theAmerican Isthmus one hundred and seventymiles long, of which Lake Nicaragua is thesummit, and is the lowest gap in the hemisphere from Point Barrow in Alaska to theStraits of .Magellan. This trough, fortunately, is in the axis of the northeast tradewinds, which are concentrated there as in afunnel, giving an almost constant breeze ofeight to ten miles an hour. So the climate isa healthy one.


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een entirely wasted and finish it as best we canwith Anglo-Saxon vim. and so connect theseas?"

The engineer leaned back and thought mostseriously. 1 le thought for many moments before he spoke:

"The French Canal lies farther so

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