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The War in the Air Chapter 4 Parts 1 & 2 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter four, Parts one and two of War in the Air.
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Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by William tom Coe. War
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Speaker 1: in the Air by H. G. Wells, Chapter four, Parts
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Speaker 1: one and two. Chapter four the German air Fleet, Part
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Speaker 1: one of all the production of the human imagination that
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Speaker 1: make the world in which mister Bert Smallways lived confusingly wonderful.
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Speaker 1: There was none quite so strange, so headlong and disturbing,
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Speaker 1: so noisy and persuasive and dangerous, as the modernizations of
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Speaker 1: patriotism produced by imperial and international politics. In the soul
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Speaker 1: of all men is a liking for kind, a pride
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Speaker 1: in one's own atmosphere, a tenderness for one's mother's speech,
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Speaker 1: and one's familiar land. Before the coming of the scientific age,
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Speaker 1: this group of gentle and noble emotions had been a
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Speaker 1: fine factor in the equipment of every worthy human being.
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Speaker 1: A fine factor that had its less amiable aspect in
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Speaker 1: a usually harmless hostility to strange people and a usually
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Speaker 1: harmless detraction of strange lands. But with the wild rush
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Speaker 1: of change in the pace, scope, materials, scale, and possibilities
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Speaker 1: of human life that then occurred. The old boundaries, the
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Speaker 1: old seclusions and separations were violently broken down. All the
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Speaker 1: old settled mental habits and traditions of men found themselves
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Speaker 1: not simply confronted by new conditions, but by constantly renewed
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Speaker 1: and changing new conditions. They had no chance of adapting themselves.
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Speaker 1: They were annihilated, or perverted, or inflamed beyond recognition. Bert
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Speaker 1: Smallway's grandfather, in the days when bun Hill was a
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Speaker 1: village under the sway of Sir Peter Bone's parent had
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Speaker 1: known his place to the other most farthing, touched his
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Speaker 1: hat to his betters, despised and condescended to his inferiors,
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Speaker 1: and hadn't changed an idea from the cradle to the grave.
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Speaker 1: He was Kentish and English, and that meant hops, beer
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Speaker 1: dog roses and the sort of sunshine that was best
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Speaker 1: in the world. Newspapers and politics and visits to London
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Speaker 1: weren't for the likes of him. Then came the change.
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Speaker 1: These earlier chapters have given an idea of what happened
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Speaker 1: to bun Hill and how the flood of novel things
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Speaker 1: had poured over its devoted rusticity. Bert Smallways was only
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Speaker 1: one of countless millions in Europe and America and Asia, who,
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Speaker 1: instead of being born rooted in the soil, were born
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Speaker 1: struggling in a torrent. They never clearly understood all the
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Speaker 1: faith of their fathers had been taken by surprise and
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Speaker 1: startled into the strangest forms and reactions. Particularly, did the
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Speaker 1: fine old tradition of patriotism get perverted and distorted in
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Speaker 1: the rush of the new times instead of the sturdy
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Speaker 1: establishment in prejudice of Bert's grandfather, to whom the word
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Speaker 1: frenchified was the ultimate term of contempt. There flowed through
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Speaker 1: Bert's brain a squittering succession of thinly violent ideas about
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Speaker 1: German competition, about the yellow danger, about the black peril,
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Speaker 1: about the white man's burthen, that is to say, Bert's
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Speaker 1: preposterous right to muddle further the naturally very muddled politics
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Speaker 1: of the entirely similar little cads to himself, except for
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Speaker 1: a smear of brown who smoked cigarettes and rode bicycles
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Speaker 1: in Buluwayo, Kingston, Jamaica or Bombay. These were Bert's subject races,
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Speaker 1: and he was ready to die by proxy in the
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Speaker 1: person of any one who cared to enlist to maintain
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Speaker 1: his hold upon that right. It kept him away at
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Speaker 1: nights to think that he might lose it. The essential
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Speaker 1: fact of the politics of the age in which Bert
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Speaker 1: small Ways lived, the age that blundered at last into
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Speaker 1: the catastrophe of the War in the Air, was a
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Speaker 1: very simple one, if only people had had the intelligence
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Speaker 1: to be simple about it. The development of science had
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Speaker 1: altered the scale of human affairs by means of rapid
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Speaker 1: mechanical traction. It had brought men nearer together, so much
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Speaker 1: nearer socially, economically, physically, that the old separations into nations
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Speaker 1: and kingdoms were no longer possible. A newer, wider synthesis
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Speaker 1: was not only needed, but imperatively demanded. Just as the
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Speaker 1: once independent dukedoms of France had to fuse into a nation,
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Speaker 1: so now the nations had to adapt themselves to a
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Speaker 1: wider coalescence. They had to keep what was precious and
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Speaker 1: possible and concede what was obsolete and dangerous. A saner
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Speaker 1: world would have perceived this patent need for a reasonable synthesis,
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Speaker 1: would have discussed it, temperately, achieved, and gone on to
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Speaker 1: organize the great civilization that was manifestly possible to mankind.
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Speaker 1: The world of burt small ways did nothing of the sort.
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Speaker 1: Its national governments, its national interests, would not hear of
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Speaker 1: anything so obvious. They were too suspicious of each other,
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Speaker 1: too wanting in generous imaginations. They began to behave, like
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Speaker 1: ill bred people in a crowded public car, to squeeze
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Speaker 1: against one another, elbow thrust, dispute and quarrel. Vain to
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Speaker 1: point out to them that they had only to rearrange
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Speaker 1: themselves to be comfortable. Everywhere, all over the world, the
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Speaker 1: historian of the early twentieth century finds the same thing,
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Speaker 1: the flow and rearrangement of human affairs, inextricably entangled by
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Speaker 1: the old areas, the old prejudices, and a sort of heated,
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Speaker 1: irascible stupidity, And everywhere congested nations in inconvenient areas, slopping
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Speaker 1: population and produce into each other, annoying each other with
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Speaker 1: tariffs and every possible commercial vexation, and threatening each other
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Speaker 1: with navies and armies that grew every year more portentous.
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Speaker 1: It is impossible now to estimate how much of the
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Speaker 1: intellectual and physical energy of the world was wasted into
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Speaker 1: military preparation and equipment, but it was an enormous proportion
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Speaker 1: Great Britain spent upon army and navy money and capacity
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Speaker 1: that directed into the channels of physical culture and education
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Speaker 1: would have made the British the aristocracy of the world.
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Speaker 1: Her rulers could have kept the whole population learning and
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Speaker 1: exercising up to the age of eighteen, and made a
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Speaker 1: broad chested and intelligent man of very birnt small ways
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Speaker 1: in the islands, had they given the resources they spent
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Speaker 1: in the war materials to the making of men, instead
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Speaker 1: of which they waggled flags at him until he was fourteen,
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Speaker 1: incited him to cheer, and then turned him out of
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Speaker 1: school to begin that career of private enterprise. We have
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Speaker 1: compactly recorded. France achieved similar imbecilities. Germany was, if possible worse. Russia,
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Speaker 1: under the waste and stresses of militarism, festered towards bankruptcy
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Speaker 1: and decay. All Europe was producing big guns and countless
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Speaker 1: swarms of little small ways. The Asiatic peoples had been
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Speaker 1: forced in self defense into a like diversion of the
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Speaker 1: new powers science had brought them. On the eve of
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Speaker 1: the outbreak of the war, there were six great powers
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Speaker 1: in the world and a cluster of smaller ones, each
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Speaker 1: armed to the teeth and straining every nerve to get
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Speaker 1: ahead of the others in deadliness of equipment and military efficiency.
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Speaker 1: The great powers were first the United States, a nation
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Speaker 1: addicted to commerce but roused to military necessities by the
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Speaker 1: efforts of Germany to expand into South America and by
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Speaker 1: the natural consequences of her own unwary annexations of land
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Speaker 1: in the very teeth of Japan. She maintained two immense
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Speaker 1: fleets east and west, and internally she was in violent
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Speaker 1: conflict between federal and state governments upon the question of
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Speaker 1: universal service in a defensive militia. Next came the Great
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Speaker 1: Alliance of Eastern Asia, a close knit coalescence of China
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Speaker 1: and Japan, advancing with rapid strides year by year to
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Speaker 1: predominance in the world's affairs. Then the German Alliance, still
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Speaker 1: struggled to achieve its dream of imperial expansion and its
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Speaker 1: imposition of the German language upon a forcibly united Europe.
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Speaker 1: These were the three most spirited and aggressive powers in
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Speaker 1: the world. Far more pacific was the British Empire, perilously
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Speaker 1: scattered over the globe and distracted now by insurrectionary movements
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Speaker 1: in Ireland. And among all its subject races, it had
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Speaker 1: given these subject races cigarettes, boots, bowler hats, cricket, race meetings,
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Speaker 1: cheap revolvers, petroleum, the factory system of industry, half penny
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Speaker 1: newspapers in both English and the vernacular, in expensive university degrees,
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Speaker 1: motor bicycles, and electric trams. It had produced a considerable
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Speaker 1: literature expressing contempt for the subject races and rendered it
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Speaker 1: freely accessible to them. And it had been content to
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Speaker 1: believe that nothing would result from these stimulants, because somebody
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Speaker 1: once wrote the Immemorial East, and also in the inspired
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Speaker 1: words of Kipling, east is East, and Vest is vest
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Speaker 1: and never the twain shall meet. Instead of which Egypt,
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Speaker 1: India and the subject countries generally had produced new generations
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Speaker 1: in a state of passionate indignation and the utmost energy
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Speaker 1: activity and modernity. The governing class in Great Britain was
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Speaker 1: slowly adapting itself to a new conception of the subject
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Speaker 1: races as waking peoples, and finding its ow efforts to
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Speaker 1: keep the empire together under these strains and changing ideas
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Speaker 1: greatly impeded by the entirely sporting spirit with which Bert
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Speaker 1: smallways at home, by the million cast his vote, and
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Speaker 1: by the tendency of his more highly colored equivalents to
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Speaker 1: be disrespectful to irascible officials. Their impertinence was excessive. It
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Speaker 1: was no mere stone throwing and shouting. They would quote
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Speaker 1: Burns at them, and Mill and Darwin and confute them
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Speaker 1: in arguments. Even more pacific than the British Empire were
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Speaker 1: France and its allies, the Latin Powers, heavily armed states,
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Speaker 1: indeed by reluctant warriors, and in many ways socially and
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Speaker 1: politically leading Western civilization. Russia was a pacific power per
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Speaker 1: force divided within itself, torn between revolutionaries and reactionaries, who
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Speaker 1: were equally incapable of social reconstruction, and so sinking towards
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Speaker 1: a tragic disorder of chronic political vendetta. Wedged in among
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Speaker 1: these portentous larger bulks, swayed and threatened by them, the
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Speaker 1: smaller states of the world maintained a precarious independence, each
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Speaker 1: keeping itself armed as dangerously as its utmost ability could contrive.
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Speaker 1: So it came about that in every country a great
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Speaker 1: and growing body of energetic and inventive men was busied,
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Speaker 1: either for offensive or defensive ends, in elaborating the apparatus
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Speaker 1: of war until the accumulating tension should reach the breaking point.
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Speaker 1: Each power sought to keep its preparation secret, to hold
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Speaker 1: new weapons in reserve, to anticipate and learn the preparations
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Speaker 1: of its rivals. The feeling of danger from fresh discoveries
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Speaker 1: affected the patriotic imagination of every people in the world.
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Speaker 1: Now it was rumored the British had an overwhelming gun,
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Speaker 1: now the French and invincible rifle. Now the Japanese a
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Speaker 1: new explosive. Now the Americans a submarine that would drive
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Speaker 1: every ironclad from the seas each time there would be
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Speaker 1: a war panic. The strength and heart of the nations
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Speaker 1: was given to the thought of war, and yet the
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Speaker 1: mass of their citizens was a teeming democracy, as heedless
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Speaker 1: of and unfitted for fighting mentally, morally, physically as any
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Speaker 1: population has ever been, or one ventures to add could
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Speaker 1: ever be. That was the paradox of the time. It
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Speaker 1: was a period altogether unique in the world's history. The
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Speaker 1: apparatus of warfare, the art and method of fighting, changed
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Speaker 1: absolutely every dozen years in a stupendous progress toward perfection,
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Speaker 1: and people grew less and less warlike, and there was
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Speaker 1: no war. And then at last it came. It came
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Speaker 1: as a surprise to all the world because its real
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Speaker 1: causes were hidden. Relations were strained between Germany and the
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Speaker 1: United States because of the intense exasperation of a tariff
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Speaker 1: conflict and the ambiguous attitude of the former power towards
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Speaker 1: the Monroe doctrine. And they were strained between in the
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Speaker 1: United States and Japan because of the perennial citizenship question.
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Speaker 1: But in both cases these were standing causes of offense.
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Speaker 1: The real deciding cause, it is now known, was the
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Speaker 1: perfecting of the Foreerzheim engine by Germany and the consequent
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Speaker 1: possibility of a rapid and entirely practicable airship. At that time,
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Speaker 1: Germany was by far the most efficient power in the world,
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Speaker 1: better organized for swift and secret action, better equipped with
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Speaker 1: the resources of modern science, and with her official and
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Speaker 1: administrative classes at a higher level of education and training.
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Speaker 1: These things she knew, and she exaggerated that knowledge to
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Speaker 1: the pitch of contempt for the secret consuls of her neighbors.
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Speaker 1: It may be that with the habit of self confidence
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Speaker 1: her spying upon them had grown less thorough Moreover, she
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Speaker 1: had a tradition of unsentimental and unscrupulous action that vitiated
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Speaker 1: her international outcome look profoundly. With the coming of these
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Speaker 1: new weapons, her collective intelligence thrilled with the sense that
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Speaker 1: now her moment had come once again in the history
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Speaker 1: of progress. It seemed she held the decisive weapon. Now
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Speaker 1: she might strike and conquer before the others had anything
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Speaker 1: but experiments. In the air. Particularly, she must strike America swiftly,
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Speaker 1: because there, if anywhere, lay the chance of an aerial rival.
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Speaker 1: It was known that America possessed a flying machine of
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Speaker 1: considerable practical value, developed out of the right model, but
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Speaker 1: it was not supposed that the Washington's War Office had
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Speaker 1: made any wholesale attempts to create an aerial navy. It
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Speaker 1: was necessary to strike before they could do so. France
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Speaker 1: had a fleet of slow navigables, several dating from nineteen
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Speaker 1: o eight that could make no possible headway against the
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Speaker 1: new type. They had been built solely for reconnoitering purposes
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Speaker 1: on the eastern frontier. They were mostly too small to
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Speaker 1: carry more than a couple of dos and men without
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Speaker 1: arms or provisions, and not one could do forty miles
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Speaker 1: an hour. Great Britain and seemed in an excess of meanness,
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Speaker 1: temporized and wrangled with the imperial spirited Butteridge and his
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Speaker 1: extraordinary invention that also was not in play, and could
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Speaker 1: not be for some months at the earliest. From Asia
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Speaker 1: there came no sign. The Germans explained this by saying
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Speaker 1: the Yellow peoples were without invention. No other competitor was
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Speaker 1: worth considering. Now or never, said the Germans. Now or never,
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Speaker 1: we may seize the air, as once the British seized
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Speaker 1: the seas, while all the other powers are still experimenting.
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Speaker 1: Swift and systematic and secret were their preparations, and their
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Speaker 1: plan most excellent. So far as their knowledge went. America
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Speaker 1: was the only dangerous possibility, America, which was also now
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Speaker 1: the leading trade rival of Germany and one of the
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Speaker 1: chief barriers to her imperial expansion. So at once they
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Speaker 1: would strike at America, they would fling a great force
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Speaker 1: across the Atlantic heavens and bear America down. Unwarned and unprepared. Altogether,
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Speaker 1: it was a well imagined and most hopeful and spirited enterprise.
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Speaker 1: Having regard to the information in the possession of the
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Speaker 1: German government, the chances of it being a successful surprise
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Speaker 1: were very great. The airship and the flying machine were
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Speaker 1: very different things from ironclads, which take a couple of
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Speaker 1: years to build. Given hands, given plant, they could be
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Speaker 1: made innumerably in a few weeks. Once the needful parks
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Speaker 1: and foundries were organized, airships and draken flagger could be
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Speaker 1: poured into the sky. Indeed, when the time came, they
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Speaker 1: did pour into the sky, like as a bitter French
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Speaker 1: writer put it, flies roused from filth. The attack upon
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Speaker 1: America was to be the first move in this tremendous game.
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Speaker 1: But no sooner had it started than instantly the aeronautic
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Speaker 1: parks were to proceed to put together and inflate the
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Speaker 1: second fleet, which was to dominate Europe and maneuver significantly
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Speaker 1: over London, Paris, Rome, Saint Petersburg, or wherever else. Its
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Speaker 1: moral effect was required a world surprise. It was to
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Speaker 1: be no less a world conquest, and it is wonderful
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Speaker 1: how near the calmy, adventurous minds that planned it came
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Speaker 1: to succeeding in their colossal design. Von Sternberg was the
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Speaker 1: molt key of this war. In the air, but it
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Speaker 1: was the curious heart romanticism of Prince Carl Albert that
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Speaker 1: won over the hesitating emperor to the scheme. Prince Carl
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Speaker 1: Albert was indeed the central figure of the world drama.
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Speaker 1: He was the darling of the imperialist spirit in Germany
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Speaker 1: and the ideal of the new aristocratic feeling, the new chivalry,
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Speaker 1: as it was called, that followed the overthrow of socialism
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Speaker 1: through its internal divisions and lack of discipline, and the
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Speaker 1: concentration of wealth in the hands of a few great families.
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Speaker 1: He was compared by obsequi oquious flatterers, to the black Prince,
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Speaker 1: to Alcibiades, to the young Caesar. To many he seemed
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Speaker 1: Nietzsche's overman. Revealed he was big and blond, and virile
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Speaker 1: and splendidly non moral. The first great feat that startled
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Speaker 1: Europe and almost brought about a Neutrojan war was his
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Speaker 1: abduction of the Princess Helena of Norway and his blank
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Speaker 1: refusal to marry her. Then followed his marriage with Gretchen Krass,
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Speaker 1: a Swiss girl of peerless beauty. Then came the gallant rescue,
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Speaker 1: which almost cost him his life of three drowning sailors
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Speaker 1: whose boat had upset in the sea near Hellegoland. For
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Speaker 1: that and his victory over the American yacht Defender C.
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Speaker 1: C I, the Emperor forgave him and placed him in
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Speaker 1: control of the new aeronautic arm of the German forces.
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Speaker 1: This he developed with marvelous energy and ability, being resolved,
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Speaker 1: as he said, to give to Germany land and sea
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Speaker 1: and sky. The national passion for aggression found in him
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Speaker 1: its supreme exponent, and achieved through him its realization in
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Speaker 1: this astounding war. But his fascination was more than national.
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Speaker 1: All over the world. His ruthless strength dominated minds as
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Speaker 1: the Napoleonic legend had dominated minds. Englishmen turned in disgust
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Speaker 1: from the slow, complex, civilized methods of their national politics
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Speaker 1: to this uncompromising, forceful figure. Frenchmen believed in him. Poems
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Speaker 1: were written to him. An American, he made the war
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Speaker 1: quite equally with the rest of the world. The general
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Speaker 1: German population was taken by surprise by the swift vigor
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Speaker 1: of the Imperial government. A considerable literature of military forecasts
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Speaker 1: beginners as early as nineteen o six, with Rudolph Martin
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Speaker 1: the author, not merely of a brilliant book of anticipations,
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Speaker 1: but of a proverb. The future of Germany lies in
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Speaker 1: the air, had however, partially prepared the Juraman imagination for
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Speaker 1: some such enterprise. Part two. Of all these world forces
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Speaker 1: and gigantic designs, Bert Smallways knew nothing until he found
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Speaker 1: himself in the very focus of it all, and gaped down,
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Speaker 1: amazed on the spectacle of that giant herd of airships.
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Speaker 1: Each one seemed as long as the strand and as
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Speaker 1: big about as Trafalgar Square. Some must have been a
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Speaker 1: third of a mile in length. He had never before
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Speaker 1: seen anything so vast and disciplined as this tremendous pack.
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Speaker 1: For the first time in his life, he really had
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Speaker 1: an intimation of the extraordinary and quite important things of
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Speaker 1: which a contemporary may go in ignorance. He had always
20:41
Speaker 1: clung to the illusion that Germans were fat, absurd men
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Speaker 1: who smoked china pipes and were addicted to knowledge and
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Speaker 1: horseflesh and sauerkraut and indigestible things. Generally, his bird's eye
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Speaker 1: view was quite transitory. He ducked at the first shot,
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Speaker 1: and directly his balloon began to drop. His mind ran
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Speaker 1: confusedly upon how he might explain himself, and whether he
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Speaker 1: should pretend to be Butteridge or not. Oh Lord, he
21:11
Speaker 1: groaned in an agony of indecision. Then his eye caught
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Speaker 1: his sandals, and he felt a spasm of self disgust.
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Speaker 1: They'll think I'm a bloomin idiot, he said, And then
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Speaker 1: it was. He rose up desperately and threw over the
21:24
Speaker 1: sand bag and provoked the second and third shots. It
21:28
Speaker 1: flashed into his head as he cowered in the bottom
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Speaker 1: of the car. That he might avoid all sorts of
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Speaker 1: disagreeable and complicated explanations by pretending to be mad. That
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Speaker 1: was his last idea before the airships seemed to rush
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Speaker 1: up about him as if to look at him, and
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Speaker 1: his car hit the ground and bounded and pitched him
21:47
Speaker 1: out on his head. He awoke to find himself famous,
21:51
Speaker 1: and to hear a voice crying, butter Rage, yah, y, heir,
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Speaker 1: butter Rage selps. He was lying on a little patch
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Speaker 1: of grass beside one of the main avenues of the
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Speaker 1: Aeronautic Park. The airships receded down a great vista, an
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Speaker 1: immense perspective, and the blunt prow of each was adorned
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Speaker 1: with a black eagle of one hundred feet or so.
22:13
Speaker 1: Spread down the other side of the avenue ran a
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Speaker 1: series of gas generators and big hose pipes trailed everywhere
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Speaker 1: across the intervening space. Close at hand was as now
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Speaker 1: nearly deflated balloon, and the car on its side, looking
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Speaker 1: minutely small, a mere broken toy, a shrivel bubble, in
22:32
Speaker 1: contrast with the gigantic bulk of the nearer airship. This
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Speaker 1: he saw almost end on, rising like a cliff and
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Speaker 1: sloping forward towards its fellow on the other side, so
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Speaker 1: as to overshadow the alley between them. There was a
22:46
Speaker 1: crowd of excited people about him, big men, mostly in
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Speaker 1: tight uniforms. Everybody was talking, and several were shouting in German.
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Speaker 1: He knew that because they splashed and aspirated sounds like
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Speaker 1: starfartled kittens. Only one phrase, repeated again and again could
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Speaker 1: be recognized. The name of hair butter rage. Golly's, said Bert.
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Speaker 1: They've spotted it, Besser, said some one, and some rapid
23:16
Speaker 1: German followed. He perceived that close at hand was a
23:20
Speaker 1: field telephone, and that a tall officer in blue was
23:23
Speaker 1: talking thereat about him. Another stood close beside him with
23:27
Speaker 1: a portfolio of drawings and photographs in his hand. They
23:31
Speaker 1: looked around at him. Do you spik cherman her? Butterrage
23:38
Speaker 1: Bertie decided that he had better be dazed. He did
23:40
Speaker 1: his best to seem thoroughly dazed. Where am I? He asked?
23:47
Speaker 1: Volubility prevailed. Der Prinz was mentioned. A bugle sounded far away,
23:53
Speaker 1: and its call was taken up by one nearer and
23:55
Speaker 1: then by one close at hand. This seemed to increase
23:58
Speaker 1: the excitement greatly. A mono rail car bumbled past. The
24:03
Speaker 1: telephone bell rang passionately, and the tall officer seemed to
24:06
Speaker 1: engage in a heated altercation. Then he approached the group
24:10
Speaker 1: about Bert, calling out something about mit Bringen. An earnest faced,
24:15
Speaker 1: emaciated man with a white mustache appealed to Bert, heir Booterrage, Sir,
24:21
Speaker 1: we are just to start. Where am i? Bert repeated?
24:27
Speaker 1: Some one shook him by the other shoulder. Are you
24:30
Speaker 1: heir Booterrage? He asked? Here, Butterrage, we are just to start,
24:36
Speaker 1: repeated the white mustache, and then, helplessly, what is de goute?
24:41
Speaker 1: What can we do? The officer from the telephone repeated
24:45
Speaker 1: his sentence about Dr Prinz and mit Bringen. The man
24:49
Speaker 1: with a mustache stared for a moment, grasped an idea,
24:53
Speaker 1: and became violently energetic, stood up and bald directions at
24:56
Speaker 1: unseen people. Questions were asked, and the doctor at Bert's
25:00
Speaker 1: side answered yah yah several times, also something about Kauugh.
25:06
Speaker 1: With a certain urgency. He got Bert rather unwillingly to
25:09
Speaker 1: his feet. Two huge soldiers in gray advanced upon Bert
25:13
Speaker 1: and seized hold of him Ullo, said, Bert startled, what's up?
25:19
Speaker 1: It is all right? The doctor explained, They are to
25:22
Speaker 1: carry you where? Asked Bert unanswered, put your arms round
25:27
Speaker 1: their hals, round them, yes, but where hold tight? Before
25:35
Speaker 1: Bert could decide to say anything more, he was wicked
25:38
Speaker 1: up by the two soldiers. They joined hands to seat him,
25:41
Speaker 1: and his arms were put about their necks warwartz. Some
25:46
Speaker 1: one ran before him with the portfolio, and he was
25:48
Speaker 1: borne rapidly along the broad avenue between the gas generators
25:52
Speaker 1: and the airships, rapidly, and on the whole smoothly, except
25:57
Speaker 1: that once or twice his bearers stumbled over host pipes
26:00
Speaker 1: and nearly let him down. He was wearing mister Butteridge's
26:04
Speaker 1: alpine cap and his little shoulders were in mister Butteridge's
26:08
Speaker 1: fur lined overcoat, and he had responded to mister Butteridge's name.
26:13
Speaker 1: The sandals dangled helplessly gaw everybody seemed in a devil
26:18
Speaker 1: of a hurry. Why he was carried joggling and gaping
26:23
Speaker 1: through the twilight, marveling beyond measure. The systematic arrangement of wide,
26:29
Speaker 1: convenient spaces, the quantities of business like soldiers everywhere, the
26:33
Speaker 1: occasional neat piles of material, the ubiquitous mono rail lines,
26:38
Speaker 1: and the towering shiplike hulls about him reminded him a
26:41
Speaker 1: little of impressions he had got as a boy on
26:44
Speaker 1: a visit to Woolwich Dockyard. The whole camp reflected the
26:48
Speaker 1: colossal power of modern science that had created it. A
26:52
Speaker 1: peculiar strangeness was produced by the lowness of the electric light,
26:56
Speaker 1: which lay upon the ground, casting all shadows upwards, and
26:59
Speaker 1: made making a grotesque shadow figure of himself and his
27:03
Speaker 1: bearers on the airship's sides, fusing all three of them
27:06
Speaker 1: into a monstrous animal with attenuated legs and an immense
27:10
Speaker 1: fanlike humped body. The lights were on the ground because
27:14
Speaker 1: as far as possible. All poles and standards had been
27:18
Speaker 1: dispensed with to prevent complications. When the airships rose, it
27:22
Speaker 1: was deep twilight, now a tranquil blue skied evening. Everything
27:27
Speaker 1: rose out from the splashes of light upon the ground
27:30
Speaker 1: into dim, translucent, tall masses. Within the cavities of the airships,
27:35
Speaker 1: small inspecting lamps glowed like cloud veiled stars and made
27:39
Speaker 1: them seem marvelously unsubstantial. Each airship had its name in
27:44
Speaker 1: black letters on white on either flank, and forward, the
27:48
Speaker 1: Imperial Eagle sprawled an overwhelming bird in the dimness. Bugles
27:53
Speaker 1: sounded monoreal. Cars of quiet soldiers slithered burbling by the
27:59
Speaker 1: cabins under the heads of the airships were being lit up.
28:02
Speaker 1: Doors opened in them and revealed padded passages. Now and
28:07
Speaker 1: then a voice gave directions to workers indistinctly seen. There
28:11
Speaker 1: was a matter of sentinels, gangways, and a long narrow passage,
28:16
Speaker 1: a scramble over a disorder of baggage. And then Bert
28:19
Speaker 1: found himself lower to the ground and standing in the
28:22
Speaker 1: doorway of a spacious cabin. It was perhaps ten feet
28:25
Speaker 1: square and eight high, furnished with crimson padding and aluminium,
28:30
Speaker 1: A tall bird like young man with a small head,
28:33
Speaker 1: a long nose, and very pale hair, with his hands
28:36
Speaker 1: full of things like shaving strops, boot trees, hair brushes
28:41
Speaker 1: and toilet tidies, was saying things about Gott and thunder
28:45
Speaker 1: and Dumer Butterage. As Bert entered, he was apparently an
28:50
Speaker 1: evicted occupant. Then he vanished, and Bert was lying back
28:54
Speaker 1: on a couch in the corner with a pillow under
28:56
Speaker 1: his head, and the door of the cabin shut upon him.
29:00
Speaker 1: He was alone. Everybody had hurried out again. Astonishingly, goll
29:05
Speaker 1: Lee's said Bert, what next? He stared about him at
29:09
Speaker 1: the room, Butteridge, shall I try to keep it up?
29:13
Speaker 1: Or shan't I? The room he was in puzzled him.
29:17
Speaker 1: Tisn't a prison and tisn't anorphoe. Then the old trouble
29:22
Speaker 1: came uppermost. I wish to even I adn't these silly
29:26
Speaker 1: sandals on, he cried querulously to the universe. They give
29:31
Speaker 1: the whole blessed show away. End of Chapter four, Parts
29:36
Speaker 1: one and two. Recording by William tom Coe