King Arthur Collection (240 page)

"Of course they won't."

"It's dreadful, Clarence.  It seems an awful pity."

The thing disturbed me so that I couldn't get any peace of mind for thinking of it and worrying over it.  So, at last, to quiet my conscience, I framed this message to the knights:

TO THE HONORABLE THE COMMANDER OF THE INSURGENT
CHIVALRY OF ENGLAND: YOU fight in vain. We know
your strength—if one may call it by that name.
We know that at the utmost you cannot bring
against us above five and twenty thousand knights.
Therefore, you have no chance—none whatever.
Reflect: we are well equipped, well fortified, we
number 54. Fifty-four what? Men? No,
minds
—the
capablest in the world; a force against which
mere animal might may no more hope to prevail than
may the idle waves of the sea hope to prevail
against the granite barriers of England. Be advised.
We offer you your lives; for the sake of your
families, do not reject the gift. We offer you
this chance, and it is the last: throw down your
arms; surrender unconditionally to the Republic,
and all will be forgiven.

(Signed) THE BOSS.

I read it to Clarence, and said I proposed to send it by a flag of truce.  He laughed the sarcastic laugh he was born with, and said:

"Somehow it seems impossible for you to ever fully realize what these nobilities are.  Now let us save a little time and trouble. Consider me the commander of the knights yonder.  Now, then, you are the flag of truce; approach and deliver me your message, and I will give you your answer."

I humored the idea.  I came forward under an imaginary guard of the enemy's soldiers, produced my paper, and read it through. For answer, Clarence struck the paper out of my hand, pursed up a scornful lip and said with lofty disdain:

"Dismember me this animal, and return him in a basket to the base-born knave who sent him; other answer have I none!"

How empty is theory in presence of fact!  And this was just fact, and nothing else.  It was the thing that would have happened, there was no getting around that.  I tore up the paper and granted my mistimed sentimentalities a permanent rest.

Then, to business.  I tested the electric signals from the gatling platform to the cave, and made sure that they were all right; I tested and retested those which commanded the fences—these were signals whereby I could break and renew the electric current in each fence independently of the others at will.  I placed the brook-connection under the guard and authority of three of my best boys, who would alternate in two-hour watches all night and promptly obey my signal, if I should have occasion to give it—three revolver-shots in quick succession.  Sentry-duty was discarded for the night, and the corral left empty of life; I ordered that quiet be maintained in the cave, and the electric lights turned down to a glimmer.

As soon as it was good and dark, I shut off the current from all the fences, and then groped my way out to the embankment bordering our side of the great dynamite ditch.  I crept to the top of it and lay there on the slant of the muck to watch.  But it was too dark to see anything.  As for sounds, there were none.  The stillness was deathlike.  True, there were the usual night-sounds of the country—the whir of night-birds, the buzzing of insects, the barking of distant dogs, the mellow lowing of far-off kine—but these didn't seem to break the stillness, they only intensified it, and added a grewsome melancholy to it into the bargain.

I presently gave up looking, the night shut down so black, but I kept my ears strained to catch the least suspicious sound, for I judged I had only to wait, and I shouldn't be disappointed. However, I had to wait a long time.  At last I caught what you may call in distinct glimpses of sound dulled metallic sound. I pricked up my ears, then, and held my breath, for this was the sort of thing I had been waiting for.  This sound thickened, and approached—from toward the north.  Presently, I heard it at my own level—the ridge-top of the opposite embankment, a hundred feet or more away.  Then I seemed to see a row of black dots appear along that ridge—human heads?  I couldn't tell; it mightn't be anything at all; you can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.  However, the question was soon settled.  I heard that metallic noise descending into the great ditch.  It augmented fast, it spread all along, and it unmistakably furnished me this fact:  an armed host was taking up its quarters in the ditch.  Yes, these people were arranging a little surprise party for us.  We could expect entertainment about dawn, possibly earlier.

I groped my way back to the corral now; I had seen enough.  I went to the platform and signaled to turn the current on to the two inner fences.  Then I went into the cave, and found everything satisfactory there—nobody awake but the working-watch.  I woke Clarence and told him the great ditch was filling up with men, and that I believed all the knights were coming for us in a body. It was my notion that as soon as dawn approached we could expect the ditch's ambuscaded thousands to swarm up over the embankment and make an assault, and be followed immediately by the rest of their army.

Clarence said:

"They will be wanting to send a scout or two in the dark to make preliminary observations.  Why not take the lightning off the outer fences, and give them a chance?"

"I've already done it, Clarence.  Did you ever know me to be inhospitable?"

"No, you are a good heart.  I want to go and—"

"Be a reception committee?  I will go, too."

We crossed the corral and lay down together between the two inside fences.  Even the dim light of the cave had disordered our eyesight somewhat, but the focus straightway began to regulate itself and soon it was adjusted for present circumstances.  We had had to feel our way before, but we could make out to see the fence posts now. We started a whispered conversation, but suddenly Clarence broke off and said:

"What is that?"

"What is what?"

"That thing yonder."

"What thing—where?"

"There beyond you a little piece—dark something—a dull shape of some kind—against the second fence."

I gazed and he gazed.  I said:

"Could it be a man, Clarence?"

"No, I think not.  If you notice, it looks a lit—why, it
is
a man!—leaning on the fence."

"I certainly believe it is; let us go and see."

We crept along on our hands and knees until we were pretty close, and then looked up.  Yes, it was a man—a dim great figure in armor, standing erect, with both hands on the upper wire—and, of course, there was a smell of burning flesh.  Poor fellow, dead as a door-nail, and never knew what hurt him.  He stood there like a statue—no motion about him, except that his plumes swished about a little in the night wind.  We rose up and looked in through the bars of his visor, but couldn't make out whether we knew him or not—features too dim and shadowed.

We heard muffled sounds approaching, and we sank down to the ground where we were.  We made out another knight vaguely; he was coming very stealthily, and feeling his way.  He was near enough now for us to see him put out a hand, find an upper wire, then bend and step under it and over the lower one.  Now he arrived at the first knight—and started slightly when he discovered him.  He stood a moment—no doubt wondering why the other one didn't move on; then he said, in a low voice, "Why dreamest thou here, good Sir Mar—" then he laid his hand on the corpse's shoulder—and just uttered a little soft moan and sunk down dead.  Killed by a dead man, you see—killed by a dead friend, in fact.  There was something awful about it.

These early birds came scattering along after each other, about one every five minutes in our vicinity, during half an hour. They brought no armor of offense but their swords; as a rule, they carried the sword ready in the hand, and put it forward and found the wires with it.  We would now and then see a blue spark when the knight that caused it was so far away as to be invisible to us; but we knew what had happened, all the same; poor fellow, he had touched a charged wire with his sword and been electrocuted. We had brief intervals of grim stillness, interrupted with piteous regularity by the clash made by the falling of an iron-clad; and this sort of thing was going on, right along, and was very creepy there in the dark and lonesomeness.

We concluded to make a tour between the inner fences.  We elected to walk upright, for convenience's sake; we argued that if discerned, we should be taken for friends rather than enemies, and in any case we should be out of reach of swords, and these gentry did not seem to have any spears along.  Well, it was a curious trip.  Everywhere dead men were lying outside the second fence—not plainly visible, but still visible; and we counted fifteen of those pathetic statues—dead knights standing with their hands on the upper wire.

One thing seemed to be sufficiently demonstrated:  our current was so tremendous that it killed before the victim could cry out. Pretty soon we detected a muffled and heavy sound, and next moment we guessed what it was.  It was a surprise in force coming! whispered Clarence to go and wake the army, and notify it to wait in silence in the cave for further orders.  He was soon back, and we stood by the inner fence and watched the silent lightning do its awful work upon that swarming host.  One could make out but little of detail; but he could note that a black mass was piling itself up beyond the second fence.  That swelling bulk was dead men!  Our camp was enclosed with a solid wall of the dead—a bulwark, a breastwork, of corpses, you may say.  One terrible thing about this thing was the absence of human voices; there were no cheers, no war cries; being intent upon a surprise, these men moved as noiselessly as they could; and always when the front rank was near enough to their goal to make it proper for them to begin to get a shout ready, of course they struck the fatal line and went down without testifying.

I sent a current through the third fence now; and almost immediately through the fourth and fifth, so quickly were the gaps filled up. I believed the time was come now for my climax; I believed that that whole army was in our trap.  Anyway, it was high time to find out.  So I touched a button and set fifty electric suns aflame on the top of our precipice.

Land, what a sight!  We were enclosed in three walls of dead men! All the other fences were pretty nearly filled with the living, who were stealthily working their way forward through the wires. The sudden glare paralyzed this host, petrified them, you may say, with astonishment; there was just one instant for me to utilize their immobility in, and I didn't lose the chance.  You see, in another instant they would have recovered their faculties, then they'd have burst into a cheer and made a rush, and my wires would have gone down before it; but that lost instant lost them their opportunity forever; while even that slight fragment of time was still unspent, I shot the current through all the fences and struck the whole host dead in their tracks!  
There
was a groan you could
hear
!  It voiced the death-pang of eleven thousand men. It swelled out on the night with awful pathos.

A glance showed that the rest of the enemy—perhaps ten thousand strong—were between us and the encircling ditch, and pressing forward to the assault.  Consequently we had them
all!
and had them past help.  Time for the last act of the tragedy.  I fired the three appointed revolver shots—which meant:

"Turn on the water!"

There was a sudden rush and roar, and in a minute the mountain brook was raging through the big ditch and creating a river a hundred feet wide and twenty-five deep.

"Stand to your guns, men!  Open fire!"

The thirteen gatlings began to vomit death into the fated ten thousand.  They halted, they stood their ground a moment against that withering deluge of fire, then they broke, faced about and swept toward the ditch like chaff before a gale.  A full fourth part of their force never reached the top of the lofty embankment; the three-fourths reached it and plunged over—to death by drowning.

Within ten short minutes after we had opened fire, armed resistance was totally annihilated, the campaign was ended, we fifty-four were masters of England.  Twenty-five thousand men lay dead around us.

But how treacherous is fortune!  In a little while—say an hour—happened a thing, by my own fault, which—but I have no heart to write that.  Let the record end here.

CHAPTER XLIV. A POSTSCRIPT BY CLARENCE
 

I, Clarence, must write it for him.  He proposed that we two go out and see if any help could be accorded the wounded.  I was strenuous against the project.  I said that if there were many, we could do but little for them; and it would not be wise for us to trust ourselves among them, anyway.  But he could seldom be turned from a purpose once formed; so we shut off the electric current from the fences, took an escort along, climbed over the enclosing ramparts of dead knights, and moved out upon the field.  The first wounded mall who appealed for help was sitting with his back against a dead comrade.  When The Boss bent over him and spoke to him, the man recognized him and stabbed him.  That knight was Sir Meliagraunce, as I found out by tearing off his helmet.  He will not ask for help any more.

We carried The Boss to the cave and gave his wound, which was not very serious, the best care we could.  In this service we had the help of Merlin, though we did not know it.  He was disguised as a woman, and appeared to be a simple old peasant goodwife. In this disguise, with brown-stained face and smooth shaven, he had appeared a few days after The Boss was hurt and offered to cook for us, saying her people had gone off to join certain new camps which the enemy were forming, and that she was starving.  The Boss had been getting along very well, and had amused himself with finishing up his record.

We were glad to have this woman, for we were short handed.  We were in a trap, you see—a trap of our own making.  If we stayed where we were, our dead would kill us; if we moved out of our defenses, we should no longer be invincible.  We had conquered; in turn we were conquered.  The Boss recognized this; we all recognized it.  If we could go to one of those new camps and patch up some kind of terms with the enemy—yes, but The Boss could not go, and neither could I, for I was among the first that were made sick by the poisonous air bred by those dead thousands. Others were taken down, and still others.  To-morrow—

To-morrow.
 It is here.  And with it the end.  About midnight I awoke, and saw that hag making curious passes in the air about The Boss's head and face, and wondered what it meant.  Everybody but the dynamo-watch lay steeped in sleep; there was no sound. The woman ceased from her mysterious foolery, and started tip-toeing toward the door.  I called out:

"Stop!  What have you been doing?"

She halted, and said with an accent of malicious satisfaction:

"Ye were conquerors; ye are conquered!  These others are perishing—you also.  Ye shall all die in this place—every one—except
him
. He sleepeth now—and shall sleep thirteen centuries.  I am Merlin!"

Then such a delirium of silly laughter overtook him that he reeled about like a drunken man, and presently fetched up against one of our wires.  His mouth is spread open yet; apparently he is still laughing.  I suppose the face will retain that petrified laugh until the corpse turns to dust.

The Boss has never stirred—sleeps like a stone.  If he does not wake to-day we shall understand what kind of a sleep it is, and his body will then be borne to a place in one of the remote recesses of the cave where none will ever find it to desecrate it.  As for the rest of us—well, it is agreed that if any one of us ever escapes alive from this place, he will write the fact here, and loyally hide this Manuscript with The Boss, our dear good chief, whose property it is, be he alive or dead.

THE END OF THE MANUSCRIPT

FINAL P.S. BY M.T.

The dawn was come when I laid the Manuscript aside.  The rain had almost ceased, the world was gray and sad, the exhausted storm was sighing and sobbing itself to rest.  I went to the stranger's room, and listened at his door, which was slightly ajar.  I could hear his voice, and so I knocked.  There was no answer, but I still heard the voice.  I peeped in.  The man lay on his back in bed, talking brokenly but with spirit, and punctuating with his arms, which he thrashed about, restlessly, as sick people do in delirium. I slipped in softly and bent over him.  His mutterings and ejaculations went on.  I spoke—merely a word, to call his attention. His glassy eyes and his ashy face were alight in an instant with pleasure, gratitude, gladness, welcome:

"Oh, Sandy, you are come at last—how I have longed for you!  Sit by me—do not leave me—never leave me again, Sandy, never again. Where is your hand?—give it me, dear, let me hold it—there—now all is well, all is peace, and I am happy again—
we
are happy again, isn't it so, Sandy?  You are so dim, so vague, you are but a mist, a cloud, but you are
here
, and that is blessedness sufficient; and I have your hand; don't take it away—it is for only a little while, I shall not require it long....  Was that the child?... Hello-Central!... she doesn't answer.  Asleep, perhaps?  Bring her when she wakes, and let me touch her hands, her face, her hair, and tell her good-bye....  Sandy!  Yes, you are there.  I lost myself a moment, and I thought you were gone....  Have I been sick long?  It must be so; it seems months to me.  And such dreams! such strange and awful dreams, Sandy!  Dreams that were as real as reality—delirium, of course, but
so
real!  Why, I thought the king was dead, I thought you were in Gaul and couldn't get home, I thought there was a revolution; in the fantastic frenzy of these dreams, I thought that Clarence and I and a handful of my cadets fought and exterminated the whole chivalry of England! But even that was not the strangest.  I seemed to be a creature out of a remote unborn age, centuries hence, and even
that
was as real as the rest!  Yes, I seemed to have flown back out of that age into this of ours, and then forward to it again, and was set down, a stranger and forlorn in that strange England, with an abyss of thirteen centuries yawning between me and you! between me and my home and my friends! between me and all that is dear to me, all that could make life worth the living!  It was awful—awfuler than you can ever imagine, Sandy.  Ah, watch by me, Sandy—stay by me every moment—
don't
let me go out of my mind again; death is nothing, let it come, but not with those dreams, not with the torture of those hideous dreams—I cannot endure
that
again.... Sandy?..."

He lay muttering incoherently some little time; then for a time he lay silent, and apparently sinking away toward death.  Presently his fingers began to pick busily at the coverlet, and by that sign I knew that his end was at hand with the first suggestion of the death-rattle in his throat he started up slightly, and seemed to listen:  then he said:

"A bugle?...  It is the king!  The drawbridge, there!  Man the battlements!—turn out the—"

He was getting up his last "effect"; but he never finished it.