The Man Who Rocked the Earth by Robert Williams Wood (read my book .txt) 📖

the searchlights which, like the antennæ of gigantic fireflies, constantly played round the city from the summit of the Eiffel Tower. So slept Paris, confident that no crash of descending bombs would shatter the blue vault of the starlit sky or rend the habitations in which lay two millions of human beings, assured that the sun would rise through the gray mists of the Seine upon the ancient beauties of the Tuilleries and the Louvre unmarred by the enemy's projectiles, and that its citizens could pass freely along its boulevards without menace of death from flying missiles. For no shell could be hurled a distance of sixty miles, and an armistice had been declared.

Behind a small hill within the German fortifications a group of officers stood in the moonlight, examining what looked superficially like the hangar of a small dirigible. Nestling behind the hill it cast a black rectangular shadow upon the trampled sand of the redoubt. A score of artisans were busy filling a deep trench through which a huge pipe led off somewhere—a sort of deadly plumbing, for the house sheltered a monster cannon reënforced by jackets of lead and steel, the whole encased in a cooling apparatus of intricate manufacture. From the open end of the house the cylindrical barrel of the gigantic engine of war raised itself into the air at an angle of forty degrees, and from the muzzle to the ground below it was a drop of over eighty feet. On a track running off to the north rested the projectiles side by side, resembling in the dim light a row of steam boilers in the yard of a locomotive factory.

"Well," remarked one of the officers, turning to the only one of his companions not in uniform. "'Thanatos' is ready."

The man addressed was Von Heckmann, the most famous inventor of military ordnance in the world, already four times decorated for his services to the Emperor.

"The labour of nine years!" he answered with emotion. "Nine long years of self-denial and unremitting study! But to-night I shall be repaid, repaid a thousand times."

The officers shook hands with him one after the other, and the group broke up; the men who were filling the trench completed their labours and departed; and Von Heckmann and the major-general of artillery alone remained, except for the sentries beside the gun. The night was balmy and the moon rode in a cloudless sky high above the hill. They crossed the enclosure, followed by the two sentinels, and entering a passage reached the outer wall of the redoubt, which was in turn closed and locked. Here the sentries remained, but Von Heckmann and the general continued on behind the fortifications for some distance.

"Well, shall we start the ball?" asked the general, laying his hand on Von Heckmann's shoulder. But the inventor found it so hard to master his emotion that he could only nod his head. Yet the ball to which the general alluded was the discharging of a fiendish war machine toward an unsuspecting and harmless city alive with sleeping people, and the emotion of the inventor was due to the fact that he had devised and completed the most atrocious engine of death ever conceived by the mind of man—the Relay Gun. Horrible as is the thought, this otherwise normal man had devoted nine whole years to the problem of how to destroy human life at a distance of a hundred kilometres, and at last he had been successful, and an emperor had placed with his own divinely appointed hands a ribbon over the spot beneath which his heart should have been.

The projectile of this diabolical invention was ninety-five centimetres in diameter, and was itself a rifled mortar, which in full flight, twenty miles from the gun and at the top of its trajectory, exploded in mid-air, hurling forward its contained projectile with an additional velocity of three thousand feet per second. This process repeated itself, the final or core bomb, weighing over three hundred pounds and filled with lyddite, reaching its mark one minute and thirty-five seconds after the firing of the gun. This crowning example of the human mind's destructive ingenuity had cost the German Government five million marks and had required three years for its construction, and by no means the least of its devilish capacities was that of automatically reloading and firing itself at the interval of every ten seconds, its muzzle rising, falling, or veering slightly from side to side with each discharge, thus causing the shells to fall at wide distances. The poisonous nature of the immense volumes of gas poured out by the mastodon when in action necessitated the withdrawal of its crew to a safe distance. But once set in motion it needed no attendant. It had been tested by a preliminary shot the day before, which had been directed to a point several miles outside the walls of Paris, the effect of which had been observed and reported by high-flying German aeroplanes equipped with wireless. Everything was ready for the holocaust.

Von Heckmann and the general of artillery continued to make their way through the intrenchments and other fortifications, until at a distance of about a quarter of a mile from the redoubt where they had left the Relay Gun they arrived at a small whitewashed cottage.

"I have invited a few of my staff to join us," said the general to the inventor, "in order that they may in years to come describe to their children and their grandchildren this, the most momentous occasion in the history of warfare."

They turned the corner of the cottage and came upon a group of officers standing by the wooden gate of the cottage, all of whom saluted at their approach.

"Good evening, gentlemen," said the general. "I beg to present the members of my staff," turning to Von Heckmann.

The officers stood back while the general led the way into the cottage, the lower floor of which consisted of but a single room, used by the recent tenants as a kitchen, dining-room, and living-room. At one end of a long table, constructed by the regimental carpenter, supper had been laid, and a tub filled with ice contained a dozen or more quarts of champagne. Two orderlies stood behind the table, at the other end of which was affixed a small brass switch connected with the redoubt and controlled by a spring and button. The windows of the cottage were open, and through them poured the light of the full moon, dimming the flickering light of the candles upon the table.

In spite of the champagne, the supper, and the boxes of cigars and cigarettes, an atmosphere of solemnity was distinctly perceptible. It was as if each one of these officers, hardened to human suffering by a lifetime of discipline and active service, to say nothing of the years of horror through which they had just passed, could not but feel that in the last analysis the hurling upon an unsuspecting city of a rain of projectiles containing the highest explosive known to warfare, at a distance three times greater than that heretofore supposed to be possible to science, and the ensuing annihilation of its inhabitants, was something less for congratulation and applause than for sorrow and regret. The officers, who had joked each other outside the gate, became singularly quiet as they entered the cottage and gathered round the table where Von Heckmann and the general had taken their stand by the instrument. Utter silence fell upon the group. The mercury of their spirits dropped from summer heat to below freezing. What was this thing which they were about to do?

Through the windows, at a distance of four hundred yards, the pounding of the machinery which flooded the water jacket of the Relay Gun was distinctly audible in the stillness of the night. The pressure of a finger—a little finger—upon that electric button was all that was necessary to start the torrent of iron and high explosives toward Paris. By the time the first shell would reach its mark nine more would be on their way, stretched across the midnight sky at intervals of less than eight miles. And once started the stream would continue uninterrupted for two hours. The fascinated eyes of all the officers fastened themselves upon the key. None spoke.

"Well, well, gentlemen!" exclaimed the general brusquely, "what is the matter with you? You act as if you were at a funeral! Hans," turning to the orderly, "open the champagne there. Fill the glasses. Bumpers all, gentlemen, for the greatest inventor of all times, Herr von Heckmann, the inventor of the Relay Gun!"

The orderly sprang forward and hastily commenced uncorking bottles, while Von Heckmann turned away to the window.

"Here, this won't do, Schelling! You must liven things up a bit!" continued the general to one of the officers. "This is a great occasion for all of us! Give me that bottle." He seized a magnum of champagne from the orderly and commenced pouring out the foaming liquid into the glasses beside the plates. Schelling made a feeble attempt at a joke at which the officers laughed loudly, for the general was a martinet and had to be humoured.

"Now, then," called out the general as he glanced toward the window, "Herr von Heckmann, we are going to drink your health! Officers of the First Artillery, I give you a toast—a toast which you will all remember to your dying day! Bumpers, gentlemen! No heel taps! I give you the health of 'Thanatos'—the leviathan of artillery, the winged bearer of death and destruction—and of its inventor, Herr von Heckmann. Bumpers, gentlemen!" The general slapped Von Heckmann upon the shoulder and drained his glass.

"'Thanatos!' Von Heckmann!" shouted the officers. And with one accord they dashed their goblets to the stone flagging upon which they stood.

"And now, my dear inventor," said the general, "to you belongs the honour of arousing 'Thanatos' into activity. Are you ready, gentlemen? I warn you that when 'Thanatos' snores the rafters will ring."

Von Heckmann had stood with bowed head while the officers had drunk his health, and he now hesitatingly turned toward the little brass switch with its button of black rubber that glistened so innocently in the candlelight. His right hand trembled. He dashed the back of his left across his eyes. The general took out a large silver watch from his pocket. "Fifty-nine minutes past eleven," he announced. "At one minute past twelve Paris will be disembowelled. Put your finger on the button, my friend. Let us start the ball rolling."

Von Heckmann cast a glance almost of disquietude upon the faces of the officers who were leaning over the table in the intensity of their excitement. His elation, his exaltation, had passed from him. He seemed overwhelmed at the momentousness of the act which he was about to perform. Slowly his index finger crept toward the button and hovered half suspended over it. He pressed his lips together and was about to exert the pressure required to transmit the current of electricity to the discharging apparatus when unexpectedly there echoed through the night the sharp click of a horse's hoofs coming at a gallop down the village street. The group turned expectantly to the doorway.

An officer dressed in the uniform of an aide-de-camp of artillery entered abruptly, saluted, and produced from the inside pocket of his jacket a sealed envelope which he handed to the general. The interest of the officers suddenly centred upon the contents of the envelope. The general grumbled an oath at the interruption, tore open the missive, and held the single sheet which it contained to the candlelight.

"An armistice!" he cried disgustedly. His eye glanced rapidly over the page.