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Read books online » Fiction » The Man Who Rocked the Earth by Robert Williams Wood (read my book .txt) 📖

Book online «The Man Who Rocked the Earth by Robert Williams Wood (read my book .txt) 📖». Author Robert Williams Wood



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this disclosure meant to him. Between puffs of his pipe he asked casual, careless questions of Nichicun. These Nascopees, for instance, how far off might their land be? And where did they assert this extraordinary serpent of iron to be? Were there rivers in the Nascopee country? Did white men ever go there? All these things the wounded Montagnais told him. It appeared, moreover, that the Rassini River was near the Nascopee territory, and that it flowed into the Moisie only seven miles above the camp. All that night the marionettes danced in Bennie's brain.

Next morning they propped Nichicun on his bed of moss, laid a rifle and a box of matches beside him, and bade him farewell. At the mouth of the Rassini River Prof. Bennie Hooker held up his hand and announced that he was going to the Nascopee country. The canoe halted abruptly. Old Edouard declared that they had been engaged only to go to the big cache, and that their present trip was merely by way of a little excursion to see the river. They had no supplies for such a journey, no proper amount of ammunition. No, they would deposit the professor on the nearest sandbar if he wished, but they were going back.

Bennie arose unsteadily in the canoe and dug into his pocket, producing a roll of gold coin. Two hundred and fifty dollars he promised them if they would take him to the nearest tribe of Nascopees; five hundred if they could find the Iron Serpent.

"Bien!" exclaimed both Indians without a moment's hesitation, and the canoe plunged forward up the Rassini.

Once more a dreamlike succession of brilliant, frosty days; once more the star-studded sky in which always the marionettes danced. And then at last the great falls of the Rassini, beyond which no white man had gone. They hid the canoe in the bushes and placed beneath it the iron stove and half their supply of food. Then they plunged into the brush, eastward. Bennie had never known such grueling work and heartbreaking fatigue; and the clouds of flies pursued them venomously and with unrelenting persistence. At first they had to cut their way through acres of brush, and then the land rose and they saw before them miles of swamp and barren land dotted with dwarf trees and lichen-grown rocks. Here it was easier and they made better time; but the professor's legs ached and his rifle wore a red bruise on his shoulder. And then after five days of torment they came upon the Iron Rail. It ran in almost a direct line from northwest to southwest, with hardly a waver, straight over the barrens and through the forests of scrub, with a five-foot clearing upon either side. At intervals it was elevated to a height of eight or ten inches upon insulated iron braces. Both Marc and Edouard stared at in wonder, while Bennie made them a little speech.

It was, he said, a thing called a "monorail," made by a man who possessed strange secrets concerning the earth and the properties of matter. That man lived over the Height of Land toward Ungava. He was a good man and would not harm other good men. But he was a great magician—if you believed in magic. On the rail undoubtedly he ran something called a gyroscopic engine, and carried his stores and machinery into the wilderness. The Nascopees were not such fools after all, for here was the something they feared to cross—the iron serpent that bit and killed. Let them watch while he made it bite. He allowed his rifle to fall against the rail, and instantly a shower of blue sparks flashed from it as the current leaped into the earth.

Bennie counted out twenty-five golden eagles and handed them to Edouard. If they followed the rail to its source he would, he promised, on their return to civilization give them as much again. Without more ado the Indians lifted their packs and swung off to the northwest along the line of the rail. The stock of Prof. Bennie Hooker had risen in their estimation. On they ploughed across the barrens, through swamps, over the quaking muskeg, into the patches of scrub growth where the short branches slapped their faces, but always they kept in sight of the rail.

The extraordinary announcement, transmitted from various European news agencies, that an attempt had been made by the general commanding the First Artillery Division of the German Army of the Meuse to violate the armistice, had caused a profound sensation, particularly as the attempt to destroy Paris had been prevented only by the sudden appearance of the same mysterious Flying Ring that had shortly before caused the destruction of the Atlas Mountains and the flooding of the Sahara Desert by the Mediterranean Sea.

The advent of the Flying Ring on this second occasion had been noted by several hundred thousand persons, both soldiers and non-combatants. At about the hour of midnight, as if to observe whether the warring nations intended sincerely to live up to their agreement and bring about an actual cessation of hostilities, the Ring had appeared out of the north and, floating through the sky, had followed the lines of the belligerents from Brussels to Verdun and southward. The blinding yellow light that it had projected toward the earth had roused the soldiers sleeping in their intrenchments and caused great consternation all along the line of fortifications, as it was universally supposed that the director of its flight intended to annihilate the combined armies of France, England, Germany, and Belgium. But the Ring had sailed peacefully along, three thousand feet aloft, deluging the countryside with its dazzling light, sending its beams into the casemates of the huge fortresses of the Rhine and the outer line of the French fortifications, searching the redoubts and trenches, but doing no harm to the sleeping armies that lay beneath it; until at last the silence of the night had been broken by the thunder of "Thanatos," and in the twinkling of an eye the Lavender Ray had descended, to turn the village of Champaubert into the smoking crater of a dying volcano. The entire division of artillery had been annihilated, with the exception of a few stragglers, and of the Relay Gun naught remained but a distorted puddle of steel and iron.

Long before the news of the horrible retribution visited by the master of the Ring upon Treitschke, the major-general of artillery, and the inventor, Von Heckmann, had reached the United States, Bill Hood, sitting in the wireless receiving station of the Naval Observatory at Georgetown, had received through the ether a message from his mysterious correspondent in the north that sent him hurrying to the White House. Pax had called the Naval Observatory and had transmitted the following ultimatum, repeating it, as was his custom, three times:

"To the President of the United States and to All Mankind:

"I have put the nations to the test and found them wanting. The solemn treaty entered into by the ambassadors of the belligerent nations at Washington has been violated. My attempt by harmless means to compel the cessation of hostilities and the abolition of war has failed. I cannot trust the nations of the earth. Their selfishness, their bloodthirstiness, and greed, will inevitably prevent their fulfilling their agreements with me or keeping the terms of their treaties with one another, which they regard, as they themselves declare, merely as 'scraps of paper.' The time has come for me to compel peace. I am the dictator of human destiny and my will is law. War shall cease. On the 10th day of September I shall shift the axis of the earth until the North Pole shall be in the region of Strassburg and the South Pole in New Zealand. The habitable zone of the earth will be hereafter in South Africa, South and Central America, and regions now unfrequented by man. The nations must migrate and a new life in which war is unknown must begin upon the globe. This is my last message to the human race.

PAX."

The conference of ambassadors summoned by the President to the White House that afternoon exhibited a character in striking contrast with the first, at which Von Koenitz and the ambassadors from France, Russia, and England had had their memorable disagreement. It was a serious, apprehensive, and subdued group of gentlemen that gathered round the great mahogany table in the Cabinet chamber to debate what course of action the nations should pursue to avert the impending calamity to mankind. For that Pax could shift the axis of the earth, or blow the globe clean out of its orbit into space, if he chose to do so, no one doubted any longer.

And first it fell as the task of the ambassador representing the Imperial German Commissioners to assure his distinguished colleagues that his nation disavowed and denied all responsibility for the conduct of General Treitschke in bombarding Paris after the hour set for the armistice. It was unjust and contrary to the dictates of reason, he argued, to hold the government of a nation comprising sixty-five millions of human beings and five millions of armed men accountable for the actions of a single individual. He spoke passionately, eloquently, persuasively, and at the conclusion of his speech the ambassadors present were forced to acknowledge that what he said was true, and to accept without reservation his plausible assurances that the Imperial German Commissioners had no thought but to cooperate with the other governments in bringing about a lasting peace such as Pax demanded.

But the immediate question was, had not the time for this gone by? Was it not too late to convince the master of the Flying Ring that his orders would be obeyed? Could anything be done to avert the calamity he threatened to bring upon the earth—to prevent the conversion of Europe into a barren waste of ice fields? For Pax had announced that he had spoken for the last time and that the fate of Europe was sealed. All the ambassadors agreed that a general European immigration was practically impossible; and as a last resort it was finally decided to transmit to Pax, through the Georgetown station, a wireless message signed by all the ambassadors of the belligerent nations, solemnly agreeing within one week to disband their armies and to destroy all their munitions and implements of war. This message was delivered to Hood, with instructions for its immediate delivery. All that afternoon and evening the operator sat in the observatory, calling over and over again the three letters that marked mankind's only communication with the controller of its destiny:

"PAX—PAX—PAX!"

But no answer came. For long, weary hours Hood waited, his ears glued to the receivers. An impenetrable silence surrounded the master of the Ring. Pax had spoken. He would say no more. Late that night Hood reluctantly returned to the White House and informed the President that he was unable to deliver the message of the nations.

And meantime Prof. Bennie Hooker, with Marc and Edouard, struggled across the wilderness of Labrador, following the Iron Rail that led to the hiding-place of the master of the world.

The terrible fate of the German expeditionary force is too well known to require comment. As has been already told, the Sea Fox had sailed from Amsterdam twelve days after the conference in the War Office at Mainz between General von Helmuth and Professor von Schwenitz. Once north of the Orkneys it had encountered fair weather, and it had reached Hamilton Inlet in ten days without mishap, and with the men and animals in the best of condition. At Rigolet the men had disembarked and loaded their howitzers, mules, and supplies upon the flat-bottomed barges brought with them for that purpose. Thirty French and Indian guides had been engaged, and five days later the expedition, towed by the powerful motor launches, had started up the river toward the chain of lakes lying northwest

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