III: CIVILISATION
The north point of the island was a rocky headland, a precipice hundreds of feet above the sea-level. Beyond it jutted three jagged rocks. One morning Siebenhaar found on one of these rocks the hull of a vessel, and when he looked closer he saw a man sitting disconsolate upon it. He fetched Ultimus, who threw stones to attract the man’s attention. It was impossible to make him hear. They gesticulated to tell him to swim to his right, and at last he caught their meaning, stripped and plunged into the sea. They had already stopped the island, which was now making only a gentle way, so that there was no danger of his being run down.
By the time they reached the shore the man was already sitting on the sands drying himself and eating a cocoa-nut. He was above middle age, and had a little fat belly and long thin legs. Siebenhaar addressed him in Fattish, and the man said he was a Rear-Admiral in the Fattish Navy and would like to know what in hell they meant by ruining his battle in which he had got the Fatters fairly on the run.
“Battle?” said Siebenhaar.
“Yes. Four cruisers, six destroyers, and torpedo craft. All gone on the rocks. The most amazing thing in all my long experience. Not a sign of a rock on the chart. You must have got the Fatters first, for their firing suddenly ceased. Who are you? What are you?”
Siebenhaar told him it was Samways Island.
The man’s jaw dropped.
“I spent the best part of three years after that,” he said. “I originally annexed it for the Empire.”
“Not,” cried Siebenhaar. “Not Mr. Bich?”
“Bich is my name.”
Siebenhaar disclosed his identity and Rear-Admiral Bich covered his amazement and emotion with a volley of expletives. He asked after George, and when he was told that both he and Arabella were dead he could not check his tears.
He shook Ultimus warmly by the hand and said he was the very spit of his father, with a strong look of his mother. Then he added: “I must not forget my duty as an officer, and, as a matter of form, I claim the island once more for the Empire.”
“If you do,” said Ultimus quietly, “I shall blow you in pieces. I know how the Fattish Empire treated my father, and, but for your kindly thoughts of my mother, I would send you to join the ships which I am only too happy to have destroyed if such a disaster can cause any genuine commotion in Bondon. I will further caution you to be careful what you say, as I am unaccustomed to society other than that of the wise Siebenhaar, and already feel my soul filled with dislike and contempt for you. This island is my island by inheritance, it is moving by my will and I shall allow you to stay on it just as long as you are useful to me.”
Rear-Admiral Bich saw the strength of Ultimus’ position and was silent until Siebenhaar asked him for news of civilisation, when he expressed surprise that they had not heard of the war.
“War?” said Siebenhaar. “Are they still at that game? Why, we were told that the Fattero-Fattish war was to be the last.”
“That,” replied the Admiral, “was a mere skirmish. There are six or seven nations at war with Fatterland.”
“Alas! my poor country!” cried the philosopher. “I knew how it would be. Their infernal greed and conceit, their confusion of mind, their slothfulness, their desire for discipline, their liking for monuments and display, their want of tact, all these defects needed but success for them to grow into active vice and plunge them into disaster. To any nation a period of successful peace is fatal. The employment of commercial cunning unredeemed by any other exercise of the mind is, after a time, unutterably boring, and the most obvious relief from it is found in the ideal of a nation in arms. Now that is a barren ideal. To train men for so stupid and brutal a trade as the soldier’s is to increase the already excessive amount of stupidity and brutality in the world. To maintain large bodies of stupid and brutal men in arms is in the end to be forced to find an excuse for using them. Human nature, I fear, is incurably pugnacious and destructive. I have had to amend many of my more optimistic opinions concerning the human race since I have had the privilege of watching the development of our young friend yonder. He is normal, healthy and intelligent, and acquainted with all the resources of civilisation, physical and mental. There is hardly a practical discovery of modern science that I have not placed at his disposal for his use and amusement, but these do not satisfy him. He is not exposed to the nervous pressure to which in our crowded modern states I used to ascribe outbreaks of hostility. No. In the absence of an enemy he must declare war upon his own handiwork, upon the elements, upon the very earth itself.”
“Before you go any further,” said the Rear-Admiral, “I should like something to eat, and I should like to explain that on our side in the war is the right. The Fatters have behaved like savages. They have burned cities, murdered old men and children, raped women and committed every outrage.”
“I have seen something of warfare myself,” said Siebenhaar. “It is a bestial occupation. When a man has become accustomed to slaughter by license, what is there to make him stop at minor offences such as theft, rape, and wounding? Soldiers who are unchaste in peace do not become chaste when war is declared. In a friendly country the women consent. In a hostile country some of them protest, generally because they are panic-stricken and in terror of worse happening to them.”
“This war,” said the Rear-Admiral, “is holy.”
“I am a Fatter,” replied Siebenhaar, “and the Fatters have been taught for generations that all war is holy and sanctifies all that is done in its name.”
“We,” said the Fattishman, “fight like gentlemen.”
“And,” retorted the philosopher, “like gentlemen you burn and rape and pillage.”
“Your conversation,” said Ultimus, “has interested me extremely. I am filled with a burning desire to see civilisation, war, soldiers, and, above all, women. We will go to the centre of civilisation, and if I do not like it I shall blow it in pieces.”
“Two can play at that game,” said Bich. “We have explosives too.”
For answer, Ultimus reached out and pressed two wires together. There was a rumble, a crash, a thud, and hundreds of tons of rock were torn away from the side of the mountain and hurled into the air to fall, miles away, into the sea.