“Go on, go on!”
“He steps to the railing and shakes his fist at the City below. Now he seems to be deliberating, for he remains perfectly still, looking every now and then at the letter or document. How beside himself with anger he seems! He dashes his fist on the railing, now he strides across the deck and stalks through the surprised gunners to the citadel. I feel sure something terrible is brewing.”
Ha, captain of the Attila! Smart under the lash of Nemesis! Matricide and murderer, writhe! You felt not for the thousands sacrificed for a theory; feel now for the report of your plans wrecked beyond hope of repair. Feel, too, for a loved mother, the sole creature you ever cared for, but whom your reckless and futile savagery has immolated! Hater of your race, terrible indeed has been your penalty!
“Hallo! he comes up again with a revolver in each hand. He closes the gate of the outer wall of the citadel, and seems to harangue the crew. Is he mad or what? He fires one of the revolvers, and a man drops. A mutiny! a mutiny! I see the men rushing up like fanatics. They climb the wall, he shooting the while. Ha! he rushes into the citadel, and closes the inner door sharply. They try to follow him, but cannot!” After a long pause—“Stay, they have broken the door open, and rush——”
A FLASH THAT BEGGARED THE LEVIN BOLT.
A flash that beggared the levin bolt, a crash shattering the window-panes and deadening the ear, a shock hurling us both on our backs, broke the utterance. Then thundered down a shower of massive fragments, fragments of the vast ship whose decks I had once trodden. Hartmann, dismayed with the failure of his plans and rendered desperate by the letter, had blown up the Attila! The news of his failure and the message of a dying woman had done what human hatred was too impotent even to hope for.
But little more remains to be said. You are conversant with the story of the next few days. You know also how order was once more completely reestablished, how the wreckage of that fell twenty-four hours was slowly replaced by modern buildings, how gradually the Empire recovered from the shock, and how dominant henceforth became the great problems of labour. My own connection with these latter was not destined to endure. After my marriage with Lena, my interests took a different turn. Travel and literary studies left no room for the surlier duties of the demagogue. Writing from this quiet German retreat I can only hope that my brief narrative will prove of some interest to you. It has not been my aim to write history. I have sought to throw light only on one of its more romantic corners, and if I have succeeded in doing so, the whole purpose of my efforts will have been accomplished.
THE END.