Men did not linger much at Fleet Street windows then; they slunk to and fro singly a hundred times a day, read behind the empty bulletins with poignant intuition, and turned silently away. In the mourning Capital they led nightmare lives from which they could only awake to a more definite despair, and the first word of the hurrying newsboy's raucous shout sent a sickening wave of dread to every heart. There was everything to fear, and nothing at all to hope. Could peace be made—not a glorious, but a decent, living peace? Was—was even London safe? Kind friends abroad threw back the answers in the fewest, crudest words. England would have to sue for peace on bended knees and bringing heavy tribute in her hands. London lay helpless at the mercy of the foe to seize at any moment when it suited him.
All this time Commander Stobalt, in command of the Ulysses by the vicissitudes of unexpected war and separated from his squadron on detached service, was supposed to be in Cura Bay, a thousand miles away from Salaveira, flung there with the destroyers Limpet and Dabfish by the mere backwash of the triumphant allied fleet. According to the rules of naval warfare he ought to have been a thousand miles away; according to the report of the allies' scouts he was a thousand miles away. But miraculously one foggy night the Ulysses loomed spectrally through the shifting mist that drifted uncertainly from off the land and rammed the first leviathan that crossed her path, while the two destroyers torpedoed her next neighbour. Then, before leviathans 3 and 4 had begun to learn from each other what the matter was, the Ulysses was between them, sprinkling their decks and tops with small shell, and perforating their water-line and vital parts with large shell from a range closer than that at which any engagement had been fought out since the day when the Treasury had begun to implore the Admiralty to impress upon her admirals what a battleship really cost before they sent her into action. For the Ulysses had everything to gain and nothing but herself to lose, and when morning broke over Salaveira's untidy bay, she had gained everything, and lost so little that even the New Alliance took no pride in mentioning it in the cross account.
It was, of course, as every naval expert could have demonstrated on the war-game board, an impossible thing to do. Steam, searchlights, wireless telegraphy, quick-firing guns, and a hundred other innovations had effaced the man; and the spirit of the Elizabethan age was at a discount. What Drake would have done, or Hawkins, what would have been a sweet and pleasing adventure to Sir Richard Grenville, or another Santa Cruz to Blake, would have been in their heirs unmitigated suicide by the verdict of any orthodox court martial. Largely imbued with the Elizabethan spirit—the genius of ensuring everything that was possible, and then throwing into the scale a splendid belief in much that seemed impossible—Stobalt succeeded in doing what perhaps no one else would have succeeded in doing, merely because perhaps no one else would have tried.
"Stobalt of Salaveira! Come down and lead us!" The wild enthusiasm, the strange unusual cries, went echoing to the sky and reverberating down every street and byway. Behind barred doors men listened to the shout, and wondered; crouching in alleys, tramping the road with no further hope in life, beggars and out-casts heard the name and dimly associated it with something pleasant in the past. It met the force of special constables hastening from the west; it fell on the ears of Mr Strummery, driving by unfrequented ways towards the House. "Stobalt and England! Stobalt for us! Stobalt and the Navy!" It was like another Salaveira night with Stobalt there among them—the man who was too modest to be fêted, the man whose very features were unknown at home, Stobalt of Salaveira!
Imagine it. Measure by the fading but not yet quite forgotten memory of another time of direful humiliation and despair what Salaveira must have been. They had passed a week of fervent exaltation, a week of calm assurance, a week of rather tremulous hope, and for the last quarter a long dumb misery that conveyed no other sense of time in later years than that of formless night. They were waiting for the stroke of doom. Then at midnight came the sudden tumult from afar, sounding to those who listened in painful silence strangely unlike the note of defeat, the frantic, mingled shouts, the tearing feet in the road beneath, the wild bells pealing out, the guns and rockets to add to the delirium of the night, and the incredible burden of the intoxicating news: "Great Victory! Salaveira Relieved!! Utter Annihilation of the Blockading Fleet!!!"
The Philosopher might withdraw to solitude and moralise; the Friend of Humanity stand aside, pained that his countrymen should possess so much human nature, but to the great primitive emotional heart of the community the choice lay between going out and shouting and staying in and going mad. Never before in history had there been a victory that so irresistibly carried the nation off its feet. To the populace it had seemed from beginning to end to contain just those qualities of daredevilry and fortuitous ease that appeal to the imagination. They were quite mistaken; the conception had been desperate, but beyond that the details of the relief of Salaveira had been as methodical, as painstaking, and as far-seeing as those which had marked the civil campaign now drawing to a close.
That was why a famished, starving mob remembered Salaveira. They would have stoned a duke or burned a bishop with very little compunction, but Stobalt ranked among their immortals. They did not even seem to question the mystery of Salt's identity. As the flames began to lap out of the lower windows of Trafalgar Chambers, and it became evident that their work there was done, a stalwart bodyguard ranged themselves about his person and headed the procession. Hurriedly committing Irene to the loyal sailor's charge, Stobalt resigned himself good-humouredly to his position until he could seize an opportunity discreetly to withdraw.
Not without some form of orderliness the great concourse marched into the broader streets. Stobalt had no idea of their destination; possibly there was no preconcerted plan, but—as such things happen—a single voice raised in a pause gave the note. It did not fall on barren ground, and the next minute the countless trampling feet moved to a brisker step, and the new cry went rolling ominously ahead to add another terror to the shadowy phantasmagoria of the ill-lit streets.
"To Westminster! Down with the Government! To Westminster!"