“What do you suppose would happen to your Queen,” he demanded, “if you were unwise enough to put us to death? I will tell you. She is now on the highroad to recovery; but, deprived of our ministrations, she would suffer an immediate relapse, and die! Do you need to be reminded of what would follow upon that? If there is any truth in your ancient prophecy the very thing that you most dread would immediately happen. In other words, our destruction would immediately be followed by that of the entire nation.
“But, apart from that, our destruction would be the gravest mistake that you could possibly make; for we, who are natives of the greatest fighting nation that the world has ever known, can teach you much in the art of war, your knowledge of which is of the slightest. Your weapons are poor and inefficient, and you know nothing of strategy and generalship; but we can instruct you in those important matters, and also teach you how to make new and powerful weapons, by means of which you will be able effectually to subjugate the nations which now threaten you. Say, then, will you destroy us, and so involve yourselves in irretrievable ruin? Or shall we teach you how to emerge victoriously from the coming struggle with your enemies?”
There could be but one answer to such a question; the jealousy of the nobles gave way to fear. They no longer clamoured for the death of the Englishmen, but, on the contrary, were as willing as the rest that the strangers should be afforded every opportunity to make good their boast, and from that moment Dick and Grosvenor became virtually the Dictators of the nation.
Their victory was perhaps the easier from the fact that during the six months of their sojourn they had already accomplished much. The Queen, for example, enlivened and encouraged by the intimate companionship of her two fellow countrymen, had gradually thrown off the incubus of her terror, and was now almost her former self again; while Grosvenor had found congenial occupation in fitting the few craft upon the lake with sails, and designing and building other craft of greatly improved model, including half a dozen cutters of the racing-yacht type, which he conceived would be exceedingly useful should the savages ever again attempt, as they had done on several previous occasions, to attack the island city. As for Dick, the densely populated city alone provided him with more patients than he could conveniently deal with; and he had effected many remarkable cures.
One of the first things that particularly attracted the attention of the two friends immediately upon their arrival in Izreel was the inadequacy of the weapons—a spear, or sheaf of spears, and a small round shield or target—with which the people were armed; and this they now proceeded to rectify by the general introduction of bows and arrows as an auxiliary to the spear and shield. There was an abundance of suitable wood for bows to be found in a forest on the inner slope of the mountains on the mainland, while reeds suitable for the shafts of arrows grew in inexhaustible quantities along the margin of the lake; and when once a pattern bow and arrow had been made, and a sufficiency of wood and reeds provided, the furnishing of every man with a good bow and quiverful of arrows was speedily accomplished. There had at first been a difficulty in the matter of arrowheads, but this had been overcome by the discovery of an enormous deposit of flints—in searching for which a rich mine of diamonds had come to light.
The construction of his fleet and the training of their crews having been accomplished, Grosvenor next took the army in hand and proceeded to train it in the use of the bow, succeeding at length, by dint of indefatigable perseverance, in converting the soldiers into an army of really brilliant marksmen.
This achievement brought the time on to nearly nine months from the date of the adventurers’ arrival in Izreel, during the first eight months of which information had come in from time to time which left no room to doubt that the savages of the adjoining nations had combined together and were making the most elaborate preparations for a simultaneous attack upon Izreel from all sides. Then the sources of information seemed to suddenly dry up, and no news of any description relative to the movements of the savages could be obtained.
The Izreelites were disposed to regard this as a favourable omen, many even asserting their conviction that the savages had quarrelled among themselves, and that attack from them was no longer to be feared; but Dick and Grosvenor took quite another view of the matter. They regarded the cessation of news as ominous in the extreme, and dispatched imperative orders to the frontier for the maintenance of the utmost vigilance, night and day. They also organised strong relays of swift runners, radiating from various points along the shore of the lake to those points where attack might first be expected, in order that intelligence of an invasion might be brought to the capital with the utmost promptitude. The strength of the garrisons in the outlying blockhouses was also doubled, which were put under the command of the most resolute and intelligent captains that could be found, with instructions that each post was to be stubbornly defended until the enemy should threaten to surround it, when it was to be abandoned, and the garrison—or what might remain of it—was to retire inward to the next post, and so on; the various garrisons contesting every inch of ground, cutting up the enemy as severely as possible, and gradually retiring inward toward the lake and Bethalia if they could not maintain their ground. These preparations did not take long to make, since it was merely a matter of marching supplementary troops to the frontier, and the provisioning of the various blockhouses, fortified farms, castles, and strongholds generally; and as the preparations had all been made beforehand, a week sufficed to place the entire nation on the defensive.
Still the task was accomplished none too soon, for on the very day succeeding that upon which the preparations for defence were completed, news arrived in Bethalia that large bodies of savages had been seen massing upon various parts of the border, while the next day brought intelligence of attacks upon almost every one of the outlying blockhouses, and of the retirement of their respective garrisons after severe fighting in which heavy loss had been sustained by both sides. The invasion of Izreel had begun, and was being prosecuted with relentless determination and energy.