"How it works, you mean? With the resistless energy of Etna in eruption and the iron grip of the flow of ashes that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum. Only here will be no escape by water; but for my protecting arm you will all be suffocated in bed, or standing or going, as it were."
The War Lord stepped to the window and looked through the telescope fixed on a stand. "As far as the eye travels," he monologued, "one vast ghastly cemetery. Every house and cottage a grave, this villa a mausoleum."
"Save us!" shrieked Bertha. "Your Majesty alone can save us!"
"I will," said the War Lord, "my Imperial word: they shall not harm a hair on your child's head. With the Krupps working according to my plans, I will save Essen and my ships and my fortresses, too, for danger anticipated is half overcome; and when 'The Day' arrives I will move so quickly Whitehall won't have time to put the Scottish nobleman's surprise into practice. Listen, Bertha:
"The Japs disembarked eight thousand men at Sakhalin in a single hour, and whatever these brown devils did my army will have to go them one better. I will fall on Belgium, and, as I told Krupp, hack my way to Calais. By that time, maybe, you will have completed the howitzer that, planted at Calais, will make Dover Castle tumble into the dust. If you haven't, my air fleet alone must pull off the job. After closing the mouth of the Thames——"
"Sheerness to be blockaded?"
"By mines, Zeppelin, admiral. And before they have recovered from their surprise I will have three hundred and fifty thousand men on the way to Threadneedle Street. About the same time King George and Mr. Asquith, or whoever is in power, will get a wireless to the effect that, to the indemnity England will have to pay, a thousand million pounds will be added if there is an attempt to interrupt the march of my armies by using the Dundonald plan, or if same is used anywhere or at any time against my possessions. My admonition will be in time, for to launch an undertaking so gigantic as to baffle even the most enterprising of your own lieutenants, Bertha, will take the slow English months and months; the swiftness of my movements, then, can be relied upon to forestall the evil intended to make our own warlike invention pale into insignificance."
"But the English fleet, Your Majesty?"
"Obsolete, old iron so far as the Channel is concerned. If I have enough airships, I won't bother about George's Dreadnoughts at all, for my nine army corps can be shipped from Calais in half an hour's time.
"As you know, my latest Zep. carries a hundred persons, and I have been talking it over with your Board and the Count: there are no technical obstacles against the construction of airships four times the size; airships can expand even more readily than howitzers.