With the keen draughts of air on my face and in my lungs I began to foreshadow my ultimate goal. The vessel which had so far carried me faithfully and smoothly was now beginning to flag and oscillate in so alarming a manner that I felt my attention was urgently demanded for its mechanical needs. The inscribed directions at once engaged my feverish attention, but so excited and over-hasty was I, that I set to working levers and pulling chains without grasping the full import of my movements. Eagerly I essayed to steer towards the British Isles, on which my gaze was concentrated, but my efforts to utilise this superb masterpiece of mechanism fell below my intentions. In a series of irregular spirals the great airship continued to descend, nor with all my frenzied manipulation of its levers and handles and pulleys could I persuade it to alter its course; down, down it dropped until I realised nothing could save me now from the wilderness of ocean beneath. How cruel my fate! To sail thus from the stars to the Earth only to be engulfed and choked in the barren salt waters! What a mean conclusion to a divine adventure! Not terror, but fierce disappointment was my prevailing emotion, as mounting to the rim of the cabin I made ready to leap at the precise moment the misguided vessel should strike the surface of the sea.
I have only a faint reminiscence of a sharp plunge and recovery; of a glimpse of my aerial chariot being swallowed in the surge; of a dull roar of explosions, before I found myself swimming or floating in calm tepid waters which were all tinged with the carnation and primrose and pearly tints of a glorious summer sunrise, whilst above my head hung the vast impassive dome of heaven flecked with cirrus clouds all gold and saffron. Even so there sprouted in my brain the vain conceit that to perish thus in mid-ocean all aglow with prismatic hues was no ill-fitting termination to the career of a monarch of Meleager. Thus did Icarus reason perhaps when his pinions melted in the envious sunbeams and he fell into the classic sea that henceforth assumed his illustrious name. It would have been in keeping with the late web of wonders spun around me if I were to find old Neptune in person ready to receive me with a bevy of ivory-armed nereids to bewail my comely corpse or an escort of tritons to announce my passing on their raucous conches. Like the hero of the Puritan poet, I still contrived to hug my majesty even in my fall from heaven; and the sick fancy seemed to support me as I straggled in the translucent swell. Involuntarily my eyes closed, as I finally abandoned myself to—what? Surely but to the next miracle, to the next freak of Fortune which had guided her favourite hitherto?
Strange noises echoed in my ears; I was rescued; I recognised my salvage without surprise and without enthusiasm. It was my due. No dolphin-mounted Neptune came to claim me; no nereid or triton stirred in my behalf; but the Man who ascended to the Stars was not destined to die by drowning. I sensed the familiar timbre of English voices close at hand; I felt a firm but kindly grip upon my shoulder; I suffered a painful but dexterous hoisting over a gunwale; I was lying in the stern of a boat, whose rowers were panting from recent effort; I was safe in the custody of my own Herthian countrymen.
VI
Perhaps I can plead insensibility for not recalling my further experiences in the row-boat or in my transmission thence to the steamship Orissa, to which the smaller craft belonged. For I remember nothing of the happenings between the moment of my rescue in the water and my deposition in a narrow white-painted cabin of the British vessel. Here my sodden tunic and vest were removed, not without expressions of astonishment on the part of the stewards, to be replaced by some ugly flannel sleeping garments. An attempt on their part to detach the little leather bag and gold chain from my neck was stoutly resisted, and eventually I was permitted to retain them. Some hot vinous potion was poured with well-intentioned effort down my reluctant throat, and perhaps as a result of this characteristic Herthian hospitality, I soon fell into a dreamless refreshing slumber which must have endured some hours.
When I awoke it was still daylight, and on opening my eyes they at once rested on the figure of a man seated by my bedside, who was evidently watching me with the deepest concern. His countenance, which appealed to my fastidious taste, was honest, intelligent and kindly, though its features were rugged and suggestive of humble origin. From his grizzled hair and heavily lined face I concluded him to be on the border-line of old and middle age, perhaps some sixty years old. Our two pairs of eyes met in a searching but friendly survey, after which encounter I smiled graciously, as I should smile upon one of my nobles in Meleager, and at the same time extended my hand for salutation. Naturally it was not kissed—how could I expect such behaviour from a Herthian equal?—but it was clasped with a gentle reassuring pressure that in no wise prejudiced me against my companion, who after a pause began to address me. His voice owned the same quality as his features, and was by no means spoiled by a trace of north-country doric that still lingered in his speech. His opening questions were of the usual type that would be found in the secular rituale (did such a compilation exist), in the section relating to the case of a ship-wrecked waif. To these I replied in a brief and (I fear) obscurantist manner. That my questioner was equally puzzled and interested, I could easily see; so that I found a somewhat malicious amusement in increasing his perplexity. Contrariwise, I soon began to examine my would-be interrogator much in the style I might have employed towards dear old Anzoni or Hiridia. My new friend seemed somewhat surprised, but good-naturedly supplied all the information I sought, whereby I learned that the ship now sheltering me was the Orissa, of seven thousand tons' burden, a cargo-boat of the Pheon Line but also carrying first-class passengers, on her way home to Liverpool from Rangoon. It would appear that the officer on the bridge at break of day had seen the airship strike the water and disappear at no great distance on our port side, and had promptly given orders for a boat to be lowered to effect a rescue. On nearing the scene of the recent disaster I had been found floating in an apparently unconscious state but otherwise uninjured by my late shock and immersion. He himself was Doctor Charles Wayne, a native of Cumberland and until lately a medical practitioner in Burmah, where he had spent most of his life in Government service. He was now returning home on a pension in his sixty-second year. He was a widower without children. The Orissa had passed through some exciting experiences in her voyage from Suez to Gibraltar, for on their way they had learned of the declaration of war between Germany and Britain. They had hurried with a sharp look-out by day and with darkened decks at night through the Mediterranean for fear of prowling German cruisers, so that all aboard were impatient to make the mouth of the Mersey without any delay or mishap.
Here indeed was startling news! I had been absent barely seven years in Meleager, and now on my return to the progressive Earth, which I had left prattling of universal peace, I was confronted by the outbreak of a European conflict on a vast scale. There had certainly been wars and rumours of war in plenty during the past half-century, but such barbaric terrors I used to be assured were the mere dying echoes of the moribund volcano of militarism, and that before us there extended a blessed and endless period of peace, wherein moral education, increasing wages and salaries, dissent, teetotalism and other blessings of equal value were to be the special marks of a glorious democratic era that would have no termination.
"They manage these things better in Meleager," I half muttered to myself, whilst Dr Wayne continued to expatiate to me on the bellicose attitude of the Hohenzollerns, on the magnificent patriotism of the French politicians, of the foresight and skill displayed by our own ministers of state, and of the lofty altruism of the Tsar. I listened, but without the attention that the exceptional nature of the case seemed to demand. Somehow it merely appeared to me that the mundane kaleidoscope had only sustained another vigorous revolution, and that the scarlet of human riot and unrest was in reality no more predominant now than in the previous arrangement of its component colours. And yet I should be doing myself an injustice were I to speak of my lack of interest concerning this stupendous piece of news; although at the same time I found myself surveying this newest phase of the world's progress with the cold aloofness of an external critic from some distant planet—which attitude after all exactly fitted my case. Thus I fell once more into a reverie on the relative values of human happiness and human progress, that theme whereon I had so often argued with my councillors in my deserted palace at Tamarida.
I spent a restful night lulled by the throbbing of the engines and the swirling of the waters displaced by our keel. The good doctor slept on the cabin sofa opposite my berth, and once or twice rose in the night hours to attend to my wants. On the following morning I had completely recovered, and news to this effect having been bruited throughout the ship, various uninvited visitors came to inspect the castaway in Dr Wayne's cabin. At my urgent entreaty I was spared a good many of these intrusions, but my kind protector could not well exclude the baboon-faced captain, whose empurpled visage framed in masses of ochre hair thrust itself more than once through the doorway and inquired in rasping accents after my welfare. The bibulous ship's surgeon too invaded my retreat, and expressed a desire to astonish my stomach with special concoctions of his own mixing. Good Dr Wayne did all that was possible to save me from these well-meaning persons, and finally he closed the cabin door on the pretence of my exhaustion. Left thus in peace, my companion began to address me seriously in regard to certain matters. I had so far refrained from giving the name I bore on earth, and was firmly resolved not to betray it, nor could any attempt draw the required information from me. Acknowledging his failure, the Doctor with a sigh of resignation desisted to apply, at the same time begging me to mention some name, a fictitious one if I were so minded, for the benefit of the authorities on landing. The suggestion seemed reasonable enough, and after some further parley I agreed to accept temporarily the absurd name of Theodore King, concerning which Dr Wayne made some jocose observations. In the name then of Theodore King, man rescued at sea in latitude 38° by longitude 18° or thereabouts, was my official report endorsed, and in this nominal disguise I was eventually disembarked at Liverpool stage.