Swords Reluctant

by Max Pemberton

From Liverpool he journeyed to Fishguard, thence to the south coast. A greater rigour of the frost was here, and it was possible for the dreamer to understand some of those fears which had haunted the timorous during the eventful days. Perhaps a man of large imagination might have been justified in looking across the still seas and asking himself what would befall the island kingdom if the prophets were justified.

At Dover, even John Faber dreamed a dream and did not hesitate to speak of it to Trevelle. Sleeping lightly because of the bitter cold, he imagined that the Channel had become but a lake of black ice in which great ships were embedded, and that far and wide over the unbroken surface went the sledges of the adventurous. Driven to imitate the leaders in this fair emprise, he himself embarked also upon an ice-ship presently, and went out into the night over that very silver streak which had been the salvation of England during the centuries. The white cliffs behind him disappeared anon in the mist; a great silence fell all about; he passed an ice-yacht moving before the lightest breeze, and she was but a shadow picture. Ultima Thule and the frozen wastes were here.

It was a dream of the darkness, and it carried him many miles from the English shore; he perceived that the coastwise lights blazed out as usual, and he could discern in the far distance the magnificent beams from Cape Grisnez and nearer to them the splendid message of the Forelands. A phantom light upon his own ship was powerful enough to cut a golden path over the frozen sea and show him its wonders and its solitudes. Here where great steamers went westward to the Americas, eastward to the city's ports; here where many thousands crossed daily at the bidding of many interests; here a man might stand alone and hear no other sounds than that of the freshening winds of eventide or the groaning of the ice when the sea refuses its harbourage. A weird, wild scene, stupendous in its suggestion, an hour of Nature's transcendent victory. And yet but a dream of his sleep, after all.

II

Such was the vision which reality supported but ill.

There was ice in the southern harbours, but there had been ice there before, and nothing but the imagination of discerning journalists had bridged the peaceful seas and put upon the frozen way the armies of the invader. Faber perceived immediately that a few of his ice-dredges from Charleston could undo any mischief that Nature had done, and he sent a cable to America there and then, as a sop to the fears of the timorous rather than a measure of real necessity.

It was odd how, through it all, this man whose name was known to so few Englishmen had become the arbiter of the nation's destiny. He held the bulk of the wheat which could be shipped from the West if the men who loaded the ships were willing; with him lay that "Yes" or "No" which should unlock the gates and bid a starving population enter the granaries. Once in his younger days he had heard a preacher who took for his text the words, "Sell that thou hast," and he remembered how that this man had declared the need of an all-embracing sacrifice once in the course of every life. The words haunted him, and could not be stilled. He had become as a King or Emperor of old time who could make war or end it by a word. Irony reminded him that he was an apostle of war, and that a sentiment which would deride it had no place in his creed. Why, and for whom, should he beggar himself to serve this people? His financial empire would come down with a crash if he surrendered now—he believed that he would never surrender, and yet he sent a compromising cable to America that day.

This was just before Trevelle and he returned to London through a country which seemed to have no other thoughts than the pleasures of the frost. Everywhere the villages kept carnival upon the ice with merriment and music and the pageantry of snows.

To Faber this seemed a wonderful trait in the national character, and not to be met by Trevelle's cheery reminiscence of the gladiatorial salute. These people had not saluted the frost because they believed that they were about to die, but because they thought that the national intellect would enable them to live. It had been the same during the Boer War and far back during the Crimea. Beneath the veil of tribulation lay the enduring faith that the nation would emerge, purified by the ordeal and greater for the knowledge of its own strength.

"You see yourselves worrying through, and that's all you care about," he said, as the morning train carried them to London, and the daily papers were strewn about him like the monstrous leaves of an unhealthy plant: "the skin of this nation is the thickest on the globe, and perhaps its most wonderful asset. When you do get into a panic, you show it chiefly in the smoking-room or over the dinner-table. This time you've the biggest chunk to chew I can remember, and yet you are only beginning to see how big it is. The mob is teaching you something, and you'll learn more."