Ever increasingly, during the 19th century, and the first decade of the 20th, commerce had been growing as clamorous and as exciting as the "horse-leech," never satisfied, ever crying "give, give." It had clamoured for a common currency, common weights and measures, common code of terms, and a hundred and one kindred things.
But it was in Babylon the Great, that the woman of Zechariah v. 1—Commerce—had found all she had been insisting for, through all the past years,—and it all emanated from, and was centred in Apleon. And it was all connected with worship. "Covetousness, which is idolatry."
With the utter destruction of "Mystic Babylon," the vast religious system, (whose destruction we have seen,) there came a mighty impulse of commerce, and of consequent wealth to "Babylon the Great" the City.
Apleon had made it his head-quarters. "The kings of the earth lived wantonly with her." Her wharves and warehouses—built on that wondrous Euphrates—were packed with "merchandise of gold, silver, precious stones, of pearls, fine linen, purple, silk, scarlet, and all rare woods, and all manner of vessels of ivory, brass, iron, marble, cinnamon, odours, ointments, frankincense, wine, oil, fine flour, wheat, beasts, sheep, horses, chariots, slaves—and souls of men."
Her vessels traded with the whole world. Her liners, travelling at 100 miles per hour, were in easy touch of every land. Her pride in her Maritime and commercial power, was overwhelming: "How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously.… For she saith in her heart, I sit a queen!" Her aerial merchandise fleets, too, were amazing!
The three months had brought great changes to the trio in whom we are specially interested—Ralph Bastin, George Bullen, and Rose, his young wife.
Ralph, in quitting the editor's chair of the Courier, had received a handsome doucier, from Sir Archibald Carlyon, and this, at his special request, had been paid to him in the new paper currency of the time—there was a world-common currency, under the Apleon regime, as there was also a world-common code, weights and measures, etc.
He had also contrived to turn his savings into the paper currency. George Bullen had done the same, though in the case of each of them it had not been easy work, for both were marked men.
They knew themselves to be hated—and watched. Again and again they had narrowly escaped death, and each day they realized that it might be the last.