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  • 1890
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Jansen,’ and yet you appeared in public by the name of ‘Christina Carlson.’ Now I refuse to marry you until this thing is explained; for I may be arrested and charged with bigamy for marrying two women at once! I am willing to wed ‘Christina Jansen’–but what am I to do with ‘Christina Carlson’? I could be “happy with either were t’other dear charmer away.'”

Christina laughed and blushed and said:

“If you do not behave yourself you shall not have either of the Christinas. But I will tell you, my dear friend, how that happened. You must know that in our Sweden, especially in the northern part of it, where father and mother came from, we are a very primitive people–far ‘behind the age,’ you will say. And there we have no family names, like Brown or Jones or Smith; but each man is simply the son of his father, and he takes his father’s first name. Thus if ‘Peter’ has a son and he is christened ‘Ole,’ then he is ‘Ole Peterson,’ or Ole the son of Peter; and if his son is called ‘John,’ then he is ‘John Oleson.’ I think, from what I have read in the books you gave me, Frank, that the same practice prevailed, centuries ago, in England, and that is how all those English names, such as Johnson, Jackson, Williamson, etc., came about. But the females of the family, in Sweden, are called ‘daughters’ or ‘dotters;’ and hence, by the custom of my race, I am ‘Christina Carl’s Dotter.’ And when Mr. Bingham asked me my name to print on his play bills, that is what I answered him; but he said ‘Christina Carl’s Dotter’ was no name at all. It would never do; and so he called me ‘Christina Carlson.’ There you have the explanation of the whole matter.”

“I declare,” said Frank, “this thing grows worse and worse! Why, there are three of you. I shall have to wed not only ‘Christina Jansen,’ and ‘Christina Carlson,’ but ‘Christina Carl’s Dotter.’ Why, that would be not only bigamy, but _trigamy!_”

And then Estella came to the rescue, and said that she felt sure that Max would be glad to have her even if there were a dozen of her.

And Frank, who had become riotous, said to me:

“You see, old fellow, you are about to marry a girl with a pedigree, and I another without one.”

“No,” said Christina, “I deny that charge; with us the very name we bear declares the pedigree. I am ‘Christina Carl’s Dotter,’ and ‘Carl’ was the son of ‘John,’ who was the son of ‘Frederick,’ who was the son of ‘Christian;’ and so on for a hundred generations. I have a long pedigree; and I am very proud of it; and, what is more, they were all good, honest, virtuous people.” And she heightened up a bit. And then Frank kissed her before us all, and she boxed his ears, and then dinner was announced.

And what a pleasant dinner it was: the vegetables, crisp and fresh, were from their own garden; and the butter and milk and cream and schmearkase from their own dairy; and the fruit from their own trees; and the mother told us that the pudding was of Christina’s own making; and thereupon Frank ate more of it than was good for him; and everything was so neat and bright, and everybody so happy; and Frank vowed that there never was before such luscious, golden butter; and Mrs. Jansen told us that that was the way they made it in Sweden, and she proceeded to explain the whole process. The only unhappy person at the table, it seemed to me, was poor Carl, and he had a wretched premonition that he was certainly going to drop some of the food on that brand-new broadcloth suit of his. I feel confident that when we took our departure he hurried to take off that overwhelming grandeur, with very much the feeling with which the dying saint shuffles off the mortal coil, and soars to heaven.

But then, in the midst of it all, there came across me the dreadful thought of what was to burst upon the world in a few days; and I could have groaned aloud in anguish of spirit. I felt we were like silly sheep gamboling on the edge of the volcano. But why not? We had not brought the world to this pass. Why should we not enjoy the sunshine, and that glorious light, brighter than all sunshine–the love of woman? For God alone, who made woman–the true woman–knows the infinite capacities for good which he has inclosed within her soul. And I don’t believe one bit of that orthodox story. I think Eve ate the apple to obtain knowledge, and Adam devoured the core because he was hungry.

And these thoughts, of course, were suggested by my looking at Estella. She and Christina were in a profound conference; the two shades of golden hair mingling curiously as they whispered to each other, and blushed and laughed. And then Estella came over to me, and smiled and blushed again, and whispered: “Christina is delighted with the plan.”

And then I said to Max, in a dignified, solemn way:

‘My dear Max, or Frank, or Arthur, or whatever thy name may be–and ‘if thou hast no other name to call thee by I will call thee devil’–I have observed, with great regret, that thou art very much afraid of standing up to-morrow and encountering in wedlock’s ceremony the battery of bright eyes of the three Christinas. Now I realize that a friend should not only ‘bear a friend’s infirmities,’ but that he should stand by him in the hour of danger; and so to-morrow, ‘when fear comes down upon you like a house,’ Estella and I have concluded to stand with you, in the imminent deadly breach, and share your fate; and if, when you get through, there are any of the Christinas left, I will–with Estella’s permission–even marry them myself ‘For I am determined that such good material shall not go to waste.’

There was a general rejoicing, and Max embraced me; and then he hugged Christina; and then I took advantage of the excuse–I was very happy in finding such excuses–to do likewise by my stately beauty; and then there was handshaking by the old folks all around, and kisses from the little folks.

Not long afterward there was much whispering and laughing between Christina and Estella; they were in the garden; they seemed to be reading some paper, which they held between them. And then that scamp, Max, crept quietly behind them, and, reaching over, snatched the paper out of their hands. And then Estella looked disturbed, and glanced at me and blushed; and Max began to dance and laugh, and cried out, “Ho! ho! we have a poet in the family!” And then I realized that some verses, which I had given Estella the day before, had fallen into the hands of that mocker. I would not give much for a man who does not grow poetical when he is making love. It is to man what song is to the bird. But to have one’s weaknesses exposed–that is another matter! And so I ran after Max; but in vain. He climbed into a tree, and then began to recite my love poetry:

“Listen to this,” he cried; “here are fourteen verses; each one begins and ends with the word _’thee.’_ Here’s a sample:

“‘All thought, all fear, all grief, all earth, all air, Forgot shall be;
Knit unto each, to each kith, kind and kin,– Life, like these rhyming verses, shall begin And end in–_thee!_’

“And here,” he cried, “is another long poem. Phœbus! what a name–_’Artesian Waters!’_

Here Christina, Estella and I pelted the rogue with apples.

“I know why they are called ‘Artesian Waters,'” he cried; “it is because it took a great _bore_ to produce them. Hal ha! But listen to it:

“‘There is a depth at which perpetual springs Fresh water, in all lands:
The which once reached, the buried torrent flings Its treasures o’er the sands.’

“Ouch!” he cried, “that one hit me on the nose: I mean the apple, not the verse.

“‘One knows not how, beneath the dark, deep crust, The clear flood there has come:
One knows not why, amid eternal dust, Slumbers that sea of foam.’

“Plain enough,” he cried, dodging the apples; “the attraction of gravitation did the business for it.

“‘Dark-buried, sepulchred, entombed and deep, Away from mortal ken,
It lies, till, summoned from its silent sleep, It leaps to light again.’

“Very good,” he said, “and now here comes the application, the moral of the poem.

“‘So shall we find no intellect so dull, No soul so cold to move,
No heart of self or sinfulness so full, But still hath power to love.’

“Of course,” he said; “he knows how it is himself; the poet fills the bill exactly.

‘It lives immortal, universal all, The tenant of each breast;
Locked in the silence of unbroken thrall, And deep and pulseless rest;
Till, at a touch, with burst of power and pride, Its swollen torrents roll,
Dash all the trappings of the mind aside, And ride above the soul.’

“Hurrah!” he cried, “that’s splendid! But here’s some more: _’To Estella.’_”

But I could stand no more, and so began to climb the tree. It was an apple-tree, and not a very big one at that, and Max was forced to retreat out upon a limb, and then drop to the ground. But the young ladies were too quick for him; they pounced upon him as he fell; and very soon my precious verses were hidden in Estella’s bosom, whence, in a burst of confidence and pride, they had been taken to exhibit to Christina.

“Yes,” said Estella, “it was nothing but mean jealousy, because he could not write such beautiful poetry to Christina.” “Exactly,” said Christina, “and I think I will refuse to marry him until he produces some verses equally fine.”

“Before I would write such poetry as that,” said Max, “I would go and hang myself.”

“No man ought to be allowed to marry,” said Estella, “until he has written a poem.”

“If you drive Max to that,” I said, “other people will hang themselves rather than hear his verses.”

And thus, with laugh and jest and badinage, the glorious hours passed away.

It was growing late; but we could not go until we had seen the cows milked, for that was a great event in the household; and “Bossy” especially was a wonderful cow. Never before in the world had there been such a cow as “Bossy.” The children had tied some ribbons to her horns, and little Ole was astride of her broad back, his chubby legs pointing directly to the horizon, and the rest of the juveniles danced around her; while the gentle and patient animal stood chewing her cud, with a profound look upon her peaceful face, much like that of a chief-justice considering “the rule in Shelley’s case,” or some other equally solemn and momentous subject.

And I could not help but think how kindly we should feel toward these good, serviceable ministers to man; for I remembered how many millions of our race had been nurtured through childhood and maturity upon their generous largess. I could see, in my imagination, the great bovine procession, lowing and moving, with their bleating calves trotting by their side, stretching away backward, farther and farther, through all the historic period; through all the conquests and bloody earth-staining battles, and all the sin and suffering of the race; and far beyond, even into the dim, pre-historic age, when the Aryan ancestors of all the European nations dwelt together under the same tents, and the blond-haired maidens took their name of “daughters” (the very word we now use) from their function of milkmaidens. And it seemed to me that we should love a creature so intimately blended with the history of our race, and which had done so much, indirectly, to give us the foundation on which to build civilization.

But we must away; and Carl, glad to do something in scenes in which he was not much fitted to shine, drove us to the station in his open spring wagon; Estella, once more the elderly, spectacled maiden, by my side; and the sunny little Christina beside Max’s mother–going to the station to see us off; while that gentleman, on the front seat, talked learnedly with Carl about the pedigree of the famous horse “Lightning,” which had just trotted its mile in less than two minutes.

And I thought, as I looked at Carl, how little it takes to make a happy household; and what a beautiful thing the human race is under favorable circumstances; and what a wicked and cruel and utterly abominable thing is the man who could oppress it, and drive it into the filth of sin and shame.

I will not trouble you, my dear brother, by giving you a detailed account of the double marriage the next day. The same person married us both–a Scandinavian preacher, a friend of the Jansen family. I was not very particular who tied the knot and signed the bill of sale of Estella, provided I was sure the title was good. But I do think that the union of man and wife should be something more than a mere civil contract. Marriage is not a partnership to sell dry goods–(sometimes, it is true, it is principally an obligation to buy them)–or to practice medicine or law together; it is, or should be, an intimate blending of two souls, and natures, and lives; and where the marriage is happy and perfect there is, undoubtedly, a growing-together, not only of spirit and character, but even in the physical appearance of man and wife. Now as these two souls came–we concede–out of heaven, it seems to me that the ceremony which thus destroys their individuality, and blends them into one, should have some touch and color of heaven in it also.

It was a very happy day.

As I look upon it now it seems to me like one of those bright, wide rays of glorious light which we have sometimes seen bursting through a rift in the clouds, from the setting sun, and illuminating, for a brief space of time, the black, perturbed and convulsed sky. One of our poets has compared it to–

“A dead soldier’s sword athwart his pall.”

But it faded away, and the storm came down, at last, heavy and dark and deadly.

CHAPTER XXX.

UPON THE HOUSE-TOP

A few days after our joint wedding Max came running in one day, and said:

“It is to be to-morrow.”

He gave each of us a red cross to sew upon our clothes. He was very much excited, and hurried out again.

I had said to him, the morning of our marriage, that I desired to return home before the outbreak came, for I was now responsible for Estella’s life and safety; and I feared that all communication of one part of the world with another would be cut off by the threatened revolution. He had begged me to remain. He said that at the interview with General Quincy it had been made a condition of the contract that each of the executive committee–Cæsar, the vice-president and himself–should have one of the flying air-ships placed at his disposal, after the outbreak, well manned and equipped with bombs and arms of all kinds. These “Demons” were to be subject to their order at any time, and to be guarded by the troops at their magazine in one of the suburbs until called for.

The committee had several reasons for making this arrangement: the outbreak might fail and they would have to fly; or the outbreak might succeed, but become ungovernable, and they would have to escape from the tempest they had themselves invoked. Max had always had a dream that after the Plutocracy was overthrown the insurgents would reconstruct a purer and better state of society; but of late my conversations with him, and his own observations, had begun to shake his faith in this particular.

He said to me that if I remained he would guarantee the safety of myself and wife, and after I had seen the outbreak he would send me home in his air-ship; and moreover, if he became satisfied that the revolution had passed beyond the control of himself and friends, he would, after rescuing his father from the prison where he was confined, accompany me with his whole family, and we would settle down together in my distant mountain home. He had, accordingly, turned all his large estate into gold and silver, which he had brought to the house; and I had likewise filled one large room full of a great library of books, which I had purchased to take with me–literature, science, art, encyclopedias, histories, philosophies, in fact all the treasures of the world’s genius–together with type, printing presses, telescopes, phonographs, photographic instruments, electrical apparatus, eclesions, phemasticons, and all the other great inventions which the last hundred years have given us. For, I said to myself, if civilization utterly perishes in the rest of the world, there, in the mountains of Africa, shut out from attack by rocks and ice-topped mountains, and the cordon of tropical barbarians yet surrounding us, we will wait until exhausted and prostrate mankind is ready to listen to us and will help us reconstruct society upon a wise and just basis.

In the afternoon Max returned, bringing with him Carl Jansen and all his family. A dozen men also came, bearing great boxes. They were old and trusted servants of his father’s family; and the boxes contained magazine rifles and pistols and fixed ammunition, together with hand-grenades. These were taken out, and we were all armed. Even the women had pistols, and knives strapped to their girdles. The men went out and again returned, bearing quantities of food, sufficient to last us during a siege, and also during our flight to my home. Water was also collected in kegs and barrels, for the supply might be cut of. Then Max came, and under his orders, as soon as night fell, the lower windows, the cellar openings and the front door were covered with sheathings of thick oak plank, of three thicknesses, strongly nailed; then the second story windows were similarly protected, loopholes being first bored, through which our rifles could be thrust, if necessary. Then the upper windows were also covered in the same way. The back door was left free for ingress and egress through the yard and back street, but powerful bars were arranged across it, and the oak plank left ready to board it up when required. The hand-grenades–there were a pile of them–were carried up to the flat roof. Then one of the men went out and painted red crosses on the doors and windows.

We ate our supper in silence. A feeling of awe was upon all of us. Every one was told to pack up his goods and valuables and be ready for instant flight when the word was given; and to each one were assigned the articles he or she was to carry.

About ten o’clock Max returned and told us all to come up to the roof. The house stood, as I have already said, upon a corner; it was in the older part of the city, and not far from where the first great battle would be fought. Max whispered to me that the blow would be struck at six o’clock in Europe and at twelve o’clock at night in America. The fighting therefore had already begun in the Old World. He further explained to me something of the plan of battle. The Brotherhood at twelve would barricade a group of streets in which were the Sub-Treasury of the United States, and all the principal banks, to wit: Cedar, Pine, Wall, Nassau, William, Pearl and Water Streets. Two hundred thousand men would be assembled to guard these barricades. They would then burst open the great moneyed institutions and blow up the safes with giant powder and Hecla powder. At daybreak one of Quincy’s air-ships would come and receive fifty millions of the spoils in gold, as their share of the plunder, and the price of their support. As soon as this was delivered, and carried to their armory, the whole fleet of air-vessels would come up and attack the troops of the Oligarchy. If, however, General Quincy should violate his agreement, and betray them, they had provided a large number of great cannon, mounted on high wheels, so that they could be fired vertically, and these were to be loaded with bombs of the most powerful explosives known to science, and so constructed with fulminating caps that, if they struck the air-ship at any point, they would explode and either destroy it or so disarrange its machinery as to render it useless. Thus they were provided, he thought, for every emergency.

At eleven he came to me and whispered that if anything happened to him he depended on me to take his wife and mother and his father, if possible, with me to Africa. I grasped his hand and assured him of my devotion. He then embraced Christina and his mother and left them, weeping bitterly, in each other’s arms.

There was a parapet around the roof. I went to the corner of it, and, leaning over, looked down into the street. Estella came and stood beside me. She was very calm and quiet. The magnetic lights yet burned, and the streets below me were almost as bright as day. There were comparatively few persons moving about. Here and there a carriage, or a man on horseback, dashed furiously past, at full speed; and I thought to myself, “The Oligarchy have heard of the tremendous outbreak in Europe, and are making preparations for another here.” It was a still, clear night; and the great solemn stars moved over the face of heaven unconscious or indifferent as to what was going forward on this clouded little orb.

I thought it must be nearly twelve. I drew out my watch to look at the time. It lacked one minute of that hour. Another instant, and the whole city was wrapped in profound darkness. Some of the workmen about the Magnetic Works were members of the Brotherhood, and, in pursuance of their orders, they had cut the connections of the works and blotted out the light.

CHAPTER XXXI.

“SHEOL”

I looked down into the dark street. I could see nothing; but immediately a confused buzz and murmur, of motion everywhere, arose from the depths below me. As it grew louder and clearer I could hear the march of thousands of feet, moving rapidly; and then a number of wagons, heavily loaded, creaked and groaned over the pavements. I surmised that these wagons were loaded with stones, and were to be used in the construction of the barricades. There was no music, no shouting, not even the sound of voices; but tramp, tramp, tramp, in endless multitude, the heavy feet went by; and now and then, where the light yet streamed out of the window of some house, I could see the glitter of the steel barrels of rifles; and here and there I caught a glimpse of men on horseback, officers apparently, but dressed in the rough garb of workmen. Along the line of the houses near me, I could see, at opened, lighted windows, an array of pale faces, looking out with astonishment and terror at this dark and silent procession, which seemed to have arisen out of the earth, and was so vast that one might dream that the trumpet of the archangel had been blown, and all the dead of a thousand battle-fields had risen up for one last grand review. And not alone past our doors, but through all the streets near us, the same mighty, voiceless procession moved on; all converging to the quarter where the treasures of the great city lay, heaped up in safe and vault.

And then, several blocks away, but within the clear range of my vision, a light appeared in the street–it blazed–it rose higher and higher. I could see shadowy figures moving around it, heaping boxes, barrels and other combustibles upon the flame. It was a bonfire, kindled to light the work of building a barricade at that point. Across the street a line of wagons had been placed; the tail of each one touching the front of another, the horses having been withdrawn. And then hundreds of busy figures were to be seen at work, tearing up the pavements of the street and heaping the materials under the wagons; and then shovels flew, and the earth rose over it all; a deep ditch being excavated quite across the street, on the side near me. Then men, lit by the red light, looked, at the distance, like hordes of busy black insects. Behind them swarmed, as far as I could see, thousands upon thousands of dark forms, mere masses, touched here and there by the light of the bonfire, gleaming on glittering steel. They were the men within the barricades. There was a confused noise in other quarters, which I supposed was caused by the erection of a number of similar barricades elsewhere. Then the tramp of the marching masses past our doors ceased; and for a time the silence was profound.

So far not a soldier or policeman had been visible. The Oligarchy were evidently carrying out the plan of the Prince of Cabano. They were permitting the insurgents to construct their “rat-trap” without interruption. Only a few stragglers were upon the street, drawn there doubtless by curiosity; and still the pale faces were at the windows; and some even talked from window to window, and wondered what it all meant.

Suddenly there was a terrific explosion that shook the house. I could see a shower of stones and brick and timbers and dust, rising like a smoke, seamed with fire, high in the air, within the lines of the barricades. Then came another, even louder; then another, and another, and another, until it sounded like a bombardment. Then these ceased, and after a little time came the sounds of smaller explosions, muffled as if under ground or within walls.

“They are blowing open the banks,” I whispered to Estella.

Then all was quiet for a space. In a little while the bombardment began again, as if in another part of the territory inclosed in the barricades.

And still there was not a soldier to be seen in the deserted streets near me.

And again came other explosions.

At last I saw the red light beginning to touch the clouds along the eastern horizon with its crimson brush. The fateful day was dawning.

And then, in a little while, far away to the north, soft and dull at first, but swelling gradually into greater volume, a mighty sound arose; and through it I could hear bursts of splendid melody, rising and falling and fluttering, like pennons, above the tumult; and I recognized the notes of that grand old Scotch air, “The Campbells are Coming.”

It was the defenders of society advancing with the swinging step of assured triumph.

Oh, it was a splendid sight! In all the bravery of banners, and uniforms, and shining decorations, and amidst the majestic and inspiriting outpouring of music, they swept along, the thousands moving as one. How they did contrast with that gloomy, dark, ragged, sullen multitude who had preceded them. And with them came, rattling along, multitudes of those dreadful machine guns–those cataracts of fire and death–drawn by prancing, well-fed, shining horses. And the lips of the gunners were set for carnage; for they had received orders _to take no prisoners!_ The world was to be taught a lesson to-day–a bloody and an awful lesson. Ah! little did they think how it would be taught!

In the gray light of the breaking day they came–an endless multitude. And all the windows were white with waving handkerchiefs, and the air stormy with huzzas and cries of “God bless you.” And at the head of every column, on exuberant steeds, that seemed as if they would leap out of their very skins with the mere delight of living, rode handsome officers, smiling and bowing to the ladies at the windows;–for was it not simply holiday work to slay the _canaille_–the insolent _canaille_–the unreasonable dogs–who demanded some share in the world’s delights–who were not willing to toil and die that others might live and be happy? And the very music had a revengeful, triumphant ring and sting to it, as if every instrument cried out: “Ah, we will give it to them!”

But it was splendid! It was the very efflorescence of the art of war–the culmination of the evolution of destruction–the perfect flower of ten thousand years of battle and blood.

But I heard one officer cry out to another, as they passed below me:

“What’s the matter with the Demons? Why are they not here?”

“I can’t say,” replied the one spoken to; “but they will be here in good time.”

The grand and mighty stream of men poured on. They halted close to the high barricade. It was a formidable structure at least fifteen feet high and many feet in thickness. The gray of dawn had turned into red, and a pale, clear light spread over all nature. I heard some sparrows, just awakened, twittering and conversing in a tall tree near me. They, too, wondered, doubtless, what it all meant, and talked it over in their own language.

The troops deployed right and left, and soon the insurgent mass was closely surrounded in every direction and every outlet closed. The “rat-trap” was set. Where were the rat-killers? I could see many a neck craned, and many a face lifted up, looking toward the west, for their terrible allies of the air. But they came not.

There was a dead pause. It was the stillness before the thunder.

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE RAT-TRAP

Some of the troops advanced toward the barricade. Instantly the long line of its top bristled with fire; the fire was returned; the rattle was continuous and terrible, mingled with the rapid, grinding noise of the machine guns. The sound spread in every direction. The barricades were all attacked.

Suddenly the noise began to decrease. It was as if some noble orator had begun to speak in the midst of a tumultuous assembly. Those nearest him catch his utterances first, and become quiet; the wave of silence spreads like a great ripple in the water; until at last the whole audience is as hushed as death. So something–some extraordinary thing–had arrested the battle; down, down, dropped the tumult; and at last there were only a few scattering shots to be heard, here and there; and then these, too, ceased.

I could see the soldiers looking to the west. I swept the sky with my glass. Yes, something portentous had indeed happened! Instead of the whole dark flight of thousands of airships for which the soldiers had been looking, there came, athwart the sky, like a great black bird, a single Demon.

As it approached it seemed to be signaling some one. Little flags of different colors were run up and taken down. I turned and looked to the barricaded district. And there on the top of a very high building, in its midst, I could see a group of men. They, too, were raising and lowering little flags. Nearer and nearer swept the great bird; every eye and many a field-glass in all that great throng were fastened upon it, with awe-struck interest–the insurgents rejoicing; the soldiers perplexed. Nearer and nearer it comes.

Now it pauses right over the tall building; it begins to descend, like a sea-gull about to settle in the waves. Now it is but a short distance above the roof. I could see against the bright sky the gossamer traces of a rope ladder, falling down from the ship to the roof. The men below take hold of it and steady it. A man descends. Something about him glitters in the rising sun. He is probably an officer. He reaches the roof. They bow and shake hands. I can see him wave his hand to those above him. A line of men descend; they disappear in the building; they reappear; they mount the ladder; again and again they come and go.

“They are removing the treasure,” I explain to our party, gathering around me.

Then the officer shakes hands again with the men on the roof; they bow to each other; he reascends the ladder; the air-ship rises in the air, higher and higher, like an eagle regaining its element; and away it sails, back into the west.

An age of bribery terminates in one colossal crime of corruption!

I can see the officers gathering in groups and taking counsel together. They are alarmed. Then they write. They must tell the Oligarchy of this singular scene, and their suspicions, and put them on their guard. There is danger in the air. In a moment orderlies dash down the street in headlong race, bearing dispatches. In a little while they come back, hurrying, agitated. I took to the north. I can see a black line across the street. It is a high barricade. It has been quietly constructed while the fight raged. And beyond, far as my eyes can penetrate, there are dark masses of armed men.

The orderlies report–there is movement–agitation. I can see the imperious motions of an officer. I can read the signs. He is saying, “Back–back–for your lives! Break out through the side streets!” They rush away; they divide; into every street they turn. Alas! in a few minutes, like wounded birds, they come trailing back. There is no outlet. Every street is blockaded, barricaded, and filled with huge masses of men. _The rat-trap has another rat-trap outside of it!_

The Oligarchy will wait long for those dispatches. They will never read them this side of eternity. The pear has ripened. The inevitable has come. The world is about to shake off its masters.

There is dead silence. Why should the military renew the fight in the midst of the awful doubt that rests upon their souls?

Ah! we will soon know the best or worst; for, far away to the west, dark, portentous as a thundercloud–spread out like the wings of mighty armies–moving like a Fate over the bright sky, comes on the vast array of the Demons.

“Will they be faithful to their bargain?” I ask myself; “or will old loyalty and faith to their masters rise up in their hearts?”

No, no, it is a rotten age. Corruption sticks faster than love.

On they come! Thousands of them. They swoop, they circle; they pause above the insurgents. The soldiers rejoice! Ah, no! No bombs fall, a meteor of death. They separate; they move north, south, east, west; they are above the streets packed full of the troops of the government!

May God have mercy on them now! The sight will haunt me to my dying day. I can see, like a great black rain of gigantic drops, the lines of the falling bombs against the clear blue sky.

And, oh, my God! what a scene below, in those close-packed streets, among those gaily dressed multitudes! The dreadful astonishment! The crash–the bang–the explosions; the uproar, the confusion; and, most horrible of all, the inevitable, invisible death by the poison.

The line of the barricade is alive with fire. With my glass I can almost see the dynamite bullets exploding in the soldiers, tearing them to pieces, like internal volcanoes.

An awful terror is upon them. They surge backward and forward; then they rush headlong down the streets. The farther barricades open upon them a hail of death; and the dark shadows above–so well named Demons–slide slowly after them; and drop, drop, drop, the deadly missiles fall again among them.

Back they surge. The poison is growing thicker. They scream for mercy; they throw away their guns; they are panic-stricken. They break open the doors of houses and hide themselves. But even here the devilish plan of Prince Cabano is followed out to the very letter. The triumphant mob pour in through the back yards; and they bayonet the soldiers under beds, or in closets, or in cellars; or toss them, alive and shrieking, from windows or roofs, down into the deadly gulf below.

And still the bombs drop and crash, and drop and crash; and the barricades are furnaces of living fire. The dead lie in heaps and layers in the invisible, pernicious poison.

But, lo! the fire slackens; the bombs cease to fall; only now and then a victim flies out of the houses, cast into death. There is nothing left to shoot at. The grand army of the Plutocracy is annihilated; it is not.

“The Demons” moved slowly off. They had earned their money. The Mamelukes of the Air had turned the tables upon the Sultan. They retired to their armory, doubtless to divide the fifty millions equitably between them.

The mob stood still for a few minutes. They could scarcely realize that they were at last masters of the city. But quickly a full sense of all that their tremendous victory signified dawned upon them. The city lay prostrate, chained, waiting to be seized upon.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

“THE OCEAN OVERPEERS ITS LIST”

And then all avenues were open. And like a huge flood, long damned up, turbulent, turbid, muddy, loaded with wrecks and debris, the gigantic mass broke loose, full of foam and terror, and flowed in every direction. A foul and brutal and ravenous multitude it was, dark with dust and sweat, armed with the weapons of civilization, but possessing only the instincts of wild beasts.

At first they were under the control of some species of discipline and moved toward the houses of the condemned, of whom printed catalogues had been furnished the officers. The shouts, the yells, the delight were appalling.

Now and then some poor wretch, whose sole offense was that he was well-dressed, would take fright and start to run, and then, like hounds after a rabbit, they would follow in full cry; and when he was caught a hundred men would struggle to strike him, and he would disappear in a vortex of arms, clubs and bayonets, literally torn to pieces.

A sullen roar filled the air as this human cyclone moved onward, leaving only wrecks behind it. Now it pauses at a house. The captain consults his catalogue. “This is it,” he cries; and doors and windows give way before the thunderous mob; and then the scenes are terrible. Men are flung headlong, alive, out of the windows to the ravenous wretches below; now a dead body comes whirling down; then the terrified inhabitants fly to the roofs, and are pursued from house to house and butchered in sight of the delighted spectators. But when the condemned man–the head of the house–is at last found, hidden perhaps in some coal-hole or cellar, and is brought up, black with dust, and wild with terror, his clothes half torn from his back; and he is thrust forth, out of door or window, into the claws of the wild beasts, the very heavens ring with acclamations of delight; and happy is the man who can reach over his fellows and know that he has struck the victim.

Then up and away for another vengeance. Before them is solitude; shops and stores and residences are closed and barricaded; in the distance teams are seen flying and men scurrying to shelter; and through crevices in shutters the horrified people peer at the mob, as at an invasion of barbarians.

Behind them are dust, confusion, dead bodies, hammered and beaten out of all semblance of humanity; and, worse than all, the criminal classes–that wretched and inexplicable residuum, who have no grievance against the world except their own existence–the base, the cowardly, the cruel, the sneaking, the inhuman, the horrible! These flock like jackals in the track of the lions. They rob the dead bodies; they break into houses; they kill if they are resisted; they fill their pockets. Their joy is unbounded. Elysium has descended upon earth for them this day. Pickpockets, sneak-thieves, confidence-men, burglars, robbers, assassins, the refuse and outpouring of grog-shops and brothels, all are here. And women, too–or creatures that pass for such–having the bodies of women and the habits of ruffians;–harpies–all claws and teeth and greed–bold–desperate–shameless–incapable of good. They, too, are here. They dart hither and thither; they swarm–they dance–they howl–they chatter–they quarrel and battle, like carrion-vultures, over the spoils.

Civilization is gone, and all the devils are loose! No more courts, nor judges, nor constables, nor prisons! That which it took the world ten thousand years to create has gone in an hour.

And still the thunderous cyclones move on through a hundred streets. Occasionally a house is fired; but this is not part of the programme, for they have decided to keep all these fine residences for themselves! They will be rich. They will do no more work. The rich man’s daughters shall be their handmaidens; they will wear his purple and fine linen.

But now and then the flames rise up–perhaps a thief kindles the blaze–and it burns and burns; for who would leave the glorious work to put it out? It burns until the streets stop it and the block is consumed. Fortunately, or unfortunately, there is no wind to breed a general conflagration. The storms to-day are all on earth; and the powers of the air are looking down with hushed breath, horrified at the exceeding wickedness of the little crawlers on the planet we call men.

They do not, as a rule, steal. Revenge–revenge–is all their thought. And why should they steal? Is it not all their own? Now and then a too audacious thief is caught and stuck full of bayonets; or he is flung out of a window, and dies at the hands of the mob the death of the honest man for whom he is mistaken; and thus, by a horrible travesty of fate, he perishes for that which he never was nor could be.

Think of the disgust of a thief who finds himself being murdered for an honest man, an aristocrat, and can get no one to believe his asseverations that he is simply and truly a thief–and nothing more! It is enough to make Death grin!

The rude and begrimed insurgents are raised by their terrible purposes to a certain dignity. They are the avengers of time–the God-sent–the righters of the world’s wrongs–the punishers of the ineffably wicked. They do not mean to destroy the world; they will reform it–redeem it. They will make it a world where there shall be neither toil nor oppression. But, poor fellows! their arms are more potent for evil than their brains for good. They are omnipotent to destroy; they are powerless to create.

But still the work of ruin and slaughter goes on. The mighty city, with its ten million inhabitants, lies prostrate, chained, helpless, at the mercy of the enraged _canaille_. The dogs have become lions.

The people cannot comprehend it. They look around for their defenders–the police, the soldiery. “Where are they? Will not this dreadful nightmare pass away?” No; no; never–never. This is the culmination–this is the climax–“the century’s aloe flowers to-day.” These are “the grapes of wrath” which God has stored up for the day of his vengeance; and now he is trampling them out, and this is the red juice–look you!–that flows so thick and fast in the very gutters.

You were blind, you were callous, you were indifferent to the sorrows of your kind. The cry of the poor did not touch you, and every pitiful appeal wrung from human souls, every groan and sob and shriek of men and women, and the little starving children–starving in body and starving in brain–rose up and gathered like a great cloud around the throne of God; and now, at last, in the fullness of time, it has burst and comes down upon your wretched heads, a storm of thunderbolts and blood.

You had money, you had power, you had leisure, you had intelligence, you possessed the earth; all things were possible unto you. Did you say to one another: “These poor souls are our brethren. For them Christ died on Calvary. What can we do to make their lives bright and happy?” No; no; you cried out, “‘On with the dance!’ Let them go down into the bottomless pit!”

And you smiled and said to one another, in the words of the first murderer, when he lied to God: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Nay, you said further to one another, “There is no God!” For you thought, if there was one, surely He would not permit the injustice manifest in the world. But, lo! He is here. Did you think to escape him? Did you think the great Father of Cause and Effect–the All-knowing, the universe-building God,–would pass you by?

As you sowed, so must you reap. Evil has but one child–Death! For hundreds of years you have nursed and nurtured Evil. Do you complain if her monstrous progeny is here now, with sword and torch? What else did you expect? Did you think she would breed angels?

Your ancestors, more than two centuries ago, established and permitted Slavery. What was the cry of the bondman to them? What the sobs of the mother torn from her child–the wife from her husband–on the auction block? Who among them cared for the lacerated bodies, the shameful and hopeless lives? They were merry; they sang and they danced; and they said, “Gods sleeps.”

But a day came when there was a corpse at every fireside. And not the corpse of the black stranger–the African–the slave;–but the corpses of fair, bright-faced men; their cultured, their manly, their noble, their best-loved. And, North and South, they sat, rocking themselves to and fro, in the midst of the shards and ashes of desolation, crying aloud for the lives that would come back to bless them never, nevermore.

God wipes out injustice with suffering; wrong with blood; sin with death. You can no more get beyond the reach of His hand than you can escape from the planet.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE PRINCE GIVES HIS LAST BRIBE

But it was when the mob reached the wealthier parts of the city that the horrors of the devastation really began. Here almost every grand house was the abode of one of the condemned. True, many of them had fled. But the cunning cripple–the vice-president–had provided for this too. At the railroad stations, at the bridges and ferries, even on the yachts of the princes, men were stationed who would recognize and seize them; and if they even escaped the dangers of the suburbs, and reached the country, there they found armed bands of desperate peasants, ranging about, slaying every one who did not bear on his face and person the traces of the same wretchedness which they themselves had so long endured. Nearly every rich man had, in his own household and among his own servants, some bitter foe, who hated him, and who had waited for this terrible day and followed him to the death.

The Prince of Cabano, through his innumerable spies, had early received word of the turn affairs had taken. He had hurriedly filled a large satchel with diamonds and other jewels of great value, and, slinging it over his shoulders, and arming himself with sword, knife and pistols, he had called Frederika to him (he had really some little love for his handsome concubine), and loading her pockets and his own with gold pieces, and taking her by the hand, he had fled in great terror to the river side. His fine yacht lay off in the stream. He called and shouted until he was hoarse, but no one replied from the vessel. He looked around. The wharves were deserted; the few boats visible were chained and padlocked to their iron rings. The master of many servants was helpless. He shouted, screamed, tore his hair, stamped and swore viciously. The man who had coolly doomed ten million human beings to death was horribly afraid he would have to die himself. He ran back, still clinging to Frederika, to hide in the thick shrubbery of his own garden; there, perhaps, he might find a faithful servant who would get him a boat and take him off to the yacht in safety.

But then, like the advancing thunder of a hurricane, when it champs the earth and tears the trees to pieces with its teeth, came on the awful mob.

Now it is at his gates. He buries himself and companion in a thick grove of cedars, and they crouch to the very ground. Oh, how humble is the lord of millions! How all the endowments of the world fall off from a man in his last extremity! He shivers, he trembles–yea, he prays! Through his bloodshot eyes he catches some glimpses of a God–of a merciful God who loves _all_ his creatures. Even Frederika, though she has neither love nor respect for him, pities him, as the bloated mass lies shivering beside her. Can this be the same lordly gentleman, every hair of whose mustache bespoke empire and dominion, who a few days since plotted the abasement of mankind?

But, hark! the awful tumult. The crashing of glass, the breaking of furniture, the beating in of doors with axes; the _canaille_ have taken possession of the palace. They are looking for him everywhere. They find him not.

Out into the grounds and garden; here, there, everywhere, they turn and wind and quarter, like bloodhounds that have lost the scent.

And then the Prince hears, quite near him, the piping voice of a little ragged boy–a bare-footed urchin–saying: “They came back from the river; they went in here.—(He is one of the cripple’s spies, set upon him to watch him.)—This way, this way!” And the next instant, like a charge of wild cattle, the mob bursts through the cedars, led by a gigantic and ferocious figure, black with dust and mantled with blood–the blood of others.

The Prince rose from his lair as the yell of the pursuers told he was discovered; he turned as if to run; his trembling legs failed him; his eyes glared wildly; he tried to draw a weapon, but his hand shook so it was in vain. The next instant there was a crack of a pistol in the hands of one of the mob. The ball struck the Prince in the back of the neck, even in the same spot where, a century before, the avenging bullet smote the assassin of the good President Lincoln. With a terrible shriek he fell down, and moaned in the most exquisite torture. His suffering was so great that, coward as he was, he cried out: “Kill me! kill me!” A workman, stirred by a human sentiment, stepped forward and pointed his pistol, but the cripple struck the weapon up.

“No, no,” he said; “let him suffer for a few hours something of the misery he and his have inflicted on mankind during centuries. A thousand years of torture would not balance the account. The wound is mortal–his body is now paralyzed–only the sense of pain remains. The damned in hell do not suffer more. Come away.”

But Cæsar had seen a prize worth pursuing. Frederika had risen, and when the Prince was shot she fled. Cæsar pursued her, crashing through the shrubbery like an enraged mammoth; and soon the cripple laughed one of his dreadful laughs–for he saw the giant returning, dragging the fair girl after him, by the hair of her head, as we have seen, in the pictures, ogres hauling off captured children to destruction.

And still the Prince lay upon his back; and still he shrieked and moaned and screamed in agony, and begged for death.

An hour passed, and there was dead silence save for his cries; the mob had swept off to new scenes of slaughter.

The Prince heard the crackling of a stick, and then a stealthy step. A thief, hunting for plunder, was approaching. The Prince, by great effort, hushed his outcries.

“Come here,” said he, as the pale, mean face peered at him curiously through the shrubbery. “Come nearer.”

The thief stood close to him.

“Would you kill a man for a hundred thousand dollars?” asked the Prince.

The thief grinned, and nodded his head; it signified that he would commit murder for the hundred thousandth part of that sum.

“I am mortally wounded and in dreadful pain,” growled the Prince, the suppressed sobs interrupting his speech. “If I tell you where you can find a hundred thousand dollars, will you drive my knife through my heart?”

“Yes,” said the thief.

“Then take the knife,” he said.

The thief did so, eying {sic} it rapaciously–for it was diamond-studded and gold-mounted.

“But,” said the Prince–villain himself and anticipating all villainy in others,–“if I tell you where the money is you will run away to seek it, and leave me here to die a slow and agonizing death.”

“No,” said the thief; “I promise you on my honor.”

A thief’s honor!

“I tell you what you must do,” said the Prince, after thinking a moment. “Kneel down and lean over me; put your arms around me; I cannot hold you with my hands, for they are paralyzed; but put the lapel of your coat between my teeth. I will then tell you where the treasure is; but I will hold on to you by my teeth until you kill me. You will have to slay me to escape from me.

The thief did as he was directed; his arms were around the Prince; the lapel of his coat was between the Prince’s teeth; and then through his shut teeth, tight clenched on the coat, the Prince muttered:

“It is in the satchel beneath me.”

Without a word the thief raised his right hand and drove the knife sidewise clear through the Prince’s heart.

The last of the accumulations of generations of wrong and robbery and extortion and cruelty had sufficed to purchase their heritor a miserable death,–in the embrace of a thief!

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE LIBERATED PRISONER

About two o’clock that day Maximilian returned home. He was covered with dust and powder-smoke, but there was no blood upon him. I did not see him return; but when I entered the drawing-room I started back. There was a stranger present. I could not long doubt as to who he was. He was locked in the arms of Max’s mother. He was a pitiful sight. A tall, gaunt man; his short hair and stubby beard white as snow. He was prematurely aged–his back was stooped–his pallid complexion reminded one of plants grown in cellars; he had a dejected, timorous look, like one who had long been at the mercy of brutal masters; his hands were seamed and calloused with hard work; he was without a coat, and his nether garments had curious, tiger-like stripes upon them. He was sobbing like a child in the arms of his wife. He seemed very weak in body and mind. Maximilian gave him a chair, and his mother sat down by him, weeping bitterly, and holding the poor calloused hands in her own, and patting them gently, while she murmured words of comfort and rejoicing. The poor man looked bewildered, as if he could not quite collect his faculties; and occasionally he would glance anxiously at the door, as if he expected that, at any moment, his brutal masters would enter and take him back to his tasks.

“Gabriel,” said Maximilian,–and his face was flushed and working,–“this is–or was–my father.”

I took the poor hand in my own and kissed it, and spoke encouragingly to him. And this, I thought, was once a wealthy, handsome, portly, learned gentleman; a scholar and a philanthropist; and his only crime was that he loved his fellow-men! And upon how many such men have the prison doors of the world closed–never to open again?

They took him away to the bath; they fed him; they put upon him the clothes of a gentleman. He smiled in a childish way, and smoothed the fine cloth with his hands; and then he seemed to realize, for the first time, that he was, indeed, no longer a prisoner–that his jailers had gone out of his life forever.

“I must go now,” said Maximilian, hurriedly; “I will be back this evening. I have a duty to perform.”

He returned at nightfall. There was a terrible light in his eyes.

“I have avenged my father,” he said to me, in a hoarse whisper. “Come this way.”

He took me into the library, for he would not have the women hear the dreadful story. I shut the door. He said:

“I had made all the necessary arrangements to prevent the escape of the Count and his accomplices. I knew that he would fly, at the first alarm, to his yacht, which lies out in the harbor. He had ruined my father by bribery; so I brought his own instrument to bear upon him, and bribed, with a large sum, his confidential friend, who was in command of his vessel, to deliver him up to me. As I had anticipated, the cunning wretch fled to the yacht; they took him on board. Then they made him prisoner. He was shackled and chained to the mast. He begged for his life and liberty. He had brought a fortune with him in gold and jewels. He offered the whole of it to his _friend_, as a bribe, for he surmised what was coming. The faithful officer replied, as I had instructed him, that the Count could not offer that treasure, for he himself had already appropriated it to his own purposes. The miscreant had always had a lively sense of the power of money for evil; he saw it now in a new light–for he was penniless. After taking my father from the prison and bringing him home, I arranged as to the other prisoners and then went to the yacht. I introduced myself to the Count. I told him that I had deceived his spies–that I had led a double life; that I had joined the Brotherhood and had become one of its leading spirits, with but two objects:–to punish him and his villainous associates and to rescue my father. That, as they had destroyed my father for money, the same instruments should now destroy him, through fear. That they were all prisoners, and should die together a fearful death; but if they had a hundred lives they could not atone for the suffering they had caused one good and great-hearted man. They had compelled him, for years, to work in the society of the basest of his species–at work too hard for even a young and strong man; they had separated him from his family; they had starved his mind and heart and body; they had beaten and scourged him for the slightest offenses. He had suffered a thousand deaths. It would be no equivalent to simply kill them. They should die in prolonged agony. And as he–the Count–had always gone upon the principle that it was right to work upon the weaknesses of others to accomplish his purposes, I should imitate him. I should not touch him myself.

“I then ordered the captain and his men to put him in the boat and carry him ashore.

“He begged and pleaded and abased himself; he entreated and shrieked; but he addressed hearts as hard as his own.

“On the river-bank were a body of my men. In the midst of them they had the other prisoners–the corrupt judge, eight of the jurymen–four had died since the trial–and the four lying witnesses. They were all shackled together. A notary public was present, and they signed and acknowledged their confessions, that they had been bribed to swear against my father and convict him; and they even acknowledged, in their terror, the precise sums which they had received for their dreadful acts.

“‘Spare me! spare me!’ shrieked the Count, groveling on the ground; ‘only part of that money came from me. I was but the instrument of the government. I was commanded to do as I did.’

“‘The others have already gone to their account,’ I replied, ‘every man of them. You will overtake them in a little while.’

“I ordered the prisoners to chain him to a stout post which stood in the middle of one of the wharves. They were unshackled and did so with alacrity; my men standing around ready to shoot them down if they attempted to fly. The Count writhed and shrieked for help, but in a little while he was securely fastened to the post. There was a ship loaded with lumber lying beside the next wharf. I ordered them to bring the lumber; they quickly piled it up in great walls around him, within about ten feet of him; and then more and more was heaped around these walls. The Count began to realize the death that awaited him, and his screams were appalling. But I said to him:

“‘O Count, be calm. This is not as bad as a sentence of twenty years in the penitentiary for an honest and innocent man. And, remember, my dear Count, how you have enjoyed yourself all these years, while my poor father has been toiling in prison in a striped suit. Think of the roast beef you have eaten and the wine you have consumed! And, moreover, the death you are about to die, my dear Count, was once fashionable and popular in the world; and many a good and holy man went up to heaven from just such a death-bed as you shall have-a death-bed of fire and ashes. And see, my good Count, how willingly these honest men, whom you hired, with your damnable money, to destroy my father–see how willingly they work to prepare your funeral pile! What a supple and pliant thing, O Count, is human baseness. It has but one defect–it may be turned upon ourselves! And then, O my dear Count, it shocks us and hurts our feelings. But say your prayers, Count, say your prayers. Call upon God, for He is the only one likely to listen to you now.’

“‘Here,’ I said to the judge, ‘put a match to the pile.’

“The miserable wretch, trembling and hoping to save his own life by his superserviceable zeal, got down upon his knees, and lighted a match, and puffed and blew to make the fire catch. At last it started briskly, and in a few minutes the Count was screaming in the center of a roaring furnace.

“I gave a preconcerted signal to my men. In the twinkling of an eye each of the prisoners was manacled hand and foot, shrieking and roaring for mercy.

“‘It was a splendid joke, gentlemen,’ I said to them, ‘that you played on my father. To send that good man to prison, and to go home with the price of his honor and his liberty jingling in your pockets. It was a capital joke; and you will now feel the finest point of the witticism. In with them!’

“And high above the walls of fire they were thrown, and the briber and the bribed–the villain and his instruments–all perished howling together.”

I listened, awestruck, to the terrible story. There was a light in Max’s eyes which showed that long brooding over the wrongs of his father and the sight of his emaciated and wretched form had “worked like madness in his brain,” until he was, as I had feared, a monomaniac, with but one idea–revenge.

“Max, dear Max.” I said, “for Heaven’s sake never let Christina or your mother hear that dreadful story. It was a madman’s act! Never think of it again. You have wiped out the crime in blood; there let it end. And leave these awful scenes, or you will become a maniac.”

He did not answer me for a time, but looked down thoughtfully; and then he glanced at me, furtively, and said:

“Is not revenge right? Is it not simply justice?”

“Perhaps so, in some sense,” I replied; “and if you had killed those base wretches with your own hand the world could not have much blamed you. Remember, however, ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I will repay.’ But to send them out of life by such dreadful tortures! It is too terrible.”

“But death,” he said, “is nothing; it is the mere end of life–perhaps of consciousness; and that is no atonement for years of suffering, every day of which was full of more agony than death itself can wring from the human heart.”

“I will not argue with you, Max,” I replied, “for you are wrong, and I love you; but do you not see, when a heart, the kindest in the world, could conceive and execute such a terrible revenge, that the condition of the mind is abnormal? But let us change the gloomy subject. The dreadful time has put ‘tricks of desperation’ in your brain. And it is not the least of the crimes of the Oligarchy that it could thus pervert honest and gentle natures, and turn them into savages. And that is what it has done with millions. It has fought against goodness, and developed wickedness.”

CHAPTER XXXVI.

CÆSAR ERECTS HIS MONUMENT

“What other news have you?” I asked.

“The strangest you ever heard,” replied Max.

“What is it?”

“Cæsar,” said Max, “has fallen upon a scheme of the most frenzied and extraordinary kind.”

“Are the members of the Executive Committee all going crazy together?” I asked.

“Surely,” replied Max, “the terrible events we are passing through would be our excuse if we did. But you shall hear. After I had avenged my father I proceeded to find Cæsar. I heard from members of the Brotherhood, whom I met on the streets, that he was at Prince Cabano’s palace. I hurried there, as it was necessary I should confer with him on some matters. A crowd had reassembled around the building, which had become in some sort a headquarters; and, in fact, Cæsar has confiscated it to his own uses, and intends to keep it as his home hereafter. I found him in the council-chamber. You never saw such a sight. He was so black with dust and blood that he looked like a negro. He was hatless, and his mat of hair rose like a wild beast’s mane. He had been drinking; his eyes were wild and rolling; the great sword he held in his right hand was caked with blood to the hilt. He was in a fearful state of excitement, and roared when he spoke. A king-devil, come fresh out of hell, could scarcely have looked more terrible. Behind him in one corner, crouching and crying together, were a bevy of young and handsome women. The Sultan had been collecting his harem. When he caught sight of me he rushed forward and seized my hand, and shouted out:

“‘Hurrah, old fellow! This is better than raising potatoes on the Saskatchewan, or hiding among the niggers in Louis–hic–iana. Down with the Oligarchy. To hell with them. Hurrah! This is my palace. I am a king! Look-a-there,’ he said, with a roll and a leer, pointing over his shoulder at the shrinking and terrified women; ‘ain’t they beauties,–hic–all mine–every one of ’em.’

“Here one of his principal officers came up, and the following dialogue occurred:

“‘I came, General, to ask you what we are to do with the dead.’

“‘Kill ’em,’ roared Cæsar, ‘kill ’em, d–n ’em.’

“‘But, General, they are dead already,’ replied the officer who was a steady fellow and perfectly sober.

“Well, what’s the matter with ’em, then?’ replied Cæsar. ‘Come, come, Bill, if they’re dead, that’s the end of them. Take a drink,’ and he turned, unsteadily, toward the council-table, on which stood several bottles and demijohns.

“‘But some of us have talked it over,’ said the officer. ‘A number of the streets are impassable already with the dead. There must be a quarter of a million of soldiers and citizens lying about, and the number is being added to every minute. The weather is warm, and they will soon breed a pestilence that will revenge them on their slayers. Those killed by the poison are beginning to smell already. We couldn’t take any action without your authority, and so I came to ask you for your orders.’

“‘Burn ’em up,’ said Cæsar.

“‘We can’t,’ said the man; ‘we would have to burn up the city to destroy them in that way; there are too many of them; and it would be an immense task to bury them.’

“‘Heap ’em all up in one big pile,’ said Cæsar.

“‘That wouldn’t do–the smell they would make in decaying would be unbearable, to say nothing of the sickness they would create.’

“Cæsar was standing unsteadily, looking at us with lackluster eyes. Suddenly an idea seemed to dawn in his monstrous head–an idea as monstrous and uncouth as the head itself. His eyes lighted up.

“‘I have it!’ he shouted. ‘By G-d, I have it! Make a pyramid of them, and pour cement over them, and let it stand forever as a monument of this day’s glorious work! Hoorrah!”

“‘That’s a pretty good idea,’ said the officer, and the others present, courtier-like–for King Cæsar already has his courtiers–applauded the idea vociferously.

“‘We’ll have a monument that shall last while the earth stands,’ cried Cæsar. ‘And, hold on, Bill,’ he continued, ‘you shall build it;–and–I say–we won’t make a pyramid of it–it shall be a column–_Cæsar’s Column_–by G-d. It shall reach to the skies! And if there aren’t enough dead to build it of, why, we’ll kill some more; we’ve got plenty to kill. Old Thingumbob, who used to live here–in my palace–said he would kill ten million of us to-day. But he didn’t. Not much! Max’s friend–that d—d long-legged fellow, from Africa–he dished him, for he told old Quincy all about it. And now I’ve got old Thingumbob’s best girl in the corner yonder. Oh, it’s jolly. But build the column, Bill–build it high and strong. I remember–hic–how they used to build houses on the Saskatchewan, when I was grubbing for potatoes there. They had a board frame the length of a wall, and three or four feet high. They would throw in stones, bowlders, pebbles, dirt, anything, and, when it was full, they would pour cement over it all; and when it hardened–hic–which it did in a few minutes, they lifted up the frame and made another course. I say, Bill, that’s the way you must build Cæsar’s column. And get Charley Carpenter to help you; he’s an engineer. And, hold on, Bill, put a lot of dynamite–Jim has just told me they had found tons of it–put a lot of dynamite–hic–in the middle of it, and if they try to tear down my monument, it will blow them to the d—l. And, I say, Max, that long-legged, preaching son-of-thunder–that friend of yours–he must write an inscription for it. Do you hear? He’s the man to do it. Something fine. By G-d, we will build a monument that will beat the pyramids of all the other Caesars. Cæsar’s Column! Hoorrah!’

“And the great brute fairly jumped and danced with delight over his extraordinary conception.

“Bill hurried out. They have sixty thousand prisoners–men who had not been among the condemned–but merchants, professional men, etc. They were debating, when I came up, whether they would kill them, but I suggested that they be set to work on the construction of Cæsar’s Column, and if they worked well, that their lives be spared. This was agreed to. They are now building the monument on Union Square. Thousands of wagons are at work bringing in the dead. Other wagons are hauling cement, sand, etc. Bill and his friend Carpenter are at work. They have constructed great wooden boxes, about forty feet from front to rear, about four feet high and fifty feet long. The dead are to be laid in rows–the feet of the one row of men near the center of the monument, and the feet of the next row touching the heads of the first, and so on. In the middle of the column there is to be a cavity, about five feet square, running from the top to the bottom of the monument, in which the dynamite is to be placed; while wires will lead out from it among the bodies, so arranged, with fulminating charges, that any attempt to destroy the monument or remove the bodies will inevitably result in a dreadful explosion. But we will go up after dinner and look at the work,” he said, “for they are to labor night and day until it is finished. The members of the Brotherhood have entered with great spirit into the idea of such a monument, as a symbol and memorial of their own glory and triumph.”

“I remember,” said I, “reading somewhere that, some centuries ago, an army of white men invaded one of the Barbary states. They were defeated by the natives, and were every one slain. The Moors took their bodies and piled them up in a great monument, and there the white bones and grinning skulls remain to this day, a pyramid of skeletons; a ghastly warning to others who might think to make a like attempt at invasion of the country. Cæsar must have read of that terrible trophy of victory.”

“Perhaps so,” said Maximilian; “but the idea may have been original with him; for there is no telling what such a monstrous brain as his, fired by whisky and battle, might or might not produce.”

At dinner poor Mr. Phillips was looking somewhat better. He had a great many questions to ask his son about the insurrection.

“Arthur,” he said, “if the bad man and his accomplices, who so cruelly used me, should be made prisoners, I beg you, as a favor to me, not to punish them. Leave them to God and their own consciences.”

“I shall,” said Max, quietly.

Mrs. Phillips heartily approved of this sentiment. I looked down at my plate, but before my eyes there came a dreadful picture of that fortress of flame, with the chained man in the midst, and high above it I could see, swung through the air by powerful arms, manacled figures, who descended, shrieking, into the vortex of fire.

After many injunctions to his guards, to look well after the house, Max and I, well armed and wearing our red crosses, and accompanied by two of our most trusted men, sallied forth through the back gate.

What a scene! Chaos; had come. There were no cars or carriages. Thieves and murderers were around us; scenes of rapine and death on every hand. We moved together in a body; our magazine rifles ready for instant use.

Our red crosses protected us from the members of the Brotherhood; and the thieves gave our guns a wide berth. At a street crossing we encountered a wagon-load of dead bodies; they were being hauled to the monument. The driver, one of the Brotherhood, recognized Max, and invited us to seats beside him. Familiarity makes death as natural as life. We accepted his offer–one of our men sitting on the tailboard of the wagon; and in this gory chariot we rode slowly through Broadway, deserted now by everything but crime. The shops had all been broken open; dead bodies lay here and there; and occasionally a burned block lifted its black arms appealingly to heaven. As we drew near to Union Square a wonderful sight–such as the world had never before beheld–expanded before us. Great blazing bonfires lighted the work; hundreds of thousands had gathered to behold the ghastly structure, the report of which had already spread everywhere. These men nearly all belonged to the Brotherhood, or were members of the lower orders, who felt that they had nothing to fear from insurrection. There were many women among them, and not a few thieves, who, drawn by curiosity, for awhile forgot their opportunities and their instincts. Within the great outer circle of dark and passionate and exultant faces, there was another assemblage of a very different appearance. These were the prisoners at work upon the monument. Many of them were gray-haired; some were bloody from wounds upon their heads or bodies; they were all pale and terrified; not a few were in rags, or half naked, their clothes having been literally torn from their backs. They were dejected, and yet moved with alacrity, in fear of the whips or clubs in the hands of their masters, who passed among them, filling the air with oaths. Max pointed out to me prominent merchants, lawyers and clergymen. They were all dazed-looking, like men after a terrific earthquake, who had lost confidence in the stability of everything. It was Anarchy personified:–the men of intellect were doing the work; the men of muscle were giving the orders. The under-rail had come on top. It reminded me of Swift’s story of the country where the men were servants to the horses.

The wagons rolled up, half a dozen at a time, and dumped their dreadful burdens on the stones, with no more respect or ceremony than if they had been cord-wood. Then the poor trembling prisoners seized them by the head and feet, and carried them to other prisoners, who stood inside the boxes, and who arranged them like double lines from a central point:–it was the many-rayed sun of death that had set upon civilization. Then, when the box was full and closely packed, they poured the liquid cement, which had been mixed close at hand, over them. It hardened at once, and the dead were entombed forever. Then the box was lifted and the work of sepulture went on.

While I stood watching the scene I heard a thrilling, ear-piercing shriek–a dreadful cry! A young man, who was helping to carry a corpse, let go his hold and fell down on the pavement. I went over to him. He was writhing and moaning. He had observed something familiar about the form he was bearing–it was the body of a woman. He had peered through the disheveled hair at the poor, agonized, blood-stained features, and recognized–_his wife!_

One of the guards raised his whip to strike him, and shouted:

“Here! Get up! None of this humbugging.”

“I caught the ruffian’s arm. The poor wretch was embracing the dead body, and moaning pitiful expressions of love and tenderness into the ears that would never hear him more. The ruffian threatened me. But the mob was moved to mercy, and took my part; and even permitted the poor creature to carry off his dead in his arms, out into the outer darkness. God only knows where he could have borne it.

I grew sick at heart. The whole scene was awful.

I advanced toward the column. It was already several feet high, and ladders were being made, up which the dead might be borne. Coffee and bread and meat were served out to the workers.

I noticed a sneaking, ruffianly fellow, going about among the prisoners, peering into every face. Not far from me a ragged, hatless, gray-haired man, of over seventy, was helping another, equally old, to bear a heavy body to the ladders. The ruffian looked first into the face of the man at the feet of the corpse; then he came to the man at the head. He uttered an exclamation of delight.

“Ha! you old scoundrel,” he cried, drawing his pistol. “So I’ve found you. You’re the man that turned my sick wife out of your house, because she couldn’t pay the rent. I’ve got you now.”

The old man fell on his knees, and held up his hands, and begged for mercy. I heard an explosion–a red spot suddenly appeared on his forehead, and he fell forward, over the corpse he had been carrying–dead.

“Come! move lively!” cried one of the guards, snapping his whip; “carry them both to the workmen.”

I grew dizzy. Maximilian came up.

“How pale you are,” he said.

“Take me away!” I exclaimed, “or I shall faint.”

We rode back in another chariot of revolution–a death-cart.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE SECOND DAY

It was a dreadful night. Crowds of farmers from the surrounding country kept pouring into the city. They were no longer the honest yeomanry who had filled, in the old time, the armies of Washington, and Jackson, and Grant, and Sherman, with brave patriotic soldiers; but their brutalized descendants–fierce serfs–cruel and bloodthirsty peasants. Every man who owned anything was their enemy and their victim. They invaded the houses of friend and foe alike, and murdered men, women and children. Plunder! plunder! They had no other thought.

One of our men came to me at midnight, and said:

“Do you hear those shrieks?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“They are murdering the family next door.”

These were pleasant, kindly people, who had never harmed any one. But this maelström swallows good and bad alike.

Another came running to me, and cried:

“They are attacking the house!”

“Where?” I asked.

“At the front door.”

“Throw over a hand-grenade,” I said.

There was a loud crash, and a scurrying of flying feet. The cowardly miscreants had fled. They were murderers, not warriors.

All night long the awful Bedlam raged. The dark streets swarmed. Three times we had to have recourse to the hand-grenades. Fires sprang up all over the city, licking the darkness with their hideous tongues of flame, and revealing by their crimson glare the awful sights of that unparalleled time. The dread came upon me: What if some wretch should fire a house in our block? How should we choose between the conflagration and those terrible streets? Would it not be better to be ashes and cinders, than to fall into the hands of that demoniacal mob?

No one slept. Max sat apart and thought. Was he considering–too late!–whether it was right to have helped produce this terrible catastrophe? Early in the morning, accompanied by three of his men, he went out.

We ate breakfast in silence. It seemed to me we had no right to eat in the midst of so much death and destruction.

There was an alarm, and the firing of guns above us. Some miscreants had tried to reach the roof of our house from the adjoining buildings. We rushed up. A lively fusillade followed. Our magazine rifles and hand-grenades were too much for them; some fell dead and the rest beat a hasty retreat. They were peasants, searching for plunder.

After awhile there came a loud rapping at the front door. I leaned over the parapet and asked who was there. A Tough-looking man replied:

“I have a letter for you.”

Fearing some trick, to break into the house, I lowered a long cord and told him to tie the letter to it. He did so. I pulled up a large sheet of dirty wrapping-paper. There were some lines scrawled upon it, in lead-pencil, in the large hand of a schoolboy–almost undecipherable. With some study I made out these words:

MISTER GABRIEL, MAX’S FRIEND: Cæsar wants that thing to put on the front of the column.

BILL.

It took me a few minutes to understand it. At last I realized that Cæsar’s officer–Bill–had sent for the inscription for the monument, about which Cæsar had spoken to Max.

I called down to the messenger to wait, and that I would give it to him.

I sat down, and, after some thought, wrote, on the back of the wrapping-paper, these words:

THIS GREAT MONUMENT
IS
ERECTED BY
CÆSAR LOMELLINI,
COMMANDING GENERAL OF
THE BROTHERHOOD OF DESTRUCTION, IN COMMEMORATION OF THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF MODERN CIVILIZATION.

It is composed of the bodies of a quarter of a million of human beings, who were once the rulers, or the instruments of the rulers, of this mighty, but, alas! this ruined city.

They were dominated by leaders who were altogether evil.

They corrupted the courts, the juries, the newspapers, the legislatures, the congresses, the ballot-boxes and the hearts and souls of the people.

They formed gigantic combinations to plunder the poor; to make the miserable more miserable; to take from those who had least and give it to those who had most.

They used the machinery of free government to effect oppression; they made liberty a mockery, and its traditions a jest; they drove justice from the land and installed cruelty, ignorance, despair and vice in its place.

Their hearts were harder than the nether mill-stone; they degraded humanity and outraged God.

At length indignation stirred in the vasty courts of heaven; and overburdened human nature rose in universal revolt on earth.

By the very instruments which their own wickedness had created they perished; and here they lie, sepulchred in stone, and heaped around explosives as destructive as their own lives. We execrate their vices, while we weep for their misfortunes. They were the culmination of centuries of misgovernment; and they paid an awful penalty for the sins of generations of short-sighted

and selfish ancestors, as well as for their own cruelty and wickedness.

Let this monument, O man! stand forever.

Should civilization ever revive on earth, let the human race come hither and look upon this towering shaft, and learn to restrain selfishness and live righteously. From this ghastly pile let it derive the great lesson, that no earthly government can endure which is not built on mercy, justice, truth and love.

I tied the paper to the cord and lowered it down to the waiting messenger.

At noon Max returned. His clothes were torn, his face pale, his eyes wild-looking, and around his head he wore a white bandage, stained with his own blood. Christina screamed and his mother fainted.

“What is the matter, Max?” I asked.

“It is all in vain,” he replied despairingly; “I thought I would be able to create order out of chaos and reconstruct society. But that dream is past.”

“What has happened?” I asked.

“I went this morning to Prince Cabano’s palace to get Cæsar to help me. He had held high carnival all night and was beastly drunk, in bed. Then I went out to counsel with the mob. But another calamity had happened. Last night the vice-president–the Jew–fled, in one of the Demons, carrying away one hundred million dollars that had been left in his charge.”

“Where did he go?” I asked.

“No one knows. He took several of his trusted followers, of his own nation, with him. It is rumored that he has gone to Judea; that he proposes to make himself king in Jerusalem, and, with his vast wealth, re-establish the glories of Solomon, and revive the ancient splendors of the Jewish race, in the midst of the ruins of the world.”

“What effect has his flight had on the mob?” I asked.

“A terrible effect. They are wild with suspicions and full of rumors. They gathered, in a vast concourse, around the Cabano palace, to prevent Cæsar leaving them, like the cripple. They believe that he, too, has another hundred millions hidden in the cellars of the palace. They clamored for him to appear. The tumult of the mob was frightful.

“I rose to address them from the steps of the palace. I told them they need not fear that Cæsar would leave them–he was dead drunk, asleep in bed. If they feared treachery, let them appoint a committee to search the palace for treasure. But–I went on–there was a great danger before them which they had not thought of. They must establish some kind of government that they would all obey. If they did not they would soon be starving. I explained to them that this vast city, of ten million inhabitants, had been fed by thousands of carloads of food which were brought in, every day, from the outside world. Now the cars had ceased to run, The mob had eaten up all the food in the shops, and tomorrow they would begin to feel the pangs of starvation. And I tried to make them understand what it meant for ten million people to be starving together.

“They became very quiet. One man cried out:

“‘What would you have us do?’

“‘You must establish a provisional government. You must select one man to whose orders you will all submit. Then you must appoint a board of counselors to assist him. Then the men among you who are engineers and conductors of trains of cars and of air-lines must reassume their old places; and they must go forth into the country and exchange the spoils you have gathered for cattle and flour and vegetables, and all other things necessary for life.’

“‘He wants to make himself a king,’ growled one ruffian.

“‘Yes,’ said another, ‘and set us all at work again.’

“‘He’s a d—-d aristocrat, anyhow,’ cried a third.

“But there were some who had sense enough to see that I was right, and the mob at once divided into two clamorous factions. Words led to blows. A number were killed. Three wretches rushed at me. I shot one dead, and wounded another; the third gave me a flesh wound on the head with a sword; my hat broke the force of the blow, or it would have made an end of me. As he raised his weapon for a second stroke, I shot him dead. My friends forced me through the door of the palace, in front of which I had been standing; we double-locked it to keep out the surging wild beasts; I fled through the back door, and reached here.

“All hope is gone,” he added sadly; “I can do nothing now but provide for our own safety.”

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE FLIGHT

“Yes,” I replied, “we cannot remain here another night. Think what would be the effect if a fire broke out anywhere in this block!”

He looked at me in a startled way.

“True,” he said; “we must fly. I would cheerfully give my life if its sacrifice would arrest these horrors; but it would not.”

Christina came and stood beside him. He wrote a letter to General Quincy. He made three copies of it. Selecting three of his best men, he gave each a copy, and told them to make their way together, well armed, to the armory of the airships. It was a perilous journey, but if either of them reached his destination, he was to deliver his copy of the letter to the general. In it Max asked General Quincy to send him one of the “Demons,” as promised, that night at eight o’clock; and he also requested, as a signal that the messengers had reached him and that the air-ship would come, that he would send up a single Demon, high in the air, at once on receiving the letter.

We went to the roof with our field-glasses. In two hours, we thought, the messengers, walking rapidly, would reach the armory. Two hours passed. Nothing was visible in the heavens in the direction of the armory, although we swept the whole region with our glasses. What if our messengers had all been slain? What if General Quincy refused to do as he had agreed, for no promises were likely to bind a man in such a dreadful period of anarchy? Two hours and a quarter–two hours and a half passed, and no signal. We began to despair. Could we survive another night of horrors? At last

Estella, who had been quietly looking to the west with her glass, cried out:

“See! there is something rising in the air.”

We looked. Yes, thank heaven! it was the signal. The Demon rose like a great hawk to a considerable height, floated around for awhile in space, and then slowly descended.

It would come!

All hands were set at work. A line was formed from the roof to the rooms below; and everything of value that we desired to carry with us was passed from hand to hand along the line and placed in heaps, ready for removal. Even the women joined eagerly in the work. We did not look for our messengers; they were to return to us in the air-ship.

The afternoon was comparatively quiet. The mobs on the street seemed to be looking for food rather than treasure. They were, however, generally resting, worn out; they were sleeping–preparing for the evening. With nightfall the saturnalia of death would begin again with redoubled force.

We ate our dinner at six; and then Mr. Phillips suggested that we should all join in family prayers. We might never have another opportunity to do so, he said. He prayed long and earnestly to God to save the world and protect his dear ones; and we all joined fervently in his supplications to the throne of grace.

At half past seven, equipped for the journey, we were all upon the roof, looking out in the direction of the west for the coming of the Demon. A little before eight we saw it rise through the twilight above the armory. Quincy, then, was true to his pledge. It came rapidly toward us, high in the air; it circled around, and at last began to descend just over our heads. It paused about ten feet above the roof, and two ladders were let down. The ladies and Mr. Phillips were first helped up to the deck of the vessel; and the men began to carry up the boxes, bales, trunks, money, books and instruments we had collected together.

Just at this moment a greater burst of tumult reached my ears. I went to the parapet and looked down. Up the street, to the north, came a vast concourse of people. It stretched far back for many blocks. My first notion was that they were all drunk, their outcries were so vociferous. They shouted, yelled and screamed. Some of them bore torches, and at their head marched a ragged fellow with a long pole, which he carried upright before him. At the top of it was a black mass, which I could not make out in the twilight. At this instant they caught sight of the Demon, and the uproar redoubled; they danced like madmen, and I could hear Max’s name shouted from a hundred lips.

“What does it mean?” I asked him.

“It means that they are after me. Hurry up, men,” he continued, “hurry up.”

We all sprang to work; the women stood at the top and received the smaller articles as a line of men passed them up.

Then came a thunderous voice from below:

“Open the door, or we will break it down.”

Max replied by casting a bomb over the parapet. It exploded, killing half a dozen men. But this mob was not to be intimidated like the thieves. The bullets began to fly; fortunately the gathering darkness protected us. The crowd grew blacker, and more dense and turbulent. Then a number of stalwart fellows appeared, bearing a long beam, which they proposed to use as a battering-ram, to burst open the door, which had resisted all previous attacks.

“Bring down one of the death bombs,” said Max to the men in the Demon.

Two stout fellows, belonging to the air-ship, carried down, carefully, between them, a great black sphere of iron.

“Over with it!” cried Max.

There was a crash, an explosion; the insurgents caught a whiff of the poisoned air; the men dropped the beam; there was a rush backward amid cries of terror, and the street was clear for a considerable space around the house.

“Hurry, men, hurry!” cried Max.

I peeped over the parapet. A number of the insurgents were rushing into a house three doors distant. In a few moments they poured out again, looking behind them as they ran.

“I fear they have fired that house,” I said to Max.

“I expected as much,” he replied, quietly.

“Hurry, men, hurry,” he again cried.

The piles on the roof were diminishing rapidly. I turned to pass up bundles of my precious books. Another sound broke on my ears; a roaring noise that rapidly increased–it was the fire. The mob cheered. Then bursts of smoke poured out of the windows of the doomed house; then great arms and hands of flame reached out and snapped and clutched at the darkness, as if they would drag down ancient Night itself, with all its crown of stars, upon the palpitating breast of the passionate conflagration. Then the roof smoked; then it seemed to burst open, and vast volumes of flame and smoke and showers of sparks spouted forth. The blaze brought the mob into fearful relief, but fortunately it was between us and the great bulk of our enemies.

“My God,” said Max, “it is Cæsar’s head!”

I looked, and there, sure enough, upon the top of the long pole I had before noticed, was the head of the redoubtable giant. It stood out as if it had been painted in gory characters by the light of the burning house upon that background of darkness. I could see the glazed and dusty eyes; the protruding tongue; the great lower jaw hanging down in hideous fashion; and from the thick, bull-like neck were suspended huge gouts of dried and blackened blood.

“It is the first instinct of such mobs,” said Max, quietly, to suspect their leaders and slay them. They killed Cæsar, and then came after me. When they saw the air-ship they were confirmed in their suspicions; they believe that I am carrying away their treasure.”

I could not turn my eyes from that ferocious head. It fascinated me. It waved and reeled with the surging of the mob. It seemed to me to be executing a hideous dance in mid-air, in the midst of that terrible scene; it floated over it like a presiding demon. The protruding tongue leered at the blazing house and the unspeakable horrors of that assemblage, lit up, as it was, in all its awful features, by the towering conflagration.

The crowd yelled and the fire roared. The next house was blazing now, and the roof of the one nearest us was smoking. The mob, perceiving that we did not move, concluded that the machinery of the air-ship was broken, and screamed with joy as the flames approached us.

Up, up, went bundle and package and box; faster, and faster, and faster. We were not to be intimidated by fire or mobs! The roof of the house next us was now blazing, and we could hear the fire, like a furnace, roaring within it.

The work is finished; every parcel is safe.

“Up, up, men!”

Max and I were the last to leave the roof; it had become insufferably hot. We stood on the deck; the engineer touched the lever of the electric engine; the great bird swayed for an instant, and then began to rise, like a veritable Phoenix from its nest of flame, surrounded by cataracts of sparks. As the mob saw us ascend, veiled dimly, at first, by that screen of conflagration, they groaned with dismay and disappointment. The bullets flew and hissed around us, but our metallic sides laughed them to scorn. Up, up, straight and swift as an arrow we rose. The mighty city lay unrolled below us, like a great map, starred here and there with burning houses. Above the trees of Union Square, my glass showed me a white line, lighted by the bon-fires, where Cæsar’s Column was towering to the skies, bearing the epitaph of the world.

I said to Max:

“What will those millions do to-morrow?”

“Starve,” he said.

“What will they do next week?”

“Devour each other,” he replied.

There was silence for a time.

“Will not civil government rise again out of this ruin?” I asked.

“Not for a long time,” he replied. “Ignorance, passion, suspicion, brutality, criminality, will be the lions in the path. Men who have such dreadful memories of labor can scarcely be forced back into it. And who is to employ them? After about three-fourths of the human family have died of hunger, or been killed, the remainder, constituting, by the law of the survival of the fittest, the most powerful and brutal, will find it necessary, for self-defense against each other, to form squads or gangs. The greatest fighter in each of these will become chief, as among all savages. Then the history of the world will be slowly repeated. A bold ruffian will conquer a number of the adjacent squads, and become a king. Gradually, and in its rudest forms, labor will begin again; at first exercised principally by slaves. Men will exchange liberty for protection. After a century or two a kind of commerce may arise. Then will follow other centuries of wars, between provinces or nations. A new aristocracy will spring up. Culture will lift its head. A great power, like Rome in the old world, may arise. Some vast superstition may take possession of the world; and Alfred, Victoria and Washington may be worshiped, as Saturn, Juno and Hercules were in the past; with perhaps dreadful and bloody rites like those of the Carthaginians and ancient Mexicans. And so, step by step, mankind will re-enact the great human drama, which begins always with a tragedy, runs through a comedy, and terminates in a catastrophe.”

The city was disappearing–we were over the ocean–the cool salt breeze was refreshing. We both looked back.

“Think,” I said, “what is going on yonder.”

Max shuddered. There was a sullen light in his eyes. He looked at his father, who was on his knees praying.

“I would destroy the world,” he said, “to save him from a living death.”

He was justifying himself unto himself.

“Gabriel,” he said, after a pause, “if this outbreak had not occurred now, yet would it certainly have come to pass. It was but a question of time. The breaking-strain on humanity was too great. The world could not have gone on; neither could it have turned back. The crash was inevitable. It may be God’s way of wiping off the blackboard. It may be that the ancient legends of the destruction of our race by flood and fire are but dim remembrances of events like that which is now happening.”

“It may be so, Max,” I replied; and we were silent.

Even the sea bore testimony to the ruin of man. The lighthouses no longer held up their fingers of flame to warn the mariner from the treacherous rocks. No air-ship, brilliant with many lights shining like innumerable eyes, and heavy with passengers, streamed past us with fierce swiftness, splitting the astonished and complaining air. Here and there a sailing vessel, or a steamer, toiled laboriously along, little dreaming that, at their journey’s end, starving creatures would swarm up their sides to kill and devour.

How still and peaceful was the night–the great, solemn, patient night! How sweet and pure the air! How delightful the silence to ears that had rung so lately with the clamors of that infuriated mob! How pleasant the darkness to eyeballs seared so long by fire and flame and sights of murder! Estella and Christina came and sat down near us. Their faces showed the torture they had endured,–not so much from fear as from the shock and agony with which goodness contemplates terrific and triumphant evil.

I looked into the grand depths of the stars above us; at that endless