“THE DAY; OR, The Passing of a Throne.”

Otago Witness, Issue 3195, 9 June 1915, Page 68

“THE DAY; OR, The Passing of a Throne.”

By FRED M. WHITE

the novelist.

[Published bx Special Arrangement.)

(Copyright.)

CHAPTER XXIX.—“THE CITY OF OREADFUL inIGHT.” incredible thing, a gloomy picture almost beyond belief. Picture it if you please! London .without water! Six millions of souls without the element which to mortals is of more vital importance than food and fire. Ask the -man—and there are many oi them —who has passed days and nights after some terrible mining disaster cut of from the world down there below, which he suffered from most —hunger or thirst? There would be only one reply, and that to the effect that the pangs of hunger are as nothing compared with the torture of thirst. It might be argued that such a thing could not happen except in the pages of a storv. And yet it could happen easily enough. It is impossible to conceive that the elaborate German spy campaign could overlook the chances of launching a thunderbolt like this. It is as inevitable as the sun will rise to-morrow that many an hour had been spent in Berlin studviiw the strength and weakness of England’s water supply. A successful attack upon this meant a far greater catastrophe than the landing of a couple of German Army Corps on the south coast. And the thing could be done with the help of a handful of desperate men properly trained for the work. We know now that near many French towns the German Intelligence Department had prepared concrete beds for their siege guns, under the very eyes of then" unsuspecting neighbours. And it needed no elaborate siege train here to cut the teeming millions of London from contact with the water supply. Reservoirs tor the most part are placed on high and open ground, and the surroundings are eagerly sought for building sites. What suspicion would be excited then when Herr Hamburger, the respectable and mild-mannered stockbroker, announces to his friends that he was building himself a house on a large piece of land he had bought incidentally in the neighbourhood of some great watershed ? What more natural than that he should spend his Saturday afternoons placidly fishing in the great reservoir? There would be nothing to prevent him from excavating here and draining there, and at the same time laying his secret mine to be lost underground perhaps for years. At anvrate the thing was done, and that- slender little woman in the silk dressing-gown, ■ looking down upon the excited mob below, ■ had brought the catastrophe about. Hers was the weak hand that had pressed the button and set the deadly machine in motion. There was no triumph on her face, merely an amused smile on her lips, for she was no self-sacrificing patriot, and this stupendous thing had been done entirely in the way of business. She was pleased because 1 she had earned her pay, and the rest mattered nothing. It would he inconvenient, of course, to leave London just now when it was thronged with people, but it'was no far cry to Brighton, and the journey by car would be a pleasant one. »■ She would wait a day or two until the nuisance became intolerable, and then she would repair to the queen of wateringplaces for the winter. She turned to her bewildered maid, and demanded that her hair should be done. “I suppose we must make the best of it,” she smiled. “ What a horrid nuisance those Germans are! They are always doing something silly. It’s horrible not to be able to have a bath; but I must put up with it. And no tea either. I daresav the trouble .is greatly exaggerated. These Sunday papers are always so full of scares.”

Down below the crowd was getting thicker. There was no panic as yet, nothing but a feeling of stupor and amazement, and in one or two frivolous quarters a disposition to regard the trouble as a joke. But as the morning wore on, and the papers came out with special editions the full extent of the cataclysm began to manifest itself. The fountain heads of all the big reservoirs had been blown away, and though the damage was local and capable of repair it w'ould have been quite -sufficient to cut off the supply and empty huge lakes over the surrounding country. Later on in the day other catastrophes were mentioned. Some of "the suburbs were flooded out, and a great manv of the houses -were up to the first floor in water. In other districts the force of the water had washed scores of houses away, and it was reported that many li?ts had been lost. It seemed stranfe, and a tragedv in ' its way, that the cause of this mischief was the precious fluid which in other districts was’ its. weight in gold. True, there whs the Thames to fall back upon, but already the medical authorities had issued warnings urgently impressing upon London the necessity of not-drinking from any open stream. And indeed this recklessness on the

part of people constituted in itself a fresh and terrible danger. In any case London was terribly short of doctors. Hundreds had gone to the front to aid the wounded, and whole battalions of them had been drafted to the big temporary hospitals all over the country.

By afternoon it became known that no water supply could be expected in London under a fortnight. The reservoirs were all empty now, and it was possible to ascertain the full extent of the damage. The waters had subsided, and in many districts Ironses of all kinds had to be abandoned in consequence of the enormous amount of silt and mud that had been brought down with the flood. There had been no rain either to speak of for months. The Thames and its tributaries were very low, and the reservoirs correspondingly so, or the disaster would have been still greater. The crowd in the streets got thicker and thicker as the true inwardness of the trouble came home to the minds ot the people. The idle and the curious began to realise it when the time for the midday meal came, the Sunday dinner, which is a national institution with the average Briton, and the knowledge that there was nothing but bread and meat, as it was 'quite impossible to cook anything in the way of vegetables. This was a blow that struck right into the heart of things. sWould there be any bread on the morrow, people began to wonder. For bread cannot be made without water, and bread was the staple food of thousands of them.

And again, the possession of a joint of meat in the future had no attractions, seeing that it could be cooked only in an oven or a frying pan. It was only by these slow -degrees that London began to feel the cold grip round the heart of it.

There were perhaps only two people in the metropolis at that moment who could afford to smile at all this misery. Lady Loxton was one of these and Alonzo was the other. Alonzo strolled round about luncheon time to find his fellow conspirator daintily lunching on a game pic and drinking a glass of champagne with it.

“ No, thank you,” Alonzo said. “ I lunched at the Grand Imperial. They have their own water supply, and, therefore, I managed to get my share of vegetables. I shan’t be able to stay here, Marie. I eat practically no meat, as you know, and without plenty of vegetables the most devoted of your slaves would pine and die. But we have given them something to think about.” “ They are just beginning to think,” Lady Loxton laughed. “It is a great achievement to make Englishman think. They are so sure of themselves, so certain of their ground, that any big disaster dees not enter into their calculations. I went out after breakfast, and I have been wandering about for hours. Never have I seen the streets of London s o full. For the moment all class distinctions seem to have been forgotten, and in the common misery the lord and the chimney-sweep are brothers. And the worst is yet to come.” * “ That’s all right,” Alonzo said carelessly. “But what are you going to do? London will be a howling 'wilderness, a city of the dead for weeks to come. Everybody who can get away will go.” “Oh, I am off to Brighton,” Lady Loxton said gaily. “All the same, I shall stay as long as I can. I am curious to see the result of our exploit. _ 1 am proud of it in a way—proud to think that a woman could plunge the greatest city in the world into woe. I shall be all right—don’t worry about me.” Alonzo was not worrying in the least. Nor was he in the least curious to study London in its new aspect. Winter was drawing near now, and the wily cosmopolitan scoundrel was. oeginning to pine for the sun. He had done wonderfully well, and it seemed to him that this latest exploit was the crowning point of his career. He had “ made good,” and now he was in touch with something like a fortune. He was making up his mind as to which bright and sunny Spanish health resort he should repair to, at any rate till the war was over. He knew what London would be like. “I couldn’t stand it,” he said. “Who was the English poet who wrote about the city of dreadful night? Well, my dear Marie, That is what London is going to be. The police will not have to go about, prosecuting people for exhibiting brilliant lights. There won’t be any at all. You can’t manufacture gas without engines, and you can’t run engines without steam, and you can’t make steam without water. Neither can you have electricity without the necessary machine to make it. Oh, I dare say that some of the big stations have their tanks full, but bow long^will that supply last? Picture to yourself London in total darkness for 14 hours on end. By to-morrow oil lamps and paraffin will be at famine prices. Oh, no, I have no use for London like that. And therefore, I am getting away without delay and taking all my” petrol in the car with me. Lady Loxton refused to accept this gloomy picture. “ Your sketch has no terrors’ for me,” sire said. “ This will be something to talk about till one’s dying day. I shall go and see everything, I shall mix with the people, and all the time I shall say to myself this thing was done by little me. "You may laugh, but there is a certain satisfaction in it; oh, yes.”

CHAPTER XXX.—LIST PALACE YARD. As the shades of night began to fall over London so did the spirits of the people, drop. The catastrophe had gone right home to them now, and as the minutes crept on so the outlook grew darker and darker. It was maddening to stand there on the Embankment watching the broad river flowing to the sea and to realise that not one drop of that precious fluid was available. No doubt to a certain extent the Thames would be used, but only for driving machinery and such kindred purposes. The people were be-

ginning to walk about in dejected attitudes, but here and there were signs of excitement, struggling masses of men hustling and shouting a> if they had found some precious treasure for which they were madly striving. Lady Loxton, wandering from place to place, found herself suddenly tangled in with the human mob at the corner of Park lane. She was tossed hither and thither like a cork on a n cream. ~<oc that' she was in the least frightened; she was too full of curiosity an'd the queer sense of elation for that. She realised that this ,mob of some hundreds were gathered outside a big Louse there, the doors of which were open. On the steps a handful of footmen were striving in vain to keep the mob back. Strangely enough, the attitude of the intruders was not a threatening one. It did not suggest that they were looting, and Lady Boston abandoned the theory that the people were pillaging the house of some wealthy German spy. Presently a big man with a keen, alert face and a heavy moustache burst from the house and fought his way down the steps, he was evidently not the master of the place, nor did he appear to have any quarrel with the mob. As far as Lady Loxton could see he was intent upon guarding some gleaming object which he held in his left hand.

As he burst into the roadway Lady Loxton saw to Iter surprise that the man was Lord Stranmouth, a well-known sporting peer of her acquaintance. She made her way towards him smiling. “What is the meaning of this?” she asked.

“ Why, it’s Lady Loxton,” Stranmouth exclaimed. “This is no place for a timid little thing like you.” “ Perhaps not,” Lady Loxton said. “ But I’m not afraid. But tell me, where did you steal that magnificent toilet jug from? It looks to me like real Sevres.”

“ I dai’e say it is,” Stranmouth said coolly. ‘‘My dear lady, all London*has gone mad. We are like a lot of dogs on the verge of hydrophobia. ‘ Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink,’ as the poet says. My womenkind were dying for a cup of tea, and they implored me to get them some water. Then I suddenly thought of my plutocratic friend Sandersgate, yonder. I knew that he had an artesian well in his palace, so I stepped over to borrow some. The handiest thing I could find was a big water jug. So I just carried it ’’to my place round the corner, never dreaming that I should be spotted, but, by gad, I was, like a shot by some people, arid now apparently half London is on the job. I am sorry for Sandersgate; but it can’t be helped. Oh no, you don’t, my friend. Oh, no, you don’t.” Stranmouth turned upon two men who attempted to snatch the precious jug from his grasp. They were not street loafers of the usual predatory class that appear like flies in the sunshine at the first breath national calamity, but men exceedingly well dressed and bearing every evidence of prosperity. Stranmouth’s hand shot out, and Iris opponents looked down the barrel of a revolver. “I’m not riled,” the former said. ‘‘.l’m only looking after mvself like all the rest of ns. By Jove, why you are the man who beat me in the final tie of the St. William Challenge Vase at Sandwich last year.” One of the two men laughed goodtemperedly. “ That’s all right,” ho said. “ All’s fair-in love and war, you know. My family also are dying for a cup of tea, and my friend here, who is staying with me, suggested that we should commandeer your jug. Glad you bear no malice.” “ Not a scrap,” Stranmouth said, cheerfully. “But you don’t get any of this water all the same. I managed to smuggle across a few jugfuls to go on with,, but I’m not likely to get any more. Why don’t you take a taxi and go down to the city and make your way into one of the breweries down there? They have ■all got their • own wells. Go and fill a cask or two, and you will be all right for some days to come. Or—stop!” What’s the matter with the House of Commons —they have got an ample supply there.”

The two men took up the suggestion with enthusiasm. They turned a way without another word, intent upon being first in the field. But Stranmouth’s dear, penetrating voice had carried further than he had intended, and his suggestion was soon passed from lip to lip. “ The House of Commons,” the word ran round. “Plenty of water in the House of Commons. Come on.” It was a motley crowd that turned away and made their way along by the shortest route in the direction of the Embankment. There could not have been less than thousand of them altogether—men and women, —carrying all sorts of utensils and seeing nothing wild or strange iii this amazing raid. Thev were all well clad, all people who lived in flats and houses round about the neighbourhood of Park lane. It was a moneyed mob. an eager regiment of people accustomed to every luxury—to their motors, their country houses, and their Scotch moors. But all their wealth and all their influence at that moment could not procure a jug of water wherewith to make a cup of " tea. It was a strange sight, without doubt the strangest sight that London had witnessed any time in the last five hundred years.

They streamed along, reaching their destination af length, and hammered on the doors of the House of Commons, both in Pal ace Yard and the entrance leading to the Lobby. The guard inside hastened to see what was the cause of this unseemly disturbance, but they were swept aside, and the mob in ever-increasing numbers flowed along the passages and thence into the Chamber itself. Just for a moment it looked as if violence would be done, for the guard was alarmed and, moreover, armed. Then a tall man, broad and commanding, pushed his way forward, and in a few words explained the situation. . “\Ve have only come here after water,”

ho said. “As you know, there is not a drop to be had in London. The calamity ii bad enough to people in good health, bat for invalids it is terrible.”

Lu was useless for the guard to protest, useless to argue with the mob that tilled the Chamber to overflowing. They droped into the green-covered seats, they occupied the Treasury bench, they lounged) upon the table —-a curious sight in the most decorous national house of assembly in the world. And all this on a quiet and peaceful Sunday afternoon, nearly two thousand years after the advent of Christianity. f!

Presently they moved along towards the kitchens and down below to where the taps and water mains had been established. It was useless to attempt to preserve any semblance of order; it was a casa of the weakest going to the wall. And all the time the mob was getting more dense as the rumour spread far and wide that there was water to spare within the sacred precincts of the blouse of Commons. For two hours they strove and sweated there, until Palace Yard was one black mass and the police came in force and pushed them back. Breathless and g-ddy, Lady Loxton found herself presently clinging to the railings and holding on to them as if she had been a rock in the midst of a torrent that was sweeping her headlong to destruction. Her dress was in rags, her blouse had been half torn away, and her hair was hanging in shining masses down her back. Still she was not afraid, she was still humanly curious and fully alive to the scene that was going on round her. She saw strong men who would in the ordinary course of things have shrunk from such brutality, snatching jugs and bottles out of the hands of women. She saw a woman, fat and stout and smothered with diamonds, almost on her knees before a ragged urchin offering him a sovereign for a whisky bottle filed with the precious water. The small boy eyed the glittering coin stolidly. . ‘‘Not me.’Lhe said. ‘‘Go on, you g.eedy old beast. If you wants water, g and get it yourself.” He turned his back resolutely did that small waif of humanity who had never handled a sovereign- in his life, and who had perhaps never yet known what it was to eat a hearty meal. And all this in the early hours of the great catastrophe. What would it then be before a week had passed ? All these and many more curious phases of humanity Lady Loxton watched before the roaring crowd had moved on, and she war free to follow them. In spite of her callousness, she was beginning to feel something of her great responsibility. She knew that there • was far worse to come, she knew what a drab and dingy crowd this would be before the end of the week. In* her mind’s eye she could see the smart London business man going to work with his collar and his linen as grimy and dirty as that of a labourer on a Saturday night. For no laundry work would be possible, white garments of everv kind would be things of the past. This was a small matter by comparison, but one that would appeal essentially to the female mind. And then there came another incident that opened up a fresh field, a new disaster ’that loomed over London like a hideous spectre. For there came a blowing of whistles and a great clatter of hoofs, and a fire engine flashed by like a great red and gold comet.

Fire! And London without a drop of water !

(To be continued.) /