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 {|style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; border-collapse:collapse; line-height:95%"
 * INDEX
 *
 * Achilles and the tortoise, 80 ff, 89 ff
 * Acquaintance, the relation of, 209 ff
 * Alexander, 125
 * American Realists, the, 134
 * Aristotle, 42, 76, 97
 *
 * Bacon, 41
 * Bergson, 14 ff, 22, 105, 128, 185 ff, 203
 * Berkeley, 97, 132
 * Blake, 1
 * Bosanquet, 99
 * Broad, 89 n
 *
 * Calculus, the, 82
 * Cantor, Georg, 64, 81 ff, 85, 91
 * Carlyle, 50, 82
 * Cause, the conception of, 135 n, 180 ff
 *
 * Christianity and renunciation, 51
 * Chuang Tzu, 106
 * Construction of permanent things and matter, 169 ff
 * Constructions, logical, 155 ff
 *
 * Darwin, 15, 23. 43
 * Dedekind, 64, 81 ff, 85
 * Descartes, 97, 126
 * Descriptions, 175, 214 ff
 *
 * Education, 37 ff
 * Euclid, 62, 92, 94
 * Evolutionism, 23 ff, 28
 *
 * Fano, 93
 * Faraday, 34
 * Free will, 205 ff
 * Frege, 78 n
 *
 * Galileo, 42
 * Gladstone, 177
 * Good and evil, 26 ff
 *
 * Hegel, 8, 10, 18, 85, 97, 105 ff
 * Heine, 113
 * Heraclitus, 1 ff, 10
 * Hertz, 34
 * Holt, 177 n
 * Hume, 1, 97
 *
 * Infinite, the mathematical, 84 ff
 *
 * James, William, 100
 * Jones, Miss E. E. C., 224 n, 225
 * Judgment, 219 ff
 *
 * Kant, 85, 96, 97, 99, 118 ff
 * Knowledge by acquaintance, 209 ff; by description, 214 ff
 *
 * Laplace, 23
 * Leibniz, 76, 79, 82 ff, 97, 126, 144, 160
 * Locke, 97
 * Logic, the laws of, 68 ff
 *
 * Macaulay and Taylor's theorem, 95
 * Malthus, 43
 * Mathematics, 58 ff; and the Metaphysicians, 74 ff; and logic, 75 ff; and the infinitesimal. 82 ff
 *
 * Matter, the nature of, 125 ff; definition of, 164 ff
 * Maxwell, 34
 * Meaning and denotation, 223 ff
 * Meinong, 174, 220 n, 225
 * Militarism, 50
 * Mill, 185, 193 ff
 * Mysticism and logic, 1 ff
 *
 * }
 *
 * Galileo, 42
 * Gladstone, 177
 * Good and evil, 26 ff
 *
 * Hegel, 8, 10, 18, 85, 97, 105 ff
 * Heine, 113
 * Heraclitus, 1 ff, 10
 * Hertz, 34
 * Holt, 177 n
 * Hume, 1, 97
 *
 * Infinite, the mathematical, 84 ff
 *
 * James, William, 100
 * Jones, Miss E. E. C., 224 n, 225
 * Judgment, 219 ff
 *
 * Kant, 85, 96, 97, 99, 118 ff
 * Knowledge by acquaintance, 209 ff; by description, 214 ff
 *
 * Laplace, 23
 * Leibniz, 76, 79, 82 ff, 97, 126, 144, 160
 * Locke, 97
 * Logic, the laws of, 68 ff
 *
 * Macaulay and Taylor's theorem, 95
 * Malthus, 43
 * Mathematics, 58 ff; and the Metaphysicians, 74 ff; and logic, 75 ff; and the infinitesimal. 82 ff
 *
 * Matter, the nature of, 125 ff; definition of, 164 ff
 * Maxwell, 34
 * Meaning and denotation, 223 ff
 * Meinong, 174, 220 n, 225
 * Militarism, 50
 * Mill, 185, 193 ff
 * Mysticism and logic, 1 ff
 *
 * }
 *
 * Laplace, 23
 * Leibniz, 76, 79, 82 ff, 97, 126, 144, 160
 * Locke, 97
 * Logic, the laws of, 68 ff
 *
 * Macaulay and Taylor's theorem, 95
 * Malthus, 43
 * Mathematics, 58 ff; and the Metaphysicians, 74 ff; and logic, 75 ff; and the infinitesimal. 82 ff
 *
 * Matter, the nature of, 125 ff; definition of, 164 ff
 * Maxwell, 34
 * Meaning and denotation, 223 ff
 * Meinong, 174, 220 n, 225
 * Militarism, 50
 * Mill, 185, 193 ff
 * Mysticism and logic, 1 ff
 *
 * }
 *
 * Matter, the nature of, 125 ff; definition of, 164 ff
 * Maxwell, 34
 * Meaning and denotation, 223 ff
 * Meinong, 174, 220 n, 225
 * Militarism, 50
 * Mill, 185, 193 ff
 * Mysticism and logic, 1 ff
 *
 * }
 * Militarism, 50
 * Mill, 185, 193 ff
 * Mysticism and logic, 1 ff
 *
 * }
 *
 * }
 * }


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 sides, causing what may be called a virtual summit. It is better to have too many than too few, as accumulations of air may cause an enormous diminution in the quantity of water delivered. In all depressions discharge valves should be placed for emptying the pipes when desired, and for letting off the sediment which accumulates at such points. Automatic valves are frequently placed at suitable distances for cutting off the supply in case of a burst. At the inlet mouth of the pipe they may depend for their action on the sudden lowering of the water (due to a burst in the pipe) in the chamber from which they draw their supply, causing a float to sink and set the closing arrangement in motion. Those on the line of main are started by the increased velocity in the water, caused by the burst on the pipe at a lower level. The water, when thus accelerated, is able to move a disk hung in the pipe at the end of a lever and weighted so as to resist the normal velocity; this lever releases a catch, and a door is then gradually revolved by weights until it entirely closes the pipe. Reflux valves on the ascending leg of a siphon prevent water from flowing back in case of a burst below them; they have doors hung on hinges, opening only in the normal direction of flow. Due allowance must be made, in the amount of head allotted to a pipe, for any head which may be absorbed by such mechanical arrangements as those described where they offer opposition to the flow of the water. These large mains require most careful and gradual filling with water, and constant attention must be given to the air-valves to see that the gutta-percha balls do not wedge themselves in the openings. A large mass of water, having a considerable velocity, may cause a great many bursts by water-ramming, due to the admission of the water at too great a speed. In places where iron is absent and timber plentiful, as in some parts of America, pipes, even of large diameter and in the most important cases, are sometimes made of wooden staves hooped with iron. A description of two of these will be found below.

The Thirlmere Aqueduct is capable of conveying 50,000,000 gallons a day from Thirlmere, in the English lake district, to Manchester. The total length of 96 m. is made up of 14 m. of tunnels, 37 m. of cut-and-cover, and 45 m. of cast-iron pipes, five rows of the latter being required. The tunnels where lined, and the cut-and-cover, are formed of concrete, and are 7 ft. in height and width, the usual thickness of the concrete being 15 in. The inclination is 20 in. per mile. The floor is flat from side to side, and the side-walls are 5 ft. high to the springing of the arch, which has a rise of 2 ft. The water from the lake is received in a circular well 65 ft. deep and 40 ft. in diameter, at the bottom of which there is a ring of wire-gauze strainers. Wherever the concrete aqueduct is intersected by valleys, cast-iron pipes are laid; in the first instance only two of the five rows 40 in. in diameter were laid, the city not requiring its supply to be augmented by more than 20,000,000 gallons a day, but in 1907 it was decided to lay a third line. All the elaborate arrangements described above for stopping the water in case of a burst have been employed, and have perfectly fulfilled their duties in the few cases in which they have been called into action. The water is received in a service reservoir at Prestwich, near Manchester, from which it is supplied to the city. The supply from this source was begun in 1894. The total cost of the complete scheme may be taken at about £5,000,000, of which rather under £3,000,000 had been spent up to the date of the opening, at which time only one line of pipes had been laid.

The Vyrnwy Aqueduct was sanctioned by parliament in 1880 for the supply of Liverpool from North Wales, the quantity of water obtainable being at least 40,000,000 gallons a day. A tower built in the artificial lake from which the supply is derived, contains the inlet and arrangements for straining the water. The aqueduct is 68 m. in length, and for nearly the whole distance will consist of three lines of cast-iron pipes, two of which, varying in diameter from 42 in. to 39 in., are now in use. As the total fall between Vyrnwy and the termination at Prescot reservoirs is about 550 ft., arrangements had to be made to ensure that no part of the aqueduct be subjected to a greater pressure than is required for the actual discharge. Balancing reservoirs have therefore been constructed at five points on the line, advantage being taken of high ground where available, so that the total pressure is broken up into sections. At one of these points, where the ground level is 110 ft. below the hydraulic gradient, a circular tower is built, making a most imposing architectural feature in the landscape. At the crossing of the river Weaver, 100 ft. wide and 15 ft. deep, the three pipes, here made of steel, were connected together laterally, floated into position, and sunk into a dredged trench prepared to receive them. Under the river Mersey the pipes are carried in a tunnel, from which, during construction, the water was excluded by compressed air.

Denver Aqueduct.—The supply to Denver City, initiated by the Citizens Water Company in 1889, is derived from the Platte river, rising in the Rocky Mountains. The first aqueduct constructed is rather over 20 m. in length, of which a length of 16 m. is made of wooden stave pipe, 30 in. in diameter. The maximum pressure is that due to 185 ft. of water; the average cost of the wooden pipe was $1.36 per foot, and the capability of discharge 8,400,000 gallons a day. Within a year of the completion of the first conduit, it became evident that another of still greater capacity was required. This was completed in April 1893; it is 34 in. in diameter and will deliver 16,000,000 gallons a day. By increasing the head upon the first pipe, the combined discharge is 30,000,000 gallons a day. An incident in obtaining a temporary supply, without waiting for the completion of the second pipe, was the construction of two wooden pipes, 13 in. in diameter, crossing a stream with a span of 104 ft., and having no support other than that derived from their arched form. One end of the arch is 24 ft. above the other end, and, when filled with water, the deflection with eight men on it was only of an inch. A somewhat similar arch, 60 ft. span, occurs on the 34-in. pipe where it crosses a canal. Schuyler points out (Trans. Am. Soc. C. E. vol. xxxi. p. 148) that the fact that the entire water supply of a city of 150,000 inhabitants is conveyed in wooden mains, is so radical a departure from all precedents, that it is deserving of more than a passing notice. He says that it is manifestly and unreservedly successful, and has achieved an enormous saving in cost. The sum saved by the use of wooden, in preference to cast-iron pipes, is estimated at $1,100,000. It is perhaps necessary to state that the pipe is buried in the ground in the same way as metal pipes. The edges of the staves are dressed to the radius with a minute tongue in. high on one edge of each stave, but with no corresponding groove in the next stave; its object is to ensure a close joint when the bands are tightened up. Leaks seldom or never occur along the longitudinal seams, but the end shrinkage caused troublesome joint leaks. The shrinkage in California redwood, which had seasoned 60 to 90 days before milling, was frequently as much as 3 in. in the 20 staves that formed the 34-in. pipe, and the space so formed had to be filled by a special closing stave. Metallic tongues, in. deep, are inserted at the ends of abutting staves, in a straight saw cut. The bands, which are of mild steel, have a head at one end and a nut and washer at the other; the ends are brought together on a wrought-iron shoe, against which the nut and washer set. The staves forming the lower half of the pipe are placed on an outside, and the top staves on an inside, mould. While the bands are being adjusted the pipe is rounded out to bring the staves out full, and the staves are carefully driven home on to the abutting staves. The spacing of the bands depends on circumstances, but is about 150 bands per 100 ft. With low heads the limit of spacing was fixed at 17 in. The outer surface of the pipe, when charged, shows moisture oozing slightly over the entire surface. This condition Schuyler considers an ideal one for perfect preservation, and the staves were kept as thin as possible to ensure its occurrence. Samples taken from pipes in use from three to nine years are quite sound, and it is concluded that the wood will last as long as cast-iron if the pipe is kept constantly charged. The bands are the only perishable portion, and their life is taken at from fifteen to twenty years. Other portions of the second conduit for a length of nearly 3 m. were formed of concrete piping, 38 in. diameter, formed on a mould in the trench, the thickness being 2 to 3 in. So successful an instance of the use of wooden piping on a large scale is sure to lead to a large development of this type of aqueduct in districts where timber is plentiful and iron absent.

Pioneer Aqueduct, Utah.—The construction of the Pioneer Aqueduct, Utah, was begun in 1896 by the Pioneer Electric Power Company, near the city of Ogden, 35 m. north of Salt Lake City. The storage reservoir, from which it draws its water, will cover an area of 2000 acres, and contain about 15,000 million gallons of water. The aqueduct is a pipe 6 ft. in diameter, and of a total length of 6 m.; for a distance of rather more than 5 m. it is formed of wooden staves, the remainder, where the head exceeds 117 ft., being of steel. It is laid in a trench and covered to a depth of 3 ft. The greatest pressure on the steel pipe is 200 ℔ per sq. in., and the thickness varies from to  in. The pipe was constructed according to the usual practice of marine boiler-work for high pressures, and each section, about 9 ft. long, was dipped in asphalt for an hour. These sections were supported on timber blocking, placed from 5 to 9 ft. apart, and consisting of three to six pieces of 6 × 6 in. timbers laid one on the top of the other; they were then riveted together in the ordinary way. The wooden stave-pipe is of the type successfully used in the Western States for many years, but its diameter is believed to be unequalled for any but short lengths. There were thirty-two staves in the circle, 2 in. in thickness, and about 20 ft. long, hooped with round steel rods in. in diameter, each hoop being in two pieces. The pipe is supported at intervals of 8 ft. by sills 6 × 8 in. and 8 ft. long. The flow through it is 250 cubic ft. per second.

The Santa Ana Canal was constructed for irrigation purposes in California, and is designed to carry 240 cub. ft. of water per second (Trans. Am. Soc. C. E. vol. xxxiii. p. 99). The cross section of the flumes shows an elliptical bottom and straight sides consisting of wooden staves held together by

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{|style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; border-collapse:collapse; line-height:95%"
 * Necessity, the notion of, 207 ff
 * Nietzsche, 22, 50
 * Nunn, 125, 137 n, 153
 *
 * Parmenides, 7 ff, 18, 21
 * Particulars, awareness of, 210 ff
 * Peano, 78 ff, 93 ff
 * Perspectives, 139 ff; the space of, 158 ff
 *
 * Philosophy and logic, 111
 * Physics, sense-data and, 145 ff
 * Pierce, 76 n
 *
 * Plato, 1 ff, 10, 30, 60, 97
 * Pragmatism, 22, 105
 *
 * Realism and the analytic method, 120 ff
 * Reason and intuition, 12 ff
 * Relatives, the logic of, 76
 * Robb, 167 n
 *
 * Santayana, 2o
 * Sense-data, 147, 210 ff; and physics, 145 ff
 * Sensibilia, 148 ff
 * Space, 138 ff; private, 158 ff; the logical problem, 114 ff; the problem in physics, 115 ff; the epistemological problem, 118 ff
 * Systems, deterministic, 199; practically isolated, 198; relatively isolated, 197; mechanical, 201
 *
 * Time, 10, 21 ff, 141 ff, 167 ff
 * Tristram Shandy, the paradox of, 90 ff
 *
 * Unity and Plurality, 18 ff
 * Universals, awareness of, 212 ff
 *
 * Ward, 180
 * Weierstrass, 80, 82, 95
 * Whitehead, 117, 157, 175
 * Wolf, 173
 *
 * Zeno the Eleatic, 64, 80, 84, 89 ff
 * }
 * Robb, 167 n
 *
 * Santayana, 2o
 * Sense-data, 147, 210 ff; and physics, 145 ff
 * Sensibilia, 148 ff
 * Space, 138 ff; private, 158 ff; the logical problem, 114 ff; the problem in physics, 115 ff; the epistemological problem, 118 ff
 * Systems, deterministic, 199; practically isolated, 198; relatively isolated, 197; mechanical, 201
 *
 * Time, 10, 21 ff, 141 ff, 167 ff
 * Tristram Shandy, the paradox of, 90 ff
 *
 * Unity and Plurality, 18 ff
 * Universals, awareness of, 212 ff
 *
 * Ward, 180
 * Weierstrass, 80, 82, 95
 * Whitehead, 117, 157, 175
 * Wolf, 173
 *
 * Zeno the Eleatic, 64, 80, 84, 89 ff
 * }
 * Unity and Plurality, 18 ff
 * Universals, awareness of, 212 ff
 *
 * Ward, 180
 * Weierstrass, 80, 82, 95
 * Whitehead, 117, 157, 175
 * Wolf, 173
 *
 * Zeno the Eleatic, 64, 80, 84, 89 ff
 * }
 * Whitehead, 117, 157, 175
 * Wolf, 173
 *
 * Zeno the Eleatic, 64, 80, 84, 89 ff
 * }
 *
 * Zeno the Eleatic, 64, 80, 84, 89 ff
 * }
 * }
 * }


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 powerful though it is when harnessed to our new atomic motors, has produced a bi-product of weird potentialities. When I imprisoned this energy within a vacuum prism of Saigon's metallic glass, I became aware of a most singular phenomenon. This energy, when sealed in a vacuum, quickened the pulse of the universe, and shattered the world's yardstick of time. That is—the force of this newly-created energy is so potent, so far beyond anything man has yet dreamed of, that it moves faster than time itself. A paradox? Perhaps. But it is the sole actuating force of the Time Projector."

Vignot tugged at his beard. "These transparent walls around projector walls. What is their purpose?"

"Pure quartz. An outside as well as an inside wall with water between to keep the emanations from escaping. Karl, you'd better switch on our own power. I don't want to chance any fluctuation of the city current if I can help it. And phone the building engineer to start our basement dynamos."

A moment after Danzig had carried out these orders, the laboratory began to vibrate gently.

"There isn't much to be seen," explained Carruthers, "but the control board, the insulated chairs with their contact helmets, and the 21-inch circular prism of Saigon's metallic glass suspended between plastic posts which keeps the prism rigid."

He indicated the chairs. "Sit down, please, both of you. Karl, you take the chair near the power control station. Vignot, you sit in the center chair. And I'll take the one on the right which enables me to control and regulate the forces sealed within the Thoridium power plant which actuates the Time Projector. Is it all clear?"

"Not quite," said Vignot. "This metal helmet..."

"Place it over your head the same as I'm doing. And I'm warning you, Vignot, that you're going to be subject to some pain and bewildering sensations. Keep both palms on the metal handrests of the chair, and don't look at me, or at Danzig. Keep your eyes and mind focused on one point only—the Saigon prism."

He turned to the control panel beside him. "Now. I'll adjust the cycle of our explorations into the time period ten years in advance of this hour with an automatic shut-off just in case—"

"One more question," observed Vignot. "What part of us is it that goes forward in space?"

"All of us, and yet no part of us, for our bodies will actually remain here in these chairs. Always keep that in mind no matter what happens. We may be injured. We may be killed. But that will be in the future. And when the experiment has ended, we will find ourselves in these same chairs, neither injured or dead, but exactly as we are at this moment."

"Go ahead," snapped the chemist. "This waiting has become intolerable."

"Contact, Karl. The energy tube series first, using the odd numbers. Then switch to the even ones with a ten-second interval between. First contact. Good. Careful now—three, four, five—not yet—seven, eight, nine—contact points of the even-numbered series—Close your switch!"

ROM somewhere inside the laboratory came a sputtering crack. And across their field of vision shot a serpentine streamer of deep-red flame. It impinged against the prism and flowed over it like red dye.

Within the metal walls of the Thoridium power plant there was a sound like an imprisoned gale escaping. Carruthers listened for a disturbed moment, then he brought his mind back to the prism.

He saw it glowing redly then change slowly to orange and through the orderly


text: Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays/Index


text:
Author:Alcibiades

Works

 * Oration In Support of the Athenian Expedition to Sicily in The World's Famous Orations.
 * Oration To the Spartans in The World's Famous Orations.

Works about Alcibiades

 * "Alcibiades" in Plutarch's Lives, translated by Dryden.
 * "Alcibiades" in Plutarch's Lives, translated by Dryden.

title: Author:Alcibiades


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Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 02.djvu/73

 prismatic scheme of yellow and blue to violet. He braced himself for what lay beyond the violet. This was the breaking point between the present and the unknown future.

A gradual mistiness engulfed the laboratory, the prism and the Thoridium power plant.

The vibrations within the laboratory seemed to lessen in intensity. An eerie silence muffled all sounds. Almost imperceptibly the mist became denser. It enveloped the plastic posts like streamers of fog, then swirled around the glowing prism in a translucent, ghostly halo.

Its effect was hypnotic. He couldn't move his eyes. His mind lost its alertness and became sluggish. Slowly the violet glow faded into a color beyond the purple—a color he had never seen before.

This strange and unfamiliar hue distressed him, made him uneasy. He knew he was seeing something nature had never intended man to see, and in seeing it, he was being punished. Still, there was no way he could stop it. The experiment had passed beyond his control.

Restlessness crept over him in slimy coils of doubt. He felt light-headed and unstable as if his body was suspended over a deep abyss and would at any moment drop into black, terrifying silence that would last forever.

There were no thoughts in his mind of the other two men. The spell of the prism had erased them completely from his memory. He had even forgotten why he was sitting in the chair, staring at the scintillating, changing effulgence of the space-quickening prism.

It was then that lightness and darkness seemed to be struggling for supremacy. Dark would follow daylight. And daylight would follow dark. At first, these changes were slow and labored. Gradually, however, they quickened in tempo until the space between his eyes and the prism that held them in thralldom flickered with lights and shadows.

He sensed, somehow, that these flickerings were caused by the swift passage of days and nights. And he knew that he was moving forward into time.

How long he remained in this state of mind suspension he never knew. The end came following a torturous succession of sounds and sensations. He became aware of a monotonous ticking in his ears. Cold enveloped him that quickly changed to a devitalizing heat. Dimly, at first, he sensed a change in his surroundings. Things seemed to be the same, yet different. The prism suspended between the plastic posts was diminishing into space. To his ears, after the peculiar ticking had subsided, came strange sounds like the lament of thousands upon thousands of voices.

It was like a dirge of despair, of hope abandoned, of fear and anguish. It seemed purposeless and without meaning. Suddenly, and without warning, a ball of purple, eye-searing radiance exploded all around him.

The last link between the present and the future had snapped. In the vortex of the concussion some unseen force gripped him, and hurled his helpless body squarely into the core of this purple flame.

There was no pain, no sensation in this weird phenomenon. There was only forgetfulness and memory failure. He had successfully crossed the unknown abyss of ten years in less than seven earth minutes. And he never knew it.

TANDING before the quartz glass windows, Aaron Carruthers watched the exodus of human beings from the great city. Never had he seen the four-speed transportation bands so jammed with people.

The sight of the continuous stampede


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Rh

was surprised to find, on alighting, that the platform was entirely free from Wrykynians. In all the stories he had read the whole school came back by the same train, and, having smashed in one another's hats and chaffed the porters, made their way to the school buildings in a solid column. But here they were alone.

A remark of Bob's to Firby-Smith explained this. "Can't make out why none of the fellows came back by this train," he said. "Heaps of them must come by this line, and it's the only Christian train they run."

"Don't want to get here before the last minute they can possibly manage. Silly idea. I suppose they think there'd be nothing to do."

"What shall we do?" said Bob. "Come and have some tea at Cook's?"

"All right."

Bob looked at Mike. There was no disguising the fact that he would be in the way; but how convey this fact delicately to him?

"Look here, Mike," he said, with a happy inspiration, "Firby-Smith and I are just going to get some tea. I think you'd better nip up to the school. Probably Wain will want to see you, and tell you all about things, which is your dorm. and so on. See you later," he concluded airily. "Any one'll tell you the way to the school. Go straight on. They'll send your luggage on later. So long." And his sole prop in this world of strangers departed, leaving him to find his way for himself."

There is no subject on which opinions differ so widely as this matter of finding the way to a place. To the man who knows, it is simplicity itself. Probably he really does imagine that he goes straight on, ignoring the fact that for him the choice of three roads, all more or

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14 less straight, has no perplexities. The man who does not know feels as if he were in a maze.

Mike started out boldly, and lost his way. Go in which direction he would, he always seemed to arrive at a square with a fountain and an equestrian statue in its centre. On the fourth repetition of this feat he stopped in a disheartened way, and looked about him. He was beginning to feel bitter towards Bob. The man might at least have shown him where to get some tea.

At this moment a ray of hope shone through the gloom. Crossing the square was a short, thick-set figure clad in grey flannel trousers, a blue blazer, and a straw hat with a coloured band. Plainly a Wrykynian. Mike made for him.

"Can you tell me the way to the school, please," he said.

"Oh, you're going to the school," said the other. He had a pleasant, square-jawed face, reminiscent of a good-tempered bull-dog, and a pair of very deep-set grey eyes which somehow put Mike at his ease. There was something singularly cool and genial about them. He felt that they saw the humour in things, and that their owner was a person who liked most people and whom most people liked.

"You look rather lost," said the stranger. "Been hunting for it long?"

"Yes," said Mike.

"Which house do you want?"

"Wain's."

"Wain's? Then you've come to the right man this time. What I don't know about Wain's isn't worth knowing."

"Are you there, too?"

"Am I not! Term and holidays. There's no close season for me."

"Oh, are you Wyatt, then?" asked Mike.

"Hullo, this is fame. How did you know my name, as the ass in the detective story always says to the detective, who's seen it in the lining of his hat? Who's been talking about me?"

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Rh "I heard my brother saying something about you in the train."

"Who's your brother?"

"Jackson. He's in Donaldson's."

"I know. A stout fellow. So you're the newest make of Jackson, latest model, with all the modern improvements? Are there any more of you?"

"Not brothers," said Mike.

"Pity. You can't quite raise a team, then? Are you a sort of young Tyldesley, too?"

"I played a bit at my last school. Only a private school, you know," added Mike modestly.

"Make any runs? What was your best score?"

"Hundred and twenty-three," said Mike awkwardly. "It was only against kids, you know." He was in terror lest he should seem to be bragging.

"That's pretty useful. Any more centuries?"

"Yes," said Mike, shuffling.

"How many?"

"Seven altogether. You know, it was really awfully rotten bowling. And I was a good bit bigger than most of the chaps there. And my pater always has a pro. down in the Easter holidays, which gave me a bit of an advantage."

"All the same, seven centuries isn't so dusty against any bowling. We shall want some batting in the house this term. Look here, I was just going to have some tea. You come along, too."

"Oh, thanks awfully," said Mike. "My brother and Firby-Smith have gone to a place called Cook's."

"The old Gazeka? I didn't know he lived in your part of the world. He's head of Wain's."

"Yes, I know," said Mike. "Why is he called Gazeka?" he asked after a pause.

"Don't you think he looks like one? What did you think of him?"

"I didn't speak to him much," said Mike cautiously. It is always delicate work answering a question like this

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16 unless one has some sort of an inkling as to the views of the questioner.

"He's all right," said Wyatt, answering for himself. "He's got a habit of talking to one as if he were a prince of the blood dropping a gracious word to one of the three Small-Heads at the Hippodrome, but that's his misfortune. We all have our troubles. That's his. Let's go in here. It's too far to sweat to Cook's."

It was about a mile from the tea-shop to the school. Mike's first impression on arriving at the school grounds was of his smallness and insignificance. Everything looked so big—the buildings, the grounds, everything. He felt out of the picture. He was glad that he had met Wyatt. To make his entrance into this strange land alone would have been more of an ordeal than he would have cared to face.

"That's Wain's," said Wyatt, pointing to one of half a dozen large houses which lined the road on the south side of the cricket field. Mike followed his finger, and took in the size of his new home.

"I say, it's jolly big," he said. "How many fellows are there in it?"

"Thirty-one this term, I believe."

"That's more than there were at King-Hall's."

"What's King-Hall's?"

"The private school I was at. At Emsworth."

Emsworth seemed very remote and unreal to him as he spoke.

They skirted the cricket field, walking along the path that divided the two terraces. The Wrykyn playing-fields were formed of a series of huge steps, cut out of the hill. At the top of the hill came the school. On the first terrace was a sort of informal practice ground, where, though no games were played on it, there was a good deal of punting and drop-kicking in the winter and fielding-practice in the summer. The next terrace was the biggest of all, and formed the first eleven cricket ground, a beautiful piece of turf, a shade too narrow for its length, bounded on the terrace side by a sharply

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Rh sloping bank, some fifteen feet deep, and on the other by the precipice leading to the next terrace. At the far end of the ground stood the pavilion, and beside it a little ivy-covered rabbit-hutch for the scorers. Old Wrykynians always claimed that it was the prettiest school ground in England. It certainly had the finest view. From the verandah of the pavilion you could look over three counties.

Wain's house wore an empty and desolate appearance. There were signs of activity, however, inside; and a smell of soap and warm water told of preparations recently completed.

Wyatt took Mike into the matron's room, a small room opening out of the main passage.

"This is Jackson," he said. "Which dormitory is he in, Miss Payne?"

The matron consulted a paper.

"He's in yours, Wyatt."

"Good business. Who's in the other bed? There are going to be three of us, aren't there?"

"Fereira was to have slept there, but we have just heard that he is not coming back this term. He has had to go on a sea-voyage for his health."

"Seems queer any one actually taking the trouble to keep Fereira in the world," said Wyatt. "I've often thought of giving him Rough On Rats myself. Come along, Jackson, and I'll show you the room."

They went along the passage, and up a flight of stairs.

"Here you are," said Wyatt.

It was a fair-sized room. The window, heavily barred, looked out over a large garden.

"I used to sleep here alone last term," said Wyatt, "but the house is so full now they've turned it into a dormitory."

"I say, I wish these bars weren't here. It would be rather a rag to get out of the window on to that wall at night, and hop down into the garden and explore," said Mike.

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18 Wyatt looked at him curiously, and moved to the window.

"I'm not going to let you do it, of course," he said, "because you'd go getting caught, and dropped on, which isn't good for one in one's first term; but just to amuse you"

He jerked at the middle bar, and the next moment he was standing with it in his hand, and the way to the garden was clear.

"By Jove!" said Mike.

"That's simply an object-lesson, you know," said Wyatt, replacing the bar, and pushing the screws back into their putty. "I get out at night myself because I think my health needs it. Besides, it's my last term, anyhow, so it doesn't matter what I do. But if I find you trying to cut out in the small hours, there'll be trouble. See?"

"All right," said Mike, reluctantly. "But I wish you'd let me."

"Not if I know it. Promise you won't try it on."

"All right. But, I say, what do you do out there?"

"I shoot at cats with an air-pistol, the beauty of which is that even if you hit them it doesn't hurt—simply keeps them bright and interested in life; and if you miss you've had all the fun anyhow. Have you ever shot at a rocketing cat? Finest mark you can have. Society's latest craze. Buy a pistol and see life."

"I wish you'd let me come."

"I daresay you do. Not much, however. Now, if you like, I'll take you over the rest of the school. You'll have to see it sooner or later, so you may as well get it over at once."

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Rh

are few better things in life than a public school summer term. The winter term is good, especially towards the end, and there are points, though not many, about the Easter term: but it is in the summer that one really appreciates public school life. The freedom of it, after the restrictions of even the most easy-going private school, is intoxicating. The change is almost as great as that from public school to 'Varsity.

For Mike the path was made particularly easy. The only drawback to going to a big school for the first time is the fact that one is made to feel so very small and inconspicuous. New boys who have been leading lights at their private schools feel it acutely for the first week. At one time it was the custom, if we may believe writers of a generation or so back, for boys to take quite an embarrassing interest in the newcomer. He was asked a rain of questions, and was, generally, in the very centre of the stage. Nowadays an absolute lack of interest is the fashion. A new boy arrives, and there he is, one of a crowd.

Mike was saved this salutary treatment to a large extent, at first by virtue of the greatness of his family, and, later, by his own performances on the cricket field. His three elder brothers were objects of veneration to most Wrykynians, and Mike got a certain amount of reflected glory from them. The brother of first-class cricketers has a dignity of his own. Then Bob was a help. He was on the verge of the cricket team and had been the school full-back for two seasons. Mike found that people came up and spoke to him, anxious to know if he were Jackson's brother; and became friendly when he replied in the affirmative. Influential relations are a help in every stage of life.

It was Wyatt who gave him his first chance at cricket. There were nets on the first afternoon of term for all old

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20 colours of the three teams and a dozen or so of those most likely to fill the vacant places. Wyatt was there, of course. He had got his first eleven cap in the previous season as a mighty hitter and a fair slow bowler. Mike met him crossing the field with his cricket bag.

"Hullo, where are you off to?" asked Wyatt. "Coming to watch the nets?"

Mike had no particular programme for the afternoon. Junior cricket had not begun, and it was a little difficult to know how to fill in the time.

"I tell you what," said Wyatt, "nip into the house and shove on some things, and I'll try and get Burgess to let you have a knock later on."

This suited Mike admirably. A quarter of an hour later he was sitting at the back of the first eleven net, watching the practice.

Burgess, the captain of the Wrykyn team, made no pretence of being a bat. He was the school fast bowler and concentrated his energies on that department of the game. He sometimes took ten minutes at the wicket after everybody else had had an innings, but it was to bowl that he came to the nets.

He was bowling now to one of the old colours whose name Mike did not know. Wyatt and one of the professionals were the other two bowlers. Two nets away Firby-Smith, who had changed his pince-nez for a pair of huge spectacles, was performing rather ineffectively against some very bad bowling. Mike fixed his attention on the first eleven man.

He was evidently a good bat. There was style and power in his batting. He had a way of gliding Burgess's fastest to leg which Mike admired greatly. He was succeeded at the end of a quarter of an hour by another eleven man, and then Bob appeared.

It was soon made evident that this was not Bob's day. Nobody is at his best on the first day of term; but Bob was worse than he had any right to be. He scratched forward at nearly everything, and when Burgess, who had been resting, took up the ball again,

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Rh he had each stump uprooted in a regular series in seven balls. Once he skied one of Wyatt's slows over the net behind the wicket; and Mike, jumping up, caught him neatly.

"Thanks," said Bob austerely, as Mike returned the ball to him. He seemed depressed.

Towards the end of the afternoon, Wyatt went up to Burgess.

"Burgess," he said, "see that kid sitting behind the net?"

"With the naked eye," said Burgess. "Why?"

"He's just come to Wain's. He's Bob Jackson's brother, and I've a sort of idea that he's a bit of a bat. I told him I'd ask you if he could have a knock. Why not send him in at the end net? There's nobody there now."

Burgess's amiability off the field equalled his ruthlessness when bowling.

"All right," he said. "Only if you think that I'm going to sweat to bowl to him, you're making a fatal error."

"You needn't do a thing. Just sit and watch. I rather fancy this kid's something special."

Mike put on Wyatt's pads and gloves, borrowed his bat, and walked round into the net.

"Not in a funk, are you?" asked Wyatt, as he passed.

Mike grinned. The fact was that he had far too good an opinion of himself to be nervous. An entirely modest person seldom makes a good batsman. Batting is one of those things which demand first and foremost a thorough belief in oneself. It need not be aggressive, but it must be there.

Wyatt and the professional were the bowlers. Mike had seen enough of Wyatt's bowling to know that it was merely ordinary "slow tosh," and the professional did not look as difficult as Saunders. The first half-dozen balls he played carefully. He was on trial, and he meant to take no risks. Then the professional

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22 on slightly on the off. Mike jumped out, and got the full face of the bat on to it. The ball hit one of the ropes of the net, and nearly broke it.

"How's that?" said Wyatt, with the smile of an impresario on the first night of a successful piece.

"Not bad," admitted Burgess.

A few moments later he was still more complimentary. He got up and took a ball himself.

Mike braced himself up as Burgess began his run. This time he was more than a trifle nervous. The bowling he had had so far had been tame. This would be the real ordeal.

As the ball left Burgess's hand he began instinctively to shape for a forward stroke. Then suddenly he realised that the thing was going to be a yorker, and banged his bat down in the block just as the ball arrived. An unpleasant sensation as of having been struck by a thunderbolt was succeeded by a feeling of relief that he had kept the ball out of his wicket. There are easier things in the world than stopping a fast yorker.

"Well played," said Burgess.

Mike felt like a successful general receiving the thanks of the nation.

The fact that Burgess's next ball knocked middle and off stumps out of the ground saddened him somewhat; but this was the last tragedy that occurred. He could not do much with the bowling beyond stopping it and feeling repetitions of the thunderbolt experience, but he kept up his end; and a short conversation which he had with Burgess at the end of his innings was full of encouragement to one skilled in reading between the lines.

"Thanks awfully," said Mike, referring to the square manner in which the captain had behaved in letting him bat.

"What school were you at before you came here?" asked Burgess.

"A private school in Hampshire," said Mike. "King-Hall's. At a place called Emsworth."

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Rh "Get much cricket there?"

"Yes, a good lot. One of the masters, a chap called Westbrook, was an awfully good slow bowler."

Burgess nodded.

"You don't run away, which is something," he said.

Mike turned purple with pleasure at this stately compliment. Then, having waited for further remarks, but gathering from the captain's silence that the audience was at an end, he proceeded to unbuckle his pads. Wyatt overtook him on his way to the house.

"Well played," he said. "I'd no idea you were such hot stuff. You're a regular pro."

"I say," said Mike gratefully, "it was most awfully decent of you getting Burgess to let me go in. It was simply ripping of you."

"Oh, that's all right. If you don't get pushed a bit here you stay for ages in the hundredth game with the cripples and the kids. Now you've shown them what you can do you ought to get into the Under Sixteen team straight away. Probably into the third, too."

"By Jove, that would be all right."

"I asked Burgess afterwards what he thought of your batting, and he said, 'Not bad.' But he says that about everything. It's his highest form of praise. He says it when he wants to let himself go and simply butter up a thing. If you took him to see N. A. Knox bowl, he'd say he wasn't bad. What he meant was that he was jolly struck with your batting, and is going to play you for the Under Sixteen."

"I hope so," said Mike.

The prophecy was fulfilled. On the following Wednesday there was a match between the Under Sixteen and a scratch side. Mike's name was among the Under Sixteen. And on the Saturday he was playing for the third eleven in a trial game.

"This place is ripping," he said to himself, as he saw his name on the list. "Thought I should like it."

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24 And that night he wrote a letter to his father, notifying him of the fact.

A of events combined to upset Mike during his first fortnight at school. He was far more successful than he had any right to be at his age. There is nothing more heady than success, and if it comes before we are prepared for it, it is apt to throw us off our balance. As a rule, at school, years of wholesome obscurity make us ready for any small triumphs we may achieve at the end of our time there. Mike had skipped these years. He was older than the average new boy, and his batting was undeniable. He knew quite well that he was regarded as a find by the cricket authorities; and the knowledge was not particularly good for him. It did not make him conceited, for his was not a nature at all addicted to conceit. The effect it had on him was to make him excessively pleased with life. And when Mike was pleased with life he always found a difficulty in obeying Authority and its rules. His state of mind was not improved by an interview with Bob.

Some evil genius put it into Bob's mind that it was his duty to be, if only for one performance, the Heavy Elder Brother to Mike; to give him good advice. It is never the smallest use for an elder brother to attempt to do anything for the good of a younger brother at school, for the latter rebels automatically against such interference in his concerns; but Bob did not know this. He only knew that he had received a letter from home, in which his mother had assumed without evidence that he was leading Mike by the hand round the pitfalls of life at Wrykyn; and his conscience smote him. Beyond asking him occasionally, when they met, how he was getting on (a question to which Mike invariably replied, "Oh, all right "), he was not aware of having done anything brotherly towards the youngster. So he asked

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Rh Mike to tea in his study one afternoon before going to the nets.

Mike arrived, sidling into the study in the half-sheepish, half-defiant manner peculiar to small brothers in the presence of their elders, and stared in silence at the photographs on the walls. Bob was changing into his cricket things. The atmosphere was one of constraint and awkwardness.

The arrival of tea was the cue for conversation.

"Well, how are you getting on?" asked Bob.

"Oh, all right," said Mike.

Silence.

"Sugar?" asked Bob.

"Thanks," said Mike.

"How many lumps?"

"Two, please."

"Cake?"

"Thanks."

Silence.

Bob pulled himself together.

"Like Wain's?"

"Ripping."

"I asked Firby-Smith to keep an eye on you," said Bob.

"What!" said Mike.

The mere idea of a worm like the Gazeka being told to keep an eye on him was degrading.

"He said he'd look after you," added Bob, making things worse.

Look after him! Him!! M. Jackson, of the third eleven!!!

Mike helped himself to another chunk of cake, and spoke crushingly.

"He needn't trouble," he said. "I can look after myself all right, thanks."

Bob saw an opening for the entry of the Heavy Elder Brother.

"Look here, Mike," he said, "I'm only saying it for your good"

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Category:1902 Gordon Bennett Cup

The 1902 Gordon Bennett Cup was a motor race held on 26–28 June 1902, on public roads between Paris, France, and Innsbruck, Austria.

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26 I should like to state here that it was not Bob's habit to go about the world telling people things solely for their good. He was only doing it now to ease his conscience.

"Yes?" said Mike coldly.

"It's only this. You know, I should keep an eye on myself if I were you. There's nothing that gets a chap so barred here as side."

"What do you mean?" said Mike, outraged.

"Oh, I'm not saying anything against you so far," said Bob. "You've been all right up to now. What I mean to say is, you've got on so well at cricket, in the third and so on, there's just a chance you might start to side about a bit soon, if you don't watch yourself. I'm not saying a word against you so far, of course. Only you see what I mean."

Mike's feelings were too deep for words. In sombre silence he reached out for the jam; while Bob, satisfied that he had delivered his message in a pleasant and tactful manner, filled his cup, and cast about him for further words of wisdom.

"Seen you about with Wyatt a good deal," he said at length.

"Yes," said Mike.

"Like him?"

"Yes," said Mike cautiously.

"You know," said Bob, "I shouldn't—I mean, I should take care what you're doing with Wyatt."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, he's an awfully good chap, of course, but still"

"Still what?"

"Well, I mean, he's the sort of chap who'll probably get into some thundering row before he leaves. He doesn't care a hang what he does. He's that sort of chap. He's never been dropped on yet, but if you go on breaking rules you're bound to be sooner or later. Thing is, it doesn't matter much for him, because he's leaving at the end of the term. But don't let him drag you into anything. Not that he would try to.

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Rh But you might think it was the blood thing to do to imitate him, and the first thing you knew you'd be dropped on by Wain or somebody. See what I mean?"

Bob was well-intentioned, but tact did not enter greatly into his composition.

"What rot!" said Mike.

"All right. But don't you go doing it. I'm going over to the nets. I see Burgess has shoved you down for them. You'd better be going and changing. Stick on here a bit, though, if you want any more tea. I've got to be off myself."

Mike changed for net-practice in a ferment of spiritual injury. It was maddening to be treated as an infant who had to be looked after. He felt very sore against Bob.

A good innings at the third eleven net, followed by some strenuous fielding in the deep, soothed his ruffled feelings to a large extent; and all might have been well but for the intervention of Firby-Smith.

That youth, all spectacles and front teeth, met Mike at the door of Wain's.

"Ah, I wanted to see you, young man," he said. (Mike disliked being called "young man.") "Come up to my study."

Mike followed him in silence to his study, and preserved his silence till Firby-Smith, having deposited his cricket-bag in a corner of the room and examined himself carefully in a looking-glass that hung over the mantelpiece, spoke again.

"I've been hearing all about you, young man." Mike shuffled.

"You're a frightful character from all accounts." Mike could not think of anything to say that was not rude, so said nothing.

"Your brother has asked me to keep an eye on you."

Mike's soul began to tie itself into knots again. He was just at the age when one is most sensitive to patronage and most resentful of it.

"I promised I would," said the Gazeka, turning round and examining himself in the mirror again.

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28 "You'll get on all right if you behave yourself. Don't make a frightful row in the house. Don't cheek your elders and betters. Wash. That's all. Cut along."

Mike had a vague idea of sacrificing his career to the momentary pleasure of flinging a chair at the head of the house. Overcoming this feeling, he walked out of the room, and up to his dormitory to change.

In the dormitory that night the feeling of revolt, of wanting to do something actively illegal, increased. Like Eric, he burned, not with shame and remorse, but with rage and all that sort of thing. He dropped off to sleep full of half-formed plans for asserting himself. He was awakened from a dream in which he was batting against Firby-Smith's bowling, and hitting it into space every time, by a slight sound. He opened his eyes, and saw a dark figure silhouetted against the light of the window. He sat up in bed.

"Hullo," he said. "Is that you, Wyatt?"

"Are you awake?" said Wyatt. "Sorry if I've spoiled your beauty sleep."

"Are you going out?"

"I am," said Wyatt. "The cats are particularly strong on the wing just now. Mustn't miss a chance like this. Specially as there's a good moon, too. I shall be deadly."

"I say, can't I come too?"

A moonlight prowl, with or without an air-pistol, would just have suited Mike's mood.

"No, you can't," said Wyatt. "When I'm caught, as I'm morally certain to be some day, or night rather, they're bound to ask if you've ever been out as well as me. Then you'll be able to put your hand on your little heart and do a big George Washington act. You'll find that useful when the time comes."

"Do you think you will be caught?"

"Shouldn't be surprised. Anyhow, you stay where you are. Go to sleep and dream that you're playing for the school against Ripton. So long."

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Rh And Wyatt, laying the bar he had extracted on the window-sill, wriggled out. Mike saw him disappearing along the wall.

It was all very well for Wyatt to tell him to go to sleep, but it was not so easy to do it. The room was almost light; and Mike always found it difficult to sleep unless it was dark. He turned over on his side and shut his eyes, but he had never felt wider awake. Twice he heard the quarters chime from the school clock; and the second time he gave up the struggle. He got out of bed and went to the window. It was a lovely night, just the sort of night on which, if he had been at home, he would have been out after moths with a lantern.

A sharp yowl from an unseen cat told of Wyatt's presence somewhere in the big garden. He would have given much to be with him, but he realised that he was on parole. He had promised not to leave the house, and there was an end of it.

He turned away from the window and sat down on his bed. Then a beautiful, consoling thought came to him. He had given his word that he would not go into the garden, but nothing had been said about exploring inside the house. It was quite late now. Everybody would be in bed. It would be quite safe. And there must be all sorts ef things to interest the visitor in Wain's part of the house. Food, perhaps. Mike felt that he could just do with a biscuit. And there were bound to be biscuits on the sideboard in Wain's dining-room.

He crept quietly out of the dormitory.

He had been long enough in the house to know the way, in spite of the fact that all was darkness. Down the stairs, along the passage to the left, and up a few more stairs at the end. The beauty of the position was that the dining-room had two doors, one leading into Wain's part of the house, the other into the boys' section. Any interruption that there might be would come from the further door.

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30 To make himself more becure he locked that door; then, turning up the incandescent light, he proceeded to look about him.

Mr. Wain's dining-room repaid inspection. There were the remains of supper on the table. Mike cut himself some cheese and took some biscuits from the box, feeling that he was doing himself well. This was Life. There was a little soda-water in the syphon. He finished it. As it swished into the glass, it made a noise that seemed to him like three hundred Niagaras; but nobody else in the house appeared to have noticed it.

He took some more biscuits, and an apple.

After which, feeling a new man, he examined the room.

And this was where the trouble began.

On a table in one corner stood a small gramophone. And gramophones happened to be Mike's particular craze.

All thought of risk left him. The soda-water may have got into his head, or he may have been in a particularly reckless mood, as indeed he was. The fact remains that he inserted the first record that came to hand, wound the machine up, and set it going.

The next moment, very loud and nasal, a voice from the machine announced that Mr. Godfrey Field would sing "The Quaint Old Bird." And, after a few preliminary chords, Mr. Field actually did so.

"Auntie went to Aldershot in a Paris pom-pom hat."

Mike stood and drained it in.

". . . Good gracious [sang Mr. Field], what was that?"

It was a rattling at the handle of the door. A rattling that turned almost immediately into a spirited banging.

A voice accompanied the banging. "Who is there?" inquired the voice. Mike recognised it as Mr. Wain's. He was not alarmed. The man who holds the ace of trumps has no need to be alarmed. His position was impregnable. The enemy was held in check by the

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Rh locked door, while the other door offered an admirable and instantaneous way of escape.

Mike crept across the room on tip-toe and opened the window. It had occurred to him, just in time, that if Mr. Wain, on entering the room, found that the occupant had retired by way of the boys' part of the house, he might possibly obtain a clue to his identity. If, on the other hand, he opened the window, suspicion would be diverted. Mike had not read his "Raffles" for nothing.

The handle-rattling was resumed. This was good. So long as the frontal attack was kept up, there was no chance of his being taken in the rear—his only danger.

He stopped the gramophone, which had been pegging away patiently at "The Quaint Old Bird" all the time, and reflected. It seemed a pity to evacuate the position and ring down the curtain on what was, to date, the most exciting episode of his life; but he must not overdo the thing, and get caught. At any moment the noise might bring reinforcements to the besieging force, though it was not likely, for the dining-room was a long way from the dormitories; and it might flash upon their minds that there were two entrances the room. Or the same bright thought might come to Wain himself.

"Now what," pondered Mike, "would A. J. Raffles have done in a case like this? Suppose he'd been after somebody's jewels, and found that they were after him, and he'd locked one door, and could get away by the other."

The answer was simple.

"He'd clear out," thought Mike.

Two minutes later he was in bed.

He lay there, tingling all over with the consciousness of having played a masterly game, when suddenly a gruesome idea came to him, and he sat up, breathless. Suppose Wain took it into his head to make a tour of the dormitories, to see that all was well! Wyatt was still in the garden somewhere, blissfully unconscious of what was going on indoors. He would be caught for a certainty!

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1536.] themselves, and might be equal to the work if they were not crushed prematurely; he resolved to secure them time by his own inaction. On the first symptoms of uneasiness he sent his son, Sir Arthur Darcy, to Lord Shrewsbury, who was then at Nottingham, with further orders, after reporting on the state of the country, to go on to Windsor with a letter to the King. Sharing, however, in none of his father's opinions, the heir of the Darcies caught fire in the stir of Shrewsbury's camp—he preferred to remain where he was, and, sending the letter by another hand, he wrote to Templehurst for arms and men. Lord Darcy had no intention that his banner should be seen in the field against the insurgents. Unable to dispose of Sir Arthur as he had intended, he replied that he had changed his mind; his son must return to him at his best speed; for the present, he said, he had himself raised no men, nor did he intend to raise any—he had put out a proclamation with which he trusted the people might be quieted. The manœuvre answered well. Lord Shrewsbury was held in check by insurrections on either side of him, and could move neither on Yorkshire nor Lincolnshire. The rebels were buying up every bow, pike, and arrow in the country, and Lord Darcy now shut himself up with no more than twelve of his followers in Pomfret Castle, without arms, without fuel, without provisions, and taking no effectual steps to secure either the one or the other. In defence of his conduct he stated afterwards that his convoys


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542 had been intercepted. An experienced military commander who could have called a thousand men under arms by a word, could have introduced a few waggon-loads of corn and beer, had such been his wish. He was taking precautions (it is more likely) to enable him to yield gracefully to necessity should necessity arise. The conflagration now spread swiftly. Every one who was disposed to be loyal looked to Darcy for orders. The Earl of Cumberland wrote to him from Skipton Castle, Sir Brien Hastings the sheriff, Sir Richard Tempest, and many others. They would raise their men, they said, and either join him at Pomfret, or at whatever place he chose to direct. But Darcy would do nothing, and would allow nothing to be done. He replied that he had no commission and could give no instructions. The King had twice written to him, but had sent no special directions, and he would not act without them.

Lord Darcy played skilfully into the rebels' hands. The rebels made admirable use of their opportunity. With method in their madness, the townships everywhere organized themselves. Instead of marching in unwieldy tumultuous bodies, they picked their 'tallest and strongest' men; they armed and equipped them; and, raising money by a rate from house to house, they sent them out with a month's wages in their pockets, and a promise of a continuance should their services be


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Faith (Service)

 * "Faith" in Rhymes of a Red-Cross Man (1916)
 * "Faith" in A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919 (1917)

title: Faith (Service)


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1536.] prolonged. The day after his return from Lincoln, Aske found himself at the head of an army of horse and foot, furnished admirably at all points. They were grouped in companies by their parishes, and instead of colours, the crosses of the churches were borne by the priests.

The first great rendezvous in Yorkshire was on Weighton common. Here Stapleton came in with nine thousand men from Beverley and Holderness. The two divisions encamped upon the heath, and Aske became acknowledged as the commander of the entire force. Couriers brought in news from all parts of the country. Sir Ralph Evers and Sir George Conyers were reputed to have taken refuge in Scarborough. Sir Ralph Ellerkar the elder and Sir John Constable were holding Hull for the King. These places must at once be seized. Stapleton rode down from Weighton to Hull gate, and summoned the town. The mayor was for yielding at once; he had no men, he said, no meat, no money, no horse or harness—resistance was impossible. Ellerkar and Constable, however, would not hear of surrender. Constable replied that he would rather die with honesty than live with shame; and Stapleton carrying back this answer to Aske, it was agreed that the former should lay siege to Hull upon the spot, while the main body of the army moved forward upon York.

Skirting parties meantime scoured the country far


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544 and near. They surrounded the castles and houses, and called on every lord, knight, and gentleman to mount his horse, with his servants, and join them, or they would leave neither corn-stack in their yards nor cattle in their sheds, and would burn their roofs over their heads.

Aske himself was present everywhere, or some counterfeit who bore his name. It seemed 'there were six Richmonds in the field.' The Earl of Northumberland lay sick at Wressill Castle. From the day of Anne Boleyn's trial he had sunk, and now was dying. His failing spirit was disturbed by the news that Aske was at his gates, and that an armed host were shouting 'thousands for a Percy!' If the Earl could not come, the rebels said, then his brothers must come—Sir Thomas and Sir Ingram. And next, with side glances, we catch sight of Sir Ingram Percy swearing in the commons, and stirring the country at Alnwick: 'using such malicious words as were abominable to hear; wishing that he might thrust his sword into the Lord Cromwell's belly; wishing the Lord Cromwell were hanged on high, and he standing by to see it.' And again we see the old Countess of Northumberland at her house at Semar, 'sore weeping and lamenting' over her children's disloyalty; Sir Thomas Percy listening, half moved, to her entreaties; for a moment pausing uncertain, then borne away by the contagion, and a few hours later flaunting, with gay plumes and gorgeous armour, in the rebel host.


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Cato's Letters/Letter 63

SIR, I go on with my considerations upon liberty, to shew that all civil virtue and happiness, every moral excellency, all politeness, all good arts and sciences, are produced by liberty; and that all wickedness, baseness, and misery, are immediately and necessarily produced by tyranny; which being founded upon the destruction of every thing that is valuable, desirable, and noble, must subsist upon means suitable to its nature, and remain in everlasting enmity to all goodness and every human blessing.

By the establishment of liberty, a due distribution of property and an equal distribution of justice is established and secured. As rapine is the child of oppression, justice is the offspring of liberty, and her handmaid; it is the guardian of innocence, and the terror of vice: And when fame, honour, and advantages, are rewards of virtue, she will be courted for the dower which she brings; otherwise, like beauty without wealth, she may be praised, but more probably will be calumniated, envied, and very often persecuted; while vice, when it is gainful, like rich deformity and prosperous folly, will be admired and pursued. Where virtue is all its own reward, she will be seldom thought any; and few will buy that for a great price, which will sell for none. So that virtue, to be followed, must be endowed, and her credit is best secured by her interest; that is, she must be strengthened and recommended by the publick laws, and embellished by publick encouragements, or else she will be slighted and shunned.

Now the laws which encourage and increase virtue, are the fixed laws of general and impartial liberty; laws, which being the rule of every man's actions, and the measures of every man's power, make honesty and equity their interest. Where liberty is thoroughly established, and its laws equally executed, every man will find his account in doing as he would be done unto, and no man will take from another what he would not part with himself: Honour and advantage will follow the upright, punishment overtake the oppressor. The property of the poor will be as sacred as the privileges of the prince, and the law will be the only bulwark of both. Every man's honest industry and useful talents, while they are employed for the publick, will be employed for himself; and while he serves himself, he will serve the publick: Publick and private interest will secure each other; all will cheerfully give a part to secure the whole, and be brave to defend it.

These certain laws therefore are the only certain beginnings and causes of honesty and virtue amongst men. There may be other motives, I own; but such as only sway particular men, few enough, God knows: And universal experience has shewn us, that they are not generally prevailing, and never to be depended upon. Now these laws are to be produced by liberty alone, and only by such laws can liberty be secured and increased: And to make laws certainly good, they must be made by mutual agreement, and have for their end the general interest.

But tyranny must stand upon force; and the laws of tyranny being only the fickle will and unsteady appetite of one man, which may vary every hour; there can be no settled rule of right or wrong in the variable humours and sudden passions of a tyrant, who, though he may sometimes punish crimes, perhaps more out of rage than justice, will be much more likely to persecute and oppress innocence, and to destroy thousands cruelly, for one that he protects justly. There are instances of princes, who, being out of humour with a favourite, have put to death all that spoke well of him, and afterwards all that did not: Of princes, who put some of their ministers to death, for using one or two of their barbers and buffoons ill; as they did others of their ministers, for using a whole country well: Of princes, who have destroyed, a whole people, for the crimes or virtues of one man; and who, having killed a minion in a passion, have, to revenge themselves upon those who had not provoked them, destroyed in the same unreasonable fury, a hundred of their servants who had no hand in it, as well as all that had; who yet would have been destroyed, had they not done it: Of princes, who have destroyed millions in single mad projects and expeditions: Of princes, who have given up cities and provinces to the revenge or avarice of a vile woman or eunuch, to be plundered, or massacred, or burned, as he or she thought fit to direct: Of princes, who, to gratify the ambition and rapine of a few sorry servants, have lost the hearts of their whole people, and detached themselves from their good subjects, to protect these men in their iniquity, who yet had done them no other service, but that of destroying their reputation, and shaking their throne.

Such are arbitrary princes, whose laws are nothing but sudden fury, or lasting folly and wickedness in uncertain shapes. Hopeful rules these, for the governing of mankind, and making them happy! Rules which are none, since they cannot be depended upon for a moment; and generally change for the worse, if that can be. A subject worth twenty thousand pounds today, may, by a sudden edict issued by the dark counsel of a traitor, be a beggar tomorrow, and lose his life without forfeiting the same. The property of the whole kingdom shall be great, or little, or none, just at the mercy of a secretary's pen, guided by a child, or a dotard, or a foolish woman, or a favourite buffoon, or a gamester, or whoever is uppermost for the day; the next day shall alter entirely the yesterday's scheme, though not for the better; and the same men, in different humours, shall be the authors of both. Thus in arbitrary countries, a law aged two days is an old law; and no law is suffered to be a standing law, but such as are found by long experience to be so very bad, and so thoroughly destructive, that human malice, and all the arts of a tyrant's court, cannot make them worse. A court which never ceaseth to squeeze, kill, and oppress, till it has wound up human misery so high, that it will go no further. This is so much fact, that I appeal to all history and travels, and to those that read them, whether in arbitrary countries, both in Europe and out of it, the people do not grow daily thinner, and their misery greater; and whether countries are not peopled and rich, in proportion to the liberty which they enjoy and allow.

It has been long my opinion, and is more and more so, that in slavish countries the people must either throw off their cruel and destroying government, and set up another in its room, or in some ages the race of mankind there will be extinct. Indeed, if it had not been for free states, that have repaired and prevented in many places the mischiefs done by tyrants, the earth had been long since a desert, as the finest countries in it are at this day by that means. The gardens of the world, the fruitful and lovely countries of the lower Asia, filled formerly by liberty with people, politeness, and plenty, are now gloriously peopled with owls and grasshoppers; and perhaps here and there, at vast distances, with inhabitants not more valuable, and less happy; a few dirty huts of slaves groaning, starving, and perishing, under the fatherly protection of the Sultan, a prince of the most orthodox standard.

The laws therefore of tyrants are not laws, but wild acts of will, counselled by rage or folly, and executed by dragoons. And as these laws are evil, all sorts of evil must concur to support them. While the people have common-sense left, they will easily see whether they are justly governed, and well or ill used; whether they are protected or plundered: They will know that no man ought to be the director of the affairs of all, without their consent; that no consent can give him unlimited power over their bodies and minds; and that the laws of nature can never be entirely abrogated by positive laws; but that, on the contrary, the entering into society, and becoming subject to government, is only the parting with natural liberty, in some instances, to be protected in the enjoyment of it in others.

So that for any man to have arbitrary power, he must have it without consent; or if it be unadvisedly given at first, they who gave it soon repent when they find its effects. In truth, all those princes that have such power, by keeping up great armies in time of peace, effectually confess that they rule without consent, and dread their people, whose worst enemies they undoubtedly are. An arbitrary prince therefore must preserve and execute his power by force and terror; which yet will not do, without calling in the auxiliary aids and strict allies of tyranny, imposture, and constant oppression. Let this people be ever so low and miserable, if they be not also blind, he is not safe. He must have established deceivers to mislead them with lies, to terrify them with the wrath of God, in case they stir hand or foot, or so much as a thought, to mend their doleful condition; as if the good God was the sanctifier of all villainy, the patron of the worst of all villains! He must have a band of standing cut-throats to murder all men who would sacrilegiously defend their own. And both his cut-throats and his deceivers must go shares with him in his tyranny.

Men will naturally see their interests, feel their condition; will quickly find that the sword, the rack, and the sponge, are not government, but the height of cruelty and robbery; and will never submit to them, but by the united powers of violence and delusion: Their bodies must be chained, their minds enchanted and deceived; the sword kept constantly over their heads, and their spirits kept low with poverty, before they can be brought to be used at the wanton and brutish pleasure of the most dignified and lofty oppressor. So that God must be belied, his creatures must be fettered, frightened, deceived, and starved, and mankind made base and undone, that one of the worst of them may live riotously and safely amongst his whores, butchers, and buffoons.

Men, therefore, must cease to be men, and in stupidity and tameness grow cattle, before they can become quiet subjects to such a government; which is a complication of all the villainies, falsehood, oppression, cruelty, and depredation, upon the face of the earth: Nor can there be a more provoking, impudent, shocking, and blasphemous position, than to assert all this group of horrors, or the author of them, to be of God's appointment.

If such kings are by God appointed, Satan may be the Lord's anointed.

And whoever scatters such doctrine, ought, by all the laws of God, reason, and self-preservation, to be put to death as a general poisoner, and advocate for publick destruction.

All men own, that it is the duty of a prince to protect his people; And some have said, that it is their duty to obey him, when he butchers them. An admirable consequence, and full of sweet consolation! His whole business and office is to defend them, and to do them good; therefore they are bound to let him destroy them. Was ever such impudence in an enlightened country? It is perfectly agreeable to the doctrines and followers of Mahomet: But shall Englishmen, who make their own laws, be told, that they have no right to the common air, to the life and fortune which God has given them, but by the permission of an officer of their own making; who is what he is only for their sakes and security, and has no more right to these blessings, nor to do evil, than one of themselves? And shall we be told this by men, who are eternally the first to violate their own doctrines? Or shall they after this have the front to teach us any doctrine, or to recommend to us any one virtue, when they have thus given up all virtue and truth, and every blessing that life affords? For there is no evil, misery, and wickedness, which arbitrary monarchies do not produce, and must produce; nor do they, nor can they, produce any certain, general, or diffusive good.

I have shewn, in my last, that an arbitrary prince cannot protect his people if he would; and I add here, that he dares not. It would disgust the instruments of his power, and the sharers in his oppression, who will consider the property of the people as the perquisites of their office, and claim a privilege of being little tyrants, for making him a great one: So that every kindness to his subjects will be a grievance to his servants; and he must assert and exercise his tyranny to the height for their sakes, or they will do it for him. And the instances are rare, if any, of any absolute monarch's protecting in earnest his people against the depredations of his ministers and soldiers, but it has cost him his life; as may be shewn by many examples in the Roman history: For this the emperor Pertinax was murdered, and so was Galba.

Machiavel has told us, that it is impossible for such a prince to please both the people and his soldiers: The one will not be satisfied without protection, nor the other without rapine: To comply with the people, he must give up his power; to comply with his soldiers, he must give up his people. So that to continue what he is, and to preserve himself from the violence of his followers, he must countenance all their villainies and oppression, and be himself no more than an imperial thief at the head of a band of thieves; for which character he is generally well qualified by the base and cruel maxims of that sort of power, and by the vile education almost always given to such a prince by the worst and most infamous of all men, their supple and lying sycophants.

Even the Christian religion can do but little or no good in lands of tyranny, since miracles have ceased; but is made to do infinite harm, by being corrupted and perverted into a deadly engine in the hands of a tyrant and his impostors, to rivet his subjects' chains, and to confirm them thorough wretches, slaves, and ignorants. I cannot indeed say, that they have the Christian religion at all amongst them, but only use its amiable name to countenance abominable falsehoods, nonsense, and heavy oppression; to defend furious and implacable bigotry, which is the direct characteristick and spirit of Mahometism, and destroys the very genius and first principles of Christianity. All this will be further shewn hereafter. I shall conclude with observing, that arbitrary monarchy is a constant war upon heaven and earth, against the souls as well as bodies and properties of men.

G ''I am, &c. ''

title: Cato's Letters/Letter 63


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1536.] On Sunday, October the 15th, the main army crossed the Derwent, moving direct for York. On Monday they were before the gates. The citizens were all in the interest of the rebellion; and the mayor was allowed only to take precautions for the security of property and life. The engagements which he exacted from Aske, and which were punctually observed, speak well for the discipline of the insurgents. No pillage was to be permitted, or injury, of any kind. The prices which were to be paid for victuals and horsemeat were published in the camp by proclamation. The infantry, as composed of the most dangerous materials, were to remain in the field. On these terms the gates were opened, and Aske, with the horse, rode in and took possession. His first act, on entering the city, was to fix a proclamation on the doors of the cathedral, inviting all monks and nuns dispossessed from their houses to report their names and conditions, with a view to their immediate restoration. Work is done rapidly by willing hands, in the midst of a willing people. In the week which followed, by a common impulse, the King's tenants were universally expelled. The vacant dormitories were again peopled; the refectories were again filled with exulting faces. 'Though it were never so late when they returned, the friars sang matins the same night.'


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Cato's Letters/Letter 64

SIR, I have in former letters begun to shew, by an induction of particulars, and shall hereafter more fully shew, that population, riches, true religion, virtue, magnanimity, arts, sciences, and learning, are the necessary effects and productions of liberty; and shall spend this paper in proving, that an extensive trade, navigation, and naval power, entirely flow from the same source: In this case, if natural advantage and encouragements be wanting, art, expence, and violence, are lost and thrown away. Nothing is more certain, than that trade cannot be forced; she is a coy and humorous dame, who must be won by flattery and allurements, and always flies force and power; she is not confined to nations, sects, or climates, but travels and wanders about the earth, till she fixes her residence where she finds the best welcome and kindest reception; her contexture is so nice and delicate, that she cannot breathe in a tyrannical air; will and pleasure are so opposite to her nature, that but touch her with the sword, and she dies: But if you give her gentle and kind entertainment, she is a grateful and beneficent mistress; she will turn deserts into fruitful fields, villages into great cities, cottages into palaces, beggars into princes, convert cowards into heroes, blockheads into philosophers; will change the coverings of little worms into the richest brocades, the fleeces of harmless sheep into the pride and ornaments of kings, and by a further metamorphosis will transmute them again into armed hosts and haughty fleets.

Now it is absolutely impossible, from the nature of an arbitrary government, that she should enjoy security and protection, or indeed be free from violence, under it. There is not one man in a thousand that has the endowments and abilities necessary to govern a state, and much fewer yet that have just notions how to make trade and commerce useful and advantageous to it; and, amongst these, it is rare to find one who will forego all personal advantages, and devote himself and his labours wholly to his country's interest: But if such a phoenix should arise in any country, he will find it hard to get access to an arbitrary court, and much harder yet to grapple with and stem the raging corruptions in it, where virtue has nothing to do, and vice rides triumphant; where bribery, servile flattery, blind submission, riotous expence, and very often lust and unnatural prostitutions, are the ladders to greatness; which will certainly be supported by the same methods by which it is obtained.

What has a virtuous man to do, or what can he do, in such company? If he pity the people's calamities, he shall be called seditious; if he recommend any publick good, he shall be called preaching fool; if he should live soberly and virtuously himself, they will think him fit only to be sent to a cloister; if he do not flatter the prince and his superiors, he will be thought to envy their prosperity; if he presume to advise his prince to pursue his true interest, he will be esteemed a formidable enemy to the whole court, who will unite to destroy him: In fine, his virtues will be crimes, reproaches, and of dangerous consequence to those who have none. As jails pick up all the little pilfering rogues of a country, so such courts engross all the great ones; who have no business there but to grow rich, and to riot upon the publick calamities, to use all the means of oppression and rapine, to make hasty fortunes before the bow-string overtakes them, or a sudden favourite supplants them.

Now what encouragement or security can trade and industry receive from such a crew of banditti? No privileges and immunities, or even protection, can be obtained but for money, and are always granted to such who give most; and these again shall be curtailed, altered, abrogated, and cancelled, upon the change of a minister, or of his inclinations, interest, and caprices: Monopolies, exclusive companies, liberties of pre-emption, &c. shall be obtained for bribes or favour, or in trust for great men, or vile and worthless women. Some merchants shall be openly encouraged and protected, and get exemptions from searches and duties, or shall be connived at in escaping them; others shall be burdened, oppressed, manacled, stopped, and delayed, to extort presents, to wreak revenge, or to give preference of markets to favourites. Governors of port-towns, or of colonies, who have purchased their employments at court, shall be indulged and countenanced in making reprisals upon the traders, and to enable them to satisfy the yearly presents due to minions: Admirals and commanders of men of war shall press their sailors, to be paid for not doing it; and military officers and soldiers shall molest and interrupt them in the course of their commerce and honest industry.

Nor shall it be in the power of the most vigilant, active and virtuous prince, to prevent these and a thousand other daily oppressions; he must see with his ministers' eyes, and hear with their ears; nor can there be any access to him but by their means, and by their leave: Constant spies shall watch and observe the first intentions, or least approaches to a complaint; and the person injured shall be threatened, way-laid, imprisoned, perhaps murdered; but if he escape all their treacheries, and can get to the ear of his prince, it is great odds but he will be treated and punished as a calumniator, a false accuser, and a seditious disturber of his Majesty's government: No witness will dare to appear for him, many false ones will be suborned against him; and the whole posse of ministers, officers, favourites, parasites, pathicks, strumpets, buffoons, fiddlers, and pimps, will conspire to ruin him, as a common enemy to their common interests.

But if all these mischiefs could be avoided, the necessities of such a prince, arising from the profusion and vast expence of his court, from his foolish wars, and the depredations, embezzlements, and various thefts of his ministers and servants, will be always calling for new supplies, for new extortions, which must be raised by all the means by which they can be raised: New and sudden impositions shall be put upon trade, new loans be exacted from merchants; commodities of general use shall be bought up by the prince's order, perhaps upon trust, and afterwards retailed again at extravagant advantages: Merchants shall be encouraged to import their goods, upon promises of easy and gentle usage; these goods when imported shall be subjected to exorbitant impositions and customs, perhaps confiscated upon frivolous pretences. But if these, and infinite other oppressions, could be prevented for some time, by the vigilance of a wise prince, or the care of an able minister; yet there can be no probable security, or even hopes of the continuance of honest and prudent measures in such a government: For one wise prince so educated, there will be twenty foolish ones; and for one honest minister, there will be a thousand corrupt ones.

Under such natural disadvantages, perpetual uncertainties, or rather certain oppressions, no men will embark large stocks and extensive talents for business, breed up their children to precarious employments, build forts, or plant colonies, when the breath of a weak prince, or the caprice of a corrupt favourite, shall dash at once all their labours and their hopes; and therefore it is impossible that any trade can subsist long in such a government, but what is necessary to support the luxury and vices of a court; and even such trade is, for the most part, carried on by the stocks, and for the advantage of free countries, and their own petty merchants are only factors to the others. True merchants are citizens of the world, and that is their country where they can live best and most secure; and whatever they can pick up and gather together in tyrannical governments, they remove to free ones. Tavernier invested all the riches he had amassed by his long ramble over the world, in the barren rocks of Switzerland: And being asked by the last king of France, how it came to pass that he, who had seen the finest countries on the globe, came to lay out his fortune in the worst? He gave his haughty Majesty this short answer, that he was willing to have something which he could call his own.

As I think it is evident, by what I have said before, that trade cannot long subsist, much less flourish, in arbitrary governments; so there is so close and inseparable a connection between that and naval power, that I dare boldly affirm, that the latter can never arrive to any formidable height, and continue long in that situation, under such a state. Where there is an extensive trade; great numbers of able-bodied and courageous sailors, men bred up to fatigues, hardships, and hazards, and consequently soldiers by profession, are kept in constant pay; not only without any charge to the publick, but greatly to its benefit; not only by daily adding to its wealth and power, but by venting and employing abroad, to their country's honour and safety, those turbulent and unruly spirits that would be fuel for factions, and the tools and instruments of ambitious or discontented great men at home. These men are always ready at their country's call, to defend the profession which they live by, and with it the publick happiness: They are, and ever must be, in the publick interest, with which their own is so closely united; for they subsist by exporting the productions of the people's industry, which they constantly increase by so doing: They receive their pay from the merchants, a sort of men always in the interests of liberty, from which alone they can receive protection and encouragement. And as this race of men contribute vastly to the publick security and wealth, so they take nothing from it: They are not quartered up and down their native country, like the bands of despotick princes, to oppress their subjects, interrupt their industry, debauch their wives and daughters, insult their persons, to be examples of lewdness and prodigality, and to be always ready at hand to execute the bloody commands of a tyrant.

No monarch was ever yet powerful enough to keep as many seamen in constant pay at his own expence, as single cities have been able to do without any at all: The pay of a sailor, with his provision, is equal to that of a trooper in arbitrary governments; nor can they learn their trade, by taking the sea-air for a few summer months, and wafting about the coasts of their own country: They gain experience and boldness, by various and difficult voyages, by being constantly inured to hardships and dangers. Nor is it possible for single princes, with all their power and vigilance, to have such regular supplies of naval provisions, as trading countries must have always in store. There must be a regular and constant intercourse with the nations from whom these supplies come; a certain and regular method of paying for them; and constant demands will produce constant supplies. There are always numerous magazines in the hands of private merchants, ready for their own use or sale. There must be great numbers of shipwrights, anchor-smiths, rope and sail-makers, and infinite other artificers, sure always of constant employment; and who, if they are oppressed by one master, may go to another. There must be numbers of ships used for trade, that, upon occasions, may be employed for men of war, for transports, for fireships, and tenders. Now all these things, or scarce any of them, can ever be brought about by arbitrary courts; stores will be embezzled, exhausted, and worn out, before new ones are supplied; payments will not be punctually made; artificers will be discouraged, oppressed, and often left without employ: Every thing will be done at an exorbitant expence, and often not done when it is paid for; and when payments are made, the greatest part shall go in fees, or for bribes, or in secret trusts.

For these reasons, and many others, despotick monarchs, though infinitely powerful at land, yet could never rival Neptune, and extend their empire over the liquid world; for though great and vigorous efforts have been often made by these haughty tyrants of mankind, to subject that element to their ambition and their power, being taught by woeful experience, arising from perpetual losses and disappointments, of what vast importance that dominion was to unlimited and universal sovereignty; yet all their riches, applications, and pride, have never been able, in one instance, to effect it. Sometimes, indeed, trade, like a phantom, has made a faint appearance at an arbitrary court, but disappeared again at the first approach of the morning light: She is the portion of free states, is married to liberty, and ever flies the foul and polluted embraces of a tyrant.

The little state of Athens was always able to humble the pride, and put a check to the growing greatness, of the towering Persian monarchs, by their naval power; and when stripped of all their territories by land, and even their capital city, the seat of their commonwealth, yet had strength enough left to vanquish numerous fleets, which almost covered the sea, and to defeat an expedition carried on by armies that drank up rivers, and exhausted all the stores of the land.

The single city of Venice has proved itself an over-match in naval power to the great Ottoman Empire, though possessed of so many islands, useful ports, environed with so many sea-coasts, and abounding with all sorts of stores necessary to navigation; and in the year fifty-six gave the Turks so signal an overthrow at the Dardanelles, as put that state in such a consternation, that they believed their empire at an end; and it is thought if the Venetians had pursued their victory, they had driven them out of Constantinople, and even out of Europe; for the Grand Seignior himself was preparing to fly into Asia. The little island of Rhodes defended itself for some ages against the whole power of the Sultan, though encompassed by his dominions; and it was with great difficulty, hazard, and expence, that he at last overcame them, and drove the inhabitants to Malta, where they have ever since braved his pride, and live upon the plunder of his subjects: And notwithstanding all his numerous and expensive efforts to share with the Christians the dominion of the sea; yet there are no other seeds or traces of it left through his great and extensive territories, but what are found in the free piratical states of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli.

Neither the Sophi of Persia, the Great Mogul, the many kings who command the banks of the Ganges, nor all the haughty potentates of Asia and Africa, are able to contend at sea with the English or Dutch East-India Companies, or even to defend their subjects against but a few pirates, with all their population, and their mines of gold and diamonds.

Spain in all her pride, with the wealth of both Indies, with dominions so vast and extensive, that the sun rises and sets within them, and a sea-line, which if extended would environ the earth, yet was not able to dispute their title to that element with a few revolted provinces, who grew up through the course of an expensive war to that amazing greatness, that in less than a century they saw themselves, from a few fisher-towns encompassed with bogs and morasses, become a most formidable state, equal to the greatest potentates at sea, and to most at land; to have great kings in a distant world submit to be their vassals; and, in fine, to be protectors of that mighty nation from whom they revolted. Here is a stupendous instance of the effects of liberty, which neighbouring monarchs with twenty times the territory tremble at, and posterity will hardly believe.

France, with all its oeconomy, address, and power, with its utmost and most expensive efforts, and the assistance of neighbouring and even rival kings, has not been able to establish an empire upon that coy element. She saw it, like a mushroom, rise in a night, and wither again the next day. It is true, that at an immense expence and infinite labour, she got together a formidable fleet, and with it got victories, and took thousands of rival ships; yet every day grew weaker as her enemies grew stronger, and could never recover a single defeat, which in Holland would have been repaired in a few more weeks than the battle was days in fighting: So impossible is it for art to contend with nature, and slavery to dispute the naval prize with liberty.

Sweden and Denmark, though possessed of the naval stores of Europe, nations who subsist by that commerce, and are constantly employed to build ships for their neighbours; yet are not able, with their united force, to equip, man out, and keep upon the sea for any considerable time, a fleet large enough to dispute with an English or Dutch squadron: And I dare venture my reputation and skill in politicks, by boldly asserting, that another vain and unnatural northern apparition will soon vanish and disappear again, like the morning-star at the glimmering of the sun, and every one shall ask, Where is it?

T I am, &c.

title: Cato's Letters/Letter 64


text:
Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/566

546 Orders were next issued in Aske's name, commanding all lords, knights, and gentlemen in the northern counties to repair to his presence; and now, at last, Lord Darcy believed that the time was come when he might commit himself with safety; or rather, since the secrets of men's minds must not be lightly conjectured, he must be heard first in his own defence, and afterwards his actions must speak for him. On the night of the surrender of York he sent his steward from Pomfret, with a request for a copy of the oath and of the articles of the rising, promising, if they pleased him, to join the confederacy. The Archbishop of York, Dr Magnus an old diplomatic servant of the Crown, Sir Robert Constable, Lord Neville, and Sir Nicholas Babthorpe, were by this time with him in the castle. His own compliance would involve the compliance of these, and would partially involve their sanction.

On the morning of the 16th or 17th he received a third letter from the King, written now in grave displeasure; the truth had not been told; the King had heard, to his surprise, that Lord Darcy, instead of raising a force and taking the field, had shut himself up, with no more than twelve servants, in Pomfret; 'If this be so,' he said, 'it is negligently passed.' Lord Darcy excused himself by replying that he was not to blame; that he had done his best; but there were sixty thousand men in arms, forty thousand in harness. They took what they pleased—horses, plate, and cattle; the