章节正文
"Ah!" said Oro, with a smile. "I know this--it is war, war as
it was when the world was different and yet the same."
As he spoke, a motor-bus rumbled past. Another flash and
explosion. A man, walking with his arms round the waist of a girl
just ahead of us; seemed to be tossed up and to melt. The girl
fell in a heap on the pavement; somehow her head and her feet had
come quite close together and yet she appeared to be sitting
down. The motor-bus burst into fragments and its passengers
hurtled through the air, mere hideous lumps that had been men and
women. The head of one of them came dancing down the pavement
towards us, a cigar still stuck in the corner of its mouth.
"Yes, this is war," said Oro. "It makes me young again to see
it. But does this city of yours understand?"
We watched a while. A crowd gathered. Policemen ran up,
ambulances came. The place was cleared, and all that was left
they carried away. A few minutes later another man passed by with
his arm round the waist of another girl. Another motor-bus
rumbled up, and, avoiding the hole in the roadway, travelled on,
its conductor keeping a keen look-out for fares.
The street was cleared by the police; the airship continued its
course, spawning bombs in the distance, and vanished. The
incident was closed.
"Let us go home," said Oro. "I have seen enough of your great
and wonderful city. I would rest in the quiet of Nyo and think."
The next thing that I remember was the voice of Bastin, saying:
"If you don't mind, Arbuthnot, I wish that you would get up.
The Glittering Lady (he still called her that) is coming here to
have a talk with me which I should prefer to be private. Excuse
me for disturbing you, but you have overslept yourself; indeed, I
think it must be nine o'clock, so far as I can judge by the sun,
for my watch is very erratic now, ever since Bickley tried to
clean it."
"I am sorry, my dear fellow," I said sleepily, "but do you know
I thought I was in London--in fact, I could swear that I have
been there."
"Then," interrupted Bickley, who had followed Bastin into the
hut, giving me that doubtful glance with which I was now
familiar, "I wish to goodness that you had brought back an
evening paper with you."
A night or two later I was again suddenly awakened to feel that
Oro was approaching. He appeared like a ghost in the bright
moonlight, greeted me, and said:
"Tonight, Humphrey, we must make another journey. I would visit
the seat of the war."
"I do not wish to go," I said feebly.
"What you wish does not matter," he replied. "I wish that you
should go, and therefore you must."
"Listen, Oro," I exclaimed. "I do not like this business; it
seems dangerous to me."
"There is no danger if you are obedient, Humphrey."
"I think there is. I do not understand what happens. Do you
make use of what the Lady Yva called the Fourth Dimension, so
that our bodies pass over the seas and through mountains, like
the vibrations of our Wireless, of which I was speaking to you?"
"No, Humphrey. That method is good and easy, but I do not use
it because if I did we should be visible in the places which we
visit, since there all the atoms that make a man would collect
together again and be a man."
"What, then, do you do?" I asked, exasperated.
"Man, Humphrey, is not one; he is many. Thus, amongst other
things he has a Double, which can see and hear, as he can in the
flesh, if it is separated from the flesh."
"The old Egyptians believed that," I said.
"Did they? Doubtless they inherited the knowledge from us, the
Sons of Wisdom. The cup of our learning was so full that, keep it
secret as we would, from time to time some of it overflowed among
the vulgar, and doubtless thus the light of our knowledge still
burns feebly in the world."
I reflected to myself that whatever might be their other
characteristics, the Sons of Wisdom had lost that of modesty, but
I only asked how he used his Double, supposing that it existed.
"Very easily," he answered. "In sleep it can be drawn from the
body and sent upon its mission by one that is its master."
"Then while you were asleep for all those thousands of years
your Double must have made many journeys."
"Perhaps," he replied quietly, "and my spirit also, which is
another part of me that may have dwelt in the bodies of other
men. But unhappily, if so I forget, and that is why I have so
much to learn and must even make use of such poor instruments as
you, Humphrey."
"Then if I sleep and you distil my Double out of me, I suppose
that you sleep too. In that case who distils your Double out of
you, Lord Oro?"
He grew angry and answered:
"Ask no more questions, blind and ignorant as you are. It is
your part not to examine, but to obey. Sleep now," and again he
waved his hand over me.
In an instant, as it seemed, we were standing in a grey old
town that I judged from its appearance must be either in northern
France or Belgium. It was much shattered by bombardment; the
church, for instance, was a ruin; also many of the houses had
been burnt. Now, however, no firing was going on for the town had
been taken. The streets were full of armed men wearing the German
uniform and helmet. We passed down them and were able to see into
the houses. In some of these were German soldiers engaged in
looting and in other things so horrible that even the unmoved Oro
turned away his head.
We came to the market-place. It was crowded with German troops,
also with a great number of the inhabitants of the town, most of
them elderly men and women with children, who had fallen into
their power. The Germans, under the command of officers, were
dragging the men from the arms of their wives and children to one
side, and with rifle-butts beating back the screaming women. Among
the men I noticed two or three priests who were doing their best
to soothe their companions and even giving them absolution in
hurried whispers.
At length the separation was effected, whereon at a hoarse word
of command, a company of soldiers began to fire at the men and
continued doing so until all had fallen. Then petty officers went
among the slaughtered and with pistols blew out the brains of any
who still moved.
"These butchers, you say, are Germans?" asked Oro of me.
"Yes," I answered, sick with horror, for though I was in the
mind and not in the body, I could feel as the mind does. Had I
been in the body also, I should have fainted.
"Then we need not waste time in visiting their country. It is
enough; let us go on."
We passed out into the open land and came to a village. It was
in the occupation of German cavalry. Two of them held a little
girl of nine or ten, one by her body, the other by her right
hand. An officer stood between them with a drawn sword fronting
the terrified child. He was a horrible, coarse-faced man who
looked to me as though he had been drinking.
"I'll teach the young devil to show us the wrong road and let
those French swine escape," he shouted, and struck with the
sword. The girl's right hand fell to the ground.
"War as practised by the Germans!" remarked Oro. Then he
stepped, or seemed to step up to the man and whispered, or seemed
to whisper, in his ear.
I do not know what tongue or what spirit speech he used, or
what he said, but the bloated-faced brute turned pale. Yes, he
drew sick with fear.
"I think there are spirits in this place," he said with a
German oath. "I could have sworn that something told me that I
was going to die. Mount!"
The Uhlans mounted and began to ride away.
"Watch," said Oro.
As he spoke out of a dark cloud appeared an aeroplane. Its
pilot saw the band of Germans beneath and dropped a bomb. The aim
was good, for the missile exploded in the midst of them, causing
a great cloud of dust from which arose the screams of men and
horses.
"Come and see," said Oro.
We were there. Out of the cloud of dust appeared one man
galloping furiously. He was a young fellow who, as I noted, had
turned his head away and hidden his eyes with his hand when the
horror was done yonder. All the others were dead except the
officer who had worked the deed. He was still living, but both
his hands and one of his feet had been blown away. Presently he
died, screaming to God for mercy.
We passed on and came to a barn with wide doors that swung a
little in the wind, causing the rusted hinges to scream like a
creature in pain. On each of these doors hung a dead man
crucified. The hat of one of them lay upon the ground, and I knew
from the shape of it that he was a Colonial soldier.
"Did you not tell me," said Oro after surveying them, "that
these Germans are of your Christian faith?"
"Yes; and the Name of God is always on their ruler's lips."
"Ah!" he said, "I am glad that I worship Fate. Bastin the
priest need trouble me no more."
"There is something behind Fate," I said, quoting Bastin
himself.
"Perhaps. So indeed I have always held, but after much study I
cannot understand the manner of its working. Fate is enough for
me."
We went on and came to a flat country that was lined with
ditches, all of them full of men, Germans on one side, English
and French upon the other. A terrible bombardment shook the
earth, the shells raining upon the ditches. Presently that from
the English guns ceased and out of the trenches in front of them
thousands of men were vomited, who ran forward through a hail of
fire in which scores and hundreds fell, across an open piece of
ground that was pitted with shell craters. They came to barbed
wire defenses, or what remained of them, cut the wire with
nippers and pulled up the posts. Then through the gaps they
surged in, shouting and hurling hand grenades. They reached the
German trenches, they leapt into them and from those holes arose
a hellish din. Pistols were fired and everywhere bayonets
flashed.
Behind them rushed a horde of little, dark-skinned men, Indians
who carried great knives in their hands. Those leapt over the
first trench and running on with wild yells, dived into the
second, those who were left of them, and there began hacking with
their knives at the defenders and the soldiers who worked the
spitting maxim guns. In twenty minutes it was over; those lines
of trenches were taken, and once more from either side the guns
began to boom.
"War again," said Oro, "clean, honest war, such as the god I
call Fate decrees for man. I have seen enough. Now I would visit
those whom you call Turks. I understand they have another worship
and perhaps they are nobler than these Christians."
We came to a hilly country which I recognised as Armenia, for
once I travelled there, and stopped on an seashore. Here were the
Turks in thousands. They were engaged in driving before them mobs
of men, women and children in countless numbers. On and on they
drove them till they reached the shore. There they massacred them
with bayonets, with bullets, or by drowning. I remember a
dreadful scene of a poor woman standing up to her waist in the
water. Three children were clinging to her--but I cannot go on,
really I cannot go on. In the end a Turk waded out and bayoneted
her while she strove to protect the last living child with her
it was when the world was different and yet the same."
As he spoke, a motor-bus rumbled past. Another flash and
explosion. A man, walking with his arms round the waist of a girl
just ahead of us; seemed to be tossed up and to melt. The girl
fell in a heap on the pavement; somehow her head and her feet had
come quite close together and yet she appeared to be sitting
down. The motor-bus burst into fragments and its passengers
hurtled through the air, mere hideous lumps that had been men and
women. The head of one of them came dancing down the pavement
towards us, a cigar still stuck in the corner of its mouth.
"Yes, this is war," said Oro. "It makes me young again to see
it. But does this city of yours understand?"
We watched a while. A crowd gathered. Policemen ran up,
ambulances came. The place was cleared, and all that was left
they carried away. A few minutes later another man passed by with
his arm round the waist of another girl. Another motor-bus
rumbled up, and, avoiding the hole in the roadway, travelled on,
its conductor keeping a keen look-out for fares.
The street was cleared by the police; the airship continued its
course, spawning bombs in the distance, and vanished. The
incident was closed.
"Let us go home," said Oro. "I have seen enough of your great
and wonderful city. I would rest in the quiet of Nyo and think."
The next thing that I remember was the voice of Bastin, saying:
"If you don't mind, Arbuthnot, I wish that you would get up.
The Glittering Lady (he still called her that) is coming here to
have a talk with me which I should prefer to be private. Excuse
me for disturbing you, but you have overslept yourself; indeed, I
think it must be nine o'clock, so far as I can judge by the sun,
for my watch is very erratic now, ever since Bickley tried to
clean it."
"I am sorry, my dear fellow," I said sleepily, "but do you know
I thought I was in London--in fact, I could swear that I have
been there."
"Then," interrupted Bickley, who had followed Bastin into the
hut, giving me that doubtful glance with which I was now
familiar, "I wish to goodness that you had brought back an
evening paper with you."
A night or two later I was again suddenly awakened to feel that
Oro was approaching. He appeared like a ghost in the bright
moonlight, greeted me, and said:
"Tonight, Humphrey, we must make another journey. I would visit
the seat of the war."
"I do not wish to go," I said feebly.
"What you wish does not matter," he replied. "I wish that you
should go, and therefore you must."
"Listen, Oro," I exclaimed. "I do not like this business; it
seems dangerous to me."
"There is no danger if you are obedient, Humphrey."
"I think there is. I do not understand what happens. Do you
make use of what the Lady Yva called the Fourth Dimension, so
that our bodies pass over the seas and through mountains, like
the vibrations of our Wireless, of which I was speaking to you?"
"No, Humphrey. That method is good and easy, but I do not use
it because if I did we should be visible in the places which we
visit, since there all the atoms that make a man would collect
together again and be a man."
"What, then, do you do?" I asked, exasperated.
"Man, Humphrey, is not one; he is many. Thus, amongst other
things he has a Double, which can see and hear, as he can in the
flesh, if it is separated from the flesh."
"The old Egyptians believed that," I said.
"Did they? Doubtless they inherited the knowledge from us, the
Sons of Wisdom. The cup of our learning was so full that, keep it
secret as we would, from time to time some of it overflowed among
the vulgar, and doubtless thus the light of our knowledge still
burns feebly in the world."
I reflected to myself that whatever might be their other
characteristics, the Sons of Wisdom had lost that of modesty, but
I only asked how he used his Double, supposing that it existed.
"Very easily," he answered. "In sleep it can be drawn from the
body and sent upon its mission by one that is its master."
"Then while you were asleep for all those thousands of years
your Double must have made many journeys."
"Perhaps," he replied quietly, "and my spirit also, which is
another part of me that may have dwelt in the bodies of other
men. But unhappily, if so I forget, and that is why I have so
much to learn and must even make use of such poor instruments as
you, Humphrey."
"Then if I sleep and you distil my Double out of me, I suppose
that you sleep too. In that case who distils your Double out of
you, Lord Oro?"
He grew angry and answered:
"Ask no more questions, blind and ignorant as you are. It is
your part not to examine, but to obey. Sleep now," and again he
waved his hand over me.
In an instant, as it seemed, we were standing in a grey old
town that I judged from its appearance must be either in northern
France or Belgium. It was much shattered by bombardment; the
church, for instance, was a ruin; also many of the houses had
been burnt. Now, however, no firing was going on for the town had
been taken. The streets were full of armed men wearing the German
uniform and helmet. We passed down them and were able to see into
the houses. In some of these were German soldiers engaged in
looting and in other things so horrible that even the unmoved Oro
turned away his head.
We came to the market-place. It was crowded with German troops,
also with a great number of the inhabitants of the town, most of
them elderly men and women with children, who had fallen into
their power. The Germans, under the command of officers, were
dragging the men from the arms of their wives and children to one
side, and with rifle-butts beating back the screaming women. Among
the men I noticed two or three priests who were doing their best
to soothe their companions and even giving them absolution in
hurried whispers.
At length the separation was effected, whereon at a hoarse word
of command, a company of soldiers began to fire at the men and
continued doing so until all had fallen. Then petty officers went
among the slaughtered and with pistols blew out the brains of any
who still moved.
"These butchers, you say, are Germans?" asked Oro of me.
"Yes," I answered, sick with horror, for though I was in the
mind and not in the body, I could feel as the mind does. Had I
been in the body also, I should have fainted.
"Then we need not waste time in visiting their country. It is
enough; let us go on."
We passed out into the open land and came to a village. It was
in the occupation of German cavalry. Two of them held a little
girl of nine or ten, one by her body, the other by her right
hand. An officer stood between them with a drawn sword fronting
the terrified child. He was a horrible, coarse-faced man who
looked to me as though he had been drinking.
"I'll teach the young devil to show us the wrong road and let
those French swine escape," he shouted, and struck with the
sword. The girl's right hand fell to the ground.
"War as practised by the Germans!" remarked Oro. Then he
stepped, or seemed to step up to the man and whispered, or seemed
to whisper, in his ear.
I do not know what tongue or what spirit speech he used, or
what he said, but the bloated-faced brute turned pale. Yes, he
drew sick with fear.
"I think there are spirits in this place," he said with a
German oath. "I could have sworn that something told me that I
was going to die. Mount!"
The Uhlans mounted and began to ride away.
"Watch," said Oro.
As he spoke out of a dark cloud appeared an aeroplane. Its
pilot saw the band of Germans beneath and dropped a bomb. The aim
was good, for the missile exploded in the midst of them, causing
a great cloud of dust from which arose the screams of men and
horses.
"Come and see," said Oro.
We were there. Out of the cloud of dust appeared one man
galloping furiously. He was a young fellow who, as I noted, had
turned his head away and hidden his eyes with his hand when the
horror was done yonder. All the others were dead except the
officer who had worked the deed. He was still living, but both
his hands and one of his feet had been blown away. Presently he
died, screaming to God for mercy.
We passed on and came to a barn with wide doors that swung a
little in the wind, causing the rusted hinges to scream like a
creature in pain. On each of these doors hung a dead man
crucified. The hat of one of them lay upon the ground, and I knew
from the shape of it that he was a Colonial soldier.
"Did you not tell me," said Oro after surveying them, "that
these Germans are of your Christian faith?"
"Yes; and the Name of God is always on their ruler's lips."
"Ah!" he said, "I am glad that I worship Fate. Bastin the
priest need trouble me no more."
"There is something behind Fate," I said, quoting Bastin
himself.
"Perhaps. So indeed I have always held, but after much study I
cannot understand the manner of its working. Fate is enough for
me."
We went on and came to a flat country that was lined with
ditches, all of them full of men, Germans on one side, English
and French upon the other. A terrible bombardment shook the
earth, the shells raining upon the ditches. Presently that from
the English guns ceased and out of the trenches in front of them
thousands of men were vomited, who ran forward through a hail of
fire in which scores and hundreds fell, across an open piece of
ground that was pitted with shell craters. They came to barbed
wire defenses, or what remained of them, cut the wire with
nippers and pulled up the posts. Then through the gaps they
surged in, shouting and hurling hand grenades. They reached the
German trenches, they leapt into them and from those holes arose
a hellish din. Pistols were fired and everywhere bayonets
flashed.
Behind them rushed a horde of little, dark-skinned men, Indians
who carried great knives in their hands. Those leapt over the
first trench and running on with wild yells, dived into the
second, those who were left of them, and there began hacking with
their knives at the defenders and the soldiers who worked the
spitting maxim guns. In twenty minutes it was over; those lines
of trenches were taken, and once more from either side the guns
began to boom.
"War again," said Oro, "clean, honest war, such as the god I
call Fate decrees for man. I have seen enough. Now I would visit
those whom you call Turks. I understand they have another worship
and perhaps they are nobler than these Christians."
We came to a hilly country which I recognised as Armenia, for
once I travelled there, and stopped on an seashore. Here were the
Turks in thousands. They were engaged in driving before them mobs
of men, women and children in countless numbers. On and on they
drove them till they reached the shore. There they massacred them
with bayonets, with bullets, or by drowning. I remember a
dreadful scene of a poor woman standing up to her waist in the
water. Three children were clinging to her--but I cannot go on,
really I cannot go on. In the end a Turk waded out and bayoneted
her while she strove to protect the last living child with her
- conductor [kən´dʌktə]
n.指导者；向导者 (初中英语单词) - goodness [´gudnis] n.优良；美德；精华 (初中英语单词)
- therefore [´ðeəfɔ:] ad.&conj.因此；所以 (初中英语单词)
- visible [´vizəbəl] a.可见的；明显的 (初中英语单词)
- doubtless [´dautlis] ad.无疑地；大概，多半 (初中英语单词)
- wisdom [´wizdəm] n.智慧，聪明，才智 (初中英语单词)
- learning [´lə:niŋ] n.学习；学问；知识 (初中英语单词)
- whatever [wɔt´evə] pron.&a.无论什么 (初中英语单词)
- mission [´miʃən] n.代表团；使馆vt.派遣 (初中英语单词)
- ignorant [´ignərənt] a.无知的，愚昧的 (初中英语单词)
- instant [´instənt] a.立即的 n.紧迫；瞬间 (初中英语单词)
- standing [´stændiŋ] n.持续 a.直立的 (初中英语单词)
- instance [´instəns] n.例子，实例，例证 (初中英语单词)
- helmet [´helmit] n.钢盔 (初中英语单词)
- horrible [´hɔrəbəl] a.可怕的；恐怖的 (初中英语单词)
- horror [´hɔrə] n.恐怖；战栗 (初中英语单词)
- occupation [,ɔkju´peiʃən] a.职业的；军事占领的 (初中英语单词)
- whisper [´wispə] v.耳语 n.低语；沙沙声 (初中英语单词)
- hidden [´hid(ə)n] hide 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- presently [´prezəntli] ad.不久；目前 (初中英语单词)
- scream [skri:m] v.&n.尖叫(声) (初中英语单词)
- colonial [kə´ləuniəl] a.(关于)殖民地的 (初中英语单词)
- worship [´wə:ʃip] n.&v.崇拜；敬仰 (初中英语单词)
- working [´wə:kiŋ] a.工人的；劳动的 (初中英语单词)
- running [´rʌniŋ] a.奔跑的；流动的 (初中英语单词)
- pavement [´peivmənt] n.路面；铺筑材料 (高中英语单词)
- hideous [´hidiəs] a.丑陋的，可怕的 (高中英语单词)
- doubtful [´dautful] a.怀疑的，可疑的 (高中英语单词)
- dimension [di´menʃən] n.尺寸；面积；体积 (高中英语单词)
- amongst [ə´mʌŋst] prep.其中之一 =among (高中英语单词)
- belgium [´beldʒəm] n.比利时 (高中英语单词)
- crowded [´kraudid] a.充(拥)满了的 (高中英语单词)
- soothe [su:ð] vt.安慰；镇定；减轻 (高中英语单词)
- separation [,sepə´reiʃən] n.分离；分开；分居 (高中英语单词)
- cavalry [´kævəlri] n.骑兵(部队) (高中英语单词)
- aeroplane [´eərəplein] n.飞机 (高中英语单词)
- furiously [´fjuəriəsli] ad.狂怒地；有力地 (高中英语单词)
- trench [trentʃ] n.&v.(挖)沟，(挖)战壕 (高中英语单词)
- countless [´kauntlis] a.无数的 (高中英语单词)
- strove [strəuv] strive的过去式 (高中英语单词)
- airship [´eə,ʃip] n.飞艇，飞船 (英语四级单词)
- obedient [ə´bi:djənt] a.服从的，恭顺的 (英语四级单词)
- vulgar [´vʌlgə] a.粗俗的；大众的 (英语四级单词)
- feebly [´fi:bli] ad.虚弱地；贫乏地 (英语四级单词)
- modesty [´mɔdisti] n.谨慎；端庄；羞怯 (英语四级单词)
- elderly [´eldəli] a. 较老的，年长的 (英语四级单词)
- hoarse [hɔ:s] a.嘶哑的；嗓门粗哑的 (英语四级单词)
- knives [naivz] knife的复数 (英语四级单词)
- seashore [´si:ʃɔ:] n.海岸；海滨 (英语四级单词)
- roadway [´rəudwei] n.车行道；路面 (英语六级单词)
- sleepily [´sli:pili] ad.瞌睡地；懒散地 (英语六级单词)
- speaking [´spi:kiŋ] n.说话 a.发言的 (英语六级单词)
- distil [dis´til] v.蒸馏；精选；提取 (英语六级单词)
- unmoved [ʌn´mu:vd] a.无动于衷的；坚定的 (英语六级单词)
- beating [´bi:tiŋ] n.敲；搅打；失败 (英语六级单词)
- whereon [weər´ɔn] ad.在什么上面；因此 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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