The Land Leviathan Read online

  Mildly, I said: “But isn’t it poor economics to work them so hard? They’ll give you better value if they’re treated a little better.”

  “That logic led to the Civil War, Mr. Bastable,” said Kennedy, as if speaking to a child. “You start thinking like that and sooner or later they decide they deserve to be treated like white men and you get the old social ills being repeated over again. Besides,” he grinned broadly, “there’s not a lot of point in worrying too much about the life expectancy of our Washington niggers, as you’ll see.”

  We were driving close to one of the main walls now. Here, as everywhere, huge gangs of Negroes were being forced to work at inhuman speed. It was no longer any mystery how Washington had managed to get its defenses up so rapidly. I tried to recall the stories of what Hood had done to the whites in Scandinavia, but even the stories, exaggerated and encouraged by Hood himself to improve his savage image, paled in comparison to the reality of what was happening in modern-day Washington!

  As we passed the walls, I noticed that large cages, rather like the cages used for transporting circus animals about the country, were much in evidence on top of the walls. I pointed them out and asked Kennedy what they were.

  He smirked as he leaned back in the carriage and lit a cigar. “They, Mr. Bastable, are our secret weapon.”

  I did not ask him to amplify this statement. I had become too saddened by the fate of the Negroes. I told Kennedy that I was tired and would like to rest. The carriage was turned about and I was taken to a hotel quite close to the Capitol, where I was given a room overlooking a stretch of parkland.

  But even here I could look out through my windows and see evidence of the brutality of the whites. Not a hundred yards away, a pit of quick-lime had been sunk, and into it, from time to time, carts would dump the bodies of the dead and the dying.

  I thought that I had witnessed Hell in Southern England, but now I knew that I had only been standing on the outskirts. Here, where it had once been declared an article of faith that all men were created equal, where it had seemed possible for the eighteenth-century ideals of reason and justice to be made reality, here was Hell, indeed!

  And it was a hell created in the name of my own race, whose survival I hoped to ensure with my resistance to Hood and his Black Horde.

  I slept badly at the hotel and the next morning sought an interview with ‘President’ Beesley at the White House. I received word that he was too busy to see me. I wandered about the streets, but there was too much there to turn my stomach. I began to feel angry. I felt frustrated. I wanted to remonstrate with Beesley, to beg him to show mercy to the blacks, to set an example of tolerance and decency to his white-hooded followers. Gandhi had been right. There was only one way to behave, even if it seemed, in the short term, against one’s self-interest. Surely it was in one’s self-interest in the long term to exhibit generosity, humanity, kindness and a sense of justice to one’s fellow men. It was cynicism of Beesley’s kind which had, after all, led to the threatened extinction of the whole human race. There could be no such thing as a ‘righteous’ war, for war was by its very nature an act of injustice against the individual, but there could be such a thing as an ‘unrighteous’ war—an evil war, a war begun by men who were utterly corrupt, both morally and intellectually. I had begun to think that it was a definition of those who would make war—that whatever motives they claimed, whatever ideals they promoted, whatever ‘threat’ they referred to, they could not be excused—because of their actions they could only be of a degenerate and immoral character.

  Gandhi had said that violence bred violence. Well, it seemed that I was witnessing a living lesson in this creed! I realized how close I had, myself, been to the brink of behaving brutally and cynically, when I had contemplated the assassination of Hood.

  Once again, at about the worst time possible, I found my loyalties divided, my mind in confusion, filled with a sense of the impossibility of any action whatsoever on my own part.

  I had wandered away from the main roads of Washington and into a series of residential streets full of those fine terraced houses reminiscent of our own Regency squares and crescents. The houses, however, were much run-down. In most cases there was no glass in the windows and many doors showed signs of having been forced. I guessed that there had been fighting here, not by an invading army, but between the Negroes and the whites.

  I was speculating, again, on the nature of the animal cages placed along the walls of the city, when I turned a corner and was confronted with a long line of black workers, chained ankle to ankle, shuffling along the centre of the road and pulling a big, wheeled platform on which had been piled a tottering mountain of sand-bags. There was hardly one of these people who was not bleeding from the cuts of the long whips wielded by armed overseers. Many seemed hardly capable of putting one foot in front of the other. They seemed destined, very shortly, for the lime-pits—and yet they were singing. They were singing as the Christian martyrs had been said to sing on their way to the Roman arena. They were singing a dirge of which it was difficult to distinguish the words at first. The white men, clad in heavy hoods, were yelling at them to stop. Their voices were muffled, but their whips were eloquent. But still the Negroes sang and now I made out some of the words.

  “He will come—he will come—

  Out of Africa—he will come—

  He will ride the Beast—he will come—

  He will set us free—he will come—

  He will bring us Pride—he will come—”

  There was no question, of course, that the song referred to Hood and that it was being sung deliberately to incense the whites. The refrain was being sung by a tall, handsome young man who somehow managed to lift his head and keep his shoulders straight no matter how many savage blows fell upon him. His dignity and his courage were so greatly in contrast to the hysterical and cowardly actions of the whites that it was impossible to feel anything but admiration for him.

  But I think that the gang of slaves was doomed. They would not stop singing and now, ominously, the hooded whites lowered their whips and began to take their guns from their shoulders.

  The procession stopped.

  The voices stopped.

  The first white ripped off his hood and revealed a hate-filled face which could have seen no more than seventeen summers. He raised his weapon to his shoulders, grinning.

  “Okay—you wanna go on singing?”

  The tall Negro took a breath, knowing that it was probably his last, and began the first words of the chant.

  That was when, impulsively, I dived for the boy, throwing my whole weight against him so that his shot went into the air. I had grabbed the gun even as I fell on top of him. I heard confused shouts and then heard the sharp report of another rifle. I saw a bullet strike the body of the boy and I used that body as cover, shooting back at my fellow whites!

  I should not have lasted long, of course, had not the tall Negro uttered a bellow which was almost gleeful and led his companions upon the whites, who had their backs to the blacks while they concentrated on me.

  I saw white hoods bobbing for a moment in a sea of black, blistered flesh. I heard a few shots fired and then it was over. The whites lay dead upon the pavement and the blacks were using their guns to shoot themselves free of the chains on their legs. I was not sure how I would be received and I stood up cautiously, ready to run if necessary, for I knew that many Negroes felt little sentimentality to whites, even if those whites were not directly involved in harming them.

  Then the black youth grinned at me. “Thanks, mister. Why ain’t you wearing your hood?”

  “I have never worn one,” I told him. “I’m British.”

  I suppose I must have sounded a little pompous, for the youth laughed aloud at this, before saying: “We’d better get off the streets fast.”

  He began to direct his people into the nearby houses, which proved to be deserted. The wheeled platform and the corpses of the whites, stripped of their guns and,
for some mysterious reason, their hoods, were left behind.

  The youth led us through the back yards of the houses, darting from building to building until he came to one he recognized. This he entered, leading us into the cellars and there pausing for breath.

  “We’ll leave those who’re too sick to go any further here,” he said. “Also the kids.” He grinned at me. “What about you, mister? You can give us that rifle and go free, if you want to. There were no witnesses. You’ll be all right. They’ll never know there was a white man involved.”

  “I think that they should know,” I found myself saying. “My name’s Bastable. I was until recently an observer attached to General Hood’s staff. I deserted and came over to the white cause. Now I have decided to serve only the cause of humanity. I am with you, Mr.—”

  “Call me Paul, Mr. Bastable. Well, that was a fine speech, sir, if, might I say, a little on the prudish side! But you’ve proved yourself. You’ve got grit and grit’s what’s needed in these troubled times. Let’s go.”

  He pulled back a couple of packing-cases and revealed a hole in the wall. Into this hole, which proved to give access to a passage connecting a whole series of houses, he led us, speaking to me over his shoulder as we went. “Have they started filling the cages, yet, do you know?”

  “I know nothing of the cages,” I told him. “I was wondering what function they were to serve. Somebody said they were Washington’s ‘secret weapon’ against General Hood, but that mystified me even more.”

  “Well, it might work,” said Paul, “though I’m sure most of our people would rather die.”

  “But what will they put in the cages? Wild beasts?”

  Paul darted me an amused look. “Some would call them that, mister. They’re going to put us in them. If Hood starts to bombard the walls, then he kills the people he intends to save. He can’t liberate Washington without killing every Negro man, woman and child in the city!”

  If I had been disgusted with the whites up to now, I was stunned completely by this information. It was reminiscent of the most barbaric practices I had read about in history. How could the whites regard themselves as being superior to Hood when they were prepared to use methods against him which even he had never contemplated, no matter how strong his hatred of the Caucasian race?

  Washington was to be protected by a wall of living flesh!

  “But all they can achieve by that is to stalemate Hood,” I said. “Unless they threaten to kill your people in the hope of forcing Hood to withdraw.”

  “They’ll do that, too, I suppose,” Paul told me. We were squeezing through a very narrow tunnel now, and I heard the distant sound of rushing water. “But they’ve had news from the Austrajaps. If they can hold Washington for twenty-four hours, there’ll be a land fleet coming to relieve them. Even those big ships of Hood’s we’ve heard about won’t be able to fire without killing their own people. Hood will have to make a decision—and either way he stands to lose something.”

  “They are fiends,” I said. “It is impossible to regard them as human beings at all.”

  “I was one of Hood’s special agents before I was captured,” Paul said. “I was hoping to work out a way of helping him from inside, but then they rounded up every black in the city. Our only chance now is somehow to get into the main compound tonight, arm as many people as possible and try for a break.”

  “Do you think you’ll be successful?” I asked.

  Paul shook his head. “No, mister, I don’t. But a lot of dead niggers won’t be much use to them when Hood does come, will they?”

  My nose was assailed by a sickening stench and now I realized where the sound of water had been coming from—the sewers. We were forced to wade sometimes waist-deep through foul water, emerging at last in a large underground room already occupied by about a score of Negroes. These were all that remained of those who had planned to rise in support of Hood when the moment came. They had a fair-sized arsenal with them, but it was plain that there was very little they could do now except die bravely.

  Through that day we discussed our plans and, when evening came, we crept up to the surface and moved through unlit streets to the north side of the city, where the main slave compound was situated.

  By the light of flares, many Negroes were still working, and it was obvious from what we heard that Hood’s forces were almost here.

  Our rifles on our shoulders, we marched openly along the broad streets, heading north. Anyone who saw us would have taken us for a detachment of soldiers, singularly well-disciplined. And not once were we stopped.

  This had been the reason why the dead whites had been stripped of their hoods earlier that day and why, now, every man and woman in our party, with the exception of myself, wore a pair of gloves. The morbid insanity of the whites was being used against them for the first time. The hoods which they wore as a symbol of their fear and hatred of the black race were now helping members of that race to march, unchallenged, under their very noses.

  Behind us, wearing fetters which could easily be removed when the moment came, were the rest of our party, dragging a big cart apparently filled with bricks but actually containing the rest of our guns.

  More than once we felt we were near to discovery, but at last we reached the gates of the compound. My own accent would have been detected at once, so Paul spoke for us. He sounded most authoritative.

  “Deliverin’ these niggers an’ pickin’ up a new party,” he said to the guards.

  The white-hooded guards were unsuspicious. Too many were coming and going tonight and there was more confusion than usual.

  “Why are you all goin’ in?” one asked as we walked through.

  “Ain’t you heard?” Paul told him. “There’s been an outbreak. Ten or twenty of our men killed by coons.”

  “I heard something,” another guard agreed, but by now we were inside the compound itself. It was unroofed—merely a large area in which the black slaves slept in their chains until they were required to work. A huge tub of swill in the centre of the compound was the only food. Those strong enough to crawl to the tub ate, those who were too weak either relied on their friends or starved. It did not matter to the whites, for the blacks had almost fulfilled their function, now.

  We moved into the darkest part of the compound, shouting orders for the people to get to their feet and be inspected. Surreptitiously we began to hand out the weapons.

  But by now we had attracted the curiosity of two of the guards, who began, casually, to walk towards us.

  For my sins, I must admit that I fired the first shot. I did it without compunction, killing the guard instantly with a bullet to his heart. The others began firing, running back towards the gate, but now our luck had changed completely. Alerted by the shots, an old-fashioned steam traction-engine, crudely armoured and carrying a couple of gatlings, turned towards the compound and had filled the gate before we could reach it.

  There was a pause while the occupants of this primitive land ’clad hesitated, seeing our white hoods, but the remaining guards shouted up to them to open fire.

  Soon we were diving for the shadows—our only cover—as a stream of bullets raked the compound, killing with complete lack of discrimination. Many of those who were still chained were cut down where they lay and we were forced to use their bodies for cover, shooting desperately back while some of our party ran around the walls of the compound, searching for a means of escape.

  But the walls were high. They had been designed so as to be escape-proof. We were trapped like rats and all we could do now was to go down fighting.

  Slowly the traction-engine rolled into the compound, firing as it came. Our own bullets were useless against the armour, hastily made as it was.

  Paul, who lay next to me, put a hand on my arm. “Well, Mr. Bastable, you can console yourself that you picked the right side before you died.”

  “It’s not much comfort,” I said.

  Then the ground just in front of us suddenly heaved
up, rippling like the waves of the sea, and something metallic and familiar emerged, its spiral snout spinning with an angry whine, directly in the path of the traction-engine. The sound of the gatlings stopped and was replaced by the dull boom boom of an electric cannon.

  Now two more metal “moles” broke the surface, also firing. Within seconds the traction-engine was reduced to a pile of twisted wreckage and the moles moved forward, still firing, blasting great holes in the walls of the compound.

  I think we were cheering as we followed behind those strange machines. I am sure that O’Bean had never visualized such a use for them! Every white hood we saw (we were no longer wearing our own) was a target and we shot at it.

  I suppose it had been naive of me to think that so clever a strategist as General Hood would not have taken the trouble to learn what the defenders of Washington had planned—and taken steps to counter their scheme. We spread out from the compound, heading for the park spaces where there were still some bushes to give us cover.

  And now I heard a distant noise, reminding me more than anything else of the sound a carpet makes when it is being beaten. But I knew what the noise signified.

  Seconds later explosive shells began to whistle down upon Washington.

  The Land Leviathan was coming.

  We regrouped as best we could, using the armed digging machines for cover, but keeping in the open as much as possible. Throughout the city now there were growing spots of light as buildings were fired by the Land Leviathan’s incendiary shells.

  My own view of the Battle of Washington was an extremely partial one, for I witnessed nothing of the strategy. Hood had heard that A.J.F. reinforcements were on their way and had moved his army swiftly, planning to strike and overwhelm the city well before its allies could arrive. Moreover, he knew that he would not be expected to attack at night, but it was immaterial to him at what hour he moved, for the lights of the Land Leviathan could pick out a target at almost any range.