Limanora the island of progress

around. Whenever he discovered that in any part a general was about to be successful in spite of his disadvantages, he hurried thither and led the troops to victory. If the feebleness of an officer anywhere seemed about to ensure defeat he marched reinforcements to his aid and turned it into success. Whenever he suffered defeat himself, he always managed to represent it as a brilliant success marred by the incompetence of some other general. At last he grew weary of the guerrilla warfare and resolved that it should end. So he withdrew his troops from siege-work and allowed the rebels to gather confidence and to mass again. He sent several generals against them with small armies. Their defeats gave the enemy still greater boldness. They ventured nearer to the capital; and when they were defiling through a pass he appeared on the heights with his guns. The two sections of his army closed the mouths of the pass, and the finest array the rebels had ever shown was shattered. The castles and forts soon surrendered. With one acclaim Choktroo was elected emperor, and the candidate whom he was supposed to be helping vanished from the scene. His boyish reading had made him as much of an actor as he was by nature an organiser. Before long the whole people of Broolyi were adoring him as a god. Their passion was glory; and in him they had found the incarnation of glory. No piece of work in the state so minute but, if successful, he claimed as his own, even should it have been centuries old. No act of his own but, if unsuccessful, he found a scapegoat for. He was mean enough to steal and eavesdrop in his own household; he was bold enough to outlie the foulest of his minions, to outface the most manifest exposure of his crimes. He even dared to assume the rôle of divinity. He ringed himself round with mystery and ceremonial, and when he did appear in public made the appearance impressive by its display. He knew the effect of silence, and cheapened neither himself nor his words. He organised the state on military lines and made it centre in his personality. He soon had exhausted the treasury and the resources of the country in the civil war and in his public displays. Nor could he keep up his glory long in inaction, even though it was an inaction of mystery. He must soon go to war beyond the bounds of the island. There he could shine, there he could get all the supplies he needed; but he had to keep up the farce the nation had played for centuries of professing to keep the peace, for he had adopted the title of the Prince of Peace. He had to make it appear that his wars were forced on him by his neighbours, and for this invented an elaborate system of diplomacies which enabled him to pick a quarrel and yet seem to have it thrust upon him. His first quarry was Aleofane; for it was the wealthiest island in the archipelago. For years he kept up a show of alliance with it, till he had his fire-ships ready, built under his direction on the model of the _Daydream_. He racked his dominion to make guns and all kinds of firearms. When the expedition was complete, he made a demand of Aleofane that had show of reason and yet could not be complied with. It was refused, and his fleet was outside the capital before it could make preparation. He sent some of his ships to the other side of the island to land troops, and as these marched up by land he disembarked the rest under protection of his guns. The first battle decided the war. He dethroned the monarch of Aleofane and annexed the island to his dominions, setting up a viceroy, with a strong force to support him. He drew new troops from the ranks of the people for service in other islands. He impoverished those nobles who refused to join his court or his staff. He broke the spirit of all who would not adore him, and he drained by taxation the resources of the country. With still larger armies and larger fleets he swept conquering over the whole archipelago, till every people bowed before him. Those who distinguished themselves in his wars or in his service he elevated to new distinctions and titles. Those who died in his wars he beatified. With great ceremony he would raise all the dead on one of his battle-fields to the rank of sub-divinities, till his heaven was as crowded as his court. He did not obliterate the old religions; but he overshadowed them, and his policy kept subject to him the passion for glory in life and deification after death that lurks in every human bosom. The active and the romantic were strung up to enthusiasm by the magnetism of his name. Most thought it was his personality which set their blood throbbing, but it was only that his deeds and his histrionic power of magnifying them worked on their imaginations. How wild their fervour I could scarcely have realised had I not observed it with my own senses. He had to keep moving and victoriously moving if his magnetism were not to vanish. When his empire included all the islands in the archipelago but the Isle of Devils in the centre, there was nothing for it but to attempt its conquest. We heard him bluster out his favourite bombastic phrases, learned from his penny romances and biographies. “Heaven is our ally, and who on earth can stand against us? Is it not our mission, the mission of a god, to chase all devils from the earth? Our last conquest shall be hell, and its denizens shall die by fire and sword.” Utterances and proclamations like this fired the imaginations of his soldiers, and they would have laid their lives down at the moment for this fire-eater. What he had boasted or threatened before, he had done, or had by astute fiction persuaded his followers that he had done; and what limit was there to his deeds? If he said that he would scale the heavens, they were certain he would do it. The thought fused them into a unity and chased out of their breasts the panic which the mere mention of the central isle produced. He had not the traditional and hereditary ague-fit to overcome in his blood, yet there was a new sinking of the heart when he thought of his task. He had to reassure himself by wild rhodomontade, as he superintended the building and armament of an enormous fleet and the concentration of the largest army the archipelago had ever seen. He could not pick a diplomatic quarrel with his new victim; yet he must have at least the semblance of a cause in order to put heart into his followers. He announced that he had sent envoys to the Isle of Devils to open intercourse with it, but they were not allowed to approach. Again and again had he tried this pacific measure, but no heed had been given to him. Let vengeance be upon the heads of so churlish and unjust a people! How could such poltroons and men-haters be allowed to cumber the earth? I watched the great fleet put out from Broolyi with its streamers of smoke. We could have heard the acclamations almost with the unaided ear; they rent the sky when Choktroo went on board his own fire-ship, which was thrice the size of the largest of the others, and thrice more brilliantly caparisoned. He passed with his favourite silent and self-absorbed look on his face through the applauding crowds on to a raised platform in the stern, reserved for him and his staff. Arrived there he paced silently with his chin resting on his folded arms. He knew what an impression of godlikeness this made on the crowd. Small though he was in stature, he doubtless seemed to his followers and the people on the shore to take gigantic proportions. I was amazed to see so little perturbation amongst the Limanorans. They seemed to watch the whole scene as if it were a comedy. On the fleet steamed, and yet there was perfect calm in the community; only the Lilamo were at their posts on the peak of Lilaroma. The rest were peacefully seated at the idrovamolans or busy with their usual avocations. I knew the destructiveness of the great cannon that Choktroo had prepared, and the distance they would carry. On this point indeed I had been consulted some months before. I knew, too, how this people shrank from every act that would involve the loss of a human life. How were they to repel this great armament without whelming it in the ocean and drowning a large proportion of those in the ships? Thyriel could throw no light on the problem; we were both too young to be taken into the confidence of the wise men or to know their designs. I could do nothing but watch the fleet and then pass to my daily duties. A night passed, and at dawn we could see the islands of smoke lie black on the horizon; the ships themselves had not appeared. Choktroo evidently knew that it was useless to conceal the expedition or its object from this far-seeing people under the darkness of night. It was too well known throughout the archipelago how penetrative was their gaze. He meant to make his attack by day. Soon the funnels and the masts broke the sky-line. Yet there was not a sound from the storm-cone. The slight wind had fallen; everything favoured the invader. He could see through the translucent air every feature of our island and almost every movement of its inhabitants as soon as we could discern the human beings on board his ships with the naked eye. Were they getting drawn into some gigantic trap? This thought evidently occurred to the leader of the armament, as it occurred to me, for the fleet lessened speed. I could see Choktroo, at a loss what to do, on his poop consulting with his officers, who could help him little. Still the storm-cone stood silent on the mountain-peak. The bold step had to be taken; the order was given for advance. The smoke again streamed in the rear of the fleet, and I could see the gunners prepare for action and the sailors and soldiers set the boats ready for launching. What had happened to the Lilamo? Were they all asleep? Was the progress of the island at last to be trampled under the feet of this brutal soldier and his forces? The fire-ships were almost within cannon-shot of the shore; there puffed out the preliminary whiff from the side of Choktroo’s steamer and the ball fell with a roar into the ocean between. Another five minutes and matters would be past remedy. Yet there was perfect calm among the Limanorans. I controlled my excitement and watched the fleet. Everything was bustle on board, and when I sat down to the idrovamolan all sounds were jubilant and boasting. This Isle of Devils was at last to have her master. This proud isolation was at last to be broken. Such exclamations I could hear from the gunners as they loaded and ran out their guns. All was silence, for all was ready for the word of command. Choktroo paced his poop in scarce-controllable glee. His thoughts were doubtless stretching out beyond the fog circle to the countries he had left behind him with his boyhood, other worlds for him to conquer. His arms were folded and his eye was turned inward; he knew that the whole expedition was awaiting his nod. Soon he stopped stone-silent and stiff, as if to give the decisive word. I waited the action, but he still stood moveless. I looked over the ship; there was his staff awaiting his beck as if petrified. Every man was at his post, but not a muscle moved; the eyes stared as if they belonged to the dead. My glance took in the other ships; all were as silent and still as the grave. The whole armament seemed turned to stone. Then there fluttered down upon the vessels human figures that I recognised as of the Lilamo. In a moment a Limanoran pilot stood at the helm of each fire-ship; and as if by nature the whole fleet turned majestically round and made for the shelving beach of a low uninhabited island underneath the horizon. On and on they sped straight for the shore, round whose margin not the least fringe of surf whitened.