The World Peril of 1910 | Page 7

Achill Island, when the Armada
came south from the Pentland Firth. The rest of me is Irish. I need
hardly say more. That is why I am here now."
The Kaiser looked at the Chancellor and the Field Marshal, and they
looked back at him, and in a moment the situation -- the crisis upon
which the fate of the world might depend -- was decided. It was not a
time when men who are men talk. A few moments of silence passed;
the four men looking at each other with eyes that had the destinies of
nations in the brains behind them. Then the Kaiser took three swift
strides towards Castellan, held out his hand, and said in a voice which

had an unwonted note of respect in it:
"Sir, you have convinced me. Henceforth you are Director of the Naval
and Military operations of the German Empire, subject, of course, to
the conditions which will be arranged by myself and those who are
entrusted with the tactical and strategical developments of such plan of
campaign as I may decide to carry out on sea and land. And now, to put
it rudely -- brutally, if you like, your price?"
Castellan took the Kaiser's hand in a strong, nervous grip, and said:
"I shall not state my price in money, your Majesty. I am not working
for money, but you will understand that I cannot convert what I have
shown you to-day into the fighting reality. Only a nation can do that. It
will cost ten millions of marks, at least, to -- well, to so far develop this
experiment that no fleet save your Majesty's shall sail the seas, and that
no armies save yours shall without your consent march over the
battlefields of the world's Armageddon."
"Make it twenty millions, fifty millions," laughed the Kaiser, "and it
will be cheap at the price. What do you think Herr Kantzler and
Feldherr?"
"Under the present circumstances of the other monarchies of Europe,
your Majesty," replied the Chancellor, "it would be cheap at a hundred
millions, especially with reference to a certain fleet, which appears to
be making the ocean its own country."
"Quite so," said the Field Marshal. "If what we have seen to-day can be
realised it would not be necessary to pump out the North Sea in order to
invade England."
"Or to get back again," laughed the Kaiser. "I think that is what your
grandfather said, didn't he?"
"Yes, your Majesty. He found eight ways of getting into England, but
he hadn't thought of one of getting out again."

Since the days of the Prophets no man had ever uttered more prophetic
words than Freidrich Helmuth von Moltke spoke then, all
unconsciously. But in the days to come they were fulfilled in such
fashion that only one man in all the world had ever dreamed of, and
that was the man who had beaten John Castellan by a yard in the
swimming race for the rescue of that American girl from drowning.
Chapter II
NORAH'S GOOD-BYE
THE scene had shifted back from the royal city of Potsdam to the little
coast town in Connemara. John Castellan was sitting on a corner of his
big writing-table swinging his legs to and fro, and looking a little
uncomfortable. Leaning against the wall opposite the windows, with
her hands folded behind her back, was a girl of about nineteen, an
almost perfect incarnation of the Irish girl at her best. Tall, black-haired,
black-browed, grey-eyed, perfectly-shaped, and with that indescribable
charm of feature which neither the pen nor the camera can do justice to
-- Norah Castellan was facing him, her eyes gleaming and almost black
with anger, and her whole body instinct with intense vitality.
"And so Ireland hasn't troubles enough of her own, John, that you must
bring new ones upon her, and what for? To realise a dream that was
never anything else but a dream, and to satisfy a revenge that is three
hundred years old! If that theory of yours about reincarnation is true,
you may have been a Spaniard once, but remember that you're an
Irishman now; and you're no good Irishman if you sell yourself to these
foreigners to do a thing like that, and it's your sister that's telling you."
"And it's your brother, Norah," he replied, his black brows meeting
almost in a straight line across his forehead, "who tells you that Ireland
is going to have her independence; that the shackles of the Saxon shall
be shaken off once and for ever, even if all Europe blazes up with war
in the doing of it. I have the power and I will use it. Spaniard or
Irishman, what does it matter? I hate England and everything English."
"Hate England, John!" said