Part 2

The Fatter ship was making for the island. After her went the grey vessel, and it was a nose-to-nose race who should first reach the harbour. The Fatter ship won. The grey vessel fired a gun. The gig was lowered and the Captain, looking very grim and determined, put off in her.... Arabella dropped a pin and it was heard all over the vessel. It was a relief to all on board when the Bishop knelt and offered up a prayer for the Captain’s safety. The Amen that came at the end of it brought the tears to George’s eyes, and his blood ran cold when it swelled into a cheer as the Captain’s gig broke loose from the Fatter ship and came tearing over the smooth waters.

The Captain’s face was very white as he stepped on deck and called Mr. Bich and the other officers to his state-room, and whiter still were the faces of Mr. Bich and the officers when they left it. The vessel shook with the vibration of the engines: there was a strange and stormy muttering among the men: the vessel headed for the open sea. George was taken to his cabin and locked in. He lay down on the floor and tried to go to sleep. A roaring and a rumbling and a banging and a thudding made that impossible. The shaking made him feel so sick that he wished to die. Near by he could hear Arabella weeping, and that was more than he could bear. He thrust and bumped against his door and worked himself into a sweat over it, but it seemed that it would not give. As he reached the very pit of despair, the door gave, the floor gave, the walls heaved in upon him; in one roaring convulsion he was flung up and up and up, and presently came down and down and down into the sea. It tasted salt and was cool to his sweating body and he was glad of it.

VII: SIEBENHAAR

He was not glad of it for long, because he soon became very cold and was nipped to numbness. He assumed that it was the end, and felt a remote regret for Arabella. Other thought he had none.

When he came to himself he was, or seemed to be, once more in the room from which he had been so violently propelled, but there were two men standing near him and talking in a strange tongue. Presently there came a third man who spoke to him in Fattish.

“Hullo! Thought you were done in,” said the man.

George stared.

“Done in. Dead.”

“Yes, I was.”

The man laughed.

“Funny fellow you are. Eyes just like a baby.”

“Where is Arabella?” asked George. “Where am I?”

“Give you three guesses,” said the man.

“On a ship?”

“Right.”

“The Emperor-King’s ship?”

“No. The King-Emperor’s. You have the honour to be the first prisoner in the great Fattero-Fattish war.”

“War? What is that?”

“War? You don’t know what war is? Have you never read a newspaper?”

“I have only read _Tittiker_. It tells about a War Office, but I never knew what it was for.”

“My name’s Siebenhaar, engineer and philosophical student, and I fancy you are the man I have been looking for all my life. You should be capable of a pure idea....”

“What,” asked George, “is an idea?”

Siebenhaar flung his arms around him and embraced him and recited a long poem in his own language.

“You shall be presented at the Universities!” he said. “You shall be a living reproach to all writers, thinkers, artists, and I, Siebenhaar, will be your humble attendant.”

“Did I say anything unusual?”

“Unusual? Unique! Colossal! The ultimate question! ‘What is war? What is an idea?’ Ach?”

George insisted on an explanation of the meaning of war, and then he asked why the Fattish and the Fatters should be intent upon mutual destruction, and also what the difference between them might be.

“Difference?” said Siebenhaar. “The Fattish drink beer that you can hold; the Fatters drink beer that runs through you. That is all there is to it.”

With that he sent for some Fatter beer and drank a large quantity himself and made George taste it. He spat it out.

“Is that why they are making war?”

Siebenhaar smacked his lips.

“Man,” he said, “is the creature of his internal organs, almost, I might say, their slave. The lungs, the heart, the kidneys, the stomach, the bladder, these control a man, and every day refashion him. If they do their work well, so does he. If they do it ill, then so does he. Each of the organs has secretions which periodically choke their interaction, and bring about a state of ill-humour and discomfort in which the difference between man and man is accentuated, and their good relations degenerate into hatred and envy and distrust. At such times murders are committed and horrible assaults, but frequently discretion prevails over those desires, suppresses them but does not destroy them. They accumulate and find expression in war, which has been led up to by a series of actions on the part of men suffering from some internal congestion. Modern war, they say, is made by money, and the lust for it. That is no explanation. No man becomes a victim of the lust for money except something interferes with his more natural lusts: no man, I go so far as to say, could so desire money as to become a millionaire except he were const----”

“But what has this to do with beer?” interrupted George.

“I’m coming to that,” continued Siebenhaar.

“Beer taken in excess is a great getter of secretions, and man is so vain an animal as to despise those whose secretions differ from his own. What is more obvious than that the implacable enemies of the Eastern hemisphere should be those whose drink is so much the same but so profoundly different in its effects? Internal congestion may bring about war, but in this war the material is undoubtedly supplied by beer. And I may add, in support of my theory, that once war is embarked upon, those engaged in it suffer so terribly from internal disorganisation as to become unanswerable for their actions, and so mad as to rejoice in the near prospect of a violent death. Moltke was notoriously decayed inside and the state of Napoleon’s internal organs will not bear thinking on.”

George protested that he had never heard of Napoleon or Moltke, and Siebenhaar was on the point of embracing him, when, muttering something about Fatter beer, he rose abruptly and left the room.

VIII: MORE OF SIEBENHAAR

“There is a woman aboard,” said Siebenhaar when he returned. “I suppose you have never seen a woman?”

“Two,” said George simply.

Siebenhaar slapped his leg.

“Have you any theory about them?” he asked.

“Theory? I don’t know what theory is. I loved them. I put my arms round their necks and rubbed my face against their soft faces. It was very nice. I should like to do it every night before I go to sleep. I should like to do it now.”

“You shall,” said Siebenhaar, and he went out and came back with Arabella.

George leaped from his berth and flung his arms round her neck and embraced her, and she was so surprised and delighted that she kissed him, and Siebenhaar wept to see it.

“I don’t know who you are, madam,” he said, “but if I were you I should stick to that young man like a barnacle to a ship’s bottom. I would creep into his heart and curl up in it like a grub in a ripe raspberry, and I would go down on my knees and thank Heaven for having sent me the one man in the modern world who may be capable of a genuine and constant affection. You have him, madam, straight from his mother’s arms, with a soul, a heart, as virgin as I hope your own are.”

Arabella disengaged herself from George’s now ardent embrace, drew herself up, and with the haughtiness of her race, said:

“My father was a bishop of the Church of Fatland.”

“That,” said Siebenhaar, “does not exempt you from the normal internal economy of your sex or its need of the (perfectly honest) love of the opposite sex. My point is that you have here an unrivalled opportunity of meeting an honest love, and I implore you to take it.”

“I would have you know,” retorted Arabella, “that I am engaged to my late father’s chaplain.”

“War,” said Siebenhaar, “is war, and I should advise you to seek protection where it is offered.”

“If you would hold my hand in yours,” said George to Arabella, “I think I should sleep now. I am so tired.”

Arabella held George’s hand and in two minutes he was asleep.

IX: SIEBENHAAR ON WOMEN

“There are some,” said Siebenhaar, “who regard women as a disease, a kind of fungoid distortion of the human form. But only the very lowest species are hermaphrodite, and the higher seem to be split up into male and female for the purpose of reproduction without temporary loss of efficiency in the task of procuring food. The share of the male in the act of reproduction is soon over, and among the wisest inhabitants of the globe the male is destroyed as soon as his share is performed. Human beings are not very wise: they have an exaggerated idea of their importance; and they are reluctant to destroy the life of their kind except in occasional outbursts of organised homicide such as that on which we are now engaged. The share of the female entails the devotion of many months, during which she needs the protection of the male, whom, for that reason, and also because she hopes to repeat the performance, she retains by every art at her disposal. Hence has arisen the institution of marriage, which pledges the male to the protection of the female and their offspring. Whether a moral principle is engaged in this institution is a question upon which philosophers cannot agree. It is therefore left out of most systems of philosophy. Mine is based on my answer to it, which is that there is no moral principle engaged. Morality is for the few who are capable of it. Few men have the capacity for ideas, but all men love women, except a few miserable degenerates, who prefer a substitute. There is no idea in marriage. It is an expedient. Sensible communities admit of open relief from it; in duller communities relief has to be sought in the byways. And still no moral principle is engaged. It is a matter only of supplying the necessities of human nature. Now, love is a different affair altogether. Love is an idea, a direct inspiration. It alone can transcend the tyranny of the internal organs and lead a man not only to perceive his limitations but within them to create beauty, and creative a man must be directly he becomes aware of the heat of love in the heart of a woman. There is no other such purging fire, none that can so illuminate the dark places of the world or so concentrate and distil such lightness as there is. All evil, I have said, comes from congestion; to release the good a purge is necessary, and there is no purge like woman. Therefore, madam, I do most solemnly charge you to tend the fire of love in your heart. Never again will you find a man so sensible to its warmth--(most men can see no difference between love and indigestion)--Oh, madam, discard all thoughts of marriage, which is an expedient of prudence, which is cowardice, of modesty, which is a lure, of innocence, which in an adult female is a lie, to the winds, do exactly as you feel inclined to do, and love. Madam ----”

But by this Arabella was asleep. She had sunk back against George, her lovely tresses lay upon his shoulder, and her hand clasped his.

Siebenhaar wiped away a tear, heaved a great sigh, took his beer-mug in his hand and crept away on tip-toe.

X: LOVE

XI: MUSIC

On deck was a band playing dirge-like dragging hymns, for the Admiral of that ship was a very pious man and believed that the Almighty was personally directing the war against the enemies of Fatterland, and would be encouraged to hear that ship’s company taking him seriously.

No sooner did Siebenhaar set foot on deck than he was arrested.

The Chaplain had listened to every word of his discourse and reported it to the Admiral, who detested Siebenhaar because he was always laughing and was very popular with the crew. Word for word the Chaplain had quoted Siebenhaar’s sayings, so that he could deny nothing but only protest that it was purely a private matter, a series of opinions and advice given gratuitously to an interesting couple.

“Nothing,” roared the Admiral, “is given to the enemies of our country.”

“We are all human,” said Siebenhaar. “I was carried away by the discovery of human feeling amid the callousness of this pompous war.”

The Admiral went pale. The Chaplain shuddered. The officers hid their faces.

“He has spoken against God’s holy war,” said the Chaplain.

“That’s all my eye,” said Siebenhaar. “Why drag God into it? You are making war simply because you have so many ships that you are ashamed not to use them. The armament companies want to build more ships and can invent no other way of getting rid of them.”

“God has given us ships of war,” said the Chaplain, “even as He has given us the good grain and the fish of the sea. Who are we that we should not use them?”

The sub-Chaplain had been sent to discover the effect of Siebenhaar’s advice upon the enemies of Fatterland. The accused had just opened his mouth to resume his defence when the sub-Chaplain returned and whispered into the ear of his chief.

“God help us all!” cried the Chaplain. “They are desecrating His ship!”

There was a whispered consultation. George and Arabella were brought before the court, and if George was the object of general execration, Arabella won the admiration of all eyes, especially the Admiral’s, who regarded his affections as his own particular, private and peculiar devil and was now tempted by him. The Chaplain held forth at great length; the Admiral grunted in apostrophe. Only Siebenhaar could interpret. He said:

“They say we have blasphemed their God of War. I by giving advice, you by acting on it. It is not good to be fortunate and favoured among hundreds of mateless males. It will go hard with us.”

“And Arabella?” asked George.

“They will keep Arabella,” replied Siebenhaar.

They were silenced.

A boat was stocked with corned beef, biscuits, and water. George and Siebenhaar were placed in it and it was lowered. The band resumed its playing of dirge-like dragging hymns, and through the wailing of the oboes and the cornet-à-piston George could hear the sobs of Arabella.

XII: ADRIFT

“Now,” said Siebenhaar, “you have an opportunity to exercise your national prerogative and rule the waves.”

George made no reply. His internal organs were supplying him with an illustration of Siebenhaar’s theory. The waves did just as they liked with the boat, sent it spinning in one direction, wrenched it back in another, slipped from under it, picked it up again and every now and then playfully sent a drenching spray over its occupants.

Siebenhaar talked, sang and slept, and, when he was doing none of these things, ate voraciously.

“I insist on dying with a full stomach,” he said when George protested.

George ate and slept and thought of Arabella, when he could think at all.

“Death,” said Siebenhaar, “must be very surprising: but then, so is life when you penetrate its disguises and discover its immutability. We hate death only because it is impossible to pretend that it is something else, so that it comes at the end of the comedy to give us the lie. After this experience I think I shall change my philosophy and seek the truth of life with the light of death. You never know: it might become fashionable. Women like their thoughts ready-made, and they like them bizarre. Women are undoubtedly superior to men....”

But by this time George was in such a state of discomfort that he lay flat on his face in the bottom of the boat and groaned:

“I am going to die.”

“Eat,” said Siebenhaar, “eat and drink.” And he offered corned beef and water.

“I want to die,” moaned George, and he wept because death would not come at once. He hid his face in his hands and howled and roared. Siebenhaar himself ate the corned beef and drank the water, and went on eating and drinking until he had exhausted all their supply. Then he curled up in the bows and went to sleep and snored.

And the waves changed their mood and gave the boat only a gentle rocking.

George opened his eyes and gazed up into the sky. It was night and the stars were shining brilliantly. Red and yellow and white they were and they danced above him. He was astonished to find that he did not wish to die. He was very hungry. He crawled over to Siebenhaar and shook him and woke him up.

There was neither food nor water in the locker.

“In the great cities of the civilised world,” said Siebenhaar, “there are occasional performers who go without food for forty days. We shall see.”

“I am thirsty,” whimpered George.

“Those occasional performers,” returned Siebenhaar, “drink water and smoke cigarettes, and they are sheltered from the elements by walls of glass. We shall see.”

With that he turned over and went to sleep again.

XIII: HUNGER

George’s face was sunk and his eyes glared. Siebenhaar tried to spit into the sea, but it was impossible. He was daunted into silence.

Another day began to dawn.

“If this goes on,” said George in a dry whistling croak of a voice, “I shall eat you.”

And he glared so at Siebenhaar’s throat that the philosopher turned up his coat collar to cover it.

XIV: MILITARY

At dawn a shower of rain came. They collected water in George’s boots. They had already eaten Siebenhaar’s.

Thus revived, George stood up, and on the edge of the sea saw blue land and little white sails. They came nearer and nearer, and presently they were delivered by a little vessel that contained one white man and ten negroes. Neither George nor Siebenhaar could speak, but they pointed to their bellies and were given to eat.

“I recant,” said Siebenhaar. “There is nothing to be learnt from death, for death is nothing. The stomach is lord of life and master of the world.”

With that he recounted their adventures and the reason for their being in such a woeful plight. The master of the ship, on learning that Siebenhaar was a Fatter, said that he must deliver him up as a prisoner when they reached Cecilia, the capital of the Fattish colony which they would see as soon as the fleet--for it was a fishing fleet--turned into the bay.

“As a Philosopher,” said Siebenhaar, “I have no nationality. As an engineer--but I am no longer an engineer. The Admiral and the Chaplain will have seen to that. My life is now devoted to Mr. Samways, as in a certain narrower sense it has nearly been.” And he told the master of the ship how George was by birth the proprietor of the island in dispute between the two nations, and how the island shone with precious stones and glittered with a mountain of gold. The master’s cupidity was aroused, and he agreed to grant Siebenhaar his liberty on the promise of a rich reward at the conclusion of the war. He was a Fattishman, and could not believe that there would be any other end than a Fattish triumph.

A pact was signed and they sailed into Cecilia, the governor of which colony was Siebenhaar’s cousin and delighted to see him and to have a chance of talking the Fatter language and indulging in philosophical speculations for which his Fattish colleagues had no taste. He welcomed George warmly on his first entry in a civilised land, and was delighted to instruct him in the refinements of Fattish manners: how you did not eat peas or gravy with your knife, and how (roughly speaking) no portion of the body between the knees and shoulders might be mentioned in polite society, and how sneezing and coughing and the like sudden affections were to be checked or disguised. George talked of Arabella and the wonderful stir of the emotions she had caused in him. Colonel Sir Gerard Schweinfleisch (for that was his name) was greatly shocked, and told how in the best Fattish society all talk of love was forbidden, left by the men to the women, and how among men the emotions were never discussed, and how, since it was impossible to avoid all mention of that side of life, men in civilisation had invented a system of droll stories which both provided amusement and put a stop to the embarrassment of intimate revelations.

However, as George’s vigour was restored by the good food he ate in enormous quantities, he could not forbear to think of Arabella or to talk of her. He spoke quite simply of her to a company of officers, and they roared with laughter and found it was the best story they had ever heard.

When the officers were not telling droll stories, they were playing cards or ball games or boasting one against the other or talking about money.

George asked what money was, and they showed him some. He was disappointed. He had expected something much more remarkable because they had been so excited about it. They told him he must have money, and Colonel Sir Gerard Schweinfleisch gave him a sovereign. A man in the street asked George to lend him a sovereign and George gave it to him. The officers were highly amused.

The adventurers had not been in Cecilia above a week when the town was besieged and presently bombarded. Except that there was a shortage of food and that every day at least thirty persons were killed, there was no change in the life of the place. The officers told droll stories and played cards or ball games or boasted one against the other or talked about money. They ate, drank, slept, and quarrelled, and George found them not so very much unlike himself except that he was serious about his love for Arabella, while they laughed. He asked Siebenhaar what civilisation was. Said the philosopher with a wave of his hand:

“They have built a lot of houses.”

“But the ships out there are knocking them down.”

“They have made railways from one town to another.”

“But the black men have torn the railways up.” (For the native tribes had risen.)

Said Siebenhaar:

“No one can define civilisation. It means doing things.”

“Why?”

“Thou art the greatest of men,” replied Siebenhaar, and his face beamed approbation and love upon his friend. But to put an unanswerable question to Siebenhaar was to set him off on his theories.

“First,” he said, “the stomach must be fed. Two men working together can procure more food than two men working separately. That is as far as we have got. Until the two men trust each other we are not likely to get any further. Until then they will steal each other’s tools, goods, women, and squabble over the proceeds of their work and make the world a hell for the young. When one man steals or murders it is a crime: when forty million men steal, murder, rape, burn, destroy, pillage, sack, oppress, they are making glorious history, a lot of money, and, if they like to call it so, an Empire. But Empire and petty thefts are both occasioned by the lamentable distrust of the two men of our postulate.”

“But for Arabella,” said George, “I could wish I had never left my island.”

News of the war came dribbling in. The island had been twice captured by the Fatter fleet, and twice it had been evacuated. The Fatters had suffered defeat in their home waters but had gained a victory in the Indian seas. Came news that the island had again been captured, then the tidings that the whole of the Fatter fleet and army was to be concentrated upon Cecilia and the colony of which it was the capital.

“Why?” asked George.

“Because a new reef of gold has been discovered up-country.”

The bombardment grew very fierce. From the mountain above the town ships of war could be seen coming from all directions, and some of them were Fattish ships, but not enough as yet to come to grips with the Fatter fleet.

The inland frontiers were attacked but held, though with frightful loss of life. Then one night from the Fatter fleet came a landing party, and Colonel Sir Gerard Schweinfleisch called a council of war, and the officers sat from ten o’clock until three in the morning debating what had best be done.