The Land Leviathan

1. THE TWO FLEETS MEET

Looking back, I suppose I should count myself fortunate in having, by a strange set of circumstances, been not only a witness to Hood's decision to risk everything he had gained by invading America, but to experience the invasion (and its aftermath) itself. Not many young officers are given such an opportunity.

My determination to take the law into my own hands if I judged Hood 'guilty' remained as strong, but I was already beginning to realize that the Black Attila was a far subtler individual than I had at first supposed. Moreover, I soon came to learn that his ferocity, his reputation for putting to death or enslaving whole cities, was something of a myth which he encouraged. It was useful to him if his enemies believed the myth, for it quite often resulted in all but bloodless conquests I The defenders would prefer to parley rather than fight, and would often ask for terms quite inferior to those Hood was prepared to grant I This meant that, when he proposed terms which wejre better than they had expected, he gained the reputation of munificence which was quite undeserved, but encouraged the conquered to work willingly for him - out of a sense of relief as much as any other consideration.

I saw little either of Hood or Una Persson in the following week. They were far too involved in their plans for mobilization. We of the diplomatic mission could only gather what information was available and relay it to Bantustan. We were allowed, in the first days, to communicate information of all kinds freely to our own country, but a little later a certain censorship was imposed as General Hood became nervous of news reaching Tokyo. I think he had heard that the A.J.E. fleet was making for the Atlantic. The largest part of the Ashanti fleet had been based in Europe, where it was most useful, and some ships had to be recalled, while others were ordered to assemble in Hamburg, Copenhagen, Gothenburg and other Northern European ports, preparatory to sailing for America.

I gathered that Hood was not merely relying on his vast land, air and sea fleets, but had some other counter to play. From something Una Persson had said, I thought her trip to England had played a part in Hood's 'secret weapon' being developed, but I was to learn more of this later.

My next surprise came a day or two before Hood was due to sail. Una Persson visited me at the legation, where I was busy with some sort of meaningless paperwork. She apologized for disturbing me and said that General Hood would like to see me for a few moments during luncheon.

I went unwillingly. Privately I was sure that the powerful Australasian-Japanese Federation would put a stop to his dreams of conquest forever and that I no longer had a part to play in the history of this world. I was looking forward to returning to Bantustan when the Ashanti Empire collapsed, as it was bound to do.

Hood had almost finished luncheon when I arrived at the palace. He was sitting at the head of a long table surrounded by his chief ministers and generals. There were charts spread among the remains of a simple meal and black faces were bent over them, conversing in low, urgent tones. All looked up as I arrived, and several frowned, making insulting remarks about their meal being spoiled by the sight of a white man. I had become quite used to this sort of thing from Hood's

lieutenants (though, to be fair, not all were so ill-mannered) and was able to ignore the comments, saying: 'You sent for me, general?'

Hood seemed surprised to see me. He looked vaguely at me for a moment and then snapped his fingers as if remembering why he had sent for me. 'Ah, yes, Mr Bastable. Just to tell you to have a bag packed by tomorrow morning and to present yourself to the captain of the Dingisivayo. He is expecting you. I've exchanged communications with President Gandhi and he is agreeable to the scheme. You have been seconded to my staff. You're coming with us to America, Mr Bastable. Congratulations.'

There was nothing I could say. I tried to think of some retort, failed, and saluted. 'Very well, sir.' Whether there was some deeper motive involved, or whether this was just another example of Hood's quixotic and whimsical behaviour where my fate was concerned I did not know. It seems that by taking my initial decision I was now bound to follow it through all the way.

And that was how I came to be the only white officer to accompany the sea-borne Black Horde when it sailed out over the Atlantic bound for New York with the express intention of destroying forever the power of the Caucasian race.

My life has been full of ironies since my first, ill-fated expedition to Teku Benga, but I think that that remains the greatest irony of them all.

Hood had thrown virtually everything he had into the invasion fleet. Surface and underwater vessels, airships of every description, came together at last just off the coast of Iceland - a fleet which filled the sky and occupied the ocean for as far as the eye could see. Aboard the ships were stored Hood's vast collection of land ironclads and in the centre of all these there rose a gigantic hull, specially built but utterly mysterious in its purpose, which could not progress under its own power but which had to be towed by thirty other battleships. I guessed that this must surely be Hood's secret weapon, but neither I nor any of the other officers aboard the Dingiswayo had any inkling of its nature. And all the while news was coming through of the Australasian-Japanese fleet converging on our own.

Hood's hope was that we could run ahead of the A.J.F. fleet and get to the coast of North America before it caught up with us, but these new ships of O'Bean's were much faster than ours (their fire-power was a completely unknown factor) and I knew that we had no chance. There was a school of thought which said that we should disperse our own fleet, but Hood was against this, feeling that we had a better chance if we concentrated our forces. Also, as was evident, he was prepared to risk almost everything to protect the vast hull we towed (or, at least, the contents of the hull) and I had the impression that he might consider sacrificing everything else so long as that hull arrived eventually in New York.

There was scarcely a ship in the fleet which would not have dwarfed one of the ironclads of my own day. Equipped with long-snouted naval guns which could put a stream of incredibly powerful shells into the air in the time it took one of my world's ships to fire a single shot, capable of cruising at speeds reaching ninety knots, of manoeuvring with the speed and ease of the lightest cruiser, a couple of them could have given our good old British navy a pretty grim time. Hood had a hundred of these alone in his fleet, as well as over fifty underwater battleships and nearly seventy big aerial men-of-war (which, in turn, were equipped with light fighting air-boats capable of leaving the mother ship, striking rapidly at an enemy and returning to safety above the clouds). As well as this massive fighting strength, there were dozens of smaller vessels, many cargo ships, carrying land 'clads and infantry, gunboats and torpedo boats - virtually all the remaining fighting ships of the nations of the world which had taken part in the war.

If I had believed in the cause of the Ashanti Empire I am sure I would have felt a surge of pride when I looked upon the splendour of that fleet as it steamed away from Reykjavik in the early morning of 23 December 1907 - a mass of black and scarlet upon the grey field of the wintry sea. Wisps of fog drifted from time to time across the scene and, standing on

the quarter-deck of the Dinghwayo, listening to the sound of ships' horns bellowing in the distance, I was overwhelmed with a sense of awe. How, I wondered, could anything in the world resist such might? And if there was a God, how could He allow it to have been created in the first place?

It seemed to me, at that moment, that I had been torn from my own world to witness a vision of Armageddon - and, oddly enough, I felt privileged I

I think it was then that the notion first occurred to me that perhaps I had been selected by Providence to be involved in a countless series of what might be called alternative versions of the Apocalypse - that I was doomed to witness the end of the world over and over again and doomed, too, to search for a world where Man had learned to control the impulses which led to such suicidal conflicts, perhaps never to find it. I still do not quite understand my motives in recording my experiences, but it could be that I hope that, if they are ever read, they will serve as a lesson to a world which has so far managed to avert its own destruction.

But, as I have said before, I am neither introspective nor morbid by nature, and my thoughts soon returned to the more immediate aspects of my situation.

It was about 4 p.m. on Christmas Day, 1907, that the Australasian-Japanese fleet was sighted speeding rapidly from ssw. out of the twilight, firing as it came.

Night had fallen by the time we properly engaged and the fighting was confused. The air was full of fire and noise. Above us the air fleets were locked in terrible conflict, while on every side huge guns poured forth destruction seemingly at random, and when, at sudden moments, there came a lull, when there was a second or two of silence and blackness, I experienced a cold and impossible fear, certain that it was all over, that the world itself had been destroyed and that the sun would never rise again.

By means of wireless telegraphy, Hood was able to direct the battle from the Chaka which was riding somewhere above the clouds, and it became evident to me that he was building up a defensive position around the contents of that huge and mysterious hull at the centre of our fleet. The Dingiswajo, also close to the centre, was not therefore immediately engaged in battle, but impatiently awaited orders to have a crack at the enemy, firing occasionally, when so commanded, into the sky at one of the Australasian-Japanese airships, which would return our shots with bombs and concentrated cannon-fire, none of which happily scored a direct hit and all of which failed to pierce our super-strong steel armour.

At last we received an order to break formation and moved at full speed to a position on the starboard flank of the main Australasian-Japanese grouping, where our own ships were sustaining particularly heavy losses.

We seemed at first to be moving away from the main battle - away from the crimson and yellow flashes of the guns, the incessant booming, and into utter blackness. Then, suddenly, as if receiving warning of our presence, two battleships turned their searchlights on us. Powerful beams of white light struck us in the eyes and blinded us for the moment. I was still on the quarter-deck, with precious little to do, not being a regular officer of the ship. I heard the captain shouting from the bridge, saw our long guns begin to swing into position, felt the Dingiswayo roll as she turned at an acute angle, broadside to the enemy, giving me my first clear view of two long lines of battleships, some mere silhouettes in the darkness, and others speckled with reflected light from the gun-flashes to port. Then the air was full of the whine of shells, the chunky, throaty noise of those shells hitting the water ahead and astern of us, but never, thankfully, scoring on either our hull or superstructure. Then all our guns began to go off and the Dingisvqyo shuddered from stem to stern so that I thought she might well shake herself to pieces. Our shells left the muzzles of the guns with a kind of high-pitched yell - almost an exultation - and the enemy ships were grouped so tightly together that we could not miss. The shells hit the battleships and exploded. Heavy smoke drifted back to us and we were all forced to don the special masks designed for the purpose of protecting our lungs in just such circumstances.

The air had been cold, the temperature well below zero, but now it began to heat up, becoming tropical, as far as we were concerned. We went about and sought the darkness again, knowing that we had been lucky and that we could not expect to take on a dozen or more battleships alone.

For a while the searchlights roamed across the sea, trying to pick us out, but we skulked just out of their range, using their own lights to try to get some idea of our best chance. A battleship had detached itself from the main formation and was rushing blindly towards us, apparently unaware of our presence in its path. It was a splendid opportunity for us. I heard the order given to release torpedoes but to hold off firing. There was a faint sound, like the striking of a bell, and the torpedoes sped silently towards their prey, darting from our tubes while the enemy ship remained unaware that she was under attack I

The torpedoes scored direct hits below the battleship's waterline. She was holed in five places and was sinking even before she realized it. I heard a confused shouting from her decks, and her searchlights came on, but already she was keeling over and the lights slowly rose into the sky like the fingers of a clutching, imploring hand. She went down without having fired a single shot. For a little while I saw her electrics gleaming below the surface, winking out slowly as she sank, and then the water was black again, dotted with a few bits of wreckage and a handful of wailing sailors.

There was no time to pick up survivors, even if we had wished to (and the Ashanti did not believe in showing much mercy to defeated enemies). We had been sighted again and two battleships were rushing towards us at speeds which would have seemed incredible on land and which were, to me, all but impossible on sea! We were capable of not much more than half their speed, but again we were successful in finding covering darkness.

It seemed to me that we had moved quite a long way off from the main conflict. At least a mile away now, the sea and the sky seemed to be one vast mass of flame, lighting a wide area and revealing wreck upon wreck. The entire sea was filled with broken remains - both of ordinary battleships and fallen airships - while beneath this mass of torn metal and blazing oil and wood could sometimes be seen the dark shapes of the underwater boats, like so many gigantic killer whales, seeking out fresh prey.

Once I had a glimpse of two subaquatic destroyers locked in conflict several fathoms below, searchlights piercing the gloom, guns flashing in what was to me an eerie silence. Then one of the boats wheeled and dived deeper and the other followed it, still firing. I saw something flicker down there and then suddenly the water above the scene gushed up like a monstrous geyser, flinging fragments of metal and corpses high into the air, and I knew it was all over for one of the vessels.

Then my attention was brought back to the two battleships whose searchlights had picked us up. Our decks were suddenly flooded with light and almost immediately the enemy guns began to go off. This time we were not so lucky. An explosive shell hit us somewhere amidships and I was flung backwards by the force of the blast. A fire-fighting team ran past me, paying out a hose behind it, and I saw the fire flicker out in what must have been seconds. I pulled myself to my feet and climbed the companionway to the bridge, where the captain, peering through a pair of night-glasses, was rapping out orders through an electrical loud-hailer which amplified his clicking, harshly accented speech (it was an Ivory Coast dialect with which I was unfamiliar). Again the Dingiswayo went about, taking evasive action, all her port guns firing at once and scoring at least two hits on the vessel which had damaged us. We saw her lurch heavily over to one side and settle in the water, part of her hull glowing red-hot and a shower of sparks streaming into the air from a point near her afterbridge. We must have hit some vital part of her, for a moment later there came an awesome explosion which flung me backwards once again so that this time my spine struck the rail and winded me horribly. Oily black smoke was borne on the wind of the explosion and blinded us, and the Dingswayo was buffeted as badly as if she had been suddenly seized by a hurricane, but then the smoke cleared and we saw little of the other ship, just something which might have been her top-mast standing out for a second above the waterline and then this, too, disappeared.

Her sister ship now commenced a heavy cannonade and again we were hit, though not badly, and were able to fire back until the enemy evidently thought better of continuing the engagement, turned about and sped at its maximum rate of knots back into the darkness.

This cautious action on the part of the enemy skipper had a considerable effect on our own morale and a huge cheer went up from our decks while our forward gun fired one last, contemptuous shot at the stern of the retreating vessel.

It seemed to me (and I was later proved correct) that for all its superiority of speed and fire-power, the Australasian-Japanese navy had little stomach for fighting. They had had no direct experience of naval warfare, whereas the Ashanti had been fighting now for several years and were used to risking death almost daily. Faced with the terrible implications of actual battle, our enemy began to lose its nerve. This was the pattern, also, above and below the waves.

But by dawn we were still fighting. For miles in all directions battleship met.battleship, steering through a veritable Sargasso Sea of wreckage (in many places it was virtually impossible to see the water at all), and the air continued to be filled with the booming of the guns, the whine of the shells and, less audible but far more chilling to my ears, the screams and the wails of the wounded, the drowning, the abandoned of both sides. Parts of the water were on fire, sending sooty smoke into the cold, grey sky, and now the cloud had come down so low that it was rare to catch sight of an aerial ironclad as it manoeuvred overhead, though we could hear the guns sounding like thunder and see occasional flashes of light, like lightning, every so often split those clouds. A couple of times I saw a blazing hull fall suddenly from out of the grey, boiling canopy above us.

We were soon engaged again, with a ship called the Irvo Shima, which had already seen some pretty fierce fighting by the look of -her. Part of her bows, above the waterline, had been blown away and there was a great pile of miscellaneous junk in her starboard scuppers which had either been washed or blown there by whatever had damaged her bridge. But she was plucky and she still had a considerable amount of fire-power, as she proved. I think she felt that she was doomed anyway, and was determined to take the Dingiswayo to the bottom with her, for she showed no concern for her own safety, steaming directly at us, apparently with the intention of ramming us full on if her guns didn't sink us first.

In the distance there were a hundred ships of varying tonnage locked in similar struggles, but I saw no sign of the great hull we had been protecting, nor of the ships which had been assigned to tow her, and it seemed to me then that she had gone down.

The Irvo Shima did not waver in her course and we were forced to do what we could to avoid her, giving her everything we had left from our forward guns and, for the first time, using every machine-gun that we had behind armour in the fighting tops. This manoeuvre brought us so close to the enemy that we almost touched and neither of us could use any of our big guns at such close range, nor risk using torpedoes. I got a good view of the Japanese seamen, their elaborate and somewhat unfunctional uniforms torn and dirty, their faces begrimed with blood, soot and sweat, watching us grimly as they sped past us, already beginning to turn in the hope of taking us in our stern. But we were turning, too, and a few minutes later the manoeuvre was all over. On our captain's orders, we released our starboard torpedoes the instant we were broadside of the Iwo Shima, at the same time pouring the last of our fire-power into her, every starboard gun firing at once. She was fast enough to escape most of what we sent, but her speed told against her, for her retaliatory fire went wide of us, scoring only one minor hit in our starboard bow. We had managed to upset most of the big guns in her battery, but she turned again, much slower now, for our torpedoes had damaged at least one of her screws. By now the sea had begun to rise, making it much more difficult to aim or, indeed, to see our enemy. Everywhere I looked there were walls of water containing all varieties of flotsam - metal, wood and flesh jostling together in some ghastly minuet - and then the sea would sink for a moment, revealing the Iwo Shima, and we would fire hastily until, momentarily, she disappeared again.

Our own damage was not slight. From somewhere below, our pumps were working full out to clear many of the compartments which were flooded. In several places the superstructure of the ship had fused into strange, jagged shapes, and corpes hung limply from damaged positions in the fighting tops, where medical staff had been unable to reach them. We had two big holes above the waterline and a smaller one below, amidships, and we had lost at least thirty men. In ordinary circumstances we might have retired with perfect honour, but all of us knew that this battle was crucial, and there was nothing for it but to fight on. We were closing on the Irvo Shima now, letting the sea carry us broadside on to the enemy ironclad, going about so that, with luck, we should be able to take her with our port battery which was in better condition and better equipped to deal with her.

We rose on the crest of a great wave and saw the Irvo Shima below us. She had taken in more water than her pumps could cope with and she was already beginning to list astern and to starboard. As the huge wave carried us down, we commenced firing.

The Iwo Shima went down without letting go another shot. The water foamed and hissed; and we saw her bows jutting stubbornly out of the green-grey ocean for a second or two and then she was gone. Immediately we went full astern, to avoid being dragged down by her undertow, and there came a massive, grumbling series of explosions from below, immediately followed by a roaring water-spout which shot at least a hundred feet into the air and rained our decks with tiny pieces of shrapnel.

Again, cheering broke out all over the ship, but was swiftly stifled as a heavy black shape emerged from the clouds over-head. The Itvo Shima must have signalled to one of her sister airships for help just before she went down. We had hardly anything left with which to defend ourselves. Machine-gunners in the fighting tops aimed their guns upwards, pouring round after round into the hull of the flying ironclad. I could hear a steady ping ping as our bullets struck metal, but they had about as much effect as a cloud of midges on a charging rhinoceros. It was our good fortune that this monster had evidently dropped all her bombs and spent her heavy artillery, for she answered us with a chatter of steam-gatlings, raking our decks where our men were thickest and wreaking immediate havoc so that in one moment where there had been proud, cheering individuals, citizens of the Ashanti Empire, there was now a horrible mass of writhing, bloody flesh.

I could read the name emblazoned on the airship's dark hull - the R.A.A. Botany Bay - and made out her insignia. This gave me a peculiar lurching sensation in the pit of my stomach, for she was flying the good old Union Jack inset with the crimson chrysanthemum of Imperial Japan.

Half of me wanted to hail the ship as a friend, while the other half shared the emotions of my fellows aboard the Dingiswayo as they fought desperately and hopelessly back. Only our stern gun, a sort of latter-day Long Tom, was operational, and as the Botany Bay went past, we managed to get off three or four shots at her, holing her astern, just above her main propellers, but it was the best we could do. Apparently careless of the damage we had done to her, she made a graceful turn in the air and fell upon us again. This time I barely managed to get down behind the shield of one of our useless g-inch guns before bullets hailed down across our decks.

When I next raised my head, I was fully expecting death, but saw instead the black-and-white markings of one of our own aerial cruisers, dropping down almost as if out of control, so swiftly did she move, clouds of grey smoke puffing from the length of her slender hull as she gave off a massive cannonade. Shell after shell struck the top of the Botany Bay's armoured canopy, piercing it so that her buoyancy tanks were thoroughly holed. She turned first on one side and then on the other and it was a horrifying as well as an awe-inspiring sight to see such a huge beast rolling in the air almost directly above our heads.

I have witnessed the death-agonies of more than one airship, but I have never seen anything quite like the death of the Botany Bay. She shuddered. She tried to right herself. She lost height and then shot into the air again, almost to the base of the clouds, then her nose dipped, her convulsions ceased and she smashed down into the sea, disappearing beneath the waves and bobbing up again on her side, steam hissing from her ports, to lie upon the face of the ocean like a dying whale. Few inside her could have survived that awful shaking and we made no attempt to discover if there were survivors. Our own flying cruiser dipped her tail to us by way of salute and climbed back into the clouds.

A few minutes later, as we moved among our wounded, trying to save those we could, news came over the wireless apparatus, telling us to rejoin the main fleet at a position which would put us only a few miles off the coast of Newfoundland. The Battle of the Atlantic was over, the enemy fleet having retired, but the Battle of America had not yet begun.

2. THE LAND LEVIATHAN

What remained of our fleet regrouped the next morning. For all that we had defeated the Australasian-Japanese fleet, we had probably sustained greater losses. There were scarcely a dozen flying ironclads left, perhaps five underwater ships still operational, and of the surface fleet half had been sunk, •while most of the fifty or so surviving craft had all sustained damage, some of it crippling. The Dmgiswayo, pumps still working full out, was perhaps in better condition than most of its sister craft, and the only ships to have received minimal damage were those which, under cover of the darkness, had towed the huge floating hull out of danger. I saw Hood's Cbaka flying overhead, inspecting us as we rose and fell on a moderately heavy sea. A misty rain was falling, adding to the gloomy atmosphere permeating the whole fleet. Somehow the proud black-and-scarlet lion banners we flew did not look so splendid in the wintry, North Atlantic light as they had done under the blazing skies of Africa. Clad in heavy jerseys and sea-cloaks, our caps pulled well down to protect us from the worst of the drizzle, we stood on our decks, shivering, weary and pessimistic. Messages of approval began to come down from the Chaka, but could not break our mood. It was the first experience many of the Africans had had of real cold, the sort of cold which cuts into the marrow and threatens to freeze the blood, and liberal amounts of hot toddy seemed to have no effect at all against the weather.

I was standing on the bridge, discussing the conditions with the skipper, Captain Ombuto, who was dismayed to learn that temperatures seemed to me to be somewhat high for the time of year, when a message came through from the Chaka which directly concerned me. He read the message, raising his eyebrows and handing it to me. A decent sort, Captain Ombuto had shown me none of the prejudice I had experienced from some of his brother officers. He spoke English with a strong French accent (he had served for a while in the Arabian navy before the War). 'The top brass seems concerned for your safety, Bastable.'

The message was unsigned, save with the name of the flagship, and read: 'Urgent you give details of officers killed and wounded. How is Bastable? Report immediately.' The message was in English, although French was also used, pretty indiscriminately, as the lingua franca of Ashanti.

Captain Ombuto waited until he had a full list of his dead and wounded before relaying the details to the flagship, adding: 'Bastable unharmed,' at the end of his reply. A little later there came a second message: 'Please relay my sympathy to those who lost so many comrades. You fought well and honourably. Send Bastable to flagship. Boat coming.' It was signed simply 'Hood'. Ombuto read the message aloud to me, shrugged and removed his cap, scratching his woolly head. 'Until now Miss Persson has been the only member of your race allowed aboard the flagship. You're going up in the world, Bastable.' He jerked his thumb in the air. 'Quite literally, eh!' A short while later an airboat landed on the crippled deck of the Dingiswayo and I climbed into it, returning the smart salute of the shivering officer of the Lion Guard who commanded it. The poor man looked wretched and I reflected a little cynically that if Hood intended to drive through America into the Southern States, his men could not have a better incentive than the promise of warmer weather.

Twenty minutes later the airboat had entered the huge stern hatches of the Chaka and come to rest in the specially modified hangar adapted from the two lowest decks. An electric lift bore us upwards into the depths of the massive ship and soon I stood with my feet in the soft, scarlet plush of the control room carpet. The control room had windows all around it, but they did not look out from the ship but into its interior. From the windows could be seen the main battle-deck, the big guns jutting through their portholes, the bomb bays (mostly empty now) and the war-weary officers and men standing by their positions. General Hood had had, by the look of him, even less sleep than had I, but Una Persson seemed extraordinarily fresh. It was she who greeted me first.

'Good morning, Mr Bastable. Congratulations on surviving the battle!'

General Hood said, half-proudly, 'It was probably the fiercest and biggest sea-battle in the history of the world. And we won it, Mr Bastable. What do you think of us now? Are we still nothing more than barbarians who pick upon the weak and the innocent, the wounded and the defenceless?'

'Your men and your ships acquitted themselves with great bravery and considerable skill,' I admitted. 'And in this case I would say they had everything to be proud of - for the Australasian-Japanese fleet attacked us, without even bothering to parley.'

'Us?' Hood was quick to pick up the word. 'So you identify with our cause, after all.'

'I identified with my ship,' I said, 'for all that I had precious little to do aboard her. Still, I gather I am here as an observer, not a participant.'

'That is up to you, Mr Bastable,' retorted Hood, running his black hands through his greying hair. 'I have merely given you the opportunity to make your choice. We are about to have luncheon. Won't you join us?'

I made a stiff little bow. 'Thank you,' I said.

'Then, come.' He linked his arm in mine and ushered me from the control room into his private quarters which were linked to the bridge by a short companionway leading directly into his cabin. Here lunch had already been laid out -an excellent selection of cold food which I could not resist. A fine hock was served and I acccepted a glass readily.

'Conditions aboard airships seem rather better than those on ordinary ships,' I said. 'It's freezing down there, almost impossible to get warm unless you're actually in the boiler-room. At least an old-fashioned iron-clad, powered by coal, heated up in almost any temperatures.’

'Well, we'll be making landfall by tomorrow,' said Hood dismissively as he ate. 'However, if you would be more comfortable aboard the Chaka I would be glad to have you as my guest.'

I was about to reject his invitation when Una Persson, seated beside me and wearing a long, simple gown of brown velvet, put a hand on my arm. 'Please stay, Mr Bastable. It will give you a better chance to witness the invasion of New York.'

'Does New York require invading? I had heard that there is hardly anyone living there now.'

'A few thousand,' said Hood airily. 'And about a third of those will doubtless join us when we arrive.'

'How can you be sure of that?' I asked.

'My agents have been active, Mr Bastable. You forget that I have retained contacts all over the United States - it is my home country, after all…'

If I had entertained any doubts concerning Hood's ability to attack and take the city of New York, they were quickly dispersed upon our arrival in what had been one of the largest and richest harbours in the world. New York had sustained if anything a heavier bombardment than London. She had been famous for her tall, metallic towers which had gleamed with a thousand bright colours, but now only two or three of those towers were left standing, stained by the elements, ravaged by explosions, threatening to collapse into the rubble which completely obscured any sign of where her broad avenues, her shady, tree-lined streets, her many parks had stood. A cold wind swept the ruins as our ships came to anchor and our aircraft began to spread out in formation, scouting for any signs of resistance. The Chaka made several flights over New York, dropping sometimes to a height of fifty feet. There were plenty of signs that these ruins were inhabited. Large fires burned in the hollows formed by tumbled concrete slabs, groups of ragged men and women ran for cover as the shadow of our great craft touched them, while others merely stood and gaped.

Elsewhere I had the impression that some form of order existed. I thought I glimpsed dirty white uniforms - soldiers wearing what might have been helmets which obscured their faces. No shots were fired at us, however, by the small groups which hastily made for the shadows whenever we approached.

The scene was made even more desolate by the presence of great drifts of snow, much of it dirty and half-melted, everywhere.

'I see hardly any point in bothering to take the place,' I said to General Hood.

He frowned at this. 'It is a question of destroying the morale of any defenders - here or in other parts of the country,' he said. There was an expression of almost fanatical intensity on his bkck features and his eyes never left the ruins. From time to time he would say, with a mixture of nostalgia and satisfaction, that this was where he had had his first flat in New York; there was where he had worked for one summer as a student; that the heap of rusting girders and shattered stone over which we flew was some famous museum or office building. It was not pleasant to hear him speaking thus - a sort of litany of gloating triumph. Slightly sickened, I turned away from the observation window, and saw Una Persson standing behind us, a look of quizzical and yet tender melancholy on her face, as if she, in her way, also regretted having to listen to Cicero Hood's morbidly gleeful remarks.

'It will be nightfall in three hours,' she said. 'Perhaps it would be best to wait until morning before making the landing?'

He turned, almost angry. 'No! We land now. I'll give the command. Let them see my power!' He reached for a speaking-tube, barking orders into it. 'Prepare for landing! Any resistance to be met without mercy. Tonight the Ashanti celebrate. Let the men have whatever spoils they can find. Contact our friends here. Bring the leaders to me as soon as they have revealed themselves. Tomorrow we continue towards Washington!'

It was with pity that I returned my attention to the ruins. 'Could you not spare them?' I asked him. 'Have they not suffered too much?'

'Not from me, Mr Bastable.' His voice was savage. 'Not from me!'

He refused to continue any sort of conversation, waving a dismissive hand both at Miss Persson and myself. 'If you cannot share my pleasure, then pray do not try to spoil it for me! Go, both of you. I want no whites here!'

Miss Persson was plainly hurt, but she did not remonstrate. She left when I left and we went together to another observation deck, forward, where we probably had a better view of the landing.

First came the infantry, brought ashore in the boats and lining up in orderly ranks on what remained of the quays. Next, huge ramps were extended from the ships and from out of their bowels began to rumble the great armour-plated 'land ironclads'. It hardly seemed possible that so many of the cumbersome machines could have been contained even in that large fleet. Rolling over every obstacle, they manoeuvred into wedge-shaped formations, all facing inland, their top-turrets swinging round to threaten New York with their long guns, their lower turrets rotating slowly as their crews ran a series of tests to make sure that they were in perfect working order. Although the Ashanti had lost about half their force during the Battle of the Atlantic, they could still field a good-sized army and it was doubtful if the United States, crushed by the terrible War Between the Nations, could find anything likely to withstand them. The U.S.A. must now depend on the Australasian-Japanese Federation for support (and we all were sure that they would make some new attempt to stop General Hood).

But now at last I was to see what had been hidden in that gigantic hull which we had towed all the way from Africa. And Una Persson's expression became eager as the hull was towed into position against the dockside.

'This is the result of what I was able to find in England, Mr Bastable,' she said in an excited murmur. 'An invention of O'Bean's that was regarded as too terrible ever to put into production, even at the height of the War. Watch!'

I watched, as the dusk began to gather. From somewhere inside the hull bolts were withdrawn, releasing the sides so that they fell backwards into the sea and forwards on to the dock. One by one the sections swung down until the contents of the hull was revealed. It was a ziggurat of steel. Tier upon tier it rose, utterly dwarfing the assembled machines which had already landed. From each tier there jutted guns which put to shame anything we had had on the Dingisivayo. On the top-most turret (the smallest on this metal pyramid) were mounted four long-snouted guns, on the second turret down there were six such guns, on the third there were twelve, on the fourth there were eighteen. On the fifth tier could be seen banks of smaller guns, perhaps a third of the size of the others, for use in close-range fire. There were about thirty of these. On the sixth tier down were some fifty similar guns, while in the seventh and bottom-most tier were upwards of a hundred of the most modern steam-gatlings, each capable of firing 150 rounds a minute. There were also slits in the armour plating all the way up, for riflemen. There were grilled observation ports in every tier, and each turret was capable of swivelling independently of the others, just as each gun was capable of a wide range of movement within the turret. The whole thing was mounted on massive wheels, the smallest of these wheels being at least four times the height of a man, mounted (I learned later) on separate chassis in groups of ten, which meant that the vast machine could move forwards, backwards or sideways whenever it wished. Moreover, the size of the wheels and the weight they carried could crush almost any obstacle.

This was General Hood's 'secret weapon'. It must have taken half the wealth of Africa and Europe combined to build it. There had never been any moving thing of its size in the world before (and precious few non-mobile things!). With it, I felt sure, the Black Attila was invincible. No wonder he had been prepared to sacrifice the rest of his invasion fleet in order to protect it.

This was truly a symbol of the Final War, of Armageddon I A leviathan released upon the land - a monster capable of destroying anything in its path - a steel-clad, gargantuan dragon bringing roaring death to all who resisted. Its gleaming, blue-grey hull displayed on four sides of each of its tiers the scarlet circle framing the black, rampant lion of Ashanti, symbol of a powerful, vengeful Africa - of an Africa which remembered the millions of black slaves who had been crowded into stinking, disease-ridden hulks to serve the White Dream - of an Africa which had waited for its moment to release this invulnerable creature upon the offspring of those who had tortured its peoples, insulted them, killed them, terrified them and robbed them over the centuries.

If justice it was, then it was to be a fearful and a spectacular justice indeed.

As I watched the Land Leviathan roll through concrete and steel as easily as one might crush grass beneath one's feet, I thought not merely of the fate which was about to befall America, but what might happen to the rest of the world, particularly Bantustan, when Hood had realized his plans here.

Having created such a beast, it seemed to me, he would have to go on using it. Ultimately it must become the master, conquering the conqueror, until nothing of the world survived at all I

Certainly that had been the logic of this world up to now and I saw nothing - save perhaps the ideal that was the country of Bantustan - to deny that logic.

I felt then that it was my moral duty to do anything I could to stop Hood's terrible pattern of conquest, but the assassination of one man no longer seemed the answer. In a quandary I turned away from the scene as night fell and the lights of the Land Leviathan pierced the darkness like so many fearsome eyes.

Miss Persson said something to me, but I did not hear her. I stumbled from the observation deck, my mind in complete confusion, certain that she and I might well be, in a short while, the last surviving members of our race.

3. THE DESERTER

It took five hours to crush New York. And 'crush' is quite literally the proper description. Hood's monstrous machine rolled at will through the ruins, pushing down the few towers which remained standing, firing brief, totally destructive, barrages into the positions of those who resisted. All the Negroes in New York, who had been fighting the whites well before we arrived, rallied at once to Hood's black-and-scarlet banner, and by noon the few defenders who remained alive were rounded up and interrogated for the information they could supply concerning other pockets of 'resistance' across the country.

Hood invited me to be present at one of these questionings and I accepted, hoping only that I could put in a plea for mercy for the poor devils who had fallen into Ashanti hands.

Hood was now dressed in a splendid military uniform -also black and scarlet, but with a considerable quantity of gold and silver braid and a three-cornered hat sporting the same ostrich plumes as his 'Lion Guard'. Hood had confided to me that such braggadocio was completely against his instincts, but that he was expected to affect the proper style both by his enemies and by those who followed him. He had a curved sword almost permanently in his right hand, and stuck into his belt, unholstered, were two large, long-barrelled automatic pistols, rather like Mausers. The prisoners were being questioned in what remained of the cellar of a house which had stood on Washington Square. They were wounded, half-starved, filthy and frightened. Their white hoods (there was some superstition which had grown up that these hoods protected them from the plague) had been torn from their heads and their uniforms, crudely fashioned from flour sacks, were torn and blood-stained. I did not, I must admit, feel any pride in these representatives of my own race. They would have been gutter-rats no matter what conditions prevailed in New York and doubtless it was because they were gutter-rats that they had managed to survive, with the ferocity and tenacity of their kind. They were spitting, snarling, shrieking at their Ashanti conquerors and their language was the foulest I have ever heard. Miss Persson stood near by and I would have given anything in the world for her not to have been subjected to that disgusting swearing.

The man who seemed to be the leader of the group (he had conferred upon himself the title of Governor!) had the surname of Hoover and his companions referred to him as 'Speed'. He was a typical example of that breed of New York small-time 'crooks' who are ready to take up any form of crime so long as there is little chance of being caught. It was written all over his mean, ugly, hate-filled face. Doubtless, before he elected himself 'Governor', he had contented himself with robbing the weak and the helpless, of frightening children and old folk, and running errands for the larger, mote successful 'gang bosses' of the city. Yet I felt a certain sympathy for him as he continued to rant and rave, turning his attention at last upon me.

'As fer yer, ya nigger-lover, yore nuttin' but a dirty traitor,’ was the only repeatable statement of this kind that he made. He spat at me, then turned on the mild-faced lieutenant (I think he was called Azuma) who had been questioning him. 'We knew you niggers wuz comin' - we bin hearin’

‘bout it fer months now - an' dey're gettin' ready fer yer. Dey got plans -dey got a way o' stoppin' yer real good!' He sniggered. 'Yer got der artillery - but yer ain't got der brains, see? Yer'll soon be t'rowin' in der sponge. It'll take more'n what you got ter lick real white men!'

His threats, however, were all vague, and it soon became obvious to Lieutenant Azuma that there was little point in continuing with his questions.

I had not taken kindly to being called a traitor by this riffraff, yet there was, I suppose, some truth in what he had said. I had not lifted my voice, let alone a finger, to try to stop Hood so far.

Now I said: 'I must ask you, General Hood, to spare these men's lives. They are prisoners-of-war, after all.'

Hood exchanged a look of cruel amusement with Lieutenant Azuma. 'But surely they are hardly worth sparing, Mr Bastable,' he said. 'What use would such as these be in any kind of society?'

'They have a right to their lives,' I said.

'They would scarcely agree with you if you were speaking up for me,' said Cicero Hood coldly now. 'You heard Hoover's remark about "niggers". If our situation were reversed, do you think your pleas would be heard?'

'No,' I said. 'But if you are to prove yourself better than such as Hoover, then you must set an example.'

'That is your Western morality, again,' said Hood. Then he laughed, without much humour. 'But we had no intention of killing them. They will be left behind in the charge of our friends. They will help in the rebuilding of New Benin, as the city is to be called henceforth.'

With that, he strode from the cellar, still laughing that peculiar, blood-chilling laugh.

And so Hood's land-fleet rolled away from New York, and now I was a passenger in one of the smaller fighting machines. Our next objective was Philadelphia, where again Hood was, in his terms, going to the relief of the blacks there. The situation for the Negro in the America of this day was, I was forced to admit, a poor one. The whites, in seeking a scapegoat for their plight, had fixed, once again, upon the blacks. The other superstitious reason that so many of them wore those strange hoods was because they had conceived the idea that the Negroes were somehow 'dirtier' than the whites and that they had been responsible for spreading the plagues which had followed the War, as they had followed it in England. In many parts of the United States, members of the Negro race were being hunted like animals and burned alive when they were caught - the rationale for this disgusting behaviour being that it was the only way to be sure that the plague did not spread. For some reason Negroes had not been so vulnerable to the various germs contained in the bombs and it had been an easy step in the insane logic of the whites to see the black people, therefore, as 'carriers'. For two years or more, black groups had been organizing themselves, under instructions from Hood's agents, awaiting the day when the Ashanti invaded. Hood's claim that he was 'liberating' the blacks was, admittedly, not entirely unfounded in truth. None the less I did not feel that any of this was sufficient to vindicate Hood.

Headed by the Land Leviathan, the conquering army looted and burned its way through the states of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and wherever it paused it set up its bkck-and-scarlet banners, leaving local bands of Negroes behind to administer the conquered territories.

It was during the battle in which Philadelphia was completely destroyed, and every white man, woman and child slain by the pounding guns of the Land Leviathan, that I found my opportunity to 'desert' the Black Horde, first falling back from the convoy of which my armoured carriage was part, and then having the luck to capture a stray horse.

My intention was' to head for Washington and warn the defenders there of what they might expect. Also, if possible, I wished to discuss methods of crippling the Land Leviathan. My only plan was that the monster should somehow be lured close to a cliff-top and fall over, smashing itself to pieces. How this could be achieved, I had not the slightest ideal

My ride from Philadelphia to the city of Wilmington probably set something of a record. Across the countryside groups of black 'soldiers' were in conflict with whites. In my Ashanti uniform, I was prey to both sides and would doubtless have fared worst at the hands of the whites who regarded me as a traitor than at the hands of the blacks, if I had been caught. But, by good fortune, I avoided capture until I rode into Wilmington, which had not suffered much bombing and merely had the deserted, overgrown look of so many of America's 'ghost cities'. On the outskirts, I stripped off my black tunic and threw it away - though the weather was still very cold - and dressed only in my singlet and britches -dismounted from my horse and searched for the local white leader.

They found me first. I was moving cautiously along one of the main thoroughfares when they suddenly appeared on all sides, wearing the sinister white hoods so reminiscent of those old Knights of the South, the Ku-Klux-Klan, whose fictional adventures had thrilled me as a boy. They asked me who and what I was and what I wanted in Wilmington. I told them that it was urgent that I should meet their leader, that I had crucial news of the Black Attila.

Shortly I found myself in a large civic building which a man named 'Bomber' Joe Kennedy was using as his headquarters. He had got his nick-name, I learned later, from his skill in manufacturing explosive devices from a wide variety of materials. Kennedy had heard about me and it was only with the greatest self-restraint that he did not shoot me on the spot there and then - but he listened and he listened attentively and eventually he seemed satisfied that I was telling the truth. He informed me that he had already planned to take his small 'army' to Washington, to add it to the growing strength of the defenders. It would do no harm, he said, if I came with them, but he warned me that if at any time it seemed that I was actually spying for Hood I would be killed in the same way that Negroes were killed in those parts. I never found out what he meant and my only clue, when I inquired, was in the phrase which a grinning member of Kennedy's army quoted with relish. 'Ever heard of "burn or cut" in England, boy?' he asked me.

The whites had managed to build up the old railroad system, for most of the lines had survived the War and the locomotives were still functional, burning wood rather than coal these days. It was Kennedy's plan to transport himself and his army by rail to Washington (for there was a direct line), and the next day we climbed aboard the big, old-fashioned train, with myself and Kennedy joining the driver and fireman on the footplate, for, as Kennedy told me, 'I don't wanna risk not keepin' you under my sight.'

The train soon had a good head of steam and was rolling away from Wilmington in no time, its first stop being Baltimore, where Kennedy hoped to pick up a larger force of men. As we rushed through the devastated countryside, Kennedy confided in me something of his life. He claimed that he had once been a very rich man, a millionaire, before the collapse. His family had come from Ireland originally and he had no liking for the English, whom he was inclined to rate second only to 'coons' as being responsible for the world's ills. It struck me as ironic that Kennedy should have a romantic attachment to one oppressed minority (as he saw it), but feel nothing but loathing for another.

Kennedy also told me that they were already making plans in Washington to resist the Black Attila. 'They've got something up their sleeves which'll stop him in his tracks,' he said smugly, but he would not amplify the statement and I had the impression that he was not altogether sure what the pkn was.

Kennedy had also heard that there was a strong chance that the Washington 'army' would receive reinforcements from the Australasian-Japanese fleet which, he had it on good authority, had already anchored off Chesapeake Bay. I expressed the doubt that anything could withstand the Bkck Attila's Land Leviathan, but Kennedy was undaunted. He rubbed his nose and told me that there was 'more than one way of skinnin' a coon'.

Twice the train had to stop to take on more wood, but we were getting closer and closer to Baltimore and the city was little more than an hour away when a squadron of land ironclads appeared ahead of us, firing at the train. They flew the lion banner of Ashanti and must have gone ahead of the main army (perhaps having received intelligence that trains of white troops were on their way to Washington). I saw the long guns in their main turrets puff red fire and white smoke and a number of shells hit the ground close by. The driver was for putting on the brakes and surrendering, feeling that we did not have a chance, but Kennedy, for all that he might have been a cruel, ignorant and stupid man, was not a coward. He sent the word back along the tram to get whatever big guns they could working, then he told the engineer to give the old locomotive all the speed she could take, and drove straight towards the lumbering war machines which were now on both sides of the track, positioned on the steep banks so that they could fire down at us as we passed.

I was reminded of an old print I once saw - a poster, I think, for Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show - of Red Indians attacking a train. The land ironclads were able to match our speed (for the train was carrying a huge number of cars), and their turrets could swing rapidly to shoot at us from any angle. Shell after shell began to smash into the train, but still she kept going, making for the safety of a long tunnel ahead of us, where the land 'clads could not follow.

We reached the tunnel with some relief and the engineer was for slowing down and stopping in the middle in the hope that the enemy machines would give up their chase, but Kennedy considered this a foolish scheme.

'They'll come at us from both ends, man!' he said. 'They'll burrow through from the roof - they've got those "mole" things which can bore through anything. We'll be like trapped rabbits down a hole it we stay here.' I think there was sense to what he said, though our chances in the open were scarcely any better. Still, under his orders, the train raced on, breaking through into daylight to find half-a-dozen land ironclads waiting for it, their guns aimed at the mouth of the tunnel. How the locomotive survived that fusillade I shall never know, but survive it did, with part of the roof and a funnel shot away and its tender of wood blazing from the effects of a direct hit by an incendiary shell.

The rest of the train, however, was not so lucky.

A shell cut the coupling attaching us to the main part of the train and we lurched forward at a speed which threatened to hurl us from the tracks. Without the burden of the rest of the train, we were soon able to leave the ironclads behind. I looked back to see the stranded 'army' fighting it out with the armoured battleships of the land. They were being pounded to pieces.

Then we had turned a bend and left the scene behind. Kennedy looked crestfallen for a moment, and then he shrugged. There was little that could be done.

'Ah, well,' he said. 'We'll not be stopping in Baltimore now.'

4. THE TRIUMPHANT BEAST

Washington, surprisingly, had not sustained anything like the damage done to cities like New York and London. The government and all its departments had fled the capital before the War had got into its stride and had retired to an underground retreat somewhere in the Appalachians. It had survived the explosives, but not the plagues. Having little strategic importance, therefore, Washington had most of its famous buildings and monuments still standing. These overblown mock-Graecian, mock-Georgian tributes to grandiose bad taste, could be seen in the distance as we steamed into the outskirts of the city, to be stopped by recently constructed barriers. These barriers had existed for only a week or so, but I was surprised at their solidity. They were of brick, stone and concrete, reinforced by neatly piled sand-bags, and, I gathered, protected the whole of the inner city. Kennedy's credentials were in order - he was recognized by three of the guards and welcomed as something of a hero -and we were allowed to continue through to the main railroad station, where we handed our locomotive over to the authorities. We were escorted through the wide, rather characterless streets (the famous trees had all been cut down in the making of the barriers and for fuel to power the trains) to the White House, occupied now by 'President' Penfield, a man who had once been a distinguished diplomat in the service of his country, but who had quickly profited from the hysteria following the War - he was beiieved to have been the first person to 'don the White Hood'. Penfield was fat and his red face bore all the earmarks of depravity. We were ushered into a study full of fine old 'colonial'-style furniture which gave the impression that nothing had changed since the old days. The only difference was in the smell and in the man sprawled in a large armchair at a desk near the bay window. The smell would have been regarded as offensive even in one of our own East End public houses - a mixture of alcohol, tobacco-smoke and human perspiration. Dressed in the full uniform of an American general, with the buttons straining to keep his tunic in place over his huge paunch, 'President' Penfield waved a hand holding a cigar by way of greeting, gestured with the other hand, which held a glass, for us to be seated. 'I'm gkd you could make it, Joe,' he said to Kennedy, who seemed to'be a close acquaintance. 'Have a drink. Help yourself.' He ignored me.

Kennedy went to a sideboard and poured himself a large glass of bourbon. 'I'm sorry I couldn't bring you any men,' he said. 'You heard, did you, Fred? We got hit by a big fleet of that nigger's land 'clads. We were lucky to get through at all.'

'I heard.' Penfield turned small, cold eyes on me. 'And this is the traitor, is it.'

'I had better tell you now,' I said, though suddenly I was reluctant to justify myself, 'that I joined Cicero Hood's entourage with the express purpose of trying to put a stop to his activities.'

'And how did you intend to do that, Mr Bastable?' said Penfield leaning forward and winking at Kennedy.

'My original plan was to assassinate him,' I said simply. 'But you didn't.'

'After the Land Leviathan made its appearance I saw that killing Hood would do no good. He is the only one who has any control at all over the Black Horde. To kill him would have resulted in making things worse for you and all the other Europeans.'

Penfield sniffed sceptically and sipped his ddnk, adding: 'And what proof have we got of all this? What proof is there that you're not still working for Hood, that you're not planning to kill me?

'None,' I said. 'But I want to discuss ways of stopping the Land Leviathan,' I told him. 'Those walls you're building will stop that monster no more than would paper. If we can dig some kind of deep trench - lay a trap like a gigantic animal trap - we might be able to put it out of action for a while at least…'

But President Penfield was smirking and shaking his head.

'We're ahead of you, Mr Bastable. There's more than one kind of wall, you know. You've only seen what you might call our first line of defence.'

'There isn't anything made strong enough to stop the Land Leviathan,' I said emphatically.

'Oh, I don't know.' Penfield gave Kennedy another of his secret looks. 'Do you want to show him around, Joe? I think we can trust him. He's one of us.'

Kennedy was not so sure. 'Well, if you think so…’

‘Sure I do. I have my hunches. He's okay. A bit misguided, a bit short on imagination - a bit English, eh? But a decent sort. Welcome to Washington, Mr Bastable. Now you'll see how that black scum is to be stopped.'

A while later we left the White House in a horse-drawn carriage provided for us. Kennedy, with some pride, explained how the Capitol had been turned into a well-defended arsenal and how every one of those overblown neo-Graecian buildings contained virtually every operational big gun left in the United States.

But it was not the architecture or the details of the defence system which arrested my vision - it was what I saw m the streets as I passed. Washington had always had a very large Negro population, and now this population was being put to use by the whites. i saw gangs of exhausted, half-starved men, women and children, shackled to one another by chains about the neck, wrists or ankles, hauling huge loads of bricks and sand-bags to the barricades. It was a scene from the past -with sweating, dying black slaves being worked, quite literally, to death by brutal white overseers armed with long bull-whips which they used liberally and with evident relish. It was a sight I had never expected to witness in the twentieth century! I was horrified, but did my best not to betray my emotion to Kennedy, who had not appeared to notice what was going on!

More than once I winced and was sickened when I saw some poor, near-naked woman fall and receive a torrent of abuse, kicking and whipping until she was forced to her feet again, or helped to her feet by her companions. Once I saw a half-grown boy collapse and it was quite plain that he was dead, but his fellow slaves were made to drag his corpse with them by the chains which secured his wrists to theirs.

Trying to appear insouciant, I said as coolly as I could: 'I see now how you managed to raise the walls so quickly. You have reintroduced slavery.'

'Well, you could call it that, couldn't you?' Kennedy grinned. 'The blacks are performing a public service, like the rest of us, helping to build up the country again. Besides,' and his face became serious, 'it's what they know best. It's what most of 'em prefer. They don't think and feel the same as us, Bastable. It's like your worker bee - stop him from working and he becomes morbid and unhappy. Eventually he dies. It's the same with the blacks.'

'Their ultimate fate would seem to be identical, however you look at it,' I commented.

'Sure, but this way they're doing some good.'

I must have seen several thousand Negroes as we travelled through the streets of Washington. A few were evidently employed as individual servants and were in a somewhat better position than their fellows, but most were chained together in gangs, sweating copiously for all that the weather was chill. There was little hope on any of their faces and I was not proud of my own race when I looked at them; also I could not help recalling the pride - arrogance, some would call it - in the bearing of Hood's Ashanti troops.

I stifled the thought, at that moment, but it kept coming back to me with greater and greater force. It was unjust to enslave other human beings and cruel to treat them in such a manner, whichever side committed the injustice. Yet it seemed to me that there was a grain more justice in Hood's policies -for he was repaying a debt, whereas men such as Penfield and Kennedy were acting from the most brutal and cynical of motives.

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 defences 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 I

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' Penfield 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 Penfield, 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 Penfield'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 ot 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 realised how close I had, myself, been on 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 streets 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 cornet 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 mil 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 bis last, and began the first words of the chant.

That was when, impulsively, I went 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 recognused. 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. Recently 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 prim side! But you've proved yourself to me. 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 cityl'

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 rilled 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 for 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 wralls 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.

As we fought our own little hit-and-run battle through the streets, I saw the great beams from the monster's search-lights dart out from the blackness, touch a building, marking it for destruction. Immediately would come that thunderous booming followed by a shrill whine and then an explosion as the shells struck home.

Not that Washington was helpless. Her own guns, particularly those in the Capitol itself, kept up a constant return fire and I think the ordinary land ironclads of the Black Horde would have had little chance of taking the city on their own.

Somehow I became separated from the rest of my party when a shell burst near by and caused us to scatter. When the smoke cleared, the steel 'moles' had moved on, the little army of former slaves going with them. I felt isolated and extremely vulnerable then and began to search for my comrades, but twice had to change direction as a party of white-hooded soldiers spotted me and began firing.

For an hour I kept low, sniping at the enemy when I saw him, then darting away again. My instinct was to make for a building and climb to the roof where I would be able to see the whites without being seen myself, but I knew that it would be foolish to attempt such a thing now, for buildings were being smashed to pieces all around me, under the steady bombardment of the Land Leviathan's many cannon.

I slowly made my way back towards the centre and found that most of the enemy soldiers had been ordered to the walls. Suddenly there was relative peace near the Capitol, save for the booming of the guns situated inside the building. I sat down behind a bush to collect my thoughts and get my bearings, when I heard the sound of horses' hooves clattering towards me. They were coming very fast. I peered from behind my bush and was astonished to see a large number of horsemen streaming hell-for-leather away from the walls, as if the Devil himself was after them. The riders had removed their hoods and their faces were grim and frightened and they shouted at their mounts to give them more speed. Behind them, in a light, open carriage, came 'President' Penfield, yelling wildly. Then came the running men. Many had abandoned their weapons and had evidently panicked. I lay in my cover, but need not have feared these soldiers. They were far too terrified to stop and deal with me.

I next became aware of the ground trembling beneath me. Had God finally made up His mind to act, to punish us all for what we were doing? Had He sent an earthquake to destroy Washington?

A rumbling grew, louder and louder, and I peered ahead of me into the darkness as I gradually began to realise what was happening.

Lights blazed from the night. Lights which had their source high overhead, so that they might have been the lights of airships. But they were not the lights of airships - all Hood's aerial battleships, it later emerged, being concentrated on harassing the Australasian-Japanese land fleet even now on its way to Washington. They were the glaring 'eyes' of the Land Leviathan itself.

On it came, breaking down everything which stood in its wake, cutting a swathe through buildings, gun-emplacements, monuments. The air was filled with a ghastly, grinding sound, the snorting of the exhaust from its twelve huge engines, the peculiar sighing it gave out whenever its wheels turned it in a slightly new direction.

This vast, moving ziggurat of destruction was what had panicked Penfield and his men. It had first pounded the city with its guns and then moved forward, breaking through the walls where they were thought to be the strongest. Invincible, implacable, it rolled towards the Capitol.

Now it was my turn to take to my heels, barely managing to fling myself clear as it advanced, sighed again, and then stopped, looking up at the Capitol in what seemed to me an attitude of challenge.

Almost hysterically, the Capitol's guns swung round and began firing and I had the impression, even as I risked death to watch, that I witnessed two primitive beasts from the Earth's remote past in conflict.

The shells from the Capitol scored direct hit upon direct hit, but they merely burst against the turrets of the Land Leviathan which did not at first reply.

Then the two top turrets began to turn until almost all her guns were pointed directly at the great, white dome which even now reflected the flames of the buildings which burned all around it.

Twice the guns of the Land Leviathan spoke, in rapid succession. The first barrage took the entire roof away. The second demolished the walls and the Capitol was silent. Again, the vast metal monster began to lumber forward, its searchlights roaming this way and that as if seeking out any others who might wish to challenge it.

At kst the Land Leviathan rolled up and over the smoking, burning ruins while the air still resounded with the screams of those who had not been killed outright, who had been

crushed beneath its great wheels or trapped somewhere under its belly. It rolled to the centre of the ruins and it stopped, squatting on the bones of its prey. Then, one by one, its lights began to wink out as the dawn rose behind it.

Now, indeed, the Land Leviathan was a triumphant beast.

5. A MATTER OF LOYALTIES

Ironically enough, it had been Miss Persson who had commanded the group of metal 'moles' which had saved us in the compound. As I stood staring up at the Land Leviathan, oblivious of all else, I heard a shout from behind me, and there she was, her body half out of the forward hatch, waving to me.

'Good morning, Mr Bastable. I thought we had lost you.'

I turned towards her, feeling very tired now. 'Is it over?'

'Very nearly. We've received wireless reports that the Australasian-Japanese fleet has once again turned tail. It heard, over its own apparatus, that Washington was ours. I think they will be willing to negotiate the terms of a treaty with us now. Within the week we shall be heading South. The month should see the whole United States liberated.'

For once I did not respond sardonically to that word. Having witnessed the ferocity of the whites, I truly believed that the blacks had been liberated.

'Thank you for saving my life,' I said.

She smiled and made a little bow. 'It was time I repaid you for what you did for me.' She looked up at a clear, cold sky. 'Do you think it will snow, Mr Bastable?'

I shrugged and trudged towards the metal mole. 'Can you give me a lift, Miss Persson?’

‘Willingly, Mr Bastable.'

Well, Moorcock, that is pretty much the end of the tale I had for you. I remained in Hood's service for the whole of the first year he spent in the United States. There was some pretty bloody fighting, particularly, as we had expected, in parts of the South (though there were also some areas where we discovered whites and blacks living in perfect harmony!) and not all of Hood's methods of warfare were pleasant. On the other hand he was never unjust in his dealings with the defeated and never matched the ferocity and brutality of those we had encountered in Washington. Hood was not a kindly conqueror and he had the blood of many on his hands, but he was, in his own way, a just one. I was reminded, originally against my will, of William the Conqueror and the stern fair-mindedness with which he set about the pacification of England in the eleventh century.

Among other things, I had witnessed the public hanging of Tresident' Penfield (discovered in the very sewers the blacks had used when hiding from him!) and many of his senior supporters, including Joe 'Bomber' Kennedy. That had not been pretty, particularly since Penfield and several of the others had died in a manner that was by no means manly.

Yet no sooner had Hood established his power than he set his war-machines to peaceful purposes. Huge ploughs were adapted, to be drawn by the ironclads, which could make a whole field ready for planting in a matter of minutes. The airships carried supplies wherever they were needed and only the Land Leviathan was not used. It remained where it had been since the morning after the battle, a symbol of Hood's triumph. Later, the monster would be used when required, but Hood thought it politic to leave it where it was for a while, and I suppose he was right.

In the meantime, negotiations took place with the Australasian-Japanese Federation and a truce was agreed upon.

Privately, Hood thought that it might be a temporary truce and that, having once broken their policy of isolationism, the Australasian-Japanese might attempt, at some future date, to invade. It was another reason why, during the talks which took place in Washington, he left the Land Leviathan in its position, glowering down upon us while we bargained. My own feelings were not entirely in accord with his. I thought it best to show them that we were no threat to their security, for after all they still had O'Bean working for them, but Hood said that it would be time enough in the future to show good faith now we must not let them believe they could strike again while we were off-guard. President Gandhi would not have approved, but eventually I gave in to his logic.

I made one visit to Bantustan during the course of that year, to arrange for food and medical supplies to be sent out, for it would be some time before America was entirely self-supporting. It was a peculiar alliance, that between Gandhi, the man of peace, and Hood, the Black Attila, the quintessential warlord, but it seemed to be an alliance which would work, for both men had great respect for each other. During my leisure moments, I penned this 'memoir' - mainly for your eyes, Moorcock, because I feel that I owe you something. If you can publish it - if you ever see it - well and good. Pretend that it is fiction.

I spent a considerable amount of time in the company of Miss Persson, but she continued to remain a mysterious figure. I attempted to engage her in conversation about my previous adventures in a future age and she listened politely to me, but refused to be drawn. However, rightly or wrongly, I conceived the impression that she, like me, had also travelled through time and in various 'alternate' worlds. I also felt that she could so travel at will and I desperately hope that one day she will admit this and help me in returning to my own world. As it is, I have given her this manuscript and told her about you, the Valley of the Morning, and how important it is to me that you should read it. The rest I have left to her. It is quite possible that my convictions about her are wholly erroneous, but I think not. I even wonder how much she was responsible for Hood's successes.

Black America is now a full partner in the Ashanti Empire. Her wealth returns and Negroes are running the country. The remaining whites are in menial positions, generally speaking, and will remain so for some time. Hood told me that he intends 'to punish one generation for the crimes of its forefathers'. As the older generation dies out, according to Hood's plan, he will gradually lift his heel from the neck of the white race. I suppose that it is justice, of a sort, though I cannot find it in my heart to approve wholly.

Myself and Una Persson, of course, are hated by the majority of whites in America. We are regarded as traitors and worse. But Miss Persson seems thoroughly unmoved by their opinion and I am only embarrassed by it.

However, I am a creature of my own age, and a year was about the most I could take of Hood's America. Many of his men were good enough to tell me that they did not think of me as white, at all, but got on with me as easily as any black man. I appreciated what they meant, but it by no means made up for the thinly disguised distaste with which I was regarded by many of the people with whom I had to mix at Hood's 'court'. Thus, eventually, I begged the Black Attila's permission to rejoin the service of Bantustan. Tomorrow I shall board an airship which will take me back to Cape Town. Once there I'll decide what to do.

You'll remember I speculated on my fate once - wondering if I was doomed to wander through a variety of different ages, of worlds slightly different from my own, to experience the many ways in which Man can destroy himself or rebuild himself into something better. Well, I still wonder that, but I have the feeling that I do not enjoy the role. One day, I'll probably go back to Teku Benga and enter that passage again, hope that it will take me through to a world where I am known, where my relatives will recognize me and I them, where the good old British Empire continues on its placid, decent course and the threat of a major war is very remote indeed. It's not much to hope for, Moorcock, is it?

And yet, just as I feel a peculiar loyalty to you to try to get this story to you somehow, so I am beginning to develop a loyalty not to one man, like Hood or even Gandhi, not to one nation, one world or even one period of history! My loyalty is at once to myself and to all of mankind. It's hard for me to explain, for I'm not a thinking man, and I suppose it looks pretty silly written down, but I hope you'll understand.

I don't suppose, Moorcock, that I shall ever see you again, but you never know. I could turn up on your doorstep one day, with another 'tall tale' to tell you. But if I do turn up, then perhaps you should start worrying, for it could mean another war!

Good luck, old man.

Yours, Oswald Bastable.