The Feminine Future: Early Science Fiction by Women Writers (Dover Thrift Editions) Read online

  “And we did go back to Germany, meeting meantime other German ships just out, and we hailed them and they saw us and answered. And the same fear was on the faces of every soul on board, and the news was in every case the same. They were, to all the ships of all the world, invisible.

  “We slunk into harbor, and I have never known how the captain met his company or what exporters said to the consignments of merchandise returned untouched in the hold. I only know that the shore officials looked strangely at us, and, since we told the same mad story, seemed to think a whole ship’s crew could hardly be incarcerated. You must remember, too, that since the war signs and wonders have had a different value. There have been too many marvels for men to scout them. There was the marvel of the victory, you know. But we won’t go into that. I suppose books will be written about it until the end of time. You may be sure of one thing—I didn’t let the grass grow under my feet. I made tracks for Holland, and from there I put for England, and sailed from Liverpool, and was in New York in a little over five days. And by that time the whole world knew. German ships were in full possession, as they had been before the war, of the freedom of the seas—except that they mysteriously could not use it. German ships took passengers, as of old, and loaded themselves with merchandise. But there was not a port on the surface of the globe that could receive them. Yet there was a certain beneficence in the power that condemned them to this wandering exile—they could go home. And so strange a thing is hope, and so almost unbreakable a thing is human will, that they would no sooner go home in panic than they would recover and dare the seas again, as if, peradventure, it might be different this time, or as if the wrath of the grim powers might be overpast. And it came out that the shipping rotted in their harbors, and there were many suicides among sailing-men.”

  When Drake reached this point in his story he almost always got solemn and rhythmic. His book was succinctly and plainly written, but he could never speak of its subject-matter without the rhythm of imagery.

  “You know,” he said, “it wasn’t expected, while the war was going on, that there would be a living being, not of Teutonic birth, who would ever be sorry for a Teuton until near the tail end of time, when some of the penalties had been worked out. But, by George! the countries that had been injured most were the first to be sorry for the poor devils that had prated about the freedom of the seas and now had to keep their own ships tied up in the harbour, tight as in war-time, because the fleet that withstood them, drew the mighty cordon, was the fleet of God. Belgium had prayers for the German fleet. England sent experts over to see what was the matter with their engines. Russia played for the boats, as she had for her four-footed beasties in the war, and France—well, France proposed that she and England should establish a maritime service from Germany to the United States and South American ports, with nominal freight rates, until the world found out what the deuce was the matter or what God actually meant. And it was to begin the week before Christmas, if you remember, and something put it into the clever French brain that maybe a German Christmas ship—a ship full of toys and dolls—might be let to pass. France didn’t think it was bamboozling God by swinging a censer of sentiment before Him; but it knew God might be willing to speak our little language with us, encourage us in it, let us think He knew what we were trying to tell Him when we took the toys and dolls.

  “And, if you remember, a string of ships went out that day, all with pretty serious men on board, men of an anxious countenance. And the British and French ships convoyed them like mother birds, and other British and French ships met them, and for a time no Teuton ship dared speak a foreign one for fear it should not be answered. But finally one—it was my old ship the Treue Königin, and on her my old captain—couldn’t wait any longer and did speak, and every French and English boat answered her, and she knew she and the rest were saved—for the eyes of man could see them and the ears of man were opened to their voice. And that’s all. You know the rest—how the German navy slowly and soberly built up its lines and sailed the seas again; but how nobody ceased talking of the wonder of the time when it was under the ban of judgement. And nobody ever will cease, because of all the signs and marvels of these later years this was the greatest.”

  “I have heard,” said the pacifist in the front row—“I hardly like to mention it; these things are best forgotten—that there is one submarine that actually does sail the sea, and never has found rest. But that they say is sometimes visible.”

  “Yes,” said Drake. He looked grim now, and nobody could doubt that he knew whereof he spoke. “She is sometimes visible. She plies back and forth along the Irish coast. I’d heard it over and over, and I’d heard that on the seventh of May she shows her periscope. She is obliged to. And they say she has one passenger— the Man We Do Not Mention.”

  “Do you suppose—” began the pacifist, and Drake interrupted him.

  “Do I suppose that sentence ever will be worked out? Maybe it isn’t a sentence. Maybe it’s a warning, against pride and cruelty and lust of power; maybe the Man We Do Not Mention is condemned to sail it, and is willing to be hated, so long as he can be the warning to the world—the warning against his sins. Do you know, I’ve often wondered if he knows one thing—if he knows that, whenever toasts are drunk in Germany, it isn’t now Der Tag, but it is, since that day when England and France joined hands to help their scared old enemy, ‘The Fleet!’ ”

  “He’d think it meant the German navy, anyway,” said a younger, unregenerate man, who was no pacifist—only, being young, too quick of tongue and rash of apprehension.

  “Oh no, he wouldn’t,” said Drake, a very warm tone in his voice. It told youth it didn’t know what its elders had been through. “He’d know it meant—The Fleet!”

  COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND STORY SOURCES

  ALL OF THE stories in this anthology are in the public domain unless otherwise noted. All efforts have been made to trace the authors’ estates, and the publisher would welcome hearing from any representative if there has been an inadvertent transgression of copyright.

  “Those Fatal Filaments” by Mabel Ernestine Abbott, first published in Argosy, January 1903.

  “Ely’s Automatic Housemaid” by Elizabeth W. Bellamy, first published in The Black Cat, December 1899.

  “A Divided Republic” by Lillie Devereux Blake, first published in The Phrenological Journal, February-March 1887. Included in A Daring Experiment and Other Stories (New York: Lovell, Coryell, 1892).

  “The Flying Teuton” by Alice Brown, first published in Harper’s Magazine, August 1917. Included in The Flying Teuton and Other Stories (New York: Macmillan, 1918).

  “Creatures of the Light” by Sophie Wenzel Ellis, first published in Astounding Stories of Super-Science, February 1930. No record of copyright renewal.

  “The Great Beast of Kafue” by Clotilde Graves reprinted from Under the Hermes (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1917) published under the pseudonym Richard Dehan.

  “The Artificial Man” by Clare Winger Harris, first published in Science Wonder Quarterly, Fall 1929. Included in Away from the Here and Now (Philadelphia: Dorrance & Co., 1947). No record of copyright renewal. Unable to trace author’s estate.

  “The Automaton Ear” by Florence McLandburgh, first published in Scribner’s Monthly, May 1873 and included in The Automaton Ear and Other Stories (Chicago: Jansen, McClurg, 1876).

  “When Time Turned” by Ethel Watts Mumford, first published in The Black Cat, January 1901.

  “The Third Drug” by Edith Nesbit, first published in The Strand Magazine, February 1908 under the name E. Bland.

  “Via the Hewitt Ray” by M. F. Rupert, first published in Science Wonder Quarterly, Spring 1930. No record of copyright renewal. Unable to trace author’s estate.

  “The Ray of Displacement” by Harriett Prescott Spofford, first published in The Metropolitan Magazine, October 1903.

  “Friend Island” by Francis Stevens, first published in All-Story Weekly, 7 September 1918.

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nbsp; “The Painter of Dead Women” by Edna W. Underwood, first published in The Smart Set, January 1910. Included in A Book of Dear Dead Women (Boston: Little, Brown, 1911).

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