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Updated: June 19, 2025
He smoothed the crumpled plans with his hand, and contemplated them. Then he referred to the other drawings in the portfolio. Twenty thousand pounds. If he worked it right! It was worth trying, anyhow. Presently he opened the drawer in which Kurt had put paper and writing-materials. Bert Smallways was by no means a stupid person, and up to a certain limit he had not been badly educated.
I sold 'em, Teddy! me what goes about now with you, dressed up in old sacks and looking for lost 'ens. People used to come into my shop, great beautiful ladies like you'd 'ardly dream of now, dressed up to the nines, and say, 'Well, Mr. Smallways, what you got 'smorning? and I'd say, 'Well, I got some very nice C'nadian apples, 'or p'raps I got custed marrers. See? And they'd buy 'em.
And later in the day an extremely shattered and disorganised Bert Smallways stood in the presence of the Prince Karl Albert. The proceedings were in German. The Prince was in his own cabin, the end room of the airship, a charming apartment furnished in wicker-work with a long window across its entire breadth, looking forward.
I can't get it out of my head with shells in her engine-room, and the fires flying out of her furnaces, and the stokers and engineers scalded and dead. Men I've messed with, Smallways men I've talked to close! And they've had their day at last! And it wasn't all luck for them! "Disabled and sinking! I suppose everybody can't have all the luck in a battle. Poor old Schneider!
Smallways' pert reflection on the causes of the immense downfall represents the wisdom that comes of bitter experience, and the application of it is very pertinent to present conditions.
He did not once look back. "That's the end of THAT game!" said Bert. "No more teuf-teuf-teuf for Bert Smallways for a year or two. Good-bye 'olidays!... Oh! I ought to 'ave sold the blasted thing when I had a chance three years ago." The next morning found the firm of Grubb & Smallways in a state of profound despondency.
The Prince's legs dangled up the passage again, and every one was briskly prepared for heroic exertion and triumphant acts. "Smallways!" cried Kurt, "come here!" Then Bert, under Kurt's direction, had his first experience of the work of an air-sailor. The immediate task before the captain of the Vaterland was a very simple one. He had to keep afloat.
It's all foolishness and haste and violence and cruel folly, stupidity and blundering hate and selfish ambition all the things that men have done all the things they will ever do. Gott! Smallways, what a muddle and confusion life has always been the battles and massacres and disasters, the hates and harsh acts, the murders and sweatings, the lynchings and cheatings.
There were no beginnings.... We're just ants in ant-hill cities, in a world that doesn't matter; that goes on and rambles into nothingness. New York New York doesn't even strike me as horrible. New York was nothing but an ant-hill kicked to pieces by a fool! "Think of it, Smallways: there's war everywhere! They're smashing up their civilisation before they have made it.
And about him, above and below, was space such a clear emptiness and silence of space as only the aeronaut can experience. He did not know where he might be drifting, or what might happen next. He accepted this state of affairs with a serenity creditable to the Smallways' courage, which one might reasonably have expected to be of a more degenerate and contemptible quality altogether.
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