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Updated: June 12, 2025
Crasweller, as soon as he saw this, said that he presumed he might go back, as he could not possibly go on. "It is but three miles for us to walk," I said. "I am forbidden to permit this gentleman to proceed either on foot or with the carriage," said the lieutenant. "I am to ask if he will do Captain Battleax the honour to come on board and take tiffin with him.
"Why are you to go if you don't wish it?" "I promised that I would go when Captain Battleax talked of carrying me off the day before yesterday. With a hundred soldiers, no doubt he could get me on board." "There are a great many more than a hundred men in Britannula as good as their soldiers. To take a man away by force, and he the President of the republic! Such a thing was never heard of.
During the whole course of my journey to England, Captain Battleax never said a word to me about the Fixed Period. He was no doubt a gallant officer, and possessed of all necessary gifts for the management of a 250-ton steam swivel-gun; but he seemed to me to be somewhat heavy.
Captain Battleax he regarded as the sultan of the world; but he was the sultan's vizier, and having the discipline of the ship altogether in his own hands, was, to my thinking, its very master. I should have said beforehand that a man of such sentiments and feelings was not at all to my taste. Everything that he loved I have always hated, and all that he despised I have revered.
Though you should reduce me to atoms, from them would spring those opinions which would serve altogether to silence your artillery. But the dread of it is to the generality much more powerful than the fact of its possession." "You may be quite sure it's there," said Captain Battleax, "and that I can so use it as to half obliterate your town within two minutes of my return on board."
"I can afford to smile, because I am absolutely powerless before you; but I do not the less feel that, in a matter in which the progress of the world is concerned, I, or rather we, have been put down by brute force. You have come to us threatening us with absolute destruction. Whether your gun be loaded or not matters little." "It is certainly loaded," said Captain Battleax.
On the next morning Sir Ferdinando Brown and Captain Battleax were announced at the executive chambers. I had already been there at my work for a couple of hours; but Sir Ferdinando apologised for the earliness of his visit.
But he was sure to succeed in telling us that he would make it impossible by means of the double file of armed men by whom he is accompanied, and the 250-ton steam-swiveller with which, as he informed me, he is able to blow us all into atoms, unless I would be ready to start with Captain Battleax to-morrow. It is not his religion but his strength that has prevailed.
"No doubt we shall do so when it is only ourselves that we have to sacrifice, but never when the question concerns our husbands, our fathers, and our sons." This was a pretty little speech enough, and received the eager compliments of the officers of the John Bright. "I did not mean," said Captain Battleax, "to touch upon public subjects at such a moment as this.
To enable you to effect this, Captain Battleax, of H.M. gunboat the John Bright, has been instructed to carry you out. The John Bright is armed with a weapon of great power, against which it is impossible that the people of Britannula should prevail.
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