CAPTAIN SHANNON

BY

COULSON KERNAHAN

AUTHOR OF “A DEAD MAN’S DIARY,” “A BOOK OF STRANGE SINS,” “SORROW AND SONG,” “GOD AND THE ANT,” ETC.

NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1896

(iv)

Copyright, 1896, By Dodd, Mead and Company.

University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.

(v)

CHAPTER I WHO IS “CAPTAIN SHANNON”?

The year 18— will be memorable for the perpetration in England and in Ireland of a series of infamously diabolical outrages. On the scene of each crime was found—sometimes scrawled in plain rough capitals upon a piece of paper which was pinned to the body of a victim, sometimes rudely chalked in the same lettering upon a door or wall—this inscription—“By order.—Captain Shannon.”

Who Captain Shannon was the police failed entirely to discover, although the counties in which the crimes occurred were scoured from end to end, and every person who was known to have been in the neighbourhood was subjected to the severest examination. That some who were so examined knew more than they would tell, there was reason to believe; but so dreaded(2) was the miscreant’s name, and so swift and terrible had been the fate of those who in the past had incurred his vengeance, that neither offers of reward nor threats of punishment could elicit anything but dogged denials.

But when the conspirators carried the war into the enemy’s country, and successfully accomplished the peculiarly daring crime which wrecked the police headquarters at New Scotland Yard, the indignation of the public knew no bounds. If the emissaries of Captain Shannon could succeed in conveying an infernal machine into New Scotland Yard itself, the whole community was—so it was argued—at the mercy of a band of murderers.

The scene in the House of Commons on the night following the outrage was one of great excitement. The Chief Secretary for Ireland declared, in a memorable speech, that the purpose of the crime was to terrorise and to intimidate. No loyal English or Irish citizen would, he was sure, be deterred from doing his duty by such infamous acts; but that they had to deal with murderers of the most determined type could not be doubted. The whole conspiracy was, in his opinion, the work of some half dozen(3) assassins, who were probably the tools of the monster calling himself “Captain Shannon,” in whose too fertile brain the crimes had, he believed, originated, and under whose devilishly planned directions they had been carried out.

The police had reason to suppose that the headquarters of the conspirators were in Ireland, in which country the majority of the crimes—at all events of the earlier crimes—had been committed.

He regretted to say, but it was his duty to say, that but for the disloyal attitude of a section of the Irish people—who, from dastardly and contemptible cowardice, or from sympathy with the assassins, had not only withheld the evidence, without which it was impossible to trace the various outrages to their cause, but had on more than one occasion actually sought to hinder the police in the execution of their duty—the conspirators would long since have been brought to book.

The Secretary then went on to denounce in the strongest language what he called the infamous conduct of the disloyal Irish. He declared, amid ringing cheers, that the man or woman who sought to shield such a monster as(4) Captain Shannon, or to protect him and his confederates from justice, was nothing less than a murderer in the eyes of God and of man. He informed the House that although the Government had actually framed several important measures which would go far to remove the grievances of which Irishmen were complaining, he for one would, in view of what had taken place, strenuously oppose the consideration at that moment of any measures which had even the appearance of a concession to Irish demands. It was repression, not concession, which must be meted out to traitors and murderers.

Within a month after the delivery of this speech all England was horrified by the news of a crime more wantonly wicked than any outrage which had preceded it, a crime which resulted—as its perpetrators must have known it would result—in the wholesale murder of hundreds of inoffensive people against whom—excepting for the fact that they happened to be law-abiding citizens—the followers of Captain Shannon could have no grievance.

All that was known was that a respectably dressed young man, carrying what appeared to(5) be about a dozen well-worn volumes from Mudie’s, or some other circulating library, had entered an empty first-class carriage at Aldgate station. These books were held together by a strap—as is usual when sending or taking volumes for exchange to the libraries—and it had occurred to no one to ask to examine them, although the officials at all railway stations had, in view of the recent outrages, been instructed to challenge every passenger carrying a suspicious-looking parcel.

The theory which was afterwards put forward was that what appeared to be a parcel of volumes from a circulating library was in reality a case cunningly covered with the backs, bindings, and edges of books, and that this case contained an infernal machine of the most deadly description. It was supposed that the wretch in charge of it had purposely entered an empty carriage that he might the better carry out his infamous plan, and that after setting fire to the fuse he had left the train at the next station.

That this theory afforded the most likely explanation of what subsequently took place was generally agreed, although one well-known(6) authority on explosives expressed himself as of opinion that no infernal machine capable of causing what had happened could be concealed in so small a compass as that suggested. But it was pointed out in reply that from arrests and discoveries which had been made in America and on the Continent, it was evident that the manufacture of infernal machines and investigations into the qualities of explosives were being scientifically and systematically carried on.

Though no connection had as yet been traced between the persons who had been arrested and the perpetrators of the recent outrages, the probabilities were that such connection existed, and it was asked whether it might not be possible that some one who was thus engaged in experimenting with explosives had discovered a new explosive, or a new combination of explosives, which was different from and more deadly than anything known to the authorities.

Into the probability or improbability of this and other theories which were put forward it would be idle here to enter. All that is known is that the train had only just entered the tunnel immediately to the west of Blackfriars station when there occurred the most awful explosion(7) of the sort within the memory of man. The passengers, as well as the guard, driver, and stoker, not only of the train in which the explosion took place, but also of a train which was proceeding in the opposite direction and happened to be passing at the time, were killed to a man, and with the exception of one of Smith’s bookstall boys, whose escape seemed almost miraculous, every soul in the station—ticket-collectors, porters, station-master, and the unfortunate people who were waiting on the platform—shared the same fate.

Nor was this all, for at the moment when the outrage occurred the train was passing under one of the busiest crossings in London—that where New Bridge Street, Blackfriars Bridge, Queen Victoria Street, and the Thames Embankment converge—and so terrific was the explosion that the space between these converging thoroughfares was blown away as a man’s hand is blown away by the bursting of a gun.

The buildings in the immediate neighbourhood, including parts of St. Paul’s station on the London, Chatham, and Dover railway, the offices over Blackfriars station, and De Keyser’s Hotel on the opposite side of the way, were(8) wrecked, and the long arm of Blackfriars Bridge lay idle across the river like a limb which has been rudely hacked from a body.

But it is not my intention to attempt any realistic description of the scene, or of the awful sights which were witnessed when, after the first paralysing moment of panic was over, the search for the injured, the dying, and the dead was commenced. The number of lives lost, including those who perished in Blackfriars station, in the two trains, in the street, and in the surrounding buildings, was enormous. Several columns of the papers next morning were filled with lists of the missing and the dead. One name on the list had a terrible significance. It was the name of the man to achieve whose murder the lives of so many innocent men and women had been ruthlessly sacrificed; the name of a man whose remains were never found, but whose funeral pyre was built of the broken bodies of hundreds of his fellow creatures,—the name of the Chief Secretary for Ireland.

(9)

CHAPTER II CAPTAIN SHANNON’S MANIFESTO

On the day of the outrage upon the Metropolitan railway a manifesto from Captain Shannon, of which the following is a copy, was received by the Prime Minister at his official residence in Downing Street. It was written as usual in roughly printed capitals, and, as it bore the Dublin postmark of the preceding day, must have been posted before the explosion had taken place.

“To the People of Great Britain and Ireland:

“Fellow countrymen and countrywomen,—The Anarchistic, Nihilistic, Fenian, and similar movements of the past have all been failures. That fact there is no denying. I do not mean to say that there have been no results to the glorious war which has been waged upon a society which is content to stand by heedless and unconcerned while Russia’s many millions of starving and suffering fellow-creatures are the slaves of a system by which the honour,(10) liberty, and life of every man, woman, and child are at the mercy of a tyrant’s whim and the whims of his myrmidons,—a society which looks on smiling while Ireland is groaning under the heel of English oppression, and while capitalists, who yawn as they seek to devise some new vice on which to squander the wealth which has become a burden to them, grind down and sweat the poor, setting one starving man to compete against another for a wage which can scarce find him and his in dry bread.

“A society which, calling itself Christian, and having it in its power to mend matters, can, unconcerned, endure such iniquities, is blood guilty, and so long as these things last, upon society shall its crimes be visited,—with society must all just men and true wage deadly war.

“What has been done hitherto has not been without results.

“But for the justice which was executed upon the arch-tyrant, Alexander of Russia; the blow which was struck at English tyranny by the destruction of Clerkenwell prison; the righteous punishment which befell those servants of tyrants and enemies of freedom, Burke and Cavendish,—but for these and other glorious deeds,(11) the bitter cry of the oppressed all over the world had passed unheard and unheeded; Ireland had not wrung from reluctant England the few paltry concessions that have been made, and the dawning of the great day of freedom had been indefinitely postponed.

“But notwithstanding all that has been done, the fact remains and cannot be denied that Nihilists, Anarchists, Fenians, and those who, under different names and different leaders, are fighting for freedom throughout the world have, up to the present, failed to accomplish the results at which they aim.

“And why?

“Because they have been scattered and separate organisations, each working independently of the other, and having no resources outside itself. So long as this sort of thing continues nothing can be hoped for but the throwing away of precious lives and sorely needed money to no purpose.

“But let these scattered forces combine into one organised and all-powerful Federation, and mankind will be at its mercy.

“This is what has been done.

“The World Federation of Freedom is now an accomplished fact, for all the secret societies(12) of the world have combined into one common and supreme organisation, with one common enemy and one common purpose.

“That purpose is to rid mankind of the monsters of Monarchy and Imperialism, and with them of the whole vampire brood of Peers, Nobles, and Capitalists who, in order that they may live in idleness and sensuality, grind the face of the poor, and drain, drop by drop, the hearts’-blood of toiling millions.

“Its object is to declare that all things are the property of the people. To wrench from the greedy maw of landowners and capitalists their ill-gotten gains, and to restore them to the rightful possessors. To sweep from the face of the earth the fat priests, ministers, and clergy who batten and fatten on the carrion of dead and decaying religions. To preach the gospel of the happiness of man in place of the worship of God, and to declare the day of the great republic, when the many millions who have hitherto been ruled shall become the rulers.

“That this glorious consummation can be attained all at once the Federation is not so sanguine as to expect. Its members know that though they have a lever strong enough to(13) move the world they must be content to work slowly. Mankind is a chained giant. Their aim is to set him free; but to do this they must be content to knock off his fetters one by one; and at the last meeting of the World Federation of Freedom it was unanimously agreed to inaugurate the great struggle for personal liberty, firstly, by emancipating Ireland from the English rule, and, secondly, by the overthrowing of Imperialism in Russia.

“The council of the Federation has two reasons for deciding to commence the plan of campaign by freeing Ireland.

“The first is that the members know well that the greatest enemy with which they have to contend—the last country to be convinced of the righteousness of their cause—will be England, that prince-ridden, priest-ridden, peer-ridden nation of flunkeys and enemies of freedom which shed the blood of her own children in America rather than grant them their rightful independence, and now seeks in a similar way to keep Ireland, India, Canada, and Australia under her cruel heel. At England, then, it is right and fitting the first blow should be struck.

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“The other reason is that Ireland, when she is once set free, and in the hands of the Federation, is to be made the basis of future operations. It is very necessary that the Federation should have some such headquarters, and in regard to size (too large a centre is not desirable), shape, situation, and compactness, Ireland possesses peculiar natural advantages for the purpose. An island, surrounded on all sides as by sentries, by the sea, no hostile force can steal upon her under cover and unawares. She is practically the key to Europe, and as a vantage-ground from which to commence operations upon England her position cannot be bettered.

“Is there a single thinking man or woman who cannot see that monarchy and imperialism, peers, clergy, and class distinctions are doomed, and that their utter downfall is only a matter of time? Germany, Russia, Austria, Italy, France, and England are undermined to the very cores by Socialism and Anarchy. The mines which are to destroy society, as society now exists, are laid though they are out of sight, and at any moment the opportunity may come to fire the train. Such an opportunity once occurred(15) in France; but what happened then, though it served to show what hatred of its rulers was seething unsuspected in the lowest stratum of society, was a mere accident. But if an accidental outbreak like the French Revolution could set rivers of blood running in France, what may we not expect from the Great Revolution which, when it comes—as come it must—will be the result, not of chance, but of long years of systematic propagation of socialistic principles among the masses, which will be the outcome of the most subtly-planned and gigantic scheme for the liberation of mankind which

the world has ever known!

“There are people who will say that what happened on the other side of the Channel can never happen on this. But those who know what is going on in London, Manchester, Birmingham, and all the largest towns, know that we are living on the edge of a volcano; that England is riper for revolution to-day than France was in 1789, though the danger is as little suspected now as it was then, and that what happened then, and worse, may happen at any time in England unless her councillors have the foresight and the wisdom to(16) give to the people what the people will assuredly otherwise take.

“It must be remembered that in England we have had for more than half a century a Queen who does not forget that during that time a complete revolution has taken place in many previously existing beliefs and systems, a Queen who knows that England will never tolerate another George IV., who recognises that what was patiently borne sixty, forty, and twenty years ago, will not be endured for a moment to-day, and has wisely avoided everything which can put royalty on its trial or the temper of the people to the test. Hence, though Englishmen know that a day of reckoning between royalty and the people is nigh, they have tacitly consented to put off that day so long as she lives, and to call upon some other and less fortunate sovereign to settle the account. But the account, too long overdue, will soon have to be settled. As well might one man hope to stand against an incoming sea, as well might the courtiers of old King Canute think by their chiding to stay the rude waves from wetting the feet of their royal master, as the rich few think that

they can withstand the million of the poor(17) when the poor shall arise in their might and their right to claim as their own the riches which their labours have accumulated. In whose hands are those riches now?

“For answer let them look to the words which are written in the very heart of their seething, starving London, over the portico of the Royal Exchange, ‘The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof.’ Yes, the lords’,—this duke’s, that earl’s,—but not God’s—if a God there be—or the people’s.

“But it is to restore the earth and the fulness thereof to the people that the World Federation of Freedom is fighting. Its cause is the cause of the poor, and it is sacred. Long years of toiling for the bare necessities of life have so broken the spirit of the poor that they have become almost like beasts of burden that wince before a whip in the hands of a child, and bow themselves to the yoke at the bidding of a master whose puny life they could crush out at a blow. It is time that the poor should be made to see the terrible power which, if only by virtue of their swarming millions, lies at their command.