War With the Newts

by Karel Čapek

  Michael Kelly, a young sailor who survived the whole catastrophe, related: ‘When the firing started we thought that another crew was shooting at us, someone who had also come to hunt for Newts. Lieutenant McCarth immediately turned about and yelled: “What the hell d’you think you’re doing, you idiots, this is the Montrose crew!” Just then he was hit in the hip but he managed to draw his revolver and started firing. Then he stopped another, in the neck, and fell. So Long Steve picked up an oar and charged the Newts, shouting Montrose! Montrose! The rest of us also yelled Montrose and battered the brutes with our oars as best we could. We left about five of our lot lying there, but the rest of us made it to the water. Long Steve jumped in and started wading out to the boat; but several Newts clung to him and dragged him under. They also drowned Charlie; he screamed to us, “For Christ’s sake, boys, don’t let them have me,” but there was nothing we could do for him. Those bastards fired at our backs. Bodkin turned round and got it in his belly; all he said was, “Not that,” and fell. So we tried to get back into the interior of the island: but we’d smashed our oars and clubs against those brutes and we were just running like rabbits. By then there were only four of us left. We were afraid to get too far away from the shore in case we couldn’t regain our ship; so we hid behind the rocks and bushes and had to watch the Newts finishing off our mates. They drowned them in the water like kittens, and if someone still tried to swim they bashed his head in with crowbars. It was only then that I noticed I had dislocated my foot and that I couldn’t move.’

  It appears that Captain James Lindley, who had stayed behind on board the Montrose, heard the firing on the island. Whether he thought there had been a clash with the natives, or that some other Newt merchants were ashore, he grabbed the ship’s cook and two engine-room men - that was all the crew that was left - got them to load the remaining boat with a machine-gun which he had providentially, if against strict orders, hidden away on his ship and set out to help his crew. He was careful enough not to step on land but brought the boat close in, with the machine-gun ready in its bow, and stood up ‘with arms folded’. Let us hand over again to young seaman Kelly.

  ‘We didn’t want to call out to the captain because we didn’t want the Newts to discover us. Mr Lindley was standing in the boat, arms folded, and called out: “What’s going on here?” Then the Newts turned towards him. There were a few hundred of them on the shore, and more and more were swimming in from the sea and encircling the boat. “What’s going on here?” the captain asked, and one big Newt then came closer to him and said: “Go back!”

  The captain looked at him, for a while he didn’t say anything and then he asked: “You’re a Newt?”

  “We are Newts,” said that Newt. “Go back, sir!”

  “I want to know what you’ve done to my men,” our Old Man said.

  “They shouldn’t have attacked us,” said the Newt. “Go back to your ship, sir!’

  Again the captain was silent for a little while, and then he said quite calmly. “That’s it, then. Jenkins, fire!”

  And Jenkins, the engine-room man, began to fire his machine-gun at the Newts.’

  (In the subsequent inquiry into the whole incident the naval authorities declared literally: ‘In that respect Captain James Lindley acted in the manner expected of a British naval man.’)

  ‘The Newts were all bunched up,’ Kelly’s account continued; ‘so they were mowed down like corn. A few of them fired their pistols at Mr Lindley but he just stood with his arms folded and didn’t even move. Just then a black Newt surfaced from the water behind the boat: he was holding something in one hand like a food tin, with his other hand he ripped something off and dropped it in the water under the boat. Before you could count five a column of water rose up at that spot and there was a muffled but powerful explosion that made the ground rock under our feet.’

  (The inquiry officials concluded from Kelly’s account that the explosive must have been W-3, an explosive supplied to the Newts working on the fortifications of Singapore for breaking up rocks under the water. But how those charges got from the Newts there to those at the Cocos Islands remained a mystery; some people speculated that they must have been shipped there by people, others believed that even then the Newts must have had some kind of long-distance communications amongst themselves. Public opinion called for a ban on supplying the Newts with such dangerous explosive substances, but the competent authorities declared that it was impossible for the moment to replace W-3, ‘a highly effective and comparatively safe’ explosive, with any other. And that was the end of the matter.)

  ‘The boat went up in the air,’ Kelly’s testimony continued, ‘in smithereens. Those Newts who were still alive crowded round the spot. We could not make out if Mr Lindley was still alive, but my three mates - Donovan, Burke and Kennedy - jumped up and raced down to help him, so he shouldn’t fall into the hands of the Newts. I tried to run too, but my ankle was dislocated, so I sat down and pulled my foot with both hands to get those joints together again. So I don’t know what happened at that moment, but when I looked up Kennedy was lying face down in the sand, and of Donovan and Burke there wasn’t a trace - only some swirling under the water.’

  Young Kelly then fled further into the island until he found a native village; but the natives acted oddly and did not even want to give him shelter. They were probably scared of the Newts. Seven weeks later a fishing boat found the completely looted and abandoned Montrose anchored off the Cocos Islands and rescued Kelly.

  A few weeks later His Britannic Majesty’s gunboat Fireball sailed up to the Cocos Islands and, riding at anchor, awaited darkness. The night was again brilliant with a full moon. The Newts emerged from the sea, sat round in a large circle on the sandy foreshore and began their ceremonial dance. At that moment His Majesty’s Ship Fireball fired the first shrapnel into their midst. The Newts, those that were not torn to pieces, were stunned for a moment and than began to run towards the sea; at that moment a terrifying salvo from six guns rang out and only a few mutilated salamanders were able to crawl back to the water. Then a second and third salvo cracked out.

  H M S Fireball thereupon stood off half a mile and, moving slowly along the coast, began to fire into the water. This went on for six hours and some 800 rounds were fired. The Fireball then sailed away. Even two days afterwards the surface of the sea off the Keeling Islands was still covered with thousands and thousands of dismembered Newts.

  The same night the Dutch battleship Van Dijck fired three rounds into a crowd of Newts on the little island of Goenong Api; the Japanese cruiser Hakodate sent three shells on to the Newt island of Ailinglaplap; the French gunboat Bechamel scattered some dancing Newts on Rawaiwai Island with three salvoes. This was a warning to the Newts. It did not go unheeded: no similar incident (this one was called the ‘Keeling killing’) ever happened again, and both the regular and the illicit Newt trade was able to flourish undisturbed and as profitably as before.

  2

  The Clash in Normandy

  The clash in Normandy, which took place a little later, was of a different character. There the Newts, employed chiefly at Cherbourg and inhabiting the neighbouring coast, took a tremendous liking to apples. But as their employers did not wish to let them have any on top of their normal Newt food (arguing that this would increase construction costs beyond the fixed budget), the Newts mounted thieving forays into the nearby orchards. The farmers complained to the Prefecture and the Newts were strictly forbidden to roam about the shore beyond the so-called Newt zone. But this did not help: the farmers continued to lose their fruit, and even eggs were said to be disappearing from the hen-coops, and more and more watchdogs were found killed each morning. The farmers thereupon began to guard their orchards themselves, armed with ancient rifles, and shot the poaching Newts. This, of course, would have remained a purely local affair if the Normandy farmers, embittered also by increased taxes and the higher price they had to pay for their ammunition, had not conceived a mortal hatre
d of the Newts and begun to mount raids on them in complete armed gangs. When the farmers had thus killed considerable numbers of Newts, even where they were working, the hydraulic engineering contractors now complained to the Prefect; the Prefect therefore ordered the confiscation of the farmers’ rusty blunderbusses. The farmers, naturally enough, resisted and some unpleasant conflicts occurred with the gendarmerie: the stubborn Normandy farmers were now taking potshots not only at Newts but also at gendarmes. Gendarmerie reinforcements were brought to Normandy and house-to-house searches were made in the villages.

  At about that time an exceedingly disagreeable thing happened: in the neighbourhood of Coutance some village youths attacked a Newt who, so they said, was suspiciously creeping up to a chicken-coop; they surrounded him, forced him with his back to the barn wall and began to pelt him with bricks. The wounded salamander swung his arm up and flung on the ground something that resembled an egg; there was an explosion which blew the Newt to pieces, as well as the three boys: eleven-year-old Pierre Cajus, sixteen-year-old Marcel Berard and fifteen-year-old Louis Kermadec. Another five children were more or less seriously injured. News of the event spread rapidly throughout the region; some seven hundred people came flocking together by bus from far and wide and, armed with shotguns, pitchforks and flails, attacked a Newt colony in the bay of Basse Coutance. About twenty Newts were killed before the gendarmes succeeded in forcing back the infuriated crowd. Sappers summoned from Cherbourg surrounded the bay of Basse Coutance with a barbed wire fence. At night, however, the salamanders emerged from the sea, breached the wire fence with hand-grenades and were evidently about to penetrate inland. Army trucks rushed up a few platoons of infantry armed with machine-guns, and a military cordon was thrown between the Newts and the humans. The farmers, meanwhile, were smashing up local tax offices and police stations and one unpopular tax collector was strung up on a lamp-post with a placard: Down with Newts! The newspapers, especially the German newspapers, spoke of a revolution in Normandy; the government in Paris, however, issued an emphatic denial.

  While these bloody clashes between farmers and Newts were spreading along the coast of Calvados, Picardy and the Pas de Calais, the ancient French cruiser Jules Flambeau left Cherbourg for the west coast of Normandy; the idea, as was subsequently established, was that her mere presence would have a calming effect both on the local population and on the Newts. The Jules Flambeau hove to a mile and a half off Basse Coutance bay; after nightfall her commander, to heighten the effect, ordered coloured flares to be fired. A crowd of people on the shore were watching that splendid spectacle when suddenly they heard a hissing roar and saw a huge column of water rising up by the cruiser’s bows. The ship listed over, and simultaneously there was a thunderous explosion. It was obvious that the cruiser was sinking; within a quarter of an hour motorboats were arriving from harbours in the vicinity but no assistance was needed; apart from three men who had been killed by the explosion itself the whole crew managed to save themselves, and the Jules Flambeau sank five minutes after her captain, as the last man aboard, had abandoned ship with the memorable remark: ‘That’s that, then.’

  An official communiqué issued the same night stated that ‘the old cruiser Jules Flambeau, due to be scrapped within the next few weeks anyway, ran aground while sailing at night and sank as a result of a boiler explosion’; but the newspapers were not so readily satisfied. While the semi-official press asserted that the ship had struck a German mine of recent manufacture, the opposition and foreign press carried inch-high banner headlines:

  FRENCH CRUISER TORPEDOED BY NEWTS

  Mysterious Incident off the Normandy Coast Revolt of the Newts

  ‘We are holding responsible,’ the Deputy Barthélemy said in a passionate article in his paper, ‘those who armed the animals against humans, those who put bombs in the Newts’ paws so they can kill French farmers and innocent children at play, those who supplied those marine monsters with the most modern torpedoes so they can sink the French Navy whenever they choose. I say: we are holding them responsible. Let them be arraigned for murder, let them be called to face a court martial on charges of high treason, let it be discovered what payments they received from armament kings for supplying that marine vermin with weapons against a civilised navy!’ And so on. In short, there was general panic, people were rioting in the streets and barricades began to be erected. On the Paris boulevards stood Senegalese riflemen, their weapons piled, and tanks and armoured cars stood by in the suburbs. At that moment M. François Ponceau, the Minister for the Navy, stood up in the Assembly, pale but determined, and declared: The government accepts responsibility for arming the Newts on the French coast with rifles, underwater machine-guns, submarine batteries and torpedo launchers.But while the French Newts only have small-calibre light guns, the German salamanders are equipped with thirty-two-centimetre calibre submarine mortars; while on the French coast there is, on average, one submarine store of hand grenades, torpedoes and explosives per twenty-four kilometres, there are deep depots of war materials at every twenty kilometres along the Italian coast and at every eighteen kilometres in German waters. France cannot and will not leave her coast unprotected. France cannot dispense with the arming of her Newts. The Minister has already put in hand the most rigorous investigation to determine responsibility for that fatal misunderstanding off the Normandy coast: it would seem that the Newts regarded the coloured flares as a signal for military intervention and were trying to defend themselves. In the meantime both the commander of the Jules Flambeau and the Prefect of Cherbourg have been suspended from office; a special commission will establish how hydraulic engineering contractors are treating their Newts; strict supervision will be instituted in this respect in future. The government deeply regrets the loss of human life; the young national heroes Pierre Cajus, Marcel Berard and Louis Kermadec will be posthumously decorated and buried at public expense, and their parents will receive a gratuitous pension. There will be significant changes in the top command of the French Navy. The government will make the matter a question of confidence by the Assembly as soon as it is in a position to make a more detailed report. The cabinet thereupon announced that it was in permanent session.

  The newspapers meanwhile - each according to its political colouring - proposed punitive, extermination, colonising campaigns and crusades against the Newts, a general strike, the resignation of the government, the arrest of all employers of Newts, the arrest of Communist leaders and agitators, and a lot of other similar safety procedures. In view of rumours about a possible closing of coasts and harbours the public feverishly began to lay in stocks of food, and the prices of all goods rose at a vertiginous rate. In industrial cities riots broke out against the price rises; the stock exchange was closed for three days. It was quite simply the tensest and most dangerous situation of the past three or four months. At that moment, however, the Minister of Agriculture, M. Monti, intervened. He arranged for a certain number of railway wagons of apples to be tipped into the sea off the French coast twice a week, needless to say at state expense. This measure had an exceedingly calming effect on the Newts and also satisfied the fruit farmers in Normandy and elsewhere. But M. Monti went even further along the same lines: because for a long time there had been a good deal of trouble with profound and alarming unrest in wine-growing districts - which were suffering from insufficient market demand - he arranged that the state should subsidise the Newts in such a way that every salamander would receive half a litre of white wine daily. At first the Newts were at a loss what to do with the wine because it gave them severe diarrhoea, and so they poured it into the sea; with time, however, they clearly got used to it and it has been observed that since then the French Newts have mated more eagerly though with a lesser fertility than before. Thus the agrarian problem and the Newt affair were solved at a single stroke: the dangerous tension was eased, and when a fresh government crisis arose shortly afterwards in connection with the financial scandal around Mme Toppler, the ingenious and wel
l-tried M. Monti became Minister for the Navy in the new government.

  3

  The Incident in the Channel

  Some time later the Belgian ferryboat Oudenbourgh was sailing from Ostend to Ramsgate. Halfway across the Straits of Dover the duty officer noticed ‘something happening in the water’ half a mile south of her usual course. Because he was unable to make out if somebody was not perhaps drowning he gave orders for the ship to make for the spot where the water was so fiercely churned up. Nearly 200 passengers watched the strange spectacle from the windward side: in some places the water was splashing up in vertical columns, in others something like a black body was flung up with it; over an area about 300 metres across the sea’s surface was intensely agitated and seething, and a loud rumble and roar was heard to come from the depth. It was just as if a small volcano was erupting under water. As the Oudenbourgh slowly drew near the spot a gigantic precipitous wave suddenly rose up some ten metres from her bows and there was a frightful explosion. The whole ship rose sharply and a shower of near-boiling water descended on her deck; simultaneously a powerful black body smacked down on her foredeck, writhing and screaming in agony: it was a mutilated and scalded Newt. The captain ordered full steam astern to prevent the ship sailing straight into the middle of that exploding inferno but by now explosions were occurring all over the place and the surface was strewn with pieces of dismembered Newts. Eventually the ship was turned about, and the Oudenbourgh made off north at full steam. Just then there was a terrifying explosion and a huge column of water and steam, perhaps 100 metres high, shot up some 600 metres astern. The Oudenbourgh headed straight for Harwich, radioing warnings in all directions: ‘Warning, warning, warning! Great danger of submarine explosions on Ostend-Ramsgate route. Cause unknown. All craft advised to avoid the area!’ Meanwhile the rumble and roar continued, almost as if naval exercises were taking place; but because of the spouts of water and steam there was nothing to be seen. By then torpedo-boats and destroyers had set out from Dover and Calais at full steam and squadrons of military aircraft were making for the spot. However, all they found on arrival was the surface muddied with yellow slime and covered with dead fish and mangled Newts.