The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures Read Online Free Page A

through the
air, into the carriage and straight at the Prime Minister!
    “Though he nearly lost
his own balance the Prime Minister twisted and neatly caught the boy in his
great hands, thus saving the child from a painful fall: the Prime Minister had
the reactions of a soldier, despite his age, and an instinct for the safety of
others. With the boy in his arms he stumbled backwards into his ottoman — but
he remained safely in the carriage.
    “And then the Rocket
reached our train. I distinctly heard the Prime Minister call out, ‘Huskisson,
for God’s sake get to your place!’ But it was too late.
    “Everybody else had
scrambled out of the way, off the track or behind the coaches — everybody but
poor Huskisson, who, hampered by a bad leg and general portliness, fell back on
to the track. The Rocket ran over Huskisson’s leg. I heard a dreadful crunch of
bone.
    “When the train had
passed others rushed to help him. George Stephenson quickly took command. One
man began to tie his belt around the damaged leg, which pumped blood. Soon the
patient would be loaded aboard a single carriage behind the Northumbrian, and
hurried off to Manchester. Mr Huskisson, to his credit, did not cry out once,
though I heard him say, ‘I have met my death. God forgive me!’
    “As for the Prime
Minister, he clambered down from the carriage at last, but to the right hand
side. The Venns and I still stood where we had been, I trembling with fear and
emotion.
    “The Prime Minister
handed the little French boy back to his father. Then he bowed stiffly to M.
Venn. ‘Sir, your quick thinking preserved my life.’
    “M. Venn was quite
modest. He ruffled little Julie’s hair. `Perhaps you should thank this small
fellow.’
    “‘But I scarce thought
the day would ever come when I of all people owed my life to one French
gentleman, let alone two!’
    “M. Venn said, ‘We are
no longer enemies, sir. And I for one would not see a countryman of mine commit
such a craven act as an assassination of this kind.’
    “At that the Prime Minister’s formidable eyebrows rose, and I
could see that he was thinking through the events of the hour in quite a
different light — as was I. But of M. Gyger, who had tried to call the Prime
Minister into the path of the advancing Rocket, there was no sign.
    “And little Julie Venn, who had that day ridden faster than any
small child in history, and saved the life of a Prime Minister, laughed
and laughed and laughed.”
    I checked out some of
the details later. The Rocket, perhaps the most famous steam locomotive ever
built, really was running that day, alongside seven of her sister engines,
including the Northumbrian. And there really was a fatal accident, when William
Huskisson MP managed to step out in front of the speeding Rocket.
    I’ve come across no
account of a Monsieur Gyger.
    Albert couldn’t tell me
why anybody would have wanted to try to kill the Prime Minister that day,
French or otherwise. France and Britain were not, at that time, at war. It made
no sense — until it occurred to me to check who the Prime Minister actually
was.
    Grand, aloof,
distrustful of new technology and the working people alike, it was Arthur
Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington, victor over Napoleon at Waterloo just
fifteen years earlier — a man who many French people would surely have loved to
see in his grave.
    The eye-witness accounts
of the day say nothing about the Prime Minister holding a small boy at the
time. On the other hand, they don’t say he wasn’t. Maybe the incident was
hushed up for the sake of international relations — or simply to save
Wellington embarrassment.
    The rest of the day
rather fizzled out for Lily Ord. The mood was subdued after the accident. She rode
on with her companions to Manchester, but the Prime Minister was greeted by
boos and thrown stones; his government wasn’t popular with everybody, and nor
was the new railway, a “triumph of machinery”. Wellington wouldn’t