"Now comes the hour supreme!To arms, each in his place!The new dawn's InternationalShall be the human race!..."
"Now comes the hour supreme!To arms, each in his place!The new dawn's InternationalShall be the human race!..."
"Halt! Who goes there?"
The challenge rang sharply on the night air, outside a small gate in the barricade of the Monck Aviation Grounds.
"Liberty!" answered Gabriel, pausing as he gave the password.
"All right, come on," said a vague figure at the gate. The little group approached. The gate opened. Silently they entered the enclosure.
Another man stepped from a hangar. In his hand he held an electric flash, which he threw upon the newcomers, one by one.
"Right!" he commented, and took Gabriel by the hand. "This way!"
Ten minutes later, all of them were in the air, save only Gabriel, who insisted on staying till his entire squad had made a clean getaway. Then he too rose; and now in a long, swift line, the fighting squadron straightened away to north-eastward, on the twenty-mile run to Niagara.
The night was foggy, chill and dark. All the aviators had instructions to fly not less than 2,500 feet high, to keep a careful lookout lest they collide, and to steer by the lights of the great Air Trust plant. For, misty though the heavens were, still Gabriel could see the dim glow of the tremendous aerial search-lights dominating Goat Island—lights of 5,000,000 candle-power, maintained by current from the Falls, incessantly sweeping the sky on the lookout for just such perils as now, indeed, were drawing near.
Momently, as he flew, Gabriel perceived these huge lights growing brighter, through the mist, and apprehension won upon him.
"Incredibly strong!" he muttered to himself, as he glanced from his barometer to the shining fog ahead. "Even though the mist will be thicker over the Falls than anywhere else, there's a good possibility they may pierce it and pick us up—andthen, look out for their 'planes and swift, fighting dirigibles!"
He rotated the rising-plane, and now soared to 2,800 feet. Below and on either side of him, nothing but tenuous fog. Ahead, the swiftly-approaching fan of radiance, white, dazzling, beautiful, that seemed to gush from earth so far below and to the eastward. Already the thunders of the Falls were audible.
"Where are the others?" Gabriel wondered, his thoughts seeming to hum and roar in his head, in harmony with the shuddering diapason of the muffler-deadened exhaust. "No way of telling, now. Each man for himself—and each to do his best!"
And then his thoughts reverted to Catherine; and round his heart a sudden yearning seemed to strengthen his stern, indomitable resolve—"Victory or death!"
But now there was scant time for thought. The moment of action was already close at hand. Far below there, hidden by night and dark and mist, Gabriel knew a hundred thousand comrades, of the Fighting Sections, were lying hidden, waiting for the signal to advance.
"And it's time, now!" he said aloud, thrilled by a wondrous sense of vast responsibility—a sense that on this moment hung the fate of the world. "It's time for the signal. Now then, up and at them!"
Taking the rocket—a powerful affair, capable of casting an intense, calcium light—he touched the fuse to a bit of smouldering punk fastened in a metal cup at his right hand. Then, as it flared, he launched the rocket far into the void.
Below, came a quick spurt of radiance, in a long, vivid streak that shot away with incredible rapidity. Gabriel followed it a moment, with his gaze, then smiled.
"The Rubicon is crossed," said he. "The gates of the Temple of Janus are open wide—and now comes War!"
He rose again, skimming to a still higher altitude as the glare of the great Works drew closer and closer underneath. The wind roared in his ears, louder than the whirling propellers. The whole fabric of the aeroplane quivered as it climbed, up, up above the rushing, bellowing cataract.
"Where are the others?" thought he, and reached for a thanatos projectile, in the rack near the metal cup where the punk still glowered.
All at once, a glare of light burst upward through the white-glowing mist; and the 'plane reeled with the air-wave, as now a thunderous concussion boomed across the empty spaces of the sky.
At the same moment, a faint, ripping noise mounted to Gabriel—a sound for all the world like the tearing of stout canvas. Then followed a chattering racket, something like distant mowing-machines at work; and now all blent to a steady, determined uproar. Gabriel almostthought to hear, as he launched his own projectile, far sounds as of the shouts and cries of men; but of this he could not make sure.
"They're at it, anyhow!" he exulted. "At it, at last! By the way our men have launched the attack, the first explosion must have breached a wall! God! What wouldn't I give to be down there, in the thick of it, rather than here! I—"
Crash!
Again a spouting geyser of light and uproar burst into mid-air.
"That wasmythanatos speaking!" cried Gabriel. "Now for another!"
Before he could drop it, as he circled round and round, directly over the great, flailing beams of the Air Trust search-lights, a third detonation shattered the heavens, nearly unseating him. Up sprang the roar, with wonderful intensity, reflected from the earth as from a giant sounding-board. And Gabriel noted, with keen satisfaction, that one of the huge light-beams had gone dark.
"Put outoneof them, anyway, so far!" thought he, and swung again to westward, and once more dropped a messenger of death to tyranny.
Now the bombardment became general. Trust aerial-gun projectiles began bursting all about. Every second or two, terrible concussions leaped toward the zenith; and the earth, hidden somewhere down there below the fog-blanket, seemed flaming upward like a huge volcano. One by one the search-lights, whipping the sky, went black; and now the glow of them was fast diminishing, only to be replaced by a ruddier and more intermittent glare.
"The plant's burning, at last," thought Gabriel. "Heaven grant the fire may spread to the oxygen-tanks! If we can only getthose—!"
Again he launched a projectile, and again he circled over the doomed plant.
A swift black shape swooped by him. He had just time to exchange a yell of warning, when it was gone. The near peril gripped his heart, but did not shake it.
"Close call!" said he.
If that machine and his had met, good-bye forever! But after all, the danger of collision in mid-air, or of being struck by a projectile from some other machine, above, was no greater than his comrades on the ground were facing. Not so great, perhaps. Many a one would meet his death from the aerial attack. In a war like this, a thousand perils threatened. Gabriel only hoped that Hargreaves, down below there, could hold them back, away, till the walls should have been destroyed.
Circling, ever circling, now hearing some echoes of the earth-battle, some grenade-volleys and rapid-fire clattering, now deafened and all but blinded by the vast, up-belching explosions of the thanatos projectiles, Gabriel flew among the drifting mists and vapors. Still was he guided by one or two search-lights; but most of these were gone, now. Yet the glare of the conflagration, below, was luridly shuddering through the fog, painting it all a dull and awful red.
Red! Suddenly words came into Gabriel's mind—the words of his own poem:
...Red as blood, red as blood! The blood of the shattered miner,Blood of the boy in the rifle pits, blood of the coughing child-slave,Blood of the mangled trainman, blood that the Carpenter shed!
...Red as blood, red as blood! The blood of the shattered miner,Blood of the boy in the rifle pits, blood of the coughing child-slave,Blood of the mangled trainman, blood that the Carpenter shed!
"For your sake! For the world's sake, this!" he cried, and hurled another thanatos. "If ever war of liberation was holy, this is that war!"
Suddenly, through all the turmoil of shattering explosions, tossing air-currents and drifting, acrid smoke, he became conscious of a sudden, swift-flying pursuer.
By the light of the burning Plant, down there somewhere in the vapors of the thunderous Falls, he saw a hawk-like 'plane that swooped toward him with incredible velocity, savage and lean and black.
Off to the right, a sudden spattering of shots in mid-air told him the battle in the sky was likewise being engaged. He saw vague, veiled explosions, there, then a swift, falling trail of flame. A pang shot through his heart. Had one of his companions fallen and been dashed to death? He could not tell—he had no time to wonder, even, for already the attacker was upon him, the swift Air Trustépervier,one of the dreaded air-fleet of the world-monopoly!
Gabriel had just time to swerve from the attack, and swoop aloft—dropping his next to last projectile as he did so—when the whirling shape zoomed past, swung round and once more charged. He saw, vaguely, two men sat in it. One was the pilot, a "Gray" or Cosmos mercenary. The other—could it be? Yes, there was no mistaking! The other was Slade himself, commander of the hireling army of Plutocracy!
Out from the attacking 'plane jetted sadden spurts of fire. Gabriel heard the zip-zip-zip of bullets; heard a ripping tear, as one of his canvas wings was punctured—God help him, had that explosive bullet struck a wire or a stay!
Then, maddened to despair; and burning with fierce rage against this monster of the upper air that now was hurling death at him, he once more "banked," brought his machine sharp round, and charged, full drive, at the attacker!
This tactic for a second must have disconcerted the Air Trust mercenaries. Gabriel's speed was terrific. With stupefying suddenness, theépervierloomed up ahead of him.
"Now!" he shouted. "Take this, from me!"
Half rising from his seat, he hurled his last remaining projectile full at Slade, then wrenched his own 'plane off sharply to the left.
A thunderous concussion and a dazzling burst of light told him his chance shot had been effective.
He got a second's vision of a shattered black mass, a tangle of girders, wires, collapsed planes, that seemed to hang a moment in midair—of whirling bodies—of wreckage indescribable. Then the broken debris plunged with awful speed and vanished through the red-glowing mist.
Even as he shuddered, sickened at the terrible, though necessary deed, the deed which alone could save him from swift death, an overwhelming air-wave from the terrible explosion struck his speeding machine, the machine captured in the Great Smokies from the Air Trust itself.
It heeled over like an unballasted yacht under the lashof a hurricane. Vainly Gabriel jerked at wheel and levers; he could not right it.
As it seemed to come under control, a stay snapped. The 'plane swooped, yawned forward and stuck its nose into an air-hole, caused by the vast, uprising smoke and heat of the huge conflagration beneath.
Then, lost and beyond all guidance, it somersaulted, slid away down a long drop and, whirling wildly over and over, plunged with Gabriel into the glowing, smoking, detonating void!
When, despite Flint's imperative orders, Slade failed to reopen the lines of communication for him, before nightfall, and when President Supple wired in code for a little more time in obeying Air Trust orders, the Billionaire recognized that something of terrible menace now had suddenly broken in upon his dream of universal power.
He summoned Waldron and Herzog for another conference and together they feverishly planned to put the works under defense, until such time as troops could be got through to them.
The plant regiment was mustered and the Cosmos mercenaries and scabs were made ready. The machine-guns were unlimbered for action and large quantities of ammunition were delivered to them and to the aerial-bomb guns, as nightfall lowered. Herzog set eight hundred men to work covering all the tanks possible, with wire netting of heavy steel. The search-lights were all ordered into use; steam and electrical connections were made, the air-fleet was manned, and everything was done that unlimited wealth and bitter hate of the Workers could suggest.
With curses on the fog, which hid the upper air from view, the old man now stood at one of the west windows of his inner office—the office on the top floor of the mainAdministration Building, overlooking nearly the whole Plant.
"Damn the weather!" he snarled, his gold teeth glinting. "In addition to all this mist from the Falls, there's a regular cloud-bank settling down, tonight! Under cover of it, what may not happen? Nothing could have been worse, Waldron. Though we shall soon control the air, that won't be enough, so long as fogs and mists escape us. Our next problem—hello! Now what the devil'sthat?"
"What's what?" retorted Waldron, testily. He had been drinking rather more heavily than usual, that day, both because of the dull weather and because the Falls invariably got on his nerves, during his brief sojourns there. Away from New York and his favorite haunts, Waldron was lost. "What's what?" he repeated with an ugly look. "This roaring, glaring, trembling place gives me—"
"That! That light in the sky!" cried Flint, excitedly pointing. "See? No—it's gone now! But it looked like—like a rocket! A signal, of some kind, thrown from an aeroplane! A—"
Waldron laughed harshly.
"Seeing things, eh?" he sneered, coming across to the window, himself, and peering out. "Idon't see anything! Nothing here to worry about, Flint. With all these walls and guns, and netting, and air-ships and a private army and all, what more do you want? Not getting nervous in your old age, are you, eh?" he gibed bitterly. "Or is your conscience beginning to wake up, as the graveyard becomes more a probability than—"
"Enough!" Flint snapped at him. "When you drink,Waldron, you're an idiot! Now, forget all this, and let's get down to work. I tell you, I just now saw a signal-light up there in the mist. There's trouble coming tonight, as sure as we own the earth. Trouble, maybe big trouble. Merciful God, I—I rather think we oughtn't to be here, in person, eh? We'd be much better off out of here. If there—there should be any fighting, you know—"
His voice broke in a falsetto pipe. Waldron laughed brutally.
"Bravo!" cried he, with flushed and mottled face. "You'll do, Flint! I see, right now, the firing-line is the life for you! Well, let the row come, and devil take it, say I. Better anything than—"
The sentence was never finished, For suddenly a shattering explosion hurled a vast section of the western encircling wall outward, out into the River, and, where but a moment before, the partners had been gazing at a high concrete-and-steel barrier, with electric lights on top, now only a huge gap appeared, through which the foam-tossed current could be seen leaping swiftly onward toward the Falls.
Hurled back from the window by the force of the explosion, both men were struck dumb with terror and amaze. Flint rallied first, and with a cry of rage, inarticulate as a beast's howl, sprang to the window again.
Outside, a scene of desolation and wild activity was visible. The great, paved courtyard, flanked by the turbine houses and the wall, on one hand, and on the other by the oxygen tanks' huge bulk that loomed vaguely through the electric-lighted mist, now had begun to swarm with men.
Flint saw a few forms lying prone under the hard glare of the arcs and vacuum lights. Others were crawling, writhing, making strange contortions. Here, there, men with rifles were running to take their posts. Hoarse orders were shouted, and shrill replies rang back.
Then, all at once, a kind of sputtering series of small explosions began to rip along the edge of the south wall. And now, machine-guns began to talk, with a dry, hard metallic clatter. And—though whence these came, Flint could not see—grenades began flying over the wall and bursting in the court. Though unwounded, men fell everywhere these gas-projectiles exploded—fell, stone dead and stiffening at once—fell, in strange, monstrous, awful attitudes of death.
Steam began billowing up; and crackling electrical discharges leaped along the naked wires of the outer barricades.
The whole Plant shook and rattled with the violent concussions of the aerial-bomb guns, already searching the upper air with shrapnel.
Somewhere, out of the range of vision, another terrible shock made the building tremble to its nethermost foundation; and wild yells and cries, as of a charge, a repulse, a savage and determined rush, echoed through the vast enclosure. Came a third detonation—and, blinding in its intensity, a globe of fire burst almost beneath the window, five stories below.
The partners, shaking and pale, retreated hastily. A swift, upward-rising shape swept over the courtyard and was gone—one of the air-fleet now launched to meet the attackers.
Far below a sudden crumbling shudder of masonry toldthe Billionaire not a moment was to be lost, for already one wing of the Administration Building was swaying to its fall.
"Quick, Waldron! Quick!" he shouted, in the shrill treble of senility, and ran into the corridor that led to the north wing. Waldron, suddenly sobered, followed; and from the offices, where the night-shift of clerks were laboring (or had been, till the first explosion), came crowding pale and frightened men. Not the fighting cast of Air Trust slaves, these, but the anaemic chemists and experimenters and clerical workers, scabs, to a man. Now, in the common sentiment of fear, they jostled Flint and Waldron, as though these plutocrats had been but common clay. And in the corridor a babel rose, through which fresh volleys and ever more and more violent explosions ripped and thundered.
Flint struck savagely at some who barred his way; and Waldron elbowed through, with curses.
"Get out of the way, you swine!" shrilled the old Billionaire. "Make way, there! Way!"
The two men reached a door that led by a private passage, through to the steel-and-concrete laboratories.
"Here, this way, Flint!" shouted Waldron. "If those Hell-devils drop a bomb on us, this building will cave in like jackstraws! Our only safety is here,here!"
Thoroughly cowed now, with all the brutal bluster and half-drunken swagger gone, Waldron whipped out a bunch of keys, tremblingly unlocked the door and blundered through. Flint followed. Behind them, others tried to press, on toward the armored laboratories; but with vile blasphemies the plutocrats beat them back and slammed the door.
"To Hell withthem!" shouted Flint, perfectly ashen now and shaking like a leaf, the fear of death strong on his withered soul. "We've got all we can do to look after ourselves! Quick, Waldron, quick!"
Both men, sick with panic, with fear of the unknown terror from above, stumbled rather than ran along the passage, and presently reached the laboratory.
Here Waldron unlocked another door, this time a steel one, and—as they both crowded through—pressed a hand to his dizzy head.
"Safe!" he gulped, slamming the door again. "They can't get ushere, at any rate, no matter what happens! This place is like a fort, and—"
His speech was interrupted by a dazing, deafening tumult of sound. The earth trembled, and the laboratory, steel though it was, with concrete facing, rocked on its foundation. A glare through the windows, quickly fading, told them the building they had just quitted was now but a smoking pile of ruin.
Flint gasped, unable to speak. Waldron, shaking and cowed, tried to moisten his dry lips with a thick tongue.
"We—we weren't any too soon!" he gulped, without one thought of the doomed scabs in the Administration Building. Stern justice was now overtaking these wretches. False to the working-class, and eager to serve the Air Trust—not only eager to serve, but zealous in any attack on the proletariat, and by their very employment serving to rivet the shackles on the world—now they were abandoned by their masters.
Between upper and nether millstone, moving with neither, they were caught and crushed. And as the greatbuilding quivered, gaped wide open, swayed and came thundering down in a vast pile of flame-lit ruin, whence a volcanic burst of fire, smoke and dust arose, they perished miserably, time-servers, cowards and self-seekers to the last.
But Flint and Waldron still survived. Though the very earth shook and trembled with the roar of bombs, the crumbling of massive walls, the rattle of volley-fire and the crashing of the terrible grenades that mowed down hundreds as they spread their poisonous gas abroad—though the shriek of projectiles, the thunder of the air-ship guns now sweeping the sky in blind endeavor to shatter the attackers all swelled the tumult to a frightful storm of terror and of death; they still lived, cowered and cringed there in the bomb-proof steel-and-concrete of the inner laboratories.
"Come, come!" Flint quavered, peering about him at the deserted room, still glaring with electric light—the room now abandoned by all its workers, who, members of Herzog's regiment, had run to take their posts at the first signal of attack. "Come—this isn't safe enough, even here. In—in there!"
He pointed toward a vault-like door, leading to the subterranean steel chambers where Herzog eventually counted on storing some hundreds of thousands of tons of liquid oxygen—the reserve-chambers, impregnable to lightning, fire, frost or storm, to man's attacks or nature's—the chambers blasted from the living rock, deep as the Falls themselves, vacuum-lined, wondrous achievement of the highest engineering skill the world could boast.
"There! There!" repeated Flint, plucking at the dazed Waldron's sleeve. "Tool-steel and concrete, twenty-five feet thick—and vacuum chambers all about—therewe can hide! There's safety! Come, come quick!"
Staring, white-faced (he who had been so red!) and dumb, Waldron yielded. Together, furtive as the criminals they were, these two world-masters slunk toward the steel door, while without, their empire was crashing down in smoke, and flame, and blood!
They had almost reached it when a smash of glass at the far end of the laboratory whipped them round, in keener terror.
Staring, wild-eyed, they beheld the crouching figure of Herzog. Running, even as he cringed, he had upset a glass retort, which had shattered on the concrete floor. And as he ran, he screamed:
"They're in! They're coming! Quick—the steel vaults! Let me in, there! Let me in!"
The coward was now a maniac with terror, his face perfectly white, writhen with panic, and with staring eyes that gleamed horribly under the greenish vacuum-lights.
"Back, you! Get out!" roared Waldron, raising a fist. "We—"
A sudden belch of flame, outside, split the night with terrible virescence. The whole steel building trembled and swayed. Some of its girders buckled; and the east wall, nearest the oxygen-tanks, caved inward as a mass of many tons was hurled against it.
A stunning concussion flung all three men to the floor;and, as they fell, a withering heat-wave quivered through the place.
"The oxygen-tanks!" gasped Flint. "They're blown up—they're burning—God help us!"
Scorching, yet still eager to live, he crawled on hands and knees toward the steel door. Waldron dragged himself along, half-dead with terror. Now, dripping gouts of inextinguishable fire were raining on the roof of the building. A whirlwind of flame was sweeping all its eastern side; and a glare like that of Hell itself seared the eyes of the fugitives.
Quivering, trembling, slavering, the old man and Waldron wrenched the steel door open.
"Me! Me! Let me in! Me! Save me!" howled Herzog, dragging himself toward them.
They only laughed derisively, with howls of demoniacal scorn.
"You slave! You cur!" shouted Waldron, and spat at him as he drew the vault door shut. "You cringing dog—stay there, now, and face it!"
The great door boomed shut. In the cool of the winding stairway of steel which led, lighted by electricity, to the trap-door and the ladder down into the tremendous vaults, the world-masters breathed deeply once more, respited from death.
Herzog, screaming like a fiend in torment, clawed at the impenetrable steel door, raved, begged, entreated, and tore his fingers on the lock.
No answer, save the muffled echo of a jeer, from within.
Boom!
What was that?
Mad with terror though he was, he whirled about, and faced the room now quivering with heat.
Even as he looked, a great gap yawned in the western wall, farthest from the flame-belching oxygen-tank that had been struck.
Through this gap, pouring irresistibly as the sea, swept a tide of attackers, storming the inner citadel of the infernal, world-strangling Air Trust.
At the head of this victorious army, this flood triumphant of the embattled proletaire, Herzog's staring eyes caught a moment's glimpse of a dreaded face—the face of Gabriel Armstrong.
Gasping, the coward and tool of the world-masters made one supreme decision. Close by, a rack of vials stood. He whirled to it, snatched out a tiny bottle and waiting not even to draw the cork—craunched the bottle, glass and all, in his fang-like, uneven teeth.
An instant change swept over him. His staring eyes closed, his head fell forward, his whole body collapsed like an empty sack. He fell, twitched once or twice, and was dead—dead ere the attackers could reach the door of steel where his bestial masters had betrayed him.
Thus perished Herzog, coward and tool, a victim of the very forces he himself had helped create.
And at the moment of his death, the masters he had cringed to and had served, sneering with scorn at him even in their mortal terror, were tremblingly descending the long metal ladder to the impregnable vaults of steel below.
Plunged into the abyss of mist and flame by the attack of the Air Trustépervier, Gabriel had abandoned himself for lost. Death, mercifully swift, he had felt could be his only fate; and with this thought had come no fear, but only a wild joy that he had shared this glorious battle, sure to end in victory! This was his only thought—this, and a quick vision of Catherine.
Then, as he hurtled down and over, whirling drunkenly in the void, all clear perception left him. Everything became a swift blur, a rushing confusion of terrible wind, and lurid light, and the wild roar of myriad explosions.
Came a shock, a sudden checking of the plunge, a long and rapid glide, as the DeVreeland stabilizer of the machine, asserting its automatic action, brought it to a level keel once more.
But now the engine was stopped. Gabriel, realizing that some chance still existed to save his life, wrenched madly at his levers.
"If I can volplane down!" he panted, sick and dizzy, "there may yet be hope!"
Hope! Yes, but how tenuous! What chance had he, coasting to earth at that low level, to avoid the detonating bombs, the aerial shrapnel being hurled aloft, the poisonous gas, the surface-fire?
Here, there and yonder, terrific explosions were shattering the echoes, as the Air Trust batteries swept the fog with their aeroplane-destroying missiles. Whither should he steer? He knew not. All sense of direction was lost, nor could the compass tell him anything. A glance at the barometric gauge showed him an altitude of but 850 feet, and this was decreasing with terrible rapidity.
Strive as he might, he could not check the swift descent.
"God send me a soft place to fall on!" he thought, grimly, still clinging to his machine and laboring to jockey it under control.
Close by, a thunderous detonation crashed through the mist. His machine reeled and swerved, then plunged more swiftly still. All became vague, to Gabriel—a dream—a nightmare!
Crash!
Flung from the seat, he sprawled through treetops, caught himself, fell to a lower limb, slid off and landed among thick bushes; and through these came to earth.
The wrecked 'plane, whirling away and down, fell crashing into the river that rushed cascading by, and vanished in the firelit mist.
Stunned, yet half-conscious, Gabriel presently sat up and pressed his right hand to his head. His left arm felt numb and useless; and when he tried to raise it, he found it refused his will.
"Where am I, now, I'd like to know?" he muttered. "Not dead, anyhow—notyet!"
A continuous roar of explosions shuddered the air, mingled with the booming of the mighty Falls. Shoutsand cheers and the rattle of machine-guns assailed his ear. The glare of the search-lights, through the mist and steam, was darkened momentarily by thick, greasy coils of smoke, shot through by violent flashes of light as explosions took place.
Gabriel struggled to his feet, and peered about him,
"Still alive!" said he. "And I must get back into the fight! That's all that matters, now—the fight!"
He knew not, yet, where he was; but this mattered nothing. His machine had, in fact, fallen near the river bank, in the eastern section of Prospect Park, beyond the Goat Island bridge—this region of the Park having been left outside the fortifications, in the extension of the Air Trust plant.
The trees, here, had saved his life. Had he smashed to earth a hundred yards further north, he would have been shattered against high walls and roofs.
Still giddy, but sensing no pain from his injured left arm, Gabriel made way toward the scene of conflict. He knew nothing of how the tide of battle was going; nothing of his position; nothing as to what men he would first meet, his comrades or the enemy.
But for these considerations he had no thought. His only idea, fixed and grim, was "The fight!" Dazed though he still was, he nerved himself for action.
And so, pressing onward through the livid glare, through the night shattered by stupendous detonations, he drew his revolver and broke into a run.
Strange evidences of the battle now became evident. He saw an unexploded grenade lying beside a wounded man who grasped at him and moaned with pain. Over a wrecked motor-car, greasy smoke was rising, as itburned. Louder shouting drew him down a path to the left. Masses of moving figures became dimly visible, through the mist. And now, stabs of fire pierced the confusion and clamorous night.
Gabriel jerked up his revolver, as he ran, the terrible weapon shooting bullets charged with hydrocyanic-acid gas.
A man rose before him, shouting.
Gabriel levelled the weapon; but a glimpse of red ribbon in the other's coat brought it down again.
"Comrade!" cried he. "Where's the attack?"
The other pointed.
"Gabriel! Is that you?" he gasped, staring.
"Yes! I fell—machine smashed—come on!"
"Hurt?"
"No! Arm, maybe. No matter! God! What's this?"
Toward them a sudden swirl of men came sweeping, stumbling, shouting, in pandemonium.
"Our men!" cried Gabriel, starting forward again. "We're being driven! Rally, here! Rally!"
Beyond, a louder crackling sounded. Here, there, men plunged down. The retreat was becoming a rout!
Yelling, Gabriel flung himself upon the men.
"Back there!" he vociferated. "Back, and at the walls! Come on, boys, now! Come on!"
His voice, well known to nearly all, thrilled them again with new determination. A shout rose up; it swelled, deepened, roared to majestic volume.
Then the tide turned.
Back went the fighting men of the great Revolution.back at the machine-guns, mounted in the breached walls.
Gabriel was caught and whirled along in that living tide. He found himself at its crest, its foremost wave. Behind him, a roaring, rushing river of men. Before the Inner Citadel.
Gathering speed and weight as it rolled up, the wave broke like an ocean surge over a crumbling dyke.
Down went the Air Trust gunners and the guns, down, down to annihilation!
Through the breach, foaming and swelling with irresistible power burst the tides of victory.
Silenced now were the Trust guns. The steam-jets had none to man them. Far aloft, a last explosion told the death story of the finalépervier.
Here and there, from windows and corners of the wrecked and blazing plant, a little intermittent firing still continued; but now the hearts of these Air Trust defenders—scabs, thugs and scourings of the slum—had turned to water, in face of the triumphant army of the working class.
They fled, those mercenaries, and all the ways and inner strongholds—such as still were left—now lay open to Gabriel and his comrades.
Lighted by the blazing buildings and the vast fire torch of an oxygen-tank off to eastward, they stormed the final citadel, the steel and concrete laboratories, heart and soul and center of the hellish world-conspiracy.
Stormed it, as it began to blaze and crumble; stormed it, in search of Flint and Waldron, would-be murderers of the world.
Stormed it, only to see Herzog gnash his teeth uponthe flask, and fall, and die; only to know that there, within the rock-hewn, steel-lined tanks, below, their enemies had still outwitted them!
The swift onrush of the fire drove the victors back.
"Out, comrades! Out of here!" shouted Gabriel, facing the attackers.
None too soon. Hardly had they beaten a retreat, back into the vast courtyard again, strewn with the dead, when a second oxygen tank exploded, overwhelming the laboratory building with tons of flying steel.
Leaping toward the zenith, a giant tongue of flame roared heavenward. So intense the heat had now become, that the solid brick and concrete walls, exposed to the direct verberation of the flame, began to crack and crumble.
Gabriel ordered a general retreat of the attacking army. Victory was won; and to stay near that gushing tornado of flame, with new explosions bound to occur as the other oxygen tanks let go, must mean annihilation.
So the triumphant Army of the Proletaire fell back and back still further, out into the wrecked and trampled Park, and all through the city, where shattered buildings, many of them ablaze, and broken trees, dead bodies, smashed ordnance and chaos absolute told something of the story of that brief but terrible war.
Ringed round the perishing ruins of the Air Trust they stood, these mute, thrilled thousands. Silence fell, now, as they watched the roaring, ever-mounting flames that, whipped by the breeze, crashed upward in long and cadenced tourbillions of white, of awful incandescence.
And the river, ever-hurrying, always foaming on anddownward to its titanic plunge, sparkled with eerie lights in that vast glow. Its voice of thunder seemed to chant the passing and the requiem of the Curse of the World, Capitalism.
And Flint, now, what of him! And Waldron?
While the Air Trust plant was burning, crumbling, smashing down, what of its masters, the masters of the world?
A sense of vast relief possessed them both, at first, as the steel door clanged after them.
Now, for a time at least, they realized that they were safe, safe from the People, safe from the awakened and triumphant Proletariat. Even now, had they surrendered, they would have been spared; but nothing was further from their thoughts than any treating with the despised and hated enemy.
Foremost in the mind of each, now, was the thought that if they could but stand siege, a day or so, the troops of the government—their government and their troops, their own personal property—would inevitably rescue them.
With this comforting belief, together they descended the long steel staircase to the trap-door, passed through this, and climbed down the metal ladder to the vast storage-vaults.
Here, everything was cool and quiet and well-lighted. Not yet had the electric-generating plant been put out of action. Though all its workers had either been drafted into the ranks of the Cosmos mercenaries, or Herzog'sregiments, or else had fled to hiding, still the huge turbines and enormous dynamos were whirling, unattended. Thus, for the first few minutes, in their living tomb, down over which the ruins of the now white-hot laboratory-building had crashed, the world-masters had electric light.
Reassured a little, they descended to the very bottom of the first huge tank.
"God!" snarled Flint, as he breathed deeply and glared about him. "The curs! The swine! To think of this,thisreally happening! And to think that if we hadn't got here just in time, they'd actually have—have used violence onus—"
Waldron laughed brutally, his body still trembling and his face chalky. His laugh echoed, hollowly, from the metal walls.
"You old fool!" he spat. "Canting old hypocrite to the last, eh? Violence? What the devil do you expect? Rosewater and confetti? Violence was all that ever held 'em, wasn't it? And when they slipped the leash, naturally they retorted—that's all! Violence? You make me sick! Damned lucky for us if we get through this yet, without violence, you whining cur!"
Flint, for the first time hearing Waldron's honest opinion of him, failed even to note it. All his panic-stricken ear had caught was the note of hope, of survival.
Clutching eagerly at Waldron's sleeve, he cackled:
"If we get through? If we get through, you say? Then, in your opinion, thereisa chance to get through? They can't get us here? We surely shall be rescued?"
"Bah!" Waldron flung at him, some latent spark of courage still smouldering in his sodden breast, whereasold Flint was craven to the marrow. "You nauseate me! Afraid to die, eh? Well, so am I; but not so damned paralyzed and sick with panic as all that! If you'd taken less dope, the last twenty years, you'd have more nerve now, to face the music! World-master, you? Eh? Playing the biggest game on earth—and now, when things break bad, you squeal! Arrrh! You called me a quitter once, you mealy-mouthed old Pecksniff! We'll see, now, who quits! We'll see, at a show-down, who can face it, you or I!"
His fingers lost their hold—he dropped like a Plummet.
His fingers lost their hold—he dropped like a Plummet.
His fingers lost their hold—he dropped like a Plummet.
His fingers lost their hold—he dropped like a Plummet.
Waldron's brutality, the hard, savage quality that all his life had made him "Tiger" Waldron, now was beginning to reassert itself. His first sheer panic over, a little manhood was returning. But as for Flint, no manhood dwelt in him to be awakened. Instead, each moment found him more abject and more pitiable. Like an old woman he now wrung his hands and groaned, hysterically; and now he paced the steel floor of the vault that was destined to be his tomb; and now he stopped again and stared about him with wild eyes.
On all sides, sheer up a hundred feet or more, the smooth steel sides of the vast oxygen tank rose, studded with long lines of rivets.
Near the top a dark aperture showed where the six-inch pipe joined the tank; the pipe destined to fill it, when Herzog's last process—never, now, to be completed—should have been done.
The huge floor, 150 feet in diameter, sloped gently downward toward the center; and here yawned another pipe, covered by a grating—the pipe to drain the liquid oxygen out to the pumping station.
So deeply set in the rock of the Niagara cliff was thisstupendous tank, and so cunningly surrounded by vacuum-chambers, that now no faintest sound of the Falls was audible. All that betrayed the nearness of the cataract was a faint, incessant trembling of the metal walls, as though the solid ribs of Earth herself were shuddering with the impact of the plunge.
Old Flint surveyed this extraordinary chamber with mingled feelings. It surely offered absolute protection, for the present—or seemed to—but his distressed mind conjured alarming pictures of the future, in case no rescue came. Death by starvation, thirst and madness loomed before him. Nervously he recommenced his pacing. Another terribly serious factor was to be considered. He had now been three hours without his dose of morphia, and his nerves were calling, tugging insistently for it.
"Rotten luck," he grumbled, "that I've got none with me!" Even there, in the imminent presence of disaster and death, his mind reverted to the poison, more necessary to him than food.
Waldron now had grown fairly calm. He stood leaning against the steel ladder, down which they had descended. Choosing a cigar, he proceeded to light up.
"Might as well be comfortable while we wait," said he. "I only wish we had a couple of chairs, down here. Oversight on our part that we didn't have some steel ones put in, and a line of canned goods and a few quarts of Scotch. The floor's a bit damp and cold to sit on, and I want a drink damn bad!"
Flint swung about and faced him, pale and shaking, tortured with fear and with longing for his dope.
"You—you don't think itwillbe long, eh, do you?" he demanded. "Not long before we're taken out?"
Waldron shrugged his shoulders and blew a long, thin arrow of smoke athwart the brightly-lighted air.
"Search me!" he exclaimed. "To judge by what was happening when we made our exit, the Plant must be a mess, by this time. We seem to have been checked, even if not mated, Flint. I must admit they caught us by surprise. Caught us napping, damn them, after all! They were stronger than we thought, Flint, and cleverer, and better organized. And so—"
"Don't say 'we,' curse you!" snarled Flint. "Blame yourself, if you want to, but leave me out!Iknew there was trouble due, I tell you.Isaw it coming! Who's been trying to crush the swine completely, if not I? Who's worked night and day to have those bills put through, and who had the army increased, and conscription started? Who's driven the President to back all sorts of things? Who's forced them? Who made the National Mounted Police a reality, if not I? Damn you, don't includemein your blame!"
Waldron shrugged his shoulders, and smoked contemplatively.
"Suit yourself," he answered. "If we both die, down here, it won't matter much either way."
"Die?" quavered the old jackal, suddenly forgetting his rage and peering about with furtive eyes. "Did you say die, Wally? No, no! You didn't say that! You didn't mean that, surely!"
Waldron smiled, evilly, joying in this abject fear of his hated partner.
"Oh, yes, I did, though," he retorted. "It's quite possible, you know. In case our government—yours, if you prefer—can't get troops through, here, or a big general revolution sweeps things, inside a day or two, we're done. We'll starve and stifle, here, sure as shooting!"
"No, no, no! Not that, notthat!" whimpered Flint, shuddering. "I can't die, yet. I—I'm not ready for it! There's all that missionary work of mine not yet done, and my huge international Sunday School League to perfect; and there's the tremendous ten-million-dollar Cathedral of Saint Luke the Pious that I'm having built on Riverside Drive, and there's—"
"Cut it!" gibed Waldron, spitting with very disgust. "If your time's come, Flint, you'll die, cathedrals or no cathedrals. Your Sunday schools won't save you any more than my investments will—which have largely been wine, women and song. As a matter of fact, if it comes to starvation, if we aren't rescued and taken out from under the red-hot wreckage that's on top of us, I'll outliveyou!I can exist on my surplus adipose tissue, for a while; but you—you'renothing but skin and bone. You'll starve far quicker than I will, old man."
"Don't! Don't!" implored the shaking wretch, covering his eyes with both trembling hands.
"Moral, you oughtn't to have been a dope-fiend, all these years," continued Waldron, cuttingly, determined that now, once for all, his despised partner should hear the truth. "How you've lived so long, as it is, I don't understand. When I tried to marry Kate, and failed, I reckoned you'd pass over in almost no time—and, by the way, that's why I was so insistent. But you've disappointed me, Flint. Disappointed me sorely. You stilllive. It won't be long, however. Down here, you know, you simply can't get any dope. In a little while you'll begin to suffer the torments of Hell. You'll die of starvation and drug 'yen,' Flint, and you'll die mad, mad,mad!Understand me! Mad, for morphine! And I, I shall watch you, and exult!"
Flint cringed, shuddering and stopped his ears. His partner, gloating over him, smoked faster now. A strange light shone in his eyes. His pulse beat faster than usual, and a certain extravagance of thought and speech had become manifest in him.
He tried to compose himself, feeling that he must not push the cowardly Flint too far, but his ideas refused to flow in orderly sequence. Wonderingly he stared at his cigar, the tip of which was now glowing more brightly than before.
And then, suddenly sniffing the air he understood. His eyes widened with horror absolute. He started forward, gasped and cried:
"Flint! Flint! The oxygen is coming in!"
Uncomprehending, the old man still stood there, mumbling to himself. His face was now tinged with unusual color, and his heart, too, was thumping strangely.
"Oxygen!" shouted Waldron, shaking him by the shoulder. "It—it's leaking in, here, somewhere! If we can't stop it—we're dead men!"
"Eh?What?" stammered the Billionaire, staring at him with eyes of half-intoxicated fear. "What d'you mean, the oxygen? In—in here?"
"In here!" cried "Tiger," casting a wild and terrible gaze about him at the vast, empty trap of steel. "Can'tyou smell it? That ozone smell? My God, we're lost! We're lost!"
"You're crazy!" retorted Flint, with vigor. "Nothing of the sort could happen!" His head was held high, now, and new life seemed surging through that spent and drug-wrecked body. "There's no way those curs could have turned on any gas, here. You're crazy, ha! ha! ha! Insane, eh? A good joke—capital joke, that! I must tell it at the Union League Club! 'Tiger' Waldron, suddenly insane, and—ha! ha! ha!"
He burst into a long, shrill cacchination. Already his face was scarlet and his mind a whirl. Though neither man understood the reason, yet the fact remained that one of the last great explosions had ruptured a subterranean check-valve closing the six-inch pipe that was to feed the storage-tanks; and now a swift, huge stream of pure oxygen gas was rushing at tremendous velocity into the vast chamber of steel.
Waldron, his heart leaping as though it would burst his ribs, raised a fist to strike down his insulter; then, with drunken indecision, joined in the maniacal laughter of the staggering old man.
In their ears a strange, wild humming now became audible. Lights danced before their eyes; their senses reeled, and violent, extravagant ideas surged through their drunken brains.
"Ha! Ha! Ha!" rang Waldron's crazy laughter, echoing the old man's. All at once, his cigar broke into flame. Cursing, he hurled it away, staggering back against the ladder and stood there swaying, clutching it to hold himself from falling.
There he stood, and stared at Flint, with eyes thatstarted from his head, with panting breath and crimson face.
The old man, in a sudden revulsion of terror, was now grovelling along the floor, by one of the massive walls, clawing at the steel with impotent hands and screaming mingled prayers and oaths. His ravings, horrible to hear, echoed through the great tank, now swiftly filling with gas.
"Help! Help!" he screamed. "Save me—my God—save me—. Let me out, let me out! A million, if you let me out! A billion—the whole world!The world, ha! ha! ha! Damn it to Hell—the world, I say! I'll give the world to be let out! It's mine—I own it—all, all mine!Ha! Dogs! You would rise up against your master and your God, would you? But it's no use—we'll beat you yet—out!out!—the world—I own it! All this plant—this gas, all mine! My oxygen—ah! it chokes me!Help! Help!—Swine! I'll scourge you yet—absolute power—the world—!"
With one final spark of energy, panting, his heart flailing itself to death under the pitiless urge of the oxygen, old Flint sprang up, ran wildly, blindly straight across the steel floor, and, screaming blasphemies like a soul in Hell, dashed into the opposite wall.
He recoiled, staggered, spun round and fell sprawling most horribly—stone dead.
Waldron, at sight of this awful end, felt an uncontrollable terror sweep over his drunk and maddened senses. Though all his blood was leaping in his arteries, and his breath coming so fast it choked him, yet a moment's seeming sanity possessed his reeling brain.
"The door! The door, up there!" he screamed, with a wild, terrible curse.
Then, turning toward the ladder, in spite of his fat and flabby muscles quivering in terrible spasms, he ran up the long steel structure with a supreme and ape-like agility.
Fifty feet he made, seventy-five, ninety—
But, all at once, something seemed to break in his overtaxed heart.
A blackness swam before his dazzled eyes. His head fell back. Unnerved, his fingers lost their hold. And, whirling over and over in midair, he dropped like a plummet.
By one wall lay Flint's body. At the foot of the ladder, like a crushed sack of bones, sprawled the corpse of "Tiger" Waldron.
And still the rushing oxygen, with which they two had hoped to dominate the world, poured through the six-inch main, far, far above—senseless matter, blindly avenging itself upon the rash and evil men who impiously had sought to cage and master it!