The night was moonless, dark, warm with the inviting softness of late spring that holds out promises of romance. Stars wavered and wimpled in the black waters of the Hudson as a launch put out in silence from the foot of Twenty-seventh Street.
This launch contained four men. They carried but little baggage; no more than could be stowed in a rucksack apiece. All were in their old service uniforms, with long coats over the uniforms to mask them. All carried vacuum-flashlights in their overcoat pockets, and lethal-gas pistols, in addition to ordinary revolvers or automatics. And all were keyed to the top notch of energy, efficiency, eagerness. The Great Adventure had begun.
In the stern of the swift, twenty-four cylinder launch—a racing model—sat Captain Alden and Rrisa. The captain wore his aviator's helmet and his goggles, despite the warmth of the night. To appear in only his celluloid mask, even at a time like this when darkness would have hidden him, seemed distasteful to the man. He seemed to want to hide his misfortune as fully as possible; and, since this did no harm, the Master let him have his way.
The bow was occupied by the Master and by Major Bohannan, with the Master at the wheel. He seemed cool, collected, impassive; but the major, of hotter Celtic blood, could not suppress his fidgety nervousness.
Intermittently he gnawed at his reddish mustache. A cigar, he felt, would soothe and quiet him. Cigars, however, were now forbidden. So were pipes and cigarettes. The Master did not intend to have even their slight distraction coming between the minds of his men and the careful, intricate plan before them.
As the racer veered north, up the broad darkness of the Hudson—the Hudson sparkling with city illumination on either hand, with still or moving ships' lights on the breast of the waters—Bohannan murmured:
"Even now, as your partner in this enterprise—"
"My lieutenant," corrected the Master.
"As second in command," amended Bohannan, irritably, "I'm not wholly convinced this is the correct procedure." He spoke in low tones, covered by the purring exhaust of the launch and by the hiss of swiftly cloven waters. "It looks like unnecessary complication, to me, and avoidable danger."
"It is neither," answered the man at the wheel. "What would you have done? What better plan could you have proposed?"
"You could have built your own flyer, couldn't you? Since money's no object to you, and you don't even know, accurately, how much you've got—nobody can keep track of figures like those—why risk legal interference and international complications at the start, by—"
"To build the kind of flyer we need would have taken six or seven months. Not all my money could have produced it, sooner. And absolute ennui can't wait half a year. I'd have gone wholly stale, and so would you, and all of them. We'd have lost them.
"Again, news of any such operations would have got out. My plans would possibly have been checkmated. In the third place, what you propose would have been tame sport, indeed, as a beginning! Three excellent reasons, my dear Major, why this is positively the only way."
"Perhaps. But there's always the chance of failure, now. The guards—"
"After your own experience, when that capsule burst in the laboratory, you talk to me about guards?"
"Suppose one escapes?"
The Master only smiled grimly, and sighted his course up the dark river.
"And the alarm is sure to be given, in no time. Why didn't you just buy the thing outright?"
"It's not for sale, at any price."
"Still—men can't run off with three and a half million dollars' worth of property and with provisions and equipment like that, all ready for a trial trip, without raising Hell. There'll be pursuit—"
"What with, my dear Bohannan?"
"That's a foolish statement of mine, the last one, I admit," answeredthe major, as his companion swung the launch a little toward theJersey shore. "Of course nothing can overhaul us, once we're away.But you know my type of mind weighs every possibility, pro and con.Wireless can fling out a fan of swift aerial police ahead of us fromEurope."
"How near can anything get to us?"
"I know it all looks quite simple and obvious, in theory.Nevertheless—"
"Men of your character are useful, in places," said the Master, incisively. "You are good in a charge, in sudden daring, in swift attack. But in the approach to great decisions, you vacillate. That's your racial character.
"I'm beginning to doubt my own wisdom in having chosen you as next in command. There's a bit of doubting Thomas in your ego. It's not too late, yet, for you to turn back. I'll let you, as a special concession. Brodeur will jump at the chance to be your successor."
His hand swung the wheel, sweeping the racer in a curve toward the Manhattan shore. Bohannan angrily pushed the spokes over again the other way.
"I stick!" he growled. "I've said the last word of this sort you'll ever hear me utter. Full speed ahead—to Paradise—or Hell!"
They said no more. The launch split her way swiftly toward the north. By the vague, ghostly shimmer of light upon the waters, a tense smile appeared on the steersman's lips. In his dark eyes gleamed the joy which to some men ranks supreme above all other joys—that of bending others to his will, of dominating them, of making them the puppets of his fancy.
Some quarter hour the racer hummed upriver. Keenly the Master kept his lookout, picking up landmarks. Finally he spoke a word to Captain Alden, who came forward to the engines. The Master's cross-questionings of this man had convinced him his credentials were genuine and that he was loyal, devoted, animated by nothing but the same thirst for adventure that formed the driving power behind them all. Now he was trusting him with much, already.
"Three quarters speed," ordered the Master. The skilled hand of the captain, well-versed in the operation of gas engines, obeyed the command. The whipping breeze of their swift course, the hiss at the bows as foam and water crumbled out and over, somewhat diminished. The goal lay not far off.
To starboard, thinning lights told the Master they were breasting Spuyten Duyvil. To port, only a few scattered gleams along the base of the cliff or atop it, showed that the sparsely settled Palisades were drawing abeam. The ceaseless, swarming activities of the metropolis were being left behind. Silence was closing in, broken only by vagrant steamer-whistles from astern.
A crawling string of lights, on the New York shore, told that an express was hurling itself cityward. Its muffled roar began to echo out over the star-flecked waters. The Master threw a scornful glance at it. He turned in his seat, and peered at the shimmer of the city's lights, strung like a luminous rosary along the river's edge. Then he looked up at the roseate flush on the sky, flung there by the metropolis as from the mouth of a crucible.
"Child's play!" he murmured. "All this coming and going in crowded streets, all this fighting for bread, and scheming over pennies—child's play. Less than that—the blind swarming of ants! Tomorrow, where will all this be, for us?"
He turned back and thrust over the spokes. The launch drew in toward the Jersey shore.
"Let the engines run at half-speed," he directed, "and control her now with the clutch."
"Yes, sir!"
The aviator's voice was sharp, precise, determined. The Master nodded to himself with satisfaction. This man, he felt, would surely be a valued member of the crew. He might prove more than that. There might be stuff in him that could be molded to executive ability, in case that should be necessary.
The launch, now at half-speed, nosed her way directly toward the cliff. Sounds from shore began to grow audible Afar, an auto siren shrieked. A dog barked, irritatingly. A human voice came vaguely hallooing.
Off to the right, over the cliff brow, a faint aura of light was visible. The eyes of the Master rested on this a moment, brightening. He smiled again; and his hand tightened a little on the wheel. But all he said was:
"Dead slow, now, Captain Alden!"
As the cliff drew near, its black brows ate across the sky, devouring stars. The Master spoke in Arabic to Rrisa, who seized a boat hook and came forward. Out of the gloom small wharf advanced to meet the launch. The boat-hook caught; the launch, easing to a stop, cradled against the stringpiece.
Rrisa held with the hook, while Bohannan and Alden clambered out. Before the Master left, he bent and seemed to be manipulating something in the bottom of the launch. Then he stepped to the engine.
"Out, Rrisa," he commanded, "and hold hard with the hook, now!"
The Arab obeyed. All at once the propeller churned water, reversed.The Master leaped to the wharf.
"Let go—and throw the hook into the boat!" he ordered.
While the three others stood wondering on the dark wharf, the launch began to draw slowly back into the stream. Already it was riding a bit low, going down gradually by the bows.
"What now?" questioned the major, astonished.
"She will sink a hundred or two yards from shore, in deep water," answered the Master, calmly. "The sea-cock is wide open."
"A fifteen thousand dollar launch—!"
"Is none the less, a clue. No man of this party, reaching the shore tonight, is leaving any more trace than we are. Come, now, all this is trivial. Forward!"
In silence, they followed him along the dark wharf, reached a narrow, rocky path that serpented up the face of the densely wooded cliff, and began to ascend. A lathering climb it was, laden as they were with heavy rucksacks, in the moonless obscurity.
Now and then the Master's little searchlight—his own wonderful invention, a heatless light like an artificial firefly, using no batteries nor any power save universal, etheric rays in an absolute vacuum—glowed with pale virescence over some particularly rough bit of going. For the most part, however, not even this tiny gleam was allowed to show. Silence, darkness, precision, speed were now all-requisite.
Twenty-four minutes from leaving the wharf, they stood among a confused, gigantic chaos of boulders flung, dicelike, amid heavy timbers on the brow of the Palisades. Off to the north, the faint, ghostly aura dimly silhouetted the trees. Far below, the jetty river trembled here, there, with starlight.
They paused a moment to breathe, to shift straps that bound shoulders not now hardened to such burdens. The Master glanced at the luminous dial of his wrist-watch.
"Almost to the dot," he whispered. "Seventeen minutes to midnight. At midnight, sharp, we take possession. Come!"
They trailed through a hard, rocky path among thick oak, pine, and silver-birch. Now and then the little greenish-white light will-o'-the-wisped ahead, flickering hither, yon. No one spoke a word. Every footstep had to be laid down with care. After three minutes' progress, the Master stopped, turned, held up his hand.
"Absolute silence, now," he breathed. "The outer guards are now within an eighth of a mile."
They moved forward again. The light was no longer shown, but the Master confidently knew the way. Bohannan felt a certain familiarity with the terrain, which he had carefully studied on the large-scale map he and the Master had used in planning the attack; but the Master's intimate knowledge was not his. After two and one-half minutes, the leader stopped again, and gestured at heavy fern-brakes that could just be distinguished as black blotches in the dark of the woods.
"The exact spot," he whispered. "Take cover, and follow your memorized orders!"
He settled down noiselessly into the brakes. The others did likewise. Utter silence fell, save for the far, vague roar of the city. A vagrant little breeze was stirring the new foliage, through which a few stars curiously peeped. The four men seemed far, very far from any others. And yet—
Werethere any others near them? the major wondered. No sign, no sound of them existed. Off to northward, where the dim glow ghosted up against the sky, an occasional noise drifted to the night. A distant laugh diffused itself through the dark. A dog yapped; perhaps the same that they had heard barking, a few minutes before. Then came the faint, sharp tapping of a hammer smiting metal.
"They're knocking out the holding-pins," thought the major. "In a few minutes it'll be too late,ifwe don't strike now!" He felt a great temptation to urge haste, on the Master. But, aware of the futility of any suggestion, the risk of being demoted for any otherfaux pas, he bridled his impatience and held still.
Realizing that they were now lying at the exact distance of 440 yards from the stockade that protected the thing they had come to steal—if you can call "stealing" the forced sale the Master now planned consummating, by having his bankers put into unwilling hands every ultimate penny of the more than $3,500,000 involved, once thecoupshould be put through—realizing this fact, Bohannan felt the tug of a profound excitement.
His pulses quickened; the tension of his Celtic nerves keyed itself up like a banjo-string about to snap. Steeled in the grim usages of war though he was, and more than once having felt the heart-breaking stress of the zero hour, this final moment of waiting, of suspense before the attack that was so profoundly to affect his life and the lives of all these other hardy men, pulled heavily at his nerves. He desperately wanted a smoke, again, but that was out of the question. It seemed to him, there in the dark and stillness, one of the fateful moments of time, pregnant with possibilities unlimited.
The Master, Alden, Rrisa, mere vague blurs among the ferns, remained motionless. If their nerves were a-tingle, they gave no hint or sign of it. Where might the others of the Legion be? No indication of them could be made out. No other living thing seemed in the woods encircling the stockade. Was each man really there and ready for the predetermined role he was to play?
It seemed incredible, fantastic, to suppose that all these adventurers, each separate and alone, each having no contact, with any other, should all have taken their assigned posts. That each, with luminous watch on wrist, was even now timing himself, to the second, before striking the single note calculated to produce, in harmony with all the rest, the finished composition. Such an assumption partook more of the stuff of an Arabian Nights tale than of stern reality in this Twentieth Century and on the outskirts of the world's greatest city.
The Master, crouching, whispered:
"Two minutes more! Keep your eyes on your watches, now. Get your lethal guns ready! In 120 seconds, you will hear the first capsule burst. Ten seconds after that, Alden, fire yours. Ten later, yours, Bohannan. Ten later, yours, Rrisa. Listen hard! Hold steady!"
The silence drew at them like a pain. Rrisa breathed something in which the words: "La Illaha ilia Allah" transpired in a wraith of sound. Alden nestled closer into the ferns. Bohannan could hardly hold his poise.
All three now had their capsule pistols ready. The self-luminous compass and level attached to each gun gave them their exact direction and elevation. Glimmering watches marked the time, the dragging of the last few seconds.
The Master drew no weapon. His mind, directing all, observing all, was not to be distracted by even so small a detail as any personal hand in the discharge of the lethal gas.
If he felt the strain of the final moment, on which hung vaster issues than mere life or death, he gave no indication of it. His eyes remained fixed on the watch-dial at his wrist. They were confident, those eyes. The vague shimmer of the watch-glow showed them dark and grave; his face, faintly revealed, was impassive, emotionless.
It seemed the face of a scientist, a chemist who—having worked out his formula to its ultimate minutiae—now felt utter trust in its reactions, now was only waiting to observe what he well knew must inevitably happen.
"Thirty seconds more," he whispered, and fell silent. Presently, after what seemed half an hour: "Fifteen!"
Another long wait. The Master breathed:
"In just five seconds the first capsule will burst there!" He pointed with assurance. "In two—in one—"
At the exact instant when the second hand notched to the minute's edge, and in precisely the spot indicated, a slight, luminous spot became dimly visible above the trees. The spot took uncertain form high above the ghost-glow rising from the unseen stockade. For an instant it hung suspended, pale-greenish, evanescent.
Then, as a faint plop! drifted to the watchers—a sound no louder than a feeble clack of the tongue—this indefinite luminosity began to sink, to fade, falling slowly, gradually dissipating itself in the dim light over the stockade.
The Master nodded, smiling, with never any hint of praise or approbation. The fulfilment of his order was to him no other than it is to you, when you drop a pebble into water, to hear the splash of it. That his plan should be working out, seemed to him a perfectly obvious, inevitable thing. The only factor that could possibly have astonished him, just now, would have been the nonappearance of that slight, luminous cloudlet at the precise spot and moment designated.
Neither Bohannan, Alden, nor Rrisa was watching the slow descent of the lethal gas. All three had their eyes fixed on their own lethal-gas pistols and on their watches. At mathematically the correct second, Bohannan discharged his piece, correctly sighting direction and elevation.
As he pressed trigger, a light sighing eased itself from the slim barrel. Something flicked through the leaves; and, almost on the instant, the phenomenon of the little phosphorescent spot repeated itself, though in a different place from the first one. Captain Alden's and Rrisa's shots produced still other blurs of virescence.
Then, as they all waited, crouching, came another and another tiny explosion, high aloft, at precisely ten-second intervals. Here, there, they developed, until twenty-nine of these strange, bubble-like things had burst above and all about the huge enclosure. Then darkness and silence once more settled down.
Nothing seemed to have happened. Night still reigned, starry with glimpses of sky through wind-swayed trees. One would have said everything still remained precisely as it had been before.
Yet presently, within the stockade or near it, a certain uneasymélangeof sounds began to develop. Here a cry became audible, there a command. A startled voice called an order, but suddenly fell silent, half-way through it. The worrying of the dog ceased with eloquent suddenness. A curse died, unfinished.
And silence, as perfect as the silence of the unseen watchers strung all about the periphery of the stockade, once more dominated the night.
For precisely ten minutes, nothing broke that silence—minutes during all of which the Master remained calmly waiting, with grave confidence. Bohannan shuddered a little. His Celtic imagination was at work, again. Uncanny the attack seemed to him, unreal and ghostlike. So, perhaps, might strange, unbelievable creatures from some other planet attack and conquer the world, noiselessly, gently, irrevocably.
This assault was different from any other ever made since man and man first began battling together in the dim twilights of the primeval. Not with shout and cheer did it rush forward, nor yet with venomous gases that gave the alarm, that choked, that strangled, that tortured.
Silence and concealment, and the invisible blight of sleep, like the greater numbing that once fell on the hosts of Sennacherib, enfolded all opposition. All who would have stood against the Legion, simply sighed once, perhaps spoke a few disjointed words, then sank into oblivion.
So far as anyone could see, save for the bursting of twenty-nine insignificant little light-bubbles, in mid-air, nothing at all had happened. And yet tremendously much had happened, inside the huge stockade.
Ten minutes to a dot had drifted by, seeming at least six times as long, when all at once the Master stood up.
"The gas has dissipated enough now," said he, "so that we can advance in safety. Come!"
The three also arose, half at his command, half from the independent impulses given them by their watches as these came to the designated second for the forward movement. The Master blew no whistle, gave no signal to the many others scattered all through those darkly silent woods; but right and left, and over beyond the stockade, he knew with the precision of a mathematical equation every man was at that exact moment also arising, also obeying orders, also preparing to close in on the precious thing whereof they meant to make themselves the owners.
Forward the Master made his way, with the three others of his immediate escort. Though there no longer existed any need of silence, hardly a word was spoken. Something vast, imminent, overpowering, seemed to have laid its finger on the lips of all, to have muted them of speech.
The vacuum-lights, however, were now freely flashing in the little party, as it advanced directly toward the stockade. The men clambered over rocks, through bushes, across fallen logs. Rrisa stopped, suddenly, played his light on a little bundle of gray fur, and touched it with a curious finger. It was a squirrel, curled into a tiny ball of oblivion.
Alden's foot narrowly missed the body of a sleeping robin. An owl, lodged in the fork of a tree, moved not as the men passed. It, too, was whelmed in deep, temporary Nirvana.
The party's next find arrested them, with a thrill of genuine emotion, a triumph that could not be denied some few half-whispered exclamations of exultation from the Master's three companions. He himself was the only one who spoke no word. But, like the others, he had stopped and was pointing the beam of his light on the figure lying inert among broken bushes.
With his toe he touched this figure. His light picked up the man's face from the gloom. That face was looking at him with wide-open eyes. The eyes saw nothing; but a kind of overwhelming astonishment still seemed mirrored there, caught in the last moment of consciousness as the man had fallen.
The effect was startling, of that sleeping face, those open eyes, that lax mouth. The man was breathing easily, peacefully as a tired child. The Master's brows contracted a little. His lips tightened. Then he nodded, and smiled the ghost of a smile.
"Lord!" exclaimed Bohannan, half awed by the weirdness of the apparition. "Staring at us, that way—and all! Is he asleep?"
"Try him in any way your ingenuity may suggest," answered the Master, while Alden blinked strangely through his eyeholes, and Rrisa in Arabic affirmed that there is no God but Allah. "Try to force some sense-impression to his brain. It is sleep, but it is more than that. The best experiment for any doubting Thomas to employ is just to waken this guard—if possible."
Bohannan shook his head.
"No," he answered, "I'm not going to make a fool of myself. There's no going against any of your statements. I'm beginning to find that out, definitely. Let's be on our way!"
The Master spoke a few quick words of Arabic to his orderly. Rrisa knelt by the prostrate man. Then, while the Master kept the light-beam on him, Rrisa unbuckled the guard's belt, with cartridges and holster containing an ugly snouted gun. This belt the Arab slung round his own body. He arose. In silence, leaving the unconscious man just as he had fallen, they once more pushed onward.
Lights were beginning to gleam ahead, now, in what appeared to be a long, high line. The trees half hid them, but moment by moment they appeared more distinctly. Meantime, too, the glow over the stockade was getting stronger. Presently the trees ceased; and there before them the men saw a wide, cleared space, a hundred feet of empty land between the woods and a tall, stout fence topped with live wires and with numerous incandescents.
"Nice place to tackle, if anybody were left to defend it!" commented Bohannan. None of the others answered. The Master started diagonally across the cleared space, toward a cluster of little buildings and stout gate-posts.
Hardly had they emerged from the woods, when, all up and down the line, till it was broken by the woods at both ends where the stockade joined its eastern and western wall, other men began appearing. And all, alike, converged toward the gate.
But to these, the little party of four gave no heed. Other men absorbed their interest—sleeping men, now more and more thickly scattered all along the stockade. Save for a slight, saline tang to the air—an odor by no means unpleasant—nothing remained of the lethal gas.
But its victims still lay there, prone, in every possible attitude of complete and overpowering abandonment. And all, as the party of four passed, were quickly disarmed. Up and down the open space, other Legionaries were at the same work.
The Master and his companions reached the gate-house first of any in the party. The gate was massive, of stout oaken planks heavily strapped with iron. About it, and the gate-house, a good many guards were lying. All showed evidence of having dropped asleep with irresistible suddenness.
Some were gaping, others foolishly grinning as if their last sensation had been agreeable—as indeed it had been—while others stared disconcertingly. The chin of one showed an ugly burn where his Turkish cigarette had sagged, and had smoldered to extinction on the flesh.
One had a watch in his hand, while another gripped a newspaper. In the gate-house, two had fallen face downward on the table that occupied the center of the rough room; checker-pieces lay scattered from the game they had been playing. Several men sprawled just outside the little house, on the platform. Under the incandescents, the effect grew weird.
Bohannan shuddered, as he glanced from one to another, then up at some of the approaching men of the expedition. Rrisa affirmed that Mohammed was indeed the prophet of Allah, and that the ways of theNasarawere most strange.
"Good!" exclaimed the Master, with his first word of approval. Even his aplomb was a little shaken by the complete success of the attack. "It's all working like a clock."
"How about disarming these men, sir?" queried Captain Alden.
"No. They fall under the orders of another group."
"The way is clear, then—"
"Absolutely! These men will sleep almost precisely thirty minutes. The way is clear ahead of us. Forward into the Palisade!"
As the little group of four penetrated into the enclosure which but a few moments before had been guarded all round its perimeter by a small army of determined men, more and more of the Legionaries began to concentrate toward the entrance.
Silently they came, with almost the precision of automata in some complex mechanical process. All were obeying the Master's will, because obedience was sweet to them; because it spelled adventure, freedom, life.
Now and then one stopped, bent, arose with some added burden taken from a fallen guard. Not one guard was to be injured in any manner. Human life was not to be taken. But nothing in the way of armament was to be left, by way of possible danger to the Legion. And already the telephone-wires had been effectively cut.
All the approaching Legionaries wore rucksacks, and all were in their respective uniforms, though every man still wore a long coat that concealed it. A few groups of two appeared, bearing rather heavy burdens.
The Master smiled again, and nodded, as he paused a moment at the gate to peer down, along the line of the clearing between stockade and forest.
"Here come some of the machine-guns," said he. "I shall be vastly surprised if one man or one single bit of equipment fails to appear on schedule time. Nothing like system, Bohannan—that, and knowing how to choose your men!"
He turned, and the other three followed him into the enclosure. Outside, all was developing according to plans and specifications. They four were to be pioneers into the jealously guarded space that for so long had been the mystery of the continent, yes, of the civilized world.
The whole enclosure was well lighted with a profusion of electric lamps. At first view, quite a bewildering mass of small buildings appeared; but second glance showed order in them all. Streets had been laid out, as in a town; and along these streets stood drafting-sheds, workshops, storehouses, commissary offices, dwellings for the workers, guards, and bosses. A well-built cottage on the main, forward-going road that led from the gate to an inner stockade, was probably headquarters for the chief engineers.
Not one sign of conscious life appeared. Men were lying here, there, in the roadways, in the porches, in the shadow of the power-plant where dynamos were still merrily singing. Few were armed. Most of them here were workers, judging by their garb and by the tools still in some hands.
The four pioneers gave them no heed, but pushed steadily on. In the road lay a couple of pigeons, farther on a sparrow, and still farther a sleeping dog, showed how complete had been the effect of the lethal pellets.
The inner stockade was now close. It stood about twice as high as the outer, was also topped with live wires and lights, and was loopholed for defense. This formidable barrier was pierced by a small gate, flanked by two machine-guns. On the gate-post was affixed an elaborate set of rules regarding those who might and might not enter. The Master smiled dryly, and opened the gate.
Even from without, the loom of the monstrous airship had been visible. The eye could hardly at first glance take in the vastness of this stupendous thing, that overshadowed all the central portion of the huge enclosure. It gave a sense of power, of swift potentialities, of speed unlimited. It stood there, tense, ready, waiting, with a hum of engines audible in its vast heart, a thing almost of life, man's creation but how illimitably greater than man!
For a moment, as this tremendous winged fabric came to the Master's view, he halted, and a look of exultation, pride, and joy came over his face. But only for a moment. Quite at once his dark eyes veiled themselves with their habitual impassivity. Once more he strode forward, the others following him.
Now that they were inside the second barrier—where sleeping men were scattered more thickly than ever—they stood under the very wings of the most stupendous hydroplane ever conceived by the brain of man or executed by the cunning of his hand.
That this hydroplane had been almost on the moment of departure for its trial trip, was proved by the sleepers. Two were on the gangplank leading up to the entrance door in the fuselage. A number who had been knocking out the last holding-pins of the last shackles that bound it to its cradle, had fallen to earth, their sledge-hammers near at hand.
In the pilot-house, a figure had collapsed across the sill of an observation window. And the engines, purring softly, told that all had been in readiness for the throwing-in of the clutches that would have set the vast propellers spinning with roaring speed.
"Yes, they were certainly just on the dot of getting away," said theMaster, nodding as he glanced at his watch. "This couldn't be better.Gas, oil, stores, everything ready. What more proof do you require, mydear Bohannan, of the value of exact coordination?"
The major could only answer: "Yes, yes—" He seemed quite amazed by this extraordinary mechanism—gigantic, weird, unreal in the garish electric lights. Rrisa was frankly staring, for once shaken out of his fatalistic Mussulman tranquillity.
As for Captain Alden, he stood there a compact, small figure in his long coat with the rucksack strapped to his shoulders, peering up with the eye of the connoisseur. His smile was of contentment absolute.
"My beauty—ah, my beauty!" he was murmuring.
Then, in the presence of this mighty thing, silence fell on all. The major set hands on hips, blinked, puckered his lips, and silently whistled. His expression was half incredulous, half enthusiastic.
What Alden was thinking revealed itself by the sparkle of his eyes through the holes of the mask behind the goggles. Expressionless though that terribly mutilated face had to remain, you could sense in the man's whole attitude the exultation of the expert ace as he beheld the perfect machine.
The droning of the engines came distinctly to them all, a low, steady, powerful note, beautiful in its steady undertones of strength. Behind the little group, a few involuntary exclamations of astonishment and joy became audible, as some of the Legionaries came into the second enclosure.
Without, blows on metal sharply resounded. The Master smiled again, as he realized his orders were going on with exact precision.
"That's the wireless they're putting out of commission," thought he, glancing at his watch again. "No mere untuning of wave-lengths. Good, old-fashioned hammer-blows! This station won't work again for a while!"
Bohannan, meantime, was trying to get some general impression of the giant plane. Not all the Master's descriptions of it, to him, had quite prepared him for the reality. Though he well knew all the largest, biggest machines in the world, this stupendous creation staggered him. By comparison with the Handley-Page, the Caproni, the D.H.-4, the Gotha 90-120, the Sikorsky, it spread itself as an eagle spreads beside a pigeon.
It lay in a kind of metallic cradle, almost like a ship ready for launching on its ways. Ahead of it, metal plates stretched away like rails, running toward the lip of the Palisades. Its quadruple floats, each the size of a tugboat and each capable of being exhausted of air, constituted a potential lifting-force of enclosed vacuums that very largely offset the weight of the mechanism. It was still a heavier-than-air machine, but the balance could be made nearly perfect. And the six helicopters, whose cylindrical, turbine-like drums gleamed with metallic glitters—three on each side along the fuselage—could at will produce an absolutely static condition of lift or even make the plane hover and soar quite vertically.
There the monster lay, outstretching its enormous sextuple wings, each wing with an area of 376 by 82.5 feet. The non-inflammable celluloid surfaces shone white as fresh-cut ivory, clean, smooth, unbreakable. The plane reminded one of some Brobdingnagian dragon-fly, resting for flight, shimmering with power as it poised for one swift leap aloft into the night.
Bohannan, still a bit confused, noted the absence of any exhaust from the speeding engines. This, too, gave a sense of vast, self-contained power. He saw stupendous propeller-blades, their varnished surfaces flicking out high-lights as the incandescents struck them. Motionless these propellers were; but something in their tense, clean sweep told of the raging cyclone to which they could whip the air, once the spinning engines should be clutched in on their shafts.
The captain's eyes wandered over the whole enormous construction, towering there above him. He saw rows of lighted windows, each cased in shining metal; a V-pointed pilot-house—the same where the still figure had dropped over the sill of the open window—a high-raised rudder of artful curve, vast as the broadside of a barn; railed galleries running along the underbody of the fuselage, between the floats and far aft of them.
Everything gleamed and flickered with bright metal, varnish, snowy celluloid. The body of the machine looked capable of housing twice as many men as the Legion numbered. But everything, after all, was quite shrunk by the overpowering sweep of the wings. These dwarfed the fast-gathering group that stood peering up at them, like pygmies under the pinions of the fabled roc in Sinbad the Sailor's story.
These stupendous wings, the captain now saw, were not braced together by hampering struts and wires, but seemed cantilevered into position, giving a clean run to the structure, great simplicity, and the acme of mechanical beauty. This giant bird of heaven lay in its nest, free of pattern, powerful beyond any air-mechanism ever built by man, almost a living thing, on whose back its captors might ride aloft defying man and nature, to whatsoever goal they chose.
"Everything is ready," said the Master. "That is quite obvious. Let us get aboard now, with no further delay, and be off!"
He drew a little notebook from his pocket, took a pencil, and faced the gathering group inside the second stockade.
"Stow your equipment," he directed "according to your orders. Ten minutes will be enough for you to unload your machine-guns and all gear, each in the assigned space. Bring out all the sleeping men and lay them down along the stockade, here. Injure no man. Valdez, are the take-off gates, over the Palisade, correctly opened?"
A dark, thin man saluted, as he answered with a Spanish accent:
"Yes, sir. Everything is ready, sir."
"Very well. Now, all to work! And then, each to his place, in engine-room, cabins, or however and where assigned. Come, come!"
As the men trailed up the gangplank, that steeply rose to the sliding door in the fuselage, the Master checked them on his list. Not one was absent. He shut the notebook with a snap, and slid it back into his pocket.
"This goes on well," he commented to the major. "So far, we are within three minutes, eighteen seconds, of schedule."
The little group of four stood waiting, watching, while the others carried out all orders, aboard. There was no hesitation, no confusion. Each had already learned the exact plan of the airship. Each knew precisely where every door led, what each passageway meant; each understood perfectly his own post and what to do there.
Two by two, Legionaries came down the gangplank, bearing limp bodies. These they laid in a row along the stockade, till seventeen had accumulated. No more came.
A figure appeared in the sliding doorway, and saluted.
"The last sleeper is out, sir," he reported.
The Master nodded, and gestured to his three companions. The group of four ascended the sharp tilt of the plank and entered the airship. As they did so, Legionaries hoisted the plank aboard, with its tackle, and lashed it to the waiting chocks. Others could be heard, in the penetralia of the vast structure, coming, going, busily at work.
The entrance door slid shut. A bolt shot home. All the Legion was now aboard, and communication with the ground had been broken.
The four men found themselves in a brightly lighted corridor that led directly across the fuselage to a similar door on the other side. This corridor was of some metal, painted a glossy white. Doors opened out of it, on either hand. Its length was just a few inches over forty-two feet. Half-way along it, a wider corridor crossed it at right angles—the main passage of the ship.
The Master led the way toward this median corridor. His tall, big-shouldered figure swung along, triumphant, impressive in the long coat, dominant and free. Followed by the other three, he turned to the left, forward of the ship.
The main corridor, like the other, was flanked by doors. Two or three stood open, giving glimpses of comfortable staterooms. The men's footfalls sounded with softened tread on a strip of thick, brown carpet that made pleasant contrast with the gleaming white walls. Light from frosted glass circles, flush with walls and ceiling, made the corridor bright as day.
The Master walked with the confident precision of one who already had passed that way a score of times. He opened the third door on the left—it slid into the wall, instead of swinging, thus economizing space—and all entered what was obviously the main saloon of the giant plane.
This saloon measured seventeen feet six inches, from corridor to windows, and twenty-nine fore-and-aft. It was furnished with a center-table, book-cases, easy-chairs, two commodious sofa-lockers, and had an excellent carpet. Bohannan noted a Victrola, with many records.
Like all parts of the ship, its lighting was splendid. Well-curtained windows gave it a homelike air. At first glance, one would have thought oneself in a rather luxurious private house; but second inspection showed all possible construction and furnishings were of aluminum alloy, of patterns designed to cut weight to the lowest minimum.
The walls bore lightly framed photographs of men famous in the annals of flying, from Santos-Dumont and the Wrights to Gruynemer and Nosworthy; also pictures of famous machines—the Spad, Bristol Fighter, Sopwith Pup, 120-135, and others. More conspicuous than any of these was a framed copy of the International Air Commission's latest condensed rules.
Signs of recent occupancy were not wanting. An extinct cigar lay on the carpet, where it had fallen from the mouth of some airman swiftly overtaken by sleep. The table bore an open cigar-box, several packs of cigarettes with loose "fags" scattered round, and a number of champagne bottles.
Two of these were opened; one had been emptied. The other had lost part of its contents. Several champagne glasses stood on the table, and one lay on its side, where perhaps a falling hand had overset it. In one of the glasses, a few last, vagrant little bubbles were still rising from the tall, hollow stem.
"Hm!" grunted the Master contemptuously. "Fools! Well—there'll be no alcohol aboard this craft!" He loosened the buckles of his rucksack, and cast the burden on one of the sofa-lockers. The others did as much.
"Shall we stow the gear in our cabins?" asked Bohannan, gesturing at the doors that led off the saloon.
"Not yet," answered the Master, glancing at the chronometer that hung beside the air-rules. "Time enough to get settled, later. Every second counts, now. We're due to start in seven minutes, you know. Rrisa will attend to all this. We three have got to be getting forward to the pilot-house."
Bohannan nodded.
"Let's have some air in here, anyhow," said he, turning toward one of the windows. "This place is damned hot!"
"We'll need all the heat, soon," the Master commented. "At a few thousand feet, the engine-exhaust through those radiators won't be any too much. Forward!"
He slid open another door. The three men passed through the captain's cabin and pilot-house. This place measured twelve feet on its longer axis and nine on its shorter, being of approximately diamond shape with one point forward in the very nose of the machine, one ending in a door that gave access to the main, longitudinal corridor, and the right and left points joining the walls of the backward-sloping prow. It contained two sofa-lockers with gas-inflated, leather cushions, a chart-rack, pilot's seat, controls, and instrument-board.
The whole front was a magnificent stretch of double plate-glass, with warm air between the sheets to keep snow, frost, or dew from obscuring the vision. Bright light flooded it.
Though one window had been slid partly open—the window on the sill of which the sleeping aviator had lain—a scent of cigarette-smoke still permeated the place. The Master sniffed with disgust. Then suddenly, to the great astonishment of Bohannan, he commanded:
"Bring me that champagne, in the saloon. All of it!"
The major opened wide eyes, but unquestioningly obeyed. Could it be possible the Master, in this moment of exultation, was about to break his lifelong rule and drink a toast, in sparkling bubbles, to success thus far achieved, to the stupendous voyage now about to begin?
Wondering, Bohannan departed. The Master gestured for Captain Alden to seat himself on one of the lockers. Alden kept complete silence as he sat down, crossed one leg over the other and began to study the complex apparatus before him. Most of it was familiar; but some new factors needed inspection.
The Master peered curiously at him. Surely, this man was odd, unusual. Most aviators, thus confronted by strange problems, would have grown loquacious, tried to exhibit their knowledge, asked questions, made much talk. But Alden held his tongue.
A look of appreciation, of liking, came upon the Master's face. It was just the suspicion of a look, for in all this strange man's life no great show of emotion ever had been permitted to mirror itself upon his countenance. But still, the look was there. He half opened his lips, as if to speak, then closed them again, and—like Alden—fell to studying the control apparatus.
All was beautifully arranged, all nicely calculated for instant use. Not here, as in small machines, could the pilot handle his own engines, tilt his planes, or manipulate his rudders by hand. That would have been as absurd to think of, as for the steersman of an ocean liner to work without the intervention of steam steering-gear.
No, these controls actuated various motors that, using current from the dynamos, produced the desired action with smooth and certain promptness. A turn of the wrist, perhaps no more than the touch of a finger, and the whole vast creation would respond as easily as a child's toy can be manipulated by a strong man's hand.
Hooded dials, brightly lighted push-buttons, a telephone headpiece and receiver combined, and switches all lay in easy reach. Here was the tachometer, that would give to a fraction the revolutions of each screw per minute; here the altimeter, to indicate height; here the air-speed indicator, the compass with reflector, the inclinometer, the motometers—to show the heat in each engine—and there, the switch to throw on the gigantic searchlight, with the little electric wheel to control its direction, as accurately as you would point a wand.
Throttle and spark, of course, there were none. All engine control was by telephone, with the engine-room which lay a little aft of midships. But the controls of the vacuum apparatus were within easy reach, so that at will the pilot could exhaust the floats, or fill them.
Here were the starting, stopping, and speed controls of the helicopters, which were under direct electrical motivation by the pilot. Here also were the magnetic-anchor release and the air-skid pump control; here were telephonic connections with the wireless-room and with the fore-and-aft observation pits, where observers were already lying on their cushions upon the heavy, metal-reinforced glass floor-plates.
"This is really very complete," approved the Master. Not Alden, but he, had been first to speak. The Master spoke half against his own wish, but a resistless impulse to make some comment, in this moment of triumph, possessed him.
"Only as expected, sir," replied Alden. The Master bit his lip a second, and said no more.
Bohannan's return with several champagne bottles in his arms, put an end to any possible developments the terse conversation might have had.
"Well, sir," said the major, "here it all is. And I've got glasses in my pocket—and a corkscrew, sir. It never does to forget the corkscrew! We'll drink to happy days, eh, sir?"
Already the Celt's mouth was watering for draughts of the precious liquid. Joy pervaded him that, for once at least, the iron rule of the Master was to be broken, and that the journey was to begin with proper libations. The Master's curt syllables, however, instantly dispelled any illusions he might have entertained on that score.
"Drop them all out that open window, there," commanded the Master.
"What, sir? Good Pommery? Veuve?"
"No argument, Bohannan! Out they go!"
Dismayed, the Celt did the other's bidding, while Alden smiled grimly.Far below, glass crashed and jangled.
"What's the idea?" demanded the major ruefully.
"You know very well, Major, my ruling on alcohol. It doesn't mix with any motive power on this trip. Moreover, it's customary to christen every launching with champagne. We've done it!"
"Well, that's not so bad an idea, at that," Bohannan admitted, scratching his fiery head. "What name have you given this bus?"
"Nissr Arrib ela Sema."
"Come again, sir?"
"Eagle of the Sky, in Arabic. I suppose we'll have to cut that down toNissr, for everyday use. But at any rate, our craft is christened. Well, now—"
He settled himself in the pilot's seat, reached forward and drew toward him a shining metal shaft. Four stout spokes unfolded; and from these, quadrants of a rim that easily snapped together. The Master laid one hand easily on the rim of the big steering-wheel, flung his cap upon a locker, pulled down the telephone headpiece and snapped it on.
He touched a button. The light died in the pilot-house, leaving only the hooded glows of the dials, switches, and small levers. Night seemed suddenly to close in about the vast machine. Till now it had been forgotten, ignored. But as darkness fingered at the panes, something of the vastness of sky and air made itself realized; something of the illimitable scope of this adventuring.
Bohannan slid the window shut and settled himself beside Captain Alden. He glanced at his wrist-watch, and a thrill of nervous exultation stabbed him.
"Only two minutes and six seconds more!" he murmured, gnawing at his mustache and blinking with excitement. Alden remained calm, impassive as the Master himself, who now, pressing another button, sent a beam of wonderful, white light lancing through the darkness.
Track, buildings, trees all leaped into vivid relief as he tested the searchlight control. He shot the beam up, up, till it lost itself, vaguely, in mist and cloud; then flung it even across the river, where it picked out buildings with startling detail.
He turned it, finally, square down the launching-way, through the yawning gates where the track abruptly ended at the brow of the Palisades—the empty chasm where, if all went right and no mistake had been made in build, engine-power, or control, the initial leap ofNissr Arrib ela Semawas to be made.
Came a moment's wait. Faintly the pulsing of the engines trembled the fabric ofNissr. Finely balanced as they were, they still communicated some slight vibration to the ship. The Master snicked the switch of the magnetic-anchor release; and now the last bond that heldNissrto her cradle was broken. As soon as the air-skid currents should be set going, she would be ready for her flight.
This moment was not long in coming. Another turn of a switch, and all at once, far below, a faint, continuous hissing made itself audible. Compressed air, forced through thousands of holes at the bottom of the floats, was interposing a gaseous cushion between those floats and the track, just as it could do between them and the earth whereverNissrshould alight.
Suspended thus on a thin layer of air, perhaps no more than a sixteenth of an inch thick but infinitely less friction-producing than the finest ball-bearing wheels and quite incapable of being broken, the ship now waited only the application of the power in her vast propellers.
"Let in numbers two and four," commanded the Master, suddenly, into the engine-room telephone. "In five seconds after we start, hook up one and three; and five later, the other two."
"Aye, aye, sir," came back the voice of Auchincloss, chief engineer."Ready, sir!"
Almost at once, the vibration of the engines altered, grew more marked, seemed to be taking hold of something with strong but easy effort. Another trembling made itself felt, as two of the giant screws, connected by reducing-gears with the engine-shafting—all three engines being geared to one shaft, but any one being capable of separate running—began to revolve.
From astern, a dull, droning hum mounted, rose, grew rapidly in volume and power. And, as two more screws began to whirl, the Eagle of the Sky shook herself slightly. She awoke from slumber. Steadily, smoothly on her air-cushions she began to move forward down the long, sloping trackway to the brink of the cliff.
"Lord above!" breathed Bohannan, chewing at his nails. "We're off!"
Neither the Master nor Captain Alden moved, spoke, manifested any excitement whatever. Both might have been graven images of coolness. The Celt, however, got up and leaned at the window-jamb, unable to keep still. He turned suddenly to Alden.
"Come, man!" he exclaimed, half angrily. "Got no heart in you, eh? No interest? Come along out of that, now, and see what's what!"
He laid hold on the captain, and drew him to the window as the airship accelerated her plunge along the rails. The hum of the propellers had now risen to a kind of throaty roar; the craft was shaking with strange quivers that no doubt would cease if she but once could launch herself into the air. Under her, in and in, the shining metal rails came running swiftly and more swiftly still, gleaming silver-like under the vivid beam of the searchlight.
Wind began to rise up against the glass of the pilot-house; the wind ofNissr'sown making.
Cool as if in his own easy-chair in the observatory, the Master sat there, hand on wheel. Then all at once he reached for the rising-plane control, drew it over, and into the telephone spoke sharply:
"Full speed ahead, now! Give her all she's got!"
A shout, was it? Many shouts, cries, execrations! But where? Over the roar of the propellers, confused sounds won to the men in the pilot-house. And all at once, by the dim aura of diffused light reflected from the huge beam, the major saw dim figures running, off there to the left, among the buildings of the stockade.
"For the Lord's sake!" he cried, amazed, with drooping jaw."Men—after us! Look there—look!"
The Master remained utterly impassive, eyes keen on the in-rushing track, now close to its abrupt ending over the vacancy of space. Captain Alden's pupils narrowed, through the mask-holes, but he said nothing. Bohannan gripped the captain's shoulder painfully, then reached for the pistol in his own holster.
"They're on to us!" he vociferated. "Somebody's got wise—they're—"
Little red spurts of fire began to jet, among the buildings; the crackling of shots started popping, like corn-kernels exploding. Dark figures were racing for the Palisade gate—the gate where, if any slightest thing went wrong with track or giant plane, the whole vast fabric might crash down, a tangled mass of wreckage.
Then it was, that for the first time in all his knowledge of theMaster, Bohannan heard the strange man laugh.
Joyously he laughed, and with keen pleasure. His eyes were blazing, as he thrust the rising-plane lever sharply up.
More shouts volleyed. From somewhere back there in the body of the ship, a cry of pain resounded.
Bohannan flung the window-pane to one side, and blazed away like mad at the attackers.
A shatter of broken glass burst into the pilot-house. Alden, catching his breath, quivered. He uttered no outcry, but his right hand went across and clutched his wounded left arm.
"Got you?" cried the major, still pumping lead. He paused, jerked Alden's automatic from its holster and thrust it into the captain's hand, now red.
Alden, a bit pale but quite impassive, opened fire through the jagged hole in the double pane. Accurately the captain fired at dark figures. One fell. Another staggered; but as the machine swept on, they lost sight of it.
Men rose up before the rushing airship. One of the great gates began to swing shut, far at the end of the track. The Master laughed again, with the wind whipping at his hair. "Full speed ahead!" he shouted into the telephone.
TheNissrleaped into a swifter course. Then all at once she skidded clear of the track, slanted upward, breasted the air. Her searchlight blazed. All along her flanks, fire-jets spangled the night. Cries echoed from her, from the great stockade.
The Master gave her all the lift the farthest wrench of the levers would thrust on her. The gate was almost shut now—would she clear it?
Below, track, earth, everything was spinning in and in. Ahead, above, yawned vastnesses. The Master could no longer see the gate. A second of taut thrill—
Crash!
TheNissrquivered, staggered, yawed away. The forward starboard float had struck. A faint yell rose as someone, hurled backward by the shattereddébrisof the gate, plunged down the cliff.
For half a second, the giant plane reeled over the abyss. Her rush and fury for that half-second threatened to plunge her, a mangled, flaming wreck, hundreds of feet down on the black, waiting rocks below the Palisades.
But engine-power and broad wings, skill of the hand at the levers, and the good fortune that watches over bold men, buoyed her again.
Suddenly she lifted. Up at a dizzy angle she sped.
A thing of life, quivering, sentient, unleashed, the gigantic Eagle of the Sky—now in heroic flight toward the greatest venturing ever conceived by the brain of man—steadied herself, lifted on the wings of darkness, and, freed from her last bonds, leaped quivering and triumphant into the night.