The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 05

by Anthology

  The two air-ships were flying side by side about a hundred yards apart, and Adams, seeing Mr. Austen in the conning-tower of the War-Hawk, attracted his attention by running the Volante up closer, and then told him in the deaf and dumb language on his fingers that he had sighted a steamer, and wanted to slow down and speak to him. The two air-ships rapidly decreased their speed until they were flying close together at thirty miles an hour, then the slides in the conning-towers were drawn back, and they arranged that if the solitary vessel by good fortune proved to be the Pilgrim, the Volante would go down and speak her, while the War-Hawk remained a thousand feet above her, so as to put any idea of resistance out of the question. Then the speed was increased again, and twenty minutes later the Volante took a downward sweep, and stopped a hundred feet from the surface of the water and some half-mile ahead of the steamer.

  "We are in fortune!" said Berthauld, whom Adams had called into the conning-tower. "That is the Pilgrim. I thought it would be, from what they told me about her having to make another voyage soon to the Bremen. May I ask what you will do with her now that you have caught her?"

  "As soon as I am satisfied that she is the vessel you describe, and is really in the employment of the anarchists, I shall sink her just as I would sink the Destroyer if we were fortunate enough to meet with her," replied Adams. "I will serve her crew as they have served the crews of the steamers they have robbed and sunk. You had better keep out of sight now. I am going to hail her."

  "Very good," said Berthauld. "But let me caution you to be careful, for they are just as likely as not to reply to your hail with a volley."

  "I will see to that," said Adams shortly. "Now you had better go to the gun-room."

  As the Corsican left the conning-tower, Adams signalled to the gun-room, and ordered the forward and after shell guns and the four broadside Maxims to be trained on the steamer's deck as he went alongside; then the Volante ran forward to meet the steamer, on whose bows the word Pilgrim could be distinctly seen. But just as she was slowing down, Adams, who had never taken his eyes off the Pilgrim's deck, saw half a dozen men tear the covering off a large boat which she carried on deck amidships, and in this boat he saw a short, mortar-like gun of large calibre mounted on what looked like a swivel-stand.

  There could be no mistaking the purpose of this weapon. The Volante was well within range, and the obvious object was to send a shell into her as she slowed down. Just as a couple of men jumped into the boat, he sent the signal, "Full speed ahead," to the engine-room, and the Volante sprang forward on an upward leap of a thousand feet, as a puff of smoke rose from the boat and a heavy shell went whistling harmlessly away astern of her.

  The next instant a couple of shells from the War-Hawk struck the water and exploded on either side of the steamer, deluging her decks with water. Then came two from the Volante, both of which struck the deck and exploded, tearing two great ragged holes in the planking. Two more from the War-Hawk followed in rapid succession. The anarchists replied as well as they could with their one gun, but the air-ships were far beyond its range, and the fate of Leo Marcel and his crew was soon sealed.

  Shell after shell burst on the torn-up deck of the Pilgrim, or else in her interior, and before the bombardment had continued a quarter of an hour, two of the projectiles exploded together in her stoke-hole, and the next moment, in the midst of a vast cloud of steam and smoke, the Pilgrim broke in two and disappeared, taking with her Leo Marcel and sixty anarchists to the fate to which they had consigned so many of their fellow-creatures.

  "Like cures like!" laughed Sir Harry grimly to Mr. Austen, who was standing with him in the conning-tower as the Pilgrim vanished. "That's the only sort of physic that's any good for the disease of anarchy."

  "Yes," said Mr. Austen; "it's a rather heroic remedy, as Dr. Roberts would say, but I don't think the disease would yield to any other. If she only had the materials for constructing a couple of air-ships on board, we haven't done a very bad morning's work. Well, now, I suppose it is a case of full speed ahead to the southward."

  On the morning of the third day after the sinking of the Pilgrim, the crews of the two air-ships saw the bare, gaunt rocks of Trinidad rising out of the water. The War-Hawk remained aloft as before, and the Volante descended to investigate. She found some huts on the desert shores of a bleak, hidden bay, but, save for the huge land-crabs crawling about them, the whole island appeared to be deserted. A shot was fired to call the attention of any inhabitants that might be there, but there was no response, and Adams decided that it was not worth while wasting time examining the place; so he rose and rejoined the War-Hawk, and the two air-ships resumed their journey, flying now in a south-eastward direction, so as to cross the Tropic of Capricorn into the unfrequented regions of the ocean in which they expected to find the Bremen and her consort.

  When they reached what Berthauld had described as the anarchists' cruising-ground, they separated, the War-Hawkgoing to the east and the Volante to the west, both flying in a zig-zag course at an elevation of five thousand feet, so as to command the largest possible range of vision. It had been settled that whichever of them sighted the Bremen first was to return to the spot from which they had started, the latitude and longitude of which had been carefully noted, and then the two were to proceed to the scene of attack together.

  It fell to the good fortune of the War-Hawk to catch the first glimpse of her quarry, and the first eyes which saw her were the pretty brown orbs of Miss Dora. She was standing in the conning-tower - not an infrequent amusement with her now - with Sir Harry, soon after sunrise on the third day of the search, looking down at the water through his glasses, when he saw a quick flush rise to her cheeks, and she leant slightly forward, as though something had caught her attention. Then she took the glasses from her eyes and handed them to him, saying as she did so-

  "Sir Harry, I think I can see something that looks like a little cloud of thin smoke, with a dark spot in the middle of it, far away down yonder. Will you have a look, please? Who knows but it might be the Bremen or the Destroyer?"

  CHAPTER XXXVI.

  THE END OF THE "BREMEN."

  WE won't tell any of them yet," said Sir Harry, after he had taken a long look through the glasses at the distant tinge of brown haze that blurred the western horizon. "I think we had better make sure first, so as not to spoil the honour of the first discovery for you, if it turns out really to be the Bremen."

  "Oh, I don't see any particular honour in it," said Dora, with just a perceptible shudder. "This is horrible, all this fighting and destruction. If you promise not to tell, I'll confess that I fainted right off when you sank the yacht the other day. It seemed so awful to think of, these two ships flying up in the clouds out of reach, and blowing that unfortunate steamer to pieces, and sending her and everyone on board her to the bottom of the sea. I sometimes think the world must have gone half mad for such dreadful things to be possible - to say nothing about their being necessary, as I suppose that was."

  "I quite agree with you," said Sir Harry. "The world is really much more of a madhouse than the conceit of humanity would care to admit. As a matter of fact, with all our boasted religion and civilisation, we are very little removed in some respects from mere beasts of prey. Indeed, where the predatory instincts are concerned, we are rather below them than otherwise. They kill because they must kill, or else die of starvation; we kill when we have ample. No tiger ever killed an antelope or an ox just to show that he was the stronger beast of the two, or to prove his exclusive right to a certain piece of jungle."

  "I like to hear you say that, Sir Harry, because- "

  "Now look here, Miss Dora, I have no doubt you were going to say something that it would be pleasant for me to hear," he said, interrupting her; "but before you say it, I wish you would explain how it is that a good Socialist like yourself can persist - well, I had almost said so obstinately - in using that most unsocialistic prefix to my name? You know what I mean."

  "Yes," she said
, with a faint flush on her cheek and just the suspicion of a roguish twinkle in her eyes, "I think I can quite understand what you mean, and perhaps I can answer you by reminding you that we Utopians don't call each other Miss and Mr. in our conversation."

  "Oh, but then you know - Hullo! yes, that must be the Bremen. A big steamer with no masts and two funnels, apparently going nowhere, just as Berthauld described her. If you'll pardon me, Dora,- I mean, of course, Miss Dora,- I'm afraid I shall have to postpone what bade fair to be a very interesting conversation, at any rate for me. If all goes well, we shall be back at Utopia in a few days, and then-'

  "And then," said Dora, who meanwhile had opened the door of the conning-tower, "you will have had time to think out a suitably conventional apology for leaving out the 'Miss' just now. Good morning! I am going to see if Violet is awake."

  And with that she vanished and shut the door behind her, leaving Sir Harry with his attention for the moment perplexingly divided between thoughts of love and war.

  The latter, however, imperatively demanded all his energies, for while they had been talking, the War-Hawk had been flying swiftly, and had brought him within plain view of the object which had attracted Dora's attention. A second look through his glasses convinced him that the object lying on the waters far below him was nothing else than the craft of which they were in search. He took its bearing carefully, and dotted its position down on a chart on which the latitude and longitude of the War-Hawk had already been marked at sunrise. Then he spun the steering-wheel round until the dot lay dead astern of the air-ship, sent the signal for full speed to the engine-room, and the War-Hawk darted away westward in search of her consort.

  The Volante returning by arrangement to the rendezvous, was picked up after four hours' flight, and as soon as the plan of attack had been arranged between them, the two returned to the eastward, and a little before mid-day they were soaring at a height of eight thousand feet above a calm sea, on which was floating the mastless Bremen, steaming to the eastward at a leisurely speed of about ten knots. To their intense disappointment, there was no sign of the Destroyer to be seen, and so they were forced to conclude that she was away on one of her raiding expeditions for coal and stores.

  Great as was the height at which they were floating, their glasses enabled them to make out the shape of an air-ship lying upon the Bremen's decks. Unfortunately, too, for their hopes of a surprise, the sky was absolutely cloudless, and so they would be visible from the Bremen's decks, if only as a couple of tiny specks drifting across the background of the intense blue above them.

  "Confound it, they have seen us!" said Sir Harry to Mr. Austen, who had now come to take his accustomed place in the conning-tower. "Look, the air-ship is rising. I wish we could have got a shell into them before they spotted us."

  "We couldn't have done that in this clear atmosphere, and I don't think it very much matters, because, as the Yankees would say, we have decidedly got the drop on them, and I don't think there is much chance of escape. There goes Adams down to cut him off. He'll keep the air-ship busy, and we'll sink the steamer, and then go and help him if it's necessary."

  "Yes, that's the plan," said Sir Harry. "So I'll leave you to your manoeuvring, and go and take a turn at the guns. Good-bye for the present."

  "Good-bye. Shoot straight!" said Mr. Austen, as he turned to leave the conning-tower.

  "As straight as I can, you may depend upon it," laughed Sir Harry, as he closed the door and went down to the gunroom.

  According to the arrangements already made, the Volante dropped about four thousand feet in a slanting direction towards the steamer, from whose deck the anarchist air-ship had now risen about fifteen hundred feet. She was evidently managed by an experienced hand, for she shot away to the southward at full speed and on an upward course, so as to gain the advantage of being pursued. But Adams had learned a good deal from the story of the War-Hawk's fight with the three vessels over Northumberland, and lost no time in frustrating this manoeuvre.

  The anarchist had about a mile start of him, but she had the worst of the elevation, and the Volante, putting on full speed, rushed away after her, soaring two feet for her one, until the positions were reversed, and Adams was able to give the order for the stern guns to open fire on her. He slowed down until the two ships were almost relatively stationary, and presently a couple of shells burst together about fifty feet above the red flag that was flying at the anarchist's stern.

  He saw her stop for an instant, and, as it were, shiver in the shaken atmosphere. Then she dropped two or three hundred feet, came to equilibrium, and swung round to fly northward again.

  The moment that she wasted in turning was fatal, for one of the gunners had his gun loaded again, and, just as she stopped for a second on the turn, sent a lucky shell, which passed through one of her broad air-planes and exploded underneath it, blowing it into ribbons. The next instant she turned over like a winged bird, and with one awful plunge dropped like a stone into the sea four thousand feet below. They saw a little splash far away in the calm water, and that was all.

  "That settled her affair," said Berthauld a few moments after, as he opened the door of the conning-tower and looked in. "I had the honour of firing that shot, Mr. Adams. I learnt my gunnery under Max Renault, on board the Vengeur. I hope now that if you had any doubts of my sincerity-"

  "I never had any, M. Berthauld," replied Adams. "If I had had, you would not be here now. But that was a splendid shot, and I congratulate you, wherever you learnt to shoot. In future, if you care to take it, you shall have charge of one of the Volante's guns."

  "It is an honour that I shall prize highly," said the Corsican. "Yours are splendid guns, better both for range and accuracy than Renault's. And now I will go back and get ready to have a shot at the Bremen, if your consort has not already destroyed her."

  As he closed the door of the conning-tower again, Adams swung the Volante round and headed her back to the northward, where, far away in the distance, he could see a dark speck on the water, with puffs of smoke breaking out every moment about it.

  Ten minutes brought him within range, but by this time the War-Hawk's guns had already done terrible execution. She had sunk to within two thousand feet of the helpless and defenceless Bremen, and shell after shell was bursting upon the quondam liner's decks. As the Volante slowed up, her two bow guns came into action, and so well were they served, that a perfect rain of shells was hurled upon the terrified and now despairing anarchists.

  The return of the Volante alone told them that their airship had been destroyed, and that they had now nothing to look for but swift and certain destruction. So far as they were concerned, their reign of terror was over. The tables had been turned on them with a vengeance, and, maddened by panic and despair, dozens of them leapt overboard, as though preferring death by drowning to be mangled and torn to pieces by the shells from the sky.

  "Rats leaving a sinking ship!" said Sir Harry, with a short, savage laugh, as he trained his gun afresh upon the Bremen and sent another shell to its mark. "It is fearful work this fighting, but there is a horrible fascination about it that makes one absolutely enjoy it while you're at it."

  "Especially when you are shooting at such vermin as these," said Markham, who was at the other gun, as he sent another shell on its errand of destruction. "Those fellows seem to have very little taste for their own kind of physic, but, after all, it is quite as good as the hanging they could only expect, if we were able to take them prisoners. There goes the last of the funnels. Now I think Mr. Austen might let us try a few bombs."

  He had hardly spoken the words before a message came down the tube from the conning-tower telling them to cease firing and man the bomb-tubes.

  "I thought so," said Markham, as he left his gun. "She is not much better than a wreck now, and a few minutes with the bombs will finish her."

  The War-Hawk now forged ahead a little until she came to a standstill exactly over the doomed Bremen. Meanwhile, the six bomb-t
ubes had been charged, and at the signal, "Let go," the six bombs, each filled with twenty pounds of dynamite, were released simultaneously. A blaze of light flashed out almost from stem to stern of the Bremen; then came the roar of the combined explosions, and they saw the great ship literally split from end to end. A vast cloud of smoke and steam rolled up, and when this had drifted away under the light breeze from the northward, the floating dockyard of the anarchists had vanished beneath the waters of the Atlantic.

  "Horrible, but necessary!" said Sir Harry drily, as he saw the bomb-tubes closed, and went to his sister's cabin to tell her and Dora that it was all over.

  "It is a frightful fate, even for those wretches," said Violet, half pityingly, when he had told her the news. "But I suppose it had to be done, if the world was to be saved from them. And where are we going to now?"

  "Utopia is the next port of call, I believe," replied Sir Harry. "You know I told you that some of the scoundrels had taken possession of it, and so we shall have to go and clear them out."