The Angel of the Revolution: A Tale of the Coming Terror
Page 18
CHAPTER XVII.
AERIA FELIX.
Every one on board the _Ariel_ was astir the next morning as soon asthe first rays of dawn were shooting across the vast plain thatstretched away to the eastward, and by the time it was fairlydaylight breakfast was over and all were anxiously speculating as towhat they would find on the other side of the tremendous cliffs, onan eyrie in which they had found a resting-place for the night.
As soon as all was ready for a start, Arnold said to Natasha, who wasstanding alone with him on the after part of the deck--
"If you would like to steer the _Ariel_ into your new kingdom, Ishall be delighted to give you the lesson in steering that I promisedyou yesterday."
Natasha saw the inner meaning of the offer at a glance, and repliedwith a smile that made his blood tingle--
"That would be altogether too great a responsibility for a beginner.I might run on to some of these fearful rocks. But if you will takethe helm when the dangerous part comes, I will learn all I can bywatching you."
"As long as you are with me in the wheel-house for the next hour orso," said Arnold, with almost boyish frankness, "I shall be content.I need scarcely tell you why I want to be alone with you when wefirst sight this new home of our future empire."
"I have half a mind not to come after that very injudicious speech.Still, if only for the sake of its delightful innocence, I willforgive you this time. You really must practise the worldly art ofdissimulation a little, or I shall have to get the Princess to playchaperon."
Natasha spoke these words in a bantering tone, and with a flush onher lovely cheeks, that forced Arnold to cut short the conversationfor the moment, by giving an order to Andrew Smith, who at thatinstant put his head out of the wheel-house door to say--
"All ready, sir!"
"Very well," replied Arnold. "I will take the wheel, and do you tellevery one to keep under cover."
Smith saluted, and disappeared, and then Natasha and Arnold went intothe wheel-house, while Colston and the Princess took their places inthe deck-saloon, the two men off duty going into the conning towerforward.
"Why every one under cover, Captain Arnold?" asked Natasha, as soonas the two were ensconced in the wheel-house and the door shut.
"Because I am going to put the _Ariel_ through her paces, and enterAeria in style," replied he, signalling for the fan-wheels torevolve. "The fact is that, so far as I can see, these mountains aretoo high for us to rise over them by means of the lifting-wheels,which are only calculated to carry the ship to a height of about fivethousand feet. After that the air gets too rarefied for them to get asolid grip. Now, these mountains look to me more like seven thousandfeet high."
"Then how will you get over them?"
"I shall first take a cruise and see if I can find a negotiable gap,and then leap it."
"What! Leap seven thousand feet?"
"No; you forget that we shall be over five thousand up when we takethe jump, and I have no doubt that we shall find a place where athousand feet or so more will take us over. That we shall rise easilywith the planes and propellers, and you will see such a leap as mannever made in the world before."
While he was speaking the _Ariel_ had risen from the ground, and washanging a few hundred feet above the little plateau. He gave thesignal for the wheels to be lowered, and the propellers to set towork at half-speed. Then he pulled the lever which moved theair-planes, and the vessel sped away forwards and upwards at aboutsixty miles an hour.
Arnold headed her away from the mountains until he had got an offingof a couple of miles, and then he swung her round and skirted thecliffs, rising ever higher and higher, and keeping a sharp look-outfor a depression among the ridges that still towered nearly threethousand feet above them.
When he had explored some twenty miles of the mountain wall, Arnoldsuddenly pointed towards it, and said--
"There is a place that I think will do. Look yonder, between thosetwo high peaks away to the southward. That ridge is not more than sixthousand feet from the earth, and the _Ariel_ can leap that as easilyas an Irish hunter would take a five-barred gate."
"It looks dreadfully high from here," said Natasha, in spite ofherself turning a shade paler at the idea of taking a six thousandfoot ridge at a flying leap. She had splendid nerves, but this washer first aerial voyage, and it was also the first time that she hadever been brought so closely face to face with the awful grandeur ofNature in her own secret and solitary places.
She would have faced a levelled rifle without flinching, but as shelooked at that frowning mass of rocks towering up into the sky, andthen down into the fearful depths below, where huge trees looked liketiny shrubs, and vast forests like black patches of heather on theearth, her heart stood still in her breast when she thought of thefrightful fate that would overwhelm the _Ariel_ and her crew shouldshe fail to rise high enough to clear the ridge, or if anything wentwrong with her machinery at the critical moment.
"Are you sure you can do it?" she asked almost involuntarily.
"Perfectly sure," replied Arnold quietly, "otherwise I should notattempt it with you on board. The _Ariel_ contains enough explosivesto reduce her and us to dust and ashes, and if we hit that ridgegoing over, she would go off like a dynamite shell. No, I know whatshe can do, and you need not have the slightest fear!"
"I am not exactly afraid, but it _looks_ a fearful thing to attempt."
"If there were any danger I should tell you--with my usual lack ofdissimulation. But really there is none, and all you have to do is tohold tight when I tell you, and keep your eyes open for the firstglimpse of Aeria."
By this time the _Ariel_ was more than ten miles away from themountains. Arnold, having now got offing enough, swung her roundagain, headed her straight for the ridge between the two peaks, andsignalled "full speed" to the engine-room.
In an instant the propellers redoubled their revolutions, and the_Ariel_ gathered way until the wind sang and screamed past her mastsand stays. She covered eight miles in less than four minutes, and itseemed to Natasha as though the rock-wall were rushing towards themat an appalling speed, still frowning down a thousand feet abovethem. For the instant she was all eyes. She could neither open herlips nor move a limb for sheer, irresistible, physical terror. Thenshe heard Arnold say sharply--
"Now, hold on tight!"
The nearest thing to her was his own arm, the hand of which graspedone of the spokes of the steering wheel. Instinctively she passed herown arm under it, and then clasped it with both her hands. As she didso she felt the muscles tighten and harden. Then with his other handhe pulled the lever back to the full, and inclined the planes totheir utmost.
Suddenly, as though some Titan had overthrown it, the huge black wallof rock in front seemed to sink down into the earth, the horizonwidened out beyond it, and the _Ariel_ soared upwards and swept overit nearly a thousand feet to the good.
"Ah!"
The exclamation was forced from her white lips by an impulse thatNatasha had no power to resist. All the pride of her nature wasconquered and humbled for the moment by the marvel that she had seen,and by the something, greater and stranger than all, that she saw inthe man beside her who had worked this miracle with a single touch ofhis hand. A moment later she had recovered her self-possession. Sheunclasped her hands from his arm, and as the colour came back to hercheeks she said, as he thought, more sweetly than she had ever spokento him before--
"My friend, you have glorious nerves where physical danger isconcerned, and now I freely forgive you for fainting in theCouncil-chamber when Martinov was executed. But don't try mine againlike that if you can help it. For the moment I thought that the endof all things had come. Oh, look! What a paradise! Truly this is alovely kingdom that you have brought me to!"
"The _Ariel_ sank down after the leap across theridge."
_See page 123._]
"And one that you and I will yet reign over together," replied Arnoldquietly, as he moved the lever again and allowed the _Ariel_ to sinksmooth
ly down the other side of the ridge over which she had takenher tremendous leap.
When she had called it a paradise, Natasha had used almost the onlyword that would fitly describe the scene that opened out before themas the _Ariel_ sank down after her leap across the ridge. Theinterior of the mountain mass took the form of an oval valley, asnearly as they could guess about fifty miles long by perhaps thirtywide. All round it the mountains seemed to rise unbroken by a singlegap or chasm to between three and four thousand feet above the lowestpart of the valley, and above this again the peaks rose high into thesky, two of them to the snow-line, which in this latitude was over15,000 feet above the sea.
Of the two peaks which reached to this altitude, one was at eitherend of a line drawn through the greater length of the valley, that isto say, from north to south. At least ten other peaks all round thewalls of the valley rose to heights varying from eight to twelvethousand feet.
The centre of the valley was occupied by an irregularly shaped lake,plentifully dotted with islands about its shores, but quite clear ofthem in the middle. In its greatest length it would be about twelvemiles long, while its breadth varied from five miles to a few hundredyards. Its sloping shores were covered with the most luxuriantvegetation, which reached upwards almost unbroken, but changing incharacter with the altitude, until there was a regular series oftransitions, from the palms and bananas on the shores of the lake, tothe sparse and scanty pines and firs that clung to the upper slopesof the mountains.
The lake received about a score of streams, many of which began aswaterfalls far up the mountains, while two of them at least had theirorigin in the eternal snows of the northern and southern peaks. Sofar as they could see from the air-ship, the lake had no outlet, andthey were therefore obliged to conclude that its surplus watersescaped by some subterranean channel, probably to reappear again as ariver welling from the earth, it might be, hundreds of miles away.
Of inhabitants there were absolutely no traces to be seen, from thedirection in which the _Ariel_ was approaching. Animals and birdsthere seemed to be in plenty, but of man no trace was visible, untilin her flight along the valley the _Ariel_ opened up one of the manysmaller valleys formed by the ribs of the encircling mountains.
There, close by a clump of magnificent tree-ferns, and nestling undera precipitous ridge, covered from base to summit with dark-greenfoliage and brilliantly-coloured flowers, was a well-built log-hutsurrounded by an ample verandah, also almost smothered in flowers,and surmounted by a flagstaff from which fluttered the tatteredremains of a Union-Jack.
In a little clearing to one side of the hut, a man, who might verywell have passed for a modern edition of Robinson Crusoe, so far ashis attire was concerned, was busily skinning an antelope which hungfrom a pole suspended from two trees. His back was turned towardsthem, and so swift and silent had been their approach that he did nothear the soft whirring of the propellers until they were within somethree hundred yards of him.
Then, just as he looked round to see whence the sound came, AndrewSmith, who was standing in the bows near the conning tower, put hishands to his mouth and roared out a regular sailor's hail--
"Thomas Jackson, ahoy!"
The man straightened himself up, stared open-mouthed for a moment atthe strange apparition, and then, with a yell either of terror orastonishment, bolted into the house as hard as he could run.
As soon as he was able to speak for laughing at the queer incident,Arnold sent the fan-wheels aloft and lowered the _Ariel_ to withinabout twenty feet of the ground over a level patch of sward, acrosswhich meandered a little stream on its way to the lake. While she washanging motionless over this, the man who had fled into the housereappeared, almost dragging another man, somewhat similarly attired,after him, and pointing excitedly towards the _Ariel_.
The second comer, if he felt any astonishment at the apparition thathad invaded his solitude, certainly betrayed none. On the contrary,he walked deliberately from the hut to the bit of sward over whichthe _Ariel_ hung motionless, and, seeing two ladies leaning on therail that ran round the deck, he doffed his goatskin cap with awell-bred gesture, and said, in a voice that betrayed not theslightest symptom of surprise--
"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen! Good morning, and welcome toAeria! I see that the problem of aerial navigation has been solved; Ialways said it would be in the first ten years of the twentiethcentury, though I often got laughed at by the wiseacres who knownothing until they see a thing before their noses. May I ask whetherthat little message that I sent to the outside world some years agohas procured me the pleasure of this visit?"
"Yes, Mr. Holt. Your little balloon was picked up about three yearsago in the Gulf of Guinea, and, after various adventures and muchdiscussion, has led to our present voyage."
"I am delighted to hear it. I suppose there were plenty of noodleswho put it down to a practical joke or something of that sort? What'sbecome of Stanley? Why didn't he come out and rescue me, as he didEmin? Not glory enough, I suppose? It would bother him, too, to getover these mountains, unless he flew over. By the way, has he got anair-ship?"
"No," replied Arnold, with a laugh. "This is the only one inexistence, and she has not been a week afloat. But if you'll allowus, we'll come down and get generally acquainted, and after that wecan explain things at our leisure."
"Quite so, quite so; do so by all means. Most happy, I'm sure. Ah!beautiful model. Comes down as easily as a bird. Capital mechanism.What's your motive-power? Gas, electricity--no, not steam, nofunnels! Humph! Very ingenious. Always said it would be done someday. Build flying navies next, and be fighting in the clouds. Thenthere'll be general smash. Serve 'em right. Fools to fight. Why can'tthey live in peace?"
While Louis Holt was running along in this style, jerking his wordsout in little short snappy sentences, and fussing about round theair-ship, she had sunk gently to the earth, and her passengers haddisembarked.
Arnold for the time being took no notice of the questions with regardto the motive-power, but introduced first himself, then the ladies,and then Colston, to Louis Holt, who may be described here, aselsewhere, as a little, bronzed, grizzled man, anywhere betweenfifty-five and seventy, with a lean, wiry, active body, a good squarehead, an ugly but kindly face, and keen, twinkling little grey eyes,that looked straight into those of any one he might be addressing.
The introductions over, he was invited on board the _Ariel_, and afew minutes later, in the deck-saloon, he was chattering awaythirteen to the dozen, and drinking with unspeakable gusto the firstglass of champagne he had tasted for nearly five years.