CHAPTER X.
THE "ARIEL."
On the sixth stroke of twelve that night the Scotch express drew outof Euston Station. At half-past nine the next morning, the _Lurline_,Lord Alanmere's yacht, steamed out of Port Patrick Harbour, and atone o'clock precisely she dropped her anchor in the little inlet thatserved for a harbour at Drumcraig.
Colston had the quarter-boat lowered and pulled ashore without amoment's delay, and as his foot touched the shore Arnold grasped hishand, and, after the first words of welcome, asked for the latestnews of Natasha.
Without immediately answering, Colston put his arm through his, drewhim away from the men who were standing about, and told him asbriefly and gently as he could the terrible news of the calamity thathad befallen the Brotherhood, and the errand upon which he had come.
Arnold received the blow as a brave man should--in silence. His nowbronzed face turned pale, his brows contracted, and his teethclenched till Colston could hear them gritting upon each other. Thena great wave of agony swept over his soul as a picture too horriblefor contemplation rose before his eyes, and after that came calm, thecalm of rapid thought and desperate resolve.
He remembered the words that Natasha had used in a letter that shehad given him when she took leave of him in Russia. "We shall trustto you to rescue us, and, if that is no longer possible, to avengeus."
Yes, and now the time had come to justify that trust and prove hisown devotion. It should be proved to the letter, and if there wascause for vengeance, the proof should be written in blood and flameover all the wide dominions of the Tsar. Grief might come after, whenthere was time for it; but this was the hour of action, and a strangesavage joy seemed to come with the knowledge that the safety of thewoman he loved now depended mainly upon his own skill and daring.
Colston respected his silence, and waited until he spoke. When he didhe was astonished at the difference that those few minutes had madein the young engineer. The dreamer and the enthusiast had become theman of action, prompt, stern, and decided. Colston had never beforeheard from his lips the voice in which he at length said to him--
"Where is this place? How far is it as the crow flies from here?"
"At a rough guess I should say about two thousand two hundred miles,almost due east, and rather less than two hundred miles on the otherside of the Ourals."
"Good! That will be twenty hours' flight for us, or less if thissouth-west wind holds good."
"What!" exclaimed Colston. "Twenty hours, did you say? You mustsurely be making some mistake. Don't you mean forty hours? Think ofthe enormous distance. Why, even then we should have to travel oversixty miles an hour through the air."
"My dear fellow, I don't make mistakes where figures are concerned.The paradox of aerial navigation is 'the greater the speed the lessthe resistance.'
"In virtue of that paradox I am able to tell you that the speed ofthe _Ariel_ in moderate weather is a hundred and twenty miles anhour, and a hundred and twenty into two thousand two hundred goeseighteen times and one-third. This is Wednesday, and we have to be onthe Asiatic frontier at daybreak on Friday. We shall start at duskto-night, and you shall see to-morrow's sun set over the Ourals."
"That means from the eastern side of the range!"
"Of course. There will be no harm in being a few hours too soon. Incase we may have a long cruise, I must have additional stores, andpower-cylinders put on board. Come, you have not seen the _Ariel_yet.
"I have made several improvements on the model, as I expected to dowhen I came to the actual building of the ship, and, what is moreimportant than that, I have immensely increased the motive power andeconomised space and weight at the same time. In fact, I don'tdespair now of two hundred miles an hour before very long. Come!"
The engineer and the enthusiast had now come to the fore again, andthe man and the lover had receded, put back, as it were, until thetime for love, or perchance for sorrow, had come.
He put his arm through Colston's, and led him up a hill-path andthrough a little gorge which opened into a deep valley, completelyscreened on all sides by heather-clad hills. Sprinkled about thebottom of this valley were a few wooden dwelling-houses andworkshops, and in the centre was a huge shed, or rather an enclosurenow, for its roof had been taken off.
In this lay, like a ship in a graving-dock, a long, narrow,grey-painted vessel almost exactly like a sea-going ship, save forthe fact that she had no funnel, and that her three masts, instead ofyards, each carried a horizontal fan-wheel, while from each of hersides projected, level with the deck, a plane twice the width of thedeck and nearly as long as the vessel herself.
They entered the enclosure and walked round the hull. This wasseventy feet long and twelve wide amidships, and save for size it wasthe exact counterpart of the model already described.
As soon as he had taken Colston round the hull, and roughly explainedits principal features, reserving more detailed description and theinspection of the interior for the voyage, he gave the necessaryorders for preparing for a lengthy journey, and the two went on boardthe _Lurline_ to dinner, which Colston had deferred in order to eatit in Arnold's company.
After dinner they carefully discussed the situation in order thatevery possible accident might be foreseen, argued the pros and consof the venture in all their bearings, and even went so far as to planthe vengeance they would take should, by any chance, the rescue failor come too late.
The instructions, signed by Natas himself, were very precise oncertain essential points, and in their broad outlines, but, like allwisely planned instructions to such men as these, they left amplemargin for individual initiative in case of emergency.
Some of the stores of the _Lurline_ had to be transferred to the_Ariel_, and these were taken ashore after dinner, and at the sametime Colston made his first inspection of the interior of theair-ship, under the guidance of her creator. What struck him most atfirst sight was the apparent inadequacy of the machinery to theattainment of the tremendous speed at which Arnold had promised theyshould travel.
There were four somewhat insignificant-looking engines in all. Ofthese, one drove the stern propeller, one the side propellers, andtwo the fan-wheels on the masts. He learnt as soon as the voyagebegan, that, by a very simple switch arrangement, the power of thewhole four engines could be concentrated on the propellers; for, oncein the air, the lifting wheels were dispensed with and lowered ondeck, and the ship was entirely sustained by the pressure of the airunder her planes.
There was not an ounce of superfluous wood or metal about thebeautifully constructed craft, but for all that she was complete inevery detail, and the accommodation she had for crew and passengerswas perfectly comfortable, and in some respects cosy in the extreme.Forward there was a spacious cabin with berths for six men, and aftthere were separate cabins for six people, and a central saloon forcommon use.
On deck there were three structures, a sort of little conning towerforward, a wheel-house aft, and a deck saloon amidships. All thesewere, of course, so constructed as to offer the least possibleresistance to the wind, or rather the current created by the vesselherself when flying through the air at a speed greater than that ofthe hurricane itself.
All were closely windowed with toughened glass, for it is hardlynecessary to say that, but for such a protection, every one whoappeared above the level of the deck would be almost instantlysuffocated, if not whirled overboard, by the rush of air when theship was going at full speed. Her armament consisted of four long,slender cannon, two pointing over the bows, and two over the stem.
The crew that Arnold had chosen for the voyage consisted, curiouslyenough, of men belonging to the four nationalities which would beprincipally concerned in the Titanic struggle which a few weeks wouldnow see raging over Europe. Their names were Andrew Smith,Englishman, and coxswain; Ivan Petrovitch, Russian; Franz Meyer,German; and Jean Guichard, Frenchman. Diverse as they were, therenever were four better workers, or four better friends.
They had no country but the world, a
nd no law save those whichgoverned their Brotherhood. They conversed in assorted but perfectlyintelligible English, for the very simple reason that Mr. AndrewSmith consistently refused to attempt even the rudiments of any othertongue.
While the stores were being put on board, Arnold made a carefulexamination of every part of the machinery, and then of the wholevessel, in order to assure himself that everything was in perfectorder. This done, he gave his final instructions to those of thelittle community who were left behind to await the arrival of thesteamer, and as the sun sank behind the western ridges of the island,he went on board the _Ariel_ with Colston, took his place at thewheel, and ordered the fan-wheels to be set in motion.
Colston was standing by the open door of the wheel-house as Arnoldcommunicated his order to the engine-room by pressing an electricbutton, one of four in a little square of mahogany in front of thewheel.
There was no vibration or grinding, as would have been the case instarting a steamer, but only a soft whirring, humming sound, thatrose several degrees in pitch as the engines gained speed, and thefan-wheels revolved faster and faster until they sang in the air, andthe _Ariel_ rose without a jar or a tremor from the ground, slowly atfirst, and then more and more swiftly, until Colston saw the groundsinking rapidly beneath him, and the island growing smaller andsmaller, until it looked like a little patch on the dark grey waterof the sea.
Away to the north and west he could see the innumerable islands ofthe Hebrides, while to the east the huge mountainous mass of themainland of Scotland loomed dark upon the horizon.
When the barometer marked eight hundred feet above the sea-level, the_Ariel_ passed through a stratum of light clouds, and on the upperside of this the sun was still shining, shooting his almost levelrays across it as though over some illimitable sea of white fleecybillows, whose crests were tipped with rosy, golden light.
Above the surface of this fairy sea rose north-eastward the blackmass of Ben More on the Island of Mull, and to the southward, thelesser peaks of Jura and Islay.
While he was still wrapped in admiration of the strange beauty ofthis, to him, marvellous scene, the _Ariel_ had risen to a thousandfeet, still almost in a vertical line from the island. Arnold nowpressed another button, and the stern propeller began to revolveswiftly and noiselessly, and Colston saw the waves of the cloud-seabegin to slip behind, although so smooth was the working of themachinery, and the motion of the air-ship, that, but for this, hecould hardly have guessed that he was in motion.
Arnold now turned a few spokes of the wheel, and headed the _Ariel_due east by the compass. Then he touched a third button. The sidepropellers began to turn swiftly on their axes, and, at the same timethe speed of the fan-wheels slackened, and gradually stopped.
Colston now began to feel the air rushing by him in a stream so rapidand strong, that he had to take hold of the side of the wheel-housedoorway to steady himself.
"I think you had better come inside and shut the door," said Arnold."We are getting up speed now, and in a few minutes you won't be ableto hold yourself there. You'll be able to see just as well inside."
Colston did as he was bidden, and as soon as he was safely insideArnold pulled a lever beside the wheel, and slightly inclined theplanes from forward aft. At the same time the fan-wheels began toslide down the masts until they rested upon the deck.
"Now, you shall see her fly," said Arnold, taking a speaking-tubefrom the wall and whistling thrice into it.
Colston felt a slight tremor in the deck beneath his feet, and then alifting movement. He staggered a little, and said to Arnold--
"What's that? Are we going higher still?"
"Yes," replied the engineer. "She is feeling the air-planes now underthe increased speed. I am going up to fifteen hundred feet, so thatwe shall only have the highest peaks to steer clear of in crossingScotland. Now, use your eyes, and you will see something worthlooking at."
The upper part of the wheel-house was constructed almost entirely ofglass, and so Colston could see just as well as if he had been ondeck outside. He did use his eyes. In fact, for some time to come,all his other senses seemed to be merged in that of sight, for thescene was one of such rare and marvellous beauty, and the sensationsthat it called up were of so completely novel a nature, that, for thetime being, he felt as though he had been suddenly transported intofairyland.
The cloud-sea now lay about seven hundred feet beneath them. The sunhad sunk quite below the horizon, even at that elevation; but hisabsence was more than made up for by the nearly full moon, which hadrisen to the southward, as though to greet the conqueror of the air,and was spreading a flood of silvery radiance over the snowy plainbeneath, through the great gaps in which they could see the darkersheen of the moving sea-waves.
Their course lay almost exactly along the fifty-sixth parallel oflatitude, and took them across Argyle, Dumbarton, and Stirlingshireto the head of the Firth of Forth. As they approached the mainland,Colston saw one or two peaks rise up out of the clouds, and soon theywere sweeping along in the midst of a score or so of these. To theleft Ben Lomond towered into the clear sky above his attendant peaks,and to the right the lower summits of the Campsie Fells soon rose afew miles ahead.
The rapidity with which these mountain-tops rose up on either side,and were left behind, proved to Colston that the _Ariel_ must betravelling at a tremendous speed, and yet, but for a very slightquivering of the deck, there was no motion perceptible, so smoothlydid the air-ship glide through the elastic medium in which shefloated.
So engrossed was he with the unearthly beauty of the new world intowhich he had risen, that for nearly two hours he stood withoutspeaking a word. Arnold, wrapped in his own thoughts, maintained alike silence, and so they sped on amidst a stillness that was onlybroken by the soft whirring of the propellers, and the singing of thewind past the masts and stays.
At length a faint sound like the dashing of breakers on a rocky coastroused Colston from his reverie, and he turned to Arnold and said--
"What is that? Not the sea, surely!"
"Yes, those are the waves of the Firth of Forth breaking on theshores of Fife."
"What! Do you mean to tell me that we have crossed Scotland already?Why, we have not been an hour on the way yet!"
"Oh yes, we have," replied the engineer. "We have been nearly two.You have been so busy looking about you that you have not noticed howthe time has passed. We have travelled a little over two hundred andforty miles. We are over the German Ocean now, and as there will beno more hills until we reach the Ourals we can go down a little."
As he spoke he moved the lever beside him about an inch, andinstantly the clouds seemed to rise up toward them as the _Ariel_swept downwards in her flight. A hundred feet above them Arnoldtouched the lever again, and the air-ship at once resumed herhorizontal course.
Then he put her head a little more to the northward, and called downthe speaking tube for Andrew Smith to come and relieve him. A minutelater Smith's head appeared at the top of the companion-ladder whichled from the saloon to the wheel-house, and Arnold gave him the wheeland the course, saying at the same time to Colston--
"Now, come down and have something to eat, and then we will have asmoke and a chat and go to bed. There is nothing more to be seenuntil the morning, and then I will show you Petersburg as it looksfrom the clouds."
"If you told me you would show me the Ourals themselves, I shouldbelieve you after what I have seen," replied Colston, as togetherthey descended the companion-way from the wheel-house to the saloon.
"Ah, I'm afraid that would be too much even for the _Ariel_ toaccomplish in the time," said Arnold. "Still, I think I can guaranteethat you shall cross Europe in such time as no man ever crossed itbefore."