CHAPTER VI.
NEW FRIENDS.
As Arnold returned the greeting of the President, all the othermembers of the Circle rose from their seats and took off their masksand the black shapeless cloaks which had so far completely coveredthem from head to foot.
Then, one after the other, they came forward and were formallyintroduced to him by the President. Nine of the fourteen were men,and five were women of ages varying from middle age almost togirlhood. The men were apparently all between twenty-five andthirty-five, and included some half-dozen nationalities among them.
All, both men and women, evidently belonged to the educated, orrather to the cultured class. Their speech, which seemed to changewith perfect ease from one language to another in the course of theirsomewhat polyglot converse, was the easy flowing speech of men andwomen accustomed to the best society, not only in the social but theintellectual sense of the word.
All were keen, alert, and swift of thought, and on the face of eachone there was the dignifying expression of a deep and settled purposewhich at once differentiated them in Arnold's eyes from the ordinaryidle or merely money-making citizens of the world.
As each one came and shook hands with the new member of theBrotherhood, he or she had some pleasant word of welcome and greetingfor him; and so well were the words chosen, and so manifestlysincerely were they spoken, that by the time he had shaken hands allround Arnold felt as much at home among them as though he were in themidst of a circle of old friends.
Among the women there were two who had attracted his attention androused his interest far more than any of the other members of theCircle. One of these was a tall and beautifully-shaped woman, whoseface and figure were those of a woman in the early twenties, butwhose long, thick hair was as white as though the snows of seventywinters had drifted over it. As he returned her warm, firmhand-clasp, and looked upon her dark, resolute, and yet perfectlywomanly features, the young engineer gave a slight start ofrecognition. She noticed this at once and said, with a smile and aquick flash from her splendid grey eyes--
"Ah! I see you recognise me. No, I am not ashamed of my portrait. Iam proud of the wounds that I have received in the war with tyranny,so you need not fear to confess your recognition."
It was true that Arnold had recognised her. She was the original ofthe central figure of the painting which depicted the woman beingflogged by the Russian soldiers.
Arnold flushed hotly at the words with the sudden passionate angerthat they roused within him, and replied in a low, steady voice--
"Those who would sanction such a crime as that are not fit to live. Iwill not leave one stone of that prison standing upon another. It isa blot on the face of the earth, and I will wipe it out utterly!"
"There are thousands of blots as black as that on earth, and I thinkyou will find nobler game than an obscure Russian provincial prison.Russia has cities and palaces and fortresses that will make fargrander ruins than that--ruins that will be worthy monuments offallen despotism," replied the girl, who had been introduced by thePresident as Radna Michaelis. "But here is some one else waiting tomake your acquaintance. This is Natasha. She has no other name amongus, but you will soon learn why she needs none."
Natasha was the other woman who had so keenly roused Arnold'sinterest. Woman, however, she hardly was, for she was seemingly stillin her teens, and certainly could not have been more than twenty.
He had mixed but little with women, and during the past few years notat all, and therefore the marvellous beauty of the girl who cameforward as Radna spoke seemed almost unearthly to him, and confusedhis senses for the moment as some potent drug might have done. Hetook her outstretched hand in awkward silence, and for an instant sofar forgot himself as to gaze blankly at her in speechlessadmiration.
She could not help noticing it, for she was a woman, and for the samereason she saw that it was so absolutely honest and involuntary thatit was impossible for any woman to take offence at it. A quick brightflush swept up her lovely face as his hand closed upon hers, herdarkly-fringed lids fell for an instant over the most wonderful pairof sapphire-blue eyes that Arnold had ever even dreamed of, and whenshe raised them again the flush had gone, and she said in a sweet,frank voice--
"I am the daughter of Natas, and he has desired me to bid you welcomein his name, and I hope you will let me do so in my own as well. Weare all dying to see this wonderful invention of yours. I suppose youare going to satisfy our feminine curiosity, are you not?"
The daughter of Natas! This lovely girl, in the first sweet flush ofher pure and innocent womanhood, the daughter of the unknown andmysterious being whose ill-omened name caused a shudder if it wasonly whispered in the homes of the rich and powerful; the name withwhich the death-sentences of the Terrorists were invariably signed,and which had come to be an infallible guarantee that they would becarried out to the letter.
No death-warrants of the most powerful sovereigns of Europe were morecertain harbingers of inevitable doom than were those which bore thisdreaded name. Whether he were high or low, the man who received oneof them made ready for his end. He knew not where or when the fatalblow would be struck. He only knew that the invisible hand of theTerror would strike him as surely in the uttermost ends of the earthas it would in the palace or the fortress. Never once had it missedits aim, and never once had the slightest clue been obtained to theidentity of the hand that held the knife or pistol.
Some such thoughts as these flashed one after another throughArnold's brain as he stood talking with Natasha. He saw at once whyshe had only that one name. It was enough, and it was not long beforehe learnt that it was the symbol of an authority in the Circle thatadmitted of no question.
She was the envoy of him whose word was law, absolute andirrevocable, to every member of the Brotherhood; to disobey whom wasdeath; and to obey whom had, so far at least, meant swift andinvariable success, even where it seemed least to be hoped for.
Of course, Natasha's almost girlish question about the air-ship wasreally a command, which would have been none the less binding had sheonly had her own beauty to enforce it. As she spoke the President andColston--who had only lost himself for the time behind a mask andcloak--came up to Arnold and asked him if he was prepared to give anexhibition of the powers of his model, and to explain its working andconstruction to the Circle at once.
He replied that everything was perfectly ready for the trial, andthat he would set the model working for them in a few minutes. ThePresident then told him that the exhibition should take place inanother room, where there would be much more space than where theywere, and bade him bring the box and follow him.
A door was now opened in the wall of the room remote from that bywhich he and Colston had entered, and through this the whole partywent down a short passage, and through another door at the end whichopened into a very large apartment, which, from the fact of its beingwindowless, Arnold rightly judged to be underground, like theCouncil-chamber that they had just left.
A single glance was enough to show him the chief purpose to which thechamber was devoted. The wall at one end was covered with arm-rackscontaining all the newest and most perfect makes of rifles andpistols; while at the other end, about twenty paces distant, werethree electric signalling targets, graded, as was afterwardsexplained to him, to one, three, and five hundred yards range.
In a word, the chamber was an underground range for rifle and pistolpractice, in which a volley could have been fired without a soundbeing heard ten yards away. It was here that the accuracy of thevarious weapons invented from time to time was tested; and here, too,every member of the Circle, man and woman, practised with rifle andpistol until an infallible aim was acquired. A register of scores waskept, and at the head of it stood the name of Radna Michaelis.
A long table ran across the end at which the arm-racks were, and onthis Arnold laid the case containing the model, he standing on oneside of the table, and the members of the Circle on the other,watching his movements with a curiosity that they too
k no trouble todisguise.
He opened the case, feeling something like a scientific demonstrator,with an advanced and critical class before him. In a moment the mandisappeared, and the mechanician and the enthusiast took his place.As each part was taken out and laid upon the table, he brieflyexplained its use; and then, last of all, came the hull of theair-ship.
This was three feet long and six inches broad in its midshipsdiameter. It was made in two longitudinal sections of polishedaluminium, which shone like burnished silver. It would have beencigar-shaped but for the fact that the forward end was drawn out intoa long sharp ram, the point of which was on a level with the floor ofthe hull amidships as it lay upon the table. Two deep bilge-plates,running nearly the whole length of the hull, kept it in an uprightposition and prevented the blades of the propellers from touching thetable. For about half its whole length the upper part of the hull wasflattened and formed a deck from which rose three short strong masts,each of which carried a wheel of thin metal whose spokes were sixinclined fans something like the blades of a screw.
A little lower than this deck there projected on each side a broad,oblong, slightly curved sheet of metal, very thin, but strengthenedby means of wire braces, till it was as rigid as a plate of solidsteel, although it only weighed a few ounces. These air-planes workedon an axis amidships, and could be inclined either way through anangle of thirty degrees. At the pointed stern there revolved apowerful four-bladed propeller, and from each quarter, inclinedslightly outwards from the middle line of the vessel, projected asomewhat smaller screw working underneath the after end of theair-planes.
The hull contained four small double-cylinder engines, one of whichactuated the stern-propeller, and the other three the fan-wheels andside-propellers. There were, of course, no furnaces, boilers, orcondensers. Two slender pipes ran into each cylinder from suitablyplaced gas reservoirs, or power-cylinders, as the engineer calledthem, and that was all.
Arnold deftly and rapidly put the parts together, continuing hisrunning description as he did so, and in a few minutes the beautifulmiracle of ingenuity stood complete before the wondering eyes of theCircle, and a murmur of admiration ran from lip to lip, bringing aflush of pleasure to the cheek of its creator.
"There," said he, as he put the finishing touches to the apparatus,"you see that she is a combination of two principles--those of theAeronef and the Aeroplane. The first reached its highest developmentin Jules Verne's imaginary "Clipper of the Clouds," and the second inHiram Maxim's Aeroplane. Of course, Jules Verne's Aeronef was merelyan idea, and one that could never be realised while Robur'smysterious source of electrical energy remained unknown--as it stilldoes.
"Maxim's Aeroplane is, as you all know, also an unrealised ideal sofar as any practical use is concerned. He has succeeded in making itfly, but only under the most favourable conditions, and practicallywithout cargo. Its two fatal defects have been shown by experience tobe the comparatively overwhelming weight of the engine and the fuelthat he has to carry to develop sufficient power to rise from theground and progress against the wind, and the inability of themachine to ascend perpendicularly to any required height.
"Without the power to do this no air-ship can be of any use saveunder very limited conditions. You cannot carry a railway about withyou, or a station to get a start from every time you want to rise,and you cannot always choose a nice level plain in which to comedown. Even if you could the Aeroplane would not rise again withoutits rails and carriage. For purposes of warfare, then, it may bedismissed as totally useless.
"In this machine, as you see, I have combined the two principles.These helices on the masts will lift the dead weight of the shipperpendicularly without the slightest help from the side-planes,which are used to regulate the vessel's flight when afloat. I willset the engines that work them in motion independently of the otherswhich move the propellers, and then you will see what I mean."
As he spoke, he set one part of the mechanism working. Those watchingsaw the three helices begin to spin round, the centre one revolvingin an opposite direction to the other two, with a soft whirring soundthat gradually rose to a high-pitched note.
When they attained their full speed they looked like solid wheels,and then the air-ship rose, at first slowly, and then more and moreswiftly, straight up from the table, until it strained hard at thepiece of cord which prevented it from reaching the roof.
A universal chorus of "bravas" greeted it as it rose, and every eyebecame fixed on it as it hung motionless in the air, sustained by itswhirling helices. After letting it remain aloft for a few minutesArnold pulled it down again, saying as he did so--
"That, I think, proves that the machine can rise from any positionwhere the upward road is open, and without the slightest assistanceof any apparatus. Now it shall take a voyage round the room.
"You see it is steered by this rudder-fan under the stern propeller.In the real ship it will be worked by a wheel, like the rudder of asea-going vessel; but in the model it is done by this lever, so thatI can control it by a couple of strings from the ground."
He went round to the other side of the table while he was speaking,and adjusted the steering gear, stopping the engines meanwhile. Thenhe put the model down on the floor, set all four engines to work, andstood behind with the guiding-strings in his hands. The spectatorsheard a louder and somewhat shriller whirring noise than before, andthe beautiful fabric, with its shining, silvery hull and side-planes,rose slantingly from the ground and darted forward down the room,keeping Arnold at a quick run with the rudder-strings tightlystrained.
Like an obedient steed, it instantly obeyed the slightest pull uponeither of them, and twice made the circuit of the room before itscreator pulled it down and stopped the machinery.
The experiment was a perfect and undeniable success in every respect,and not one of those who saw it had the slightest doubt as toArnold's air-ship having at last solved the problem of aerialnavigation, and made the Brotherhood lords of a realm as wide as theatmospheric ocean that encircles the globe.
As soon as the model was once more resting on the table, thePresident came forward and, grasping the engineer by both hands, saidin a voice from which he made but little effort to banish the emotionthat he felt--
"Bravo, brother! Henceforth you shall be known to the Brotherhood asthe Master of the Air, for truly you have been the first among thesons of men to fairly conquer it. Come, let us go back and talk, forthere is much to be said about this, and we cannot begin too soon tomake arrangements for building the first of our aerial fleet. You canleave your model where it is in perfect safety, for no one everenters this room save ourselves."
So saying the President led the way to the Council-chamber, andthere, after the _Ariel_--as it had already been decided to name thefirst air-ship--had been christened in anticipation in twenty-yearold champagne, the Circle settled down at once to business, and for agood three hours discussed the engineer's estimate and plans forbuilding the first vessel of the aerial fleet.
At length all the practical details were settled, and the Presidentrose in token of the end of the conference. As he did so he saidsomewhat abruptly to Arnold--
"So far so good. Now there is nothing more to be done but to laythose plans before the Chief and get his authority for withdrawingout of the treasury sufficient money to commence operations. Ipresume you could reproduce them from memory if necessary--at anyrate, in sufficient outline to make them perfectly intelligible?"
"Certainly," was the reply. "I could reproduce them in _fac simile_without the slightest difficulty. Why do you ask?"
"Because the Chief is in Russia, and you must go to him and placethem before him from memory. They are far too precious to be trustedto any keeping, however trustworthy. There are such things as railwayaccidents, and other forms of sudden death, to say nothing of theRussian customs, false arrests, personal searches, and imprisonmentson mere suspicion.
"We can risk none of these, and so there is nothing for it but yourgoing to Petersburg an
d verbally explaining them to the Chief. Youcan be ready in three days, I suppose?"
"Yes, in two, if you like," replied Arnold, not a little taken abackat the unexpected suddenness of what he knew at once to be the firstorder that was to test his obedience to the Brotherhood. "But as I amabsolutely ignorant of Russia and the Russians, I suppose you willmake such arrangements as will prevent my making any innocent butpossibly awkward mistakes."
"Oh yes," replied the President, with a smile, "all arrangements havebeen made already, and I expect you will find them anything butunpleasant. Natasha goes to Petersburg in company with another ladymember of the Circle whom you have not yet seen.
"You will go with them, and they will explain everything to you _enroute_, if they have no opportunity of doing so before you start. Nowlet us go upstairs and have some supper. I am famished, and I supposeevery one else is too."
Arnold simply bowed in answer to the President; but one pair of eyesat least in the room caught the quick, faint flush that rose in hischeek as he was told in whose company he was to travel. As forhimself, if the journey had been to Siberia instead of Russia, hewould have felt nothing but pleasure at the prospect after that.
They left the Council-chamber by the passage and the ante-room, thesentry standing to attention as they passed him, each giving the wordin turn, till the President came last and closed the doors behindhim. Then the sentry brought up the rear and extinguished the lightsas he left the passage.
Fifteen minutes later there sat down to supper, in the solidlycomfortable dining-room of the upper house, a party of ladies andgentlemen who chatted through the meal as merrily and innocently asthough there were no such things as tyranny or suffering in theworld, and whom not the most acute observer would have taken for themost dangerous and desperately earnest body of conspirators that everplotted the destruction, not of an empire, but of a civilisation anda social order that it had taken twenty centuries to build up.