The Kingdom of Slender Swords
CHAPTER LIII
A RACE WITH DAWN
In that furious pace toward Aoyama, Daunt had been consumed by onethought: that upon his single effort hung the saving of human lives--thecovering of a shame to his own nation--the turning away of a foulallegation from the repute of a friendly Empire. He knew that minuteswere valuable.
On the long, dimly-lighted roadways where the flying hoofs beat theirfurious tattoo, few carts were astir, and the trolleys had not yetappeared on the wider thoroughfares. The rain had washed the air clean,the wind was dustless and sweet, and the stars were palely bright. Oncea policeman signaled and the driver momentarily slackened speed--then onas before. The horses were white with foam when they reached theparade-ground. Here Daunt leaped down and wrenched both lamps from thecarriage. "Go home," he said to the _betto_, and running through a clumpof trees, struck across the waste.
The Japanese stared after him mystified, then with a philosophicobjurgation, turned and drove the sweating horses home at a walk.
Daunt ran to a low door in the long garage. The key was on a ring in hispocket. He went in, locking the door behind him. There were no electriclights--he had been there heretofore only by day--and the carriage lampsmade only a subdued glimmer that was reflected from the polished metalof the great winged thing resting on its carrier. He threw off hisevening coat and set feverishly to work. After its single trial the newfan-propeller had been unshipped for a slight alteration, and theflanges had not yet been reassembled. There were delicate adjustments tobe made, wire rigging to be tautened, a score of minute tests before allcould be safe and sure. He worked swiftly and with concentration,feeling his mind answering to the stress with an absolute coolness.
At length the last attachment was in place, the final bolt sent home andone of the lamps lashed close in the angle of the wind screen. He tookhis place and the engine started its familiar double rhythm:pst-pst--pst-pst--pst-pst, as the explosive drop fell faster and faster.He leaned and broke the clutch which held the big double doors of thebuilding. They swung open and he threw on the gear.
And suddenly, as the propeller began to spin, in the instant the Gliderstarted in its rush down the guides, Daunt was aware that some one haddarted through the doors. He had a flashing view of a white, disheveledface, heard a cry behind him--then the prow of the Glider tiltedabruptly, the air whistled past the screens, the great flat field sankaway, and he was throbbing steeply upward, against the sweep of thewind.
Daunt threw himself forward--the bubble in the spirit-level clung to thetop of its tube. Rapidly he warped down the elevation-vanes till slowly,slowly, the telltale bubble crept to the middle of the level. What wasthe matter? The engine was working well, yet there was a sense ofheaviness, of sluggishness that was unaccountable. He looked to eitherside, before him, behind him.
His fingers tightened on the clutches. Just forward of the whirlingpropeller he made out the figure of a man, lying flat along the ribs ofthe Glider's body, clutching the steel guys of the planes, looking athim.
For a moment he stared motionless. It was this extra weight that hadsent the Glider reeling prow-up--had made it unresponsive to control.The man who clung there had aimed to prevent the flight! Daunt leanedto let the full beam of the flaring lamp go past him. A quickintuition had told him whose were the eyes that had glittered acrossthe throbbing fabric; but the face he saw now was infuriate with a newlook that made him shiver. It was incarnate with the daredevil ofterror. Phil had been a drunkard; he was drunk now with the calculatemadness of overmastering fear. As he gazed, a flitting, irrelevantmemory crossed Daunt's mind, of a day at college, years before, whenby a personal appeal, he had saved Phil from the disgrace ofexpulsion. And now it was Phil--_Phil!_--clinging there, withdesperate, hooked fingers, struggling to consummate a crime that mustsink him for ever!
Pst-pst--pst-pst--pst-pst; on the Glider drove. With a fierce effort,Daunt crushed down the sense of unreality and swiftly weighed hisposition.
The other was directly in front of the propeller, a perilous place. Onlythe guy-wire was in his reach. Between them was a shuddering space. Toland in the darkness to rid the aeroplane of that incubus, wasimpossible. He must go on. Could he win with such a terrible handicap?He set his teeth. Tilting the lateral vanes, he soared in a wideserpentine, peering into the deep, resounding dark below.
Tokyo lay a vast network of tiny pin-pricks of fire. He had never beenso high before, had been content to sweep the tree-tops. To the left abearded scimitar of light, merged by blackness, marked the bay. Dauntswung parallel with this. Pst-pst--pst-pst--pst-pst. The wind tore ingusts through the structure, the planes vibrating, the guys humming likethe strings of a gigantic harp. His clothing dragged at his body. He wastoo high; he leaned over the mass of levers and the Glider slid down along, steep descent, till in the starlight he could see the blue-grayblur of roofs, the massed shadows of little parks of trees. Now he waspassing the edge of the city--now below him was the gloom of therice-fields. A low sobbing sound came in the wind; it was the bubblingchorus of the frogs, and across it he heard the bark of a peasant's dog.
To the right a dark hill loomed without warning, with a dimcongeries of red tea-houses. It was the famous Ikegami, the shrineof the Buddhist saint Ichiren, famed for its plum-gardens. It fellaway behind, and now, far off, a score of miles ahead, grew up onthe horizon a misty blotch of radiance. Yokohama! He swerved,heading out across the lagoon, straight as the bee flies for theshimmering spot. Pst-pst--pst-pst--faster and faster spat the tinyexplosions. The Glider throbbed and sang like a thing alive, and thehum of the propeller shrilled into a scream.
Tokyo was far behind now, the pale glow ahead rising and spreading. Tothe right he could see the clumped lights of the villages along therailroad, Kamata--Kawasaki--Tsurumi. He dropped still lower, out of thelash of the wind.
Suddenly a flying missile struck the forward plane, which resounded likea great drum. A drop of something red fell on his bare hand and afeathered body fell like a stone between his feet. A dark carpet, dottedwith foam, seemed to spring up out of the gulf. Daunt threw himself atthe levers and rammed them back. The Glider had almost touched thesea--for a heartbreaking instant he thought it could never rise. Heheard the curl of the waves, and a cry from behind him. Then, slowly,slowly, breasting the blast, it came staggering up the hill of air tosafety.
The sky was perceptibly lightening now. Daunt realized it with atightening of all his muscles. It was the first tentative withdrawal ofthe forces of the dark. Should he be in time? With his free hand heloosened the coil of the grapnel. Suddenly the chances seemed allagainst success. A feeling of hopelessness caught him. He thought of thetwo men he had left behind, waiting--waiting. What message would come tothem that morning?
The engine was doing its best, every fiber of tested steel and canvasringing and throbbing. But the creeping pallor of the night grew apace.Kanagawa:--the Glider swooped above it, left it behind. The misty glowwas all around now, lights pricked up through the shadow. Yokohama wasunder his feet, and ahead--the darker mass toward which he washurtling--was the Bluff.
Slowly, with painful anxiety, he swung the huge float in to skirt thecliff's seaward edge. There was the naval hospital with its flag-staff.There beyond, was the familiar break in the rampart of foliage--andthere, flapping in the wind, was the awning on the flat roof of theRoost. In the dawning twilight, it seemed a monstrous, leprous lichen,shuddering at the unholy thing it hid. Daunt threw out the grapnel.
He curved sharply in, aslant to the wind, flung down his prow andswooped upon it. There was a tearing, splintering complaint of canvasand bamboo; the Glider seemed to stop, to tremble, then leaped on.Turning his head, Daunt saw the awning disappear like a collapsed kite.He caught a glimpse, on the steep, ascending roadway of a handful ofnaked men running staggeringly, one straggler far behind. The thoughtflashed through his mind that these were the cadets from the NavalCollege. But they would be too late! The sun was
coming too swiftly. Thesky was a tide of amethyst--the dawn was very near! He came about in awide loop that took him out over the bay, making the turn with the wind.For a fraction of a second he looked down--on the Squadron ofbattle-ships, a geometrical cluster of black blots from which straightwisps of dark smoke spun like raveled yarn into the formless obscurity.A shrill, mad laugh came from behind him.
Daunt was essaying a gigantic figure-of-light whose waist was the flatbungalow roof. It was a difficult evolution in still sunlight and over alevel ground. He had now the semi-darkness, and the sucking down-draftsof the wind that made his flight, with its driving falls and recoveries,seem the careless fury of a suicide. Yet never once did his hand waver,never did that strange, tense coolness desert him.
As he swept back, like a stone in the sling of the wind, he saw thething he had come to destroy. It had the appearance of a large camera,set on a spidery tripod near the edge of the flat roof, its lenspointing out over the anchorage. Landing was out of the question; toslacken speed meant to fall. He must strike the machine with the body ofthe Glider or with the grapnel. To strike the roof instead meant to behurled headlong, mangled or dead, his errand unaccomplished, downsomewhere in that medley of roofs and foliage. The chances that he coulddo this seemed suddenly to fade to the vanishing point. A wave ofprofound hopelessness chilled his heart.
With Phil's mad, derisive laughter ringing in his ears, he dropped theGlider's stem and drove it obliquely across. The grapnel bounded andclanged along the tiling, missing the tripod by three feet. On, in anupward staggering lunge, then round once more, wearing into the wind.
There was no peal of laughter now from the man clinging to the steelrib. With the clarity of the lunatic Phil saw how close the swoop hadbeen. The scourge of the wind and the rapid flight through the rarefiedair had exalted him to a cunning frenzy. He had no terror of themoment--all his fear centered in the to-morrow. To his derangedimagination the black square on the tripod represented his safety. Hehad forgotten why. But Bersonin had made him see it clearly. It must notbe touched! Daunt was the devil--he was trying to send him to thecopper-mines, to work underground, with chains on his feet, as long ashe lived!
The Glider heeled suddenly and slid steeply downward. Daunt gripped thelevers and with all his strength warped up the forward plane. He felt apang of sharpened agony. He, too, would fail! The crash was almost uponhim. But the Glider hung a moment and righted. Farther and farther hetwisted the laterals, till she swam up, oscillating. A jerk ran throughher after framework; he turned his head. Clinging with foot and hand,his hair streaming back from his forehead, his lips wide, Phil wasdrawing himself, inch by inch, along the sagging guy-wire toward him.
For a rigid second Daunt could not move a muscle. Then, caught by theupper wind, the perilous tilting of the planes awoke him. He swung headon, wavered, and swooped a last time for the roof.
Pst-pst--pst-pst--Crash! The curved irons of the grapnel tore away thecoping--slid, screaming. A jolt all but threw him from his seat. Therewere running feet somewhere far below him--a battering and shattering ofglass in the piazza. He felt a sudden clearance and the big aeroplaneplunged sidewise out over the bay, with a black, unwieldy weight, thatspun swiftly, hanging on its grapnel.
A shout tore its way from his lips. Heedless of direction, he wrenchedwith his fingers to unship the grapnel chain. At the same instant thefirst sunbeam slid across the waves and turned the misty gloom to thegolden-blue glory of morning.
And with it, as though the voice of the day itself, there went out overthe water, above the sweep of the wind, a single piercing-sweet note ofmusic, like the cry of a great, splendid bird calling to the sunrise.Fishermen in tossing _sampan_, and sailors on heaving _junk_ heard it,and whispered that it was the cry of the _kaminari_, the thunder-animal,or of the _kappa_ that lures the swimmer to his death. An icy blastseemed to shoot past the Glider into the zenith. Staring, Daunt realizedthat one of the great planes, the propeller, the after-framework, withthe man who had clung to it, were utterly gone--that the Glider, like adead bird caught by the thudding twinge of a bullet, was lunging by itsown momentum--to its fall! Had Phil fallen, or was it--
Suddenly he felt himself flung backward, then forward on his face. Thespreading vanes, crumpled edgewise, like squares of cardboard, weresliding down. He saw the shipping of the bay spread beneath him--thetwin lighthouses, one red, one white, on the ends of the breakwater--theblack Dreadnaughts--a steamer with bright red funnels--a fleet offishing _sampan_ putting out. All were swelling larger and larger. Thewind, blowing upward around him, stole his breath, and he felt the bloodbeating in his temples. He heard ships' bells striking, and across thesound a temple-bell boomed clearly. A mist was coming before his eyes.Just below him was a white yacht; it seemed to be rushing up to meet himlike a swan.
Thoughts darted through his brain like live arrows. The battle-shipswere saved! No shameful suspicion should touch Japan's name in thehighways of the world! What matter that he lost the game? What didone--any one--count against so much?
He thought of Barbara. He would never know now what she had been aboutto tell him that night at the Nikko shrine! He would never see heragain! But she would know ... she would know!
The sound of the sea--a great roaring in his ears.