"Just so," remarked Sir Reginald. "And here," he continued, "it seems
to me that we reach the most important point in the whole adventure.
This convict-ship will, of course, carry a small detachment of troops as
a guard over the convicts; do you think that we four are sufficient to
capture a ship carrying a crew of, say, thirty or forty men, with
probably, a like number of soldiers?"
The professor seemed to be rather taken aback at this question.
"It has not occurred to me that there will be any difficulty in the
matter," he answered. "What do our military friends say?"
"Well," responded the colonel, "the task you propose to set us seems to
be, at first sight, rather a tall order. Remember, we have thus far had
no experience of the capabilities of the _Flying Fish_ as a fighting
ship; and, to tell you the truth, I have almost forgotten the details of
her armament, and how it is worked."
"I have not," answered Mildmay. "She is fitted with a torpedo port
for'ard, for firing what the professor called `torpedo-shells'; two
10-inch breech-loading rifled guns, fired through ports in the
dining-saloon, and six Maxim guns, fired from the upper deck, to say
nothing of small-arms. Such an armament is ample for every occasion
which is at all likely to arise; and if the professor will only furnish
me with the particulars of which he has spoken, as to the sailing and so
on of the ship, I will undertake to find and capture her. But I presume
you are all fully aware that such capture will be an act of piracy?"
"Y-e-es," replied Sir Reginald, hesitatingly; "but thus far I have been
influenced by the conviction that the end justifies the means. Still,
if you, Mildmay, or you, Lethbridge, have any qualms of conscience--"
"`Nary a qualm,' as our cousins, the Yankees, would say," answered
Mildmay, cheerfully; "only, remember this, we must take the whole onus
and responsibility of the act upon our own shoulders; we must show no
colours--unless you feel disposed to sport a `Jolly Roger' for this
occasion only. What I particularly mean is, that we must take care not
to betray our nationality, and so involve Great Britain in a difficulty
with Russia. So long as that contingency is avoided, I shall be ready
to become a pirate of as deep a dye as you please."
"We will take whatever precautions you may deem necessary in that
respect," answered Sir Reginald; "in fact, I thought it was quite
understood by us all that every such precaution _would_ be taken, or I
would have especially mentioned the matter. And now, Professor, as to
the disposal of Vasilovich--when we have caught him. Your idea, I
believe, is to hand him over to the authorities aboard the convict-ship,
in place of Colonel Sziszkinski; but will the authorities accept him,
think you?"
"Yes," said the professor, "I believe they will. So long as they are
able to account satisfactorily at Sakhalien for the full number of
convicts placed in their charge, I do not think they will care whether
one of them declares himself to be Count Vasilovich, or not; they will
simply assign to him the number which Colonel Sziszkinski now bears, and
that will end the matter. If not, we must maroon the fellow upon some
spot from which it will be practically impossible for him to escape, as
he is altogether too wicked a man to be permitted the opportunity to
perpetrate further wrong."
"Oh, we will find a means of satisfactorily disposing of the fellow,
never fear," rejoined Sir Reginald. "And now, our plan of campaign
being complete, when do we start? To-night?"
"That is for you to say," answered the professor. "So far as the
capture of Vasilovich is concerned, if we arrive within sight of his
chateau by nightfall, or in time to berth the _Flying Fish_ in his park
with the last of the daylight, we shall be quite early enough. And if
the weather happens to remain calm, as it is at present, we can
accomplish the run from here to Saint Petersburg in eight hours; while,
with a moderately fresh breeze against us, we can do the distance in
about nine and a half hours. But we must not forget that Saint
Petersburg time is two hours and five minutes fast on Greenwich time,
and we must make our dispositions accordingly. Taking everything into
consideration, I am of opinion that if we leave here to-morrow morning
about seven o'clock, it will be early enough.
"There is, however, one other point to consider: I presume you will
desire to attract as little attention as possible; in which event I
would suggest that a start from here should be made, say, about two
hours before daylight to-morrow morning, which will afford us time to
make a long circular sweep in a north-easterly direction, clearing the
British Isles before dawn. After that we shall almost certainly meet
with weather which will enable us to conceal our movements by remaining
all day above the lower cloud level, a mode of procedure which will
possess the further recommendation of being advantageous to your
daughter's health by keeping her in a dry, pure, bracing atmosphere."
"Such an arrangement would mean that we must all take up our quarters on
board to-night," remarked Sir Reginald. "How would that suit your
convenience, dear?" he inquired of Lady Olivia.
"Quite well," answered her ladyship. "Everything that Ida or I shall
require is already on board, and, so far as we are concerned, it makes
no difference whether we go on board immediately, or some time
to-morrow. Only, if you should decide to accept Professor von
Schalckenberg's suggestion, I should like to know soon, as it is nearly
Ida's bedtime; and if we are to start early to-morrow morning, I will
send her and Nurse on board at once."
And so it was presently arranged, the whole party making their way to
the ship together, and there and then taking possession of their
quarters.
It wanted a few minutes of four o'clock the next morning, when Professor
von Schalckenberg rose from his couch and, wrapping himself in a
gorgeous dressing-gown, made his way quietly to one of the luxurious
bathrooms with which the _Flying Fish_ was fitted, where he took his
matutinal cold tub, returning, a quarter of an hour later, to his cabin,
fresh and vigorous, to find that, according to orders, George, the chief
steward, had already brought a cup of coffee for his delectation while
dressing. And punctually at a quarter to five the professor might have
been seen making his way, on slippered feet, into the pilot-house.
Arrived there, he turned on an electric light of moderate power and,
with the assistance of the illumination thus furnished, peered about him
as he satisfied himself that everything was in perfect order. Then he
laid his hand upon the crank of a large wheel within reach, and gave the
wheel three or four turns, directing his gaze, meanwhile, upon two large
dials which were attached, side by side, to the wall of the pilot-house.
Each of these dials was provided with an index hand, both of which
began to move almost simultaneously with the first movement of the large
wheel by the professor. One of the dials was simply a very sensitive
and accurate pressure gauge; the other was an instrument for registering
the weight of the ship, or the pressure with which she bore upon the
ground. The index hands of both dials were travelling backwards towards
zero along their respective graduated arcs; and simultaneously with the
registration by the pressure gauge of a pressure of six pounds--which
indicated the air-pressure in the air-chambers of the ship--the other
dial registered zero, thus indicating that the partial exhaustion of the
air in the air-chambers had rendered the ship so buoyant that she was
now deprived of weight and was upon the point of floating upward,
balloon-like, in the air. Another moment, and the incredible was
happening; the ship had become converted into a gigantic metallic
balloon, and the professor, extinguishing the electric light which
illuminated the interior of the pilot-house, peered out through one of
the circular ports in the walls of the structure, to see by the
starlight that the _Flying Fish_ had already left the earth, and, in the
still air, was rising in a perfectly horizontal position past the tops
of the trees in the park.
"Good!" muttered the lonely scientist to himself. "Everything works
just as sweetly as it did that night, six years ago, when we backed out
of the building-shed on the banks of the Thames, and started upon our
first memorable journey!"
He reversed the great wheel controlling the valve which admitted the
vapour that drove the air out of the air-chambers of the great ship,
thus creating a vacuum there by the subsequent and almost instant
condensation of the vapour, and, softly made his way out on deck where,
walking to the rail, he looked forth upon the landscape that was dimly
widening out beneath him as the _Flying Fish_ continued to float gently
upward.
It was a beautifully fine, clear, starlit night, without the faintest
suspicion of a cloud anywhere in the soft, velvety blue-black dome of
the sky; and presently, when the professor's eyes had grown accustomed
to the dim, mysterious radiance of the twinkling constellations, he was
able to see the landscape steadily unfolding around him like a map, in a
rapidly widening circle, as the great ship steadily attained an
ever-increasing altitude in the breathless atmosphere. For some ten
minutes the scientist remained thoughtfully leaning upon the rail,
watching the noble expanse of park beneath him dwindle into a mere dark,
insignificant blot upon the face of the country, dotted here and there
with feebly twinkling lights, until the sleeping waters of the Channel
came into view to the southward. Then he returned to the pilot-house,
turned on the electric light once more, and glanced at the barometer.
It registered a height of nearly six thousand feet above the sea-level.
This seemed to satisfy the professor; for he opened a valve which
admitted air into the hull, leaving it open until the mercury ceased to
fall in the tube. Then he drew from his pocket a paper which he had
obtained from Mildmay a few hours before, carefully studied for a few
moments the instructions written thereon, and, refolding the paper,
began to manipulate certain of the levers and valves by which he was
surrounded. As he did so a gentle, scarcely perceptible thrill stirred
the gigantic structure which bore him--a humming sound, low at first,
but rapidly increasing in intensity, arose and came floating in through
the pilot-house windows--all of which the professor thereupon closed--
and, seizing the tiller, the lone watcher thrust it gently over, fixing
his gaze meanwhile upon the illuminated compass card of the binnacle.
Presently a certain point on the compass card floated round opposite the
"lubber's mark," whereupon the professor pulled toward him a small lever
upon which he had laid his hand, and two slender steel arms forthwith
slid in through a slit in the side of the compass bowl, one on each side
of a slender needle that projected up through the edge of the compass
card. This ingenious piece of mechanism at once caused the ship to
become self-steering. Then the professor gave three or four turns to a
wheel which controlled the valve admitting vapour to the engine,
throwing the valve wide open, whereupon the humming sound suddenly rose
to a loud and rather high, but pleasing, note as the huge propeller
whirled round at its full speed of one thousand revolutions per minute.
At the same moment the professor noted the exact time by a clock that
formed a portion of the complicated furniture of the pilot-house, and
then, seating himself in a comfortable deck chair, he proceeded to make
certain calculations upon a leaf of a notebook which he drew from his
pocket. At the expiration of a period of twenty minutes the professor
threw the self-steering apparatus out of gear for a moment, altered the
course a trifle to the eastward, threw the self-steering apparatus into
gear again, and waited another twenty minutes, when the same process was
repeated a second time, and so on, a slight alteration of the ship's
course being effected at intervals of twenty minutes. The professor was
causing the ship to make the long, circular sweep of which he had spoken
to Sir Reginald a few hours earlier.
At length, as the lonely scientist sat there in the pilot-house, plunged
in deep thought, and mechanically performing the simple operations
necessary to enable him to alter the course of the ship from time to
time, the mirror-like discs of the scuttles in the walls of the
pilot-house gradually underwent a subtle change of colour--from deepest
black, through an infinite variety of shades of grey, to a pure, rich
blue which, in its turn, merged into a delicate primrose hue, while the
incandescent lamp in the dome-like roof of the structure as gradually
lost its radiance until it became a mere white-hot thread in the growing
flood of cold morning light. Meanwhile the moment arrived for a further
alteration in the course of the ship; and as the professor rose to his
feet to effect it he realised that not only had the day broken, but also
the sun was about to rise, for long, spoke-like shafts of clear white
light were radiating upward into the blue from a point broad on the
starboard bow.
As he realised this, he reached forward, turned a button, and the
glowing film of the electric lamp overhead dulled into blackness and
disappeared.
Then, stepping to one of the scuttles, the professor looked out through
the thick disc of plate-glass, and beheld a sight of beauty that is
given only to the adventurous few to look upon--a sea of dense, opaque,
fleecy cloud, white as the driven snow in the high lights, with its
irregular surface, some sixteen hundred feet below, broken up into a
thousand tender, delicate, pearly shadows that came and went, and
momentarily changed their tints as the _Flying Fish_ swept over them at
a speed of one hundred and twenty miles an hour.
"Ha, ha!" exclaimed the professor, as he gazed forth upon the wondrous
sight. "Good! I expected as much. Now we are safe from observation so
long as this cloud-bank intervenes between us and the earth; when it
passes away we must--But what am I thinking about? The sun is about to
rise. I must call her ladyship, and my little friend Feodorovna--it
will be far too splendid a sight for them to lose!"
So saying the worthy man turned and hurried down the staircase toward
what may be termed the main, or principal, deck of the ship. As he
descended he became aware of the sound of gay voices, male and female;
and when he reached the vestibule he found one of the doors of the
dining-saloon wide open. It was from this apartment that the voices
proceeded, and, entering, he found the entire party--with the exception
of little Ida and her nurse--seated at the table, warmly attired, and
partaking of coffee.
"Hillo, Professor, good morning!" shouted Sir Reginald, as his eyes fell
upon the newcomer. "You are just in the nick of time. George, a cup of
coffee for Herr von Schalckenberg! So you have made a start, Professor;
but you must have done it very gently, for none of us was awakened by
the movement of the ship. Where are we now?"
"If it is as calm now as it was when we started, we ought to be over the
mouth of the Humber, and just leaving the shores of England behind us,"
answered the professor. "But I cannot tell for certain," he continued,
"because, as you may have noticed, there is a dense sea of cloud below
us, through which we can see nothing. My object in leaving the
pilot-house was to call Lady Elphinstone and my young friend,
Feodorovna, to come up and see the sun rise over the clouds. But you
must come up at once, or you will be too late."
"Where are we to go, Professor--out on the deck?" asked Lady
Elphinstone.
"Certainly not, dear lady," answered the professor, earnestly. "You
must witness the phenomenon through the closed windows of the
pilot-house. If you were to go out on deck, you would be swept away in
a moment by the hurricane force of the wind created by the ship as she
rushes through the atmosphere. And if perchance you were fortunate
enough to escape being blown overboard, you would be made seriously ill
by the sudden change, from the dense air which you are now breathing, to
the highly rarefied air outside. For this same reason it is also
necessary that, while the ship is in flight, all ports and doors
communicating with the exterior atmosphere should be kept tightly
closed. But come, the sun is rising," he said, as a flash of golden
light darted in through the scuttles; "you must not miss this sight."
With one accord the whole party rose and followed the professor, as he
eagerly led the way up the double flight of steps into the upper storey
of the pilot-house; and in another moment the two ladies were
advantageously placed at two contiguous scuttles whence they could
obtain the best possible view of the phenomenon, while the men grouped
themselves elsewhere.
It was a magnificent spectacle upon which the party looked out. Beneath
them, and as far as the eye could reach on every hand, stretched the
vast, unbroken sea of cloud, heaped together in gigantic masses of the
most extraordinary shapes, as though some giant hand had strewn a
boundless plain with great, carelessly heaped piles of light, soft,
fleecy, snow-white cotton wool, over the eastern edge of which the sun
was just rising into view, while his brilliant, lance-like beams darted
and played over and through the piles of vapour in a glory of prismatic
colour that beggared description. The beauty and glory of the scene
consisted indeed solely in the shimmering and shifting play of every
conceivable shade and tone of richest and purest and most brilliant
colour; and its most charming effect lasted only a brief minute or two,
when the colours gradually became lost in an all-pervading white of
dazzling purity.
"It was lovely, Professor; the most beautiful sight I have ever beheld,"
exclaimed Lady Elphinstone, as she presently turned away from the
ice-cold glass of the scuttle. "What did you think of it, dear?" to
Feodorovna.
"I can only say, with you, dear Lady Elphinstone, that it was the most
beautiful sight I have ever beheld," answered Feodorovna. "It was as
wonderful, too, as it was beautiful, but an even greater wonder, to me,
is the undoubted fact that this huge--ship, I suppose I must call it--is
actually floating in the air at a greater altitude than the clouds
themselves. Although I know it to be the case, from the evidence of my
own senses, my imagination is scarcely powerful enough to realise the
circumstance as a sober fact. And I am lost in wonder, too, at the
magnificence of everything around me. The ship is literally a palace;
and everything is so solid and substantial that, although I know myself
to be hundreds--perhaps thousands--of feet above the earth, I have not a
particle of fear!"
"Fear?" exclaimed the professor, with a laugh. "You would not be
Colonel Sziszkinski's daughter if you were afraid. But in very truth
there is nothing to be afraid of, here; this ship is as safe as any ship
that ever rode the sea; and for precisely the same reason. In the case
of an ocean ship, she will float upon the sea so long as the water is
excluded from her hull; and, in the same way, _this_ ship will float in
the air so long as the air is excluded from her vacuum chambers. The
same natural law applies in both cases."