At last everything seemed in readiness.
The beautiful grounds of the Quarry were black with thousands upon
thousands of anxious spectators, and at a signal from the aeronaut
Casteno and I, amidst loud cheers from the mob in the enclosure, took
our places first in the car. There was room for a third passenger, and
for a few seconds the Spaniard and I debated eagerly whether we should
have Doris or the hunchback as the last party in the trio, and, if so,
what line we ought to take with them lest they should suspect we were
not those harmless members of a curious section of the public which we
had given ourselves out to be. Unfortunately, as it happened, we were
destined to have as travelling companion a total stranger to both of us.
All at once we saw Doris beckon to the captain, and when he approached
she introduced him to a tall venerable-looking figure with a long white
beard.
"This is the Professor Stephen Leopardi of the Meteorological Office,
whom I mentioned to you," she said in her clear, ringing tones. "He is
an old friend of my father and myself from London, but just now he
happens to be staying near the Wrekin, and he is very anxious, if you
will take him, to make the ascent with you. He is a man of science too,
of considerable reputation, and any testimony he can bear to the uses of
your invention must, in the natural course of things, be very valuable
to you."
"Quite so! Quite so!" rejoined both Captain Sparhawk and the hunchback,
whose eyes gleamed with avarice at the prospect of getting so famous an
expert to go with them and to speak up for them without a fee. "We
shall really be only too delighted if the professor will make the sixth
in our party--if he will consent to do so. There is a very nice seat
vacant in the car we have reserved for independent passengers. Will he
honour us by occupying that?" And with a good many flourishes and bows
on both sides the scientist, to our profound disgust, was hoisted on to
a seat next to Casteno and myself, thus cutting off for good all chance
of our carrying on any private conversation or of giving each other any
confidential hints.
A few minutes later Doris and the hunchback entered the adjacent car.
Captain Sparhawk shook hands warmly with some of his more prominent
supporters and friends on the committee and followed them, and the next
moment he blew a shrill call on a small whistle attached to the motor,
close to which he had taken up his position, ready to set all the
machinery at work.
There was a loud crash of cannon, an ear-splitting salvo of cheers as
one by one the guide-ropes slipped out of their blocks, and finally the
air-ship "Doris" rose free from her moorings and went sailing like a
bird across the river Severn in the direction of Welshpool.
At first the sensation was delightful. The earth and its people and
features dropped away from us, until we seemed to have risen out of the
hollow of a basin. There was no sense of ascent at all. The world
slipped away from us, and not we away from the world. One by one the
sounds died out, until at last we could only catch the hoarse barking of
some sheep-dogs which must have seen us with those keen eyes of theirs
and thought mischief was astir. Clouds, too, began to rush swiftly
towards us, and soon we found ourselves enveloped in a soft, clinging,
whitish mist, which blotted out all sight of the earth we had left
behind us.
We were now being carried upward with a terrific force, and insensibly
all of us turned our eyes towards Captain Sparhawk to see how he was
going to acquit himself and his machine now the time of real trial had
come. After all, any balloon could rise like this had done. Indeed,
all balloons had been able to accomplish as much since the days of the
Brothers Montgolfier. It was on the steering--directing--descent that
the fame of the "Doris" and all modern flying machines had to rest. How
would the vessel behave in a wild upward dash like ours?
Alas! we had not long to wait for an answer.
All at once we saw Captain Sparhawk stagger and throw up his arms. The
wind had blown his coat, which he had carelessly left unfastened,
against the motor, and the petroleum ignition had set the dry woollen
material on fire. In vain he tried to extinguish the flames. They
spread with hideous rapidity, and at last, frantic with pain, he
scrambled on to the framework, and dashed headlong to the earth, a
seething mass of fire.
For a moment, I believe, all our hearts stood still with terror.
Freed, too, from the burden of Captain Sparhawk's weight, the air-ship
shot upward at a most amazing rate of speed. At first it gave two great
violent lurches, as though the loss of that twelve or fourteen stone of
ballast would send it heeling over, with its cars at a crazy angle
'twixt earth and heaven, but, luckily, in our consternation we all made
various movements that served to right the vessel, and later we found
ourselves safe, at all events for the moment, but perfectly helpless.
By this time, too, there was not a trace of the world to be seen. We
were simply surrounded with clouds, which seethed about us in white,
clinging vapour and wrapped themselves about our clothes and faces as
though we had been overtaken in a mist on some Scottish moor.
"Something will have to be done," said the professor sternly, turning
suddenly to Casteno and myself, his sole travelling companions in that
car. "We can expect no assistance from that old hunchback or that girl,
Miss Napier, in the other compartment. Do either of you gentlemen
understand anything about air-ships?" And he gave a quick, scrutinising
gaze at our uniforms, as though he could find thereon some badge which
showed we belonged to the ballooning section of the Royal Engineers.
"We know nothing whatever," replied Jose quietly, stamping up and down
to keep his feet warm. "We have come, for pleasure we thought it, and
here is the result."
"Besides, professor," I cut in, "are not you really the one to take
charge of operations at this juncture? I understand that you come from
the Meteorological Office and that ventures like this fall under your
review in your department. Surely you know enough of ballooning by
which, even if you couldn't make the machine perform like the inventor
intended it should, you could at least take us back to the earth."
"I am not so sure about that," said the man quickly, and then all at
once he stopped and bit his lip. It was obvious that he had said a
little more than he intended, and a new suspicion about him gathered
shape and force in my mind. Suppose he were not the Professor Stephen
Leopardi that Doris had pretended but some other spy sent by Cuthbertson
to keep an eye on the hunchback?
"Well, at all events, we can't go blindly to death like this," I
snapped. "Look, there is Miss Napier making signals to us with her
handkerchief? Where, though, is the hunchback? Ah! I see. The fright
has been too much for him. He has collapsed, fainted, and dropped like
a log to the seat on the side of the car. We must do something or she
will grow frantic." And waving a hand to her I, half unconscious of
what I had myself resolved upon, scrambled on to the stays of the
machine and began to crawl like a monkey towards the tiny platform from
which poor Captain Sparhawk had fallen, and on which stood the motor and
the different cords and levers that controlled the machine.
"Come back! Come back!" Casteno shouted. "Are you mad, man? Don't
you understand that in a cold, rarefied atmosphere like this the gas in
the balloon is bound to condense, and that, as surely as an apple drops
from a tree to the earth instead of the sky, by the law of gravitation,
we must land on terra firma again?"
But his appeal fell on ears that were deaf to all save one voice. Above
the swirl and the wind I had heard Doris call to us, and nought else
mattered. Doris was frightened. Doris wanted somebody near to her
besides that senseless Spaniard. Doris dreaded what might happen. That
must not be, and so, with eyes fixed resolutely on her graceful figure
standing silhouetted against the clouds, I shut my lips tightly and
crept along that dizzy path that separated me from her. What if she did
not know me in that disguise? I, at least, knew her, and, should the
need come, I would, I swore to myself, cheerfully lay down my life to
save her from harm.
That passage from the car to the platform could not have occupied more
than seven or eight seconds. To me it seemed as though hours had passed
before I got to that platform and stood up by that complicated series of
levers, with hands firmly gripped to the steel rails that ran round on
three sides, the bulky outline of the motor shutting in the fourth. At
length, however, I stood there, and realised I had not reached it one
instant too soon, for just at that moment the air-ship struck a warmer
strata of atmosphere and began to move on a dizzy and bewildering
course, now shooting upward like a rocket, then striking a cold wind,
and collapsing like a stricken bird.
"Pull some of those levers, man. Get the rudder at work," shouted the
professor through his hands as the machine commenced to career sideways
through the air like a torpedo. "These cars will be flattened out if
you don't accomplish something soon."
But my blood was up after my dizzy crawl through space, and I felt I
could not brook interference. "Throw that idiot out if he says another
word," I shouted to Casteno. Then I turned to Doris. "Don't be
frightened, Miss Napier," I cried, "just trust me, and, if all goes
well, we shall before five minutes are over be safe on land again." And
then I bent down and studied the machinery by which I was surrounded.
A ship's compass warned me of the position of the levers that controlled
the rudder, and after three or four experimental turns of the latter I
got the great monster in hand. Indeed, so queerly constituted are we
men who love adventure that, no sooner did I find the air-ship obey my
movements, than I promptly forgot all the dangers of my position, and,
almost with boyish joy, I began to manoeuvre the vessel, first in one
direction and then in another, until in the end I found I could make it
head on whatever course I wished.
Unfortunately, none of those movements brought the machine any nearer to
the earth, and I had to turn to try other levers, the objects of which
were not quite so apparent. My first experiment shut off the control of
the motor. My second extinguished the electrical ignition altogether,
and I found that as the screw ceased to revolve we began to fall to the
earth at a tremendous pace.
What was I to do? For a second, I confess, I had the wildest thoughts
of throwing everything portable overboard and trusting to luck to get
everything started again. Then, all at once, something seemed to
whisper to me: "The motor has stopped. Now the thing is no longer a
flying machine but a balloon; treat it as a balloon. Find the cord that
controls the valves in the top of the bag and pull those, and let all
the gas escape, and come down to earth like a bird that is spent and
tired."
Like a man dazed I threw out my hands and gripped what ropes I could
that looked at all like guide-ropes. The first I seized sent my
platform heeling over sideways, and it was nothing less than a miracle
that I did not fall off its inclined surface so sudden was the change of
balance. Happily, the second I snatched controlled the valves in the
top of the balloon. It answered to a touch, and the gas went roaring
through the aperture like a typhoon.
"Throw yourselves into the bottom of the cars," I shouted to the
occupants of the two compartments. "We are racing towards the earth at
a terrific pace. In a few seconds we shall reach it. We shall strike
it gently enough because of the law of gravity and of the compensating
ballonet we carry above the propeller, but I don't want one of you to
get frightened and to leap out of the ship before all the gas is
exhausted, otherwise we shall go careering up again, and the entire ship
then will fall and dash itself and us into pieces. Trust to its steady
collapse." And seizing an anchor that was fastened to the guide-rails
of the platform I flung this over the side, and then crouched myself on
a kind of huge buoy that hung just above the platform, through which all
the different ropes of the machine seemed to pass.
Fortunately, everybody was too impressed by the way in which I had
guided the ship in the first instance to have noticed how badly I had
managed in the second in stopping the use of the motor, and so at my
words they dropped down amongst the ballast in the bottom of the cars,
and with teeth clenched and hands gripping the framework they awaited
the inevitable crash.
Down--down--down we went--down into space!
The clouds shot past us as though they were driven out of our path by
some tornado. The wind roared in our ears.
We caught sight of the earth, and it rushed up to meet us as if it would
there and then pulverise us into a million atoms.
Next instant everything appeared to change like magic. Instead of one
wild, dizzy, headlong flight to the ground we seemed to be upborne on
some mighty pinions that were moving with great force but steadiness as
we dropped, tired and glad, into our native sphere.
Slowly, steadily, like a bird coming to rest, we touched the earth again
on a wide expanse of grassland. Then women and children started up
about us, and, before we knew what had happened, we heard about us the
thunders of British cheers, and found ourselves caught up in the arms of
eager and excited admirers; whilst once again the good ship "Doris" lay
on its side on the ground, slowly panting out from its shrunken ribs the
gas that had lifted us to such dizzy dangers and heights.
For myself, I own, I should have been strongly tempted to yield to that
joyous sensation of peace and safety again, and have done like Doris,
the hunchback, and Professor Leopardi, and dropped promptly into
blissful unconsciousness, had not Casteno fought his way towards me as
soon as the excitement and the mob permitted and caught me tightly by
the arm.
"Look here," he whispered. "This, remember, is the real time of our
trial, not up there above the clouds. Make one false move here and
you'll ruin everything."
"How? What do you mean?" I muttered, blinking my eyes.
"Why, Leopardi is a spy, and so is Miss Napier. They are following the
hunchback, and with good reason. They are keeping watch on those three
manuscripts which he probably carries on his person. Neither Lord Cyril
nor they intend that he shall keep them."
"Well, what of that?" I murmured, for the fall through space had dulled
the edge of my brain.
"Well, they will steal them at the first opportunity. The deeds no
longer belong to my father, remember, but to the British Government, who
have purchased them, and who are only letting him retain them now so
that he may not give the fact of their existence away until they have
got their other diplomatic arrangements complete. The pretence that
they want him to translate them or to decipher them is all fudge. They
have two or three experts in cipher at the Foreign Office whose business
it is to decode all secret messages, plans, documents, and treaties of
which the Secret Service obtains possession. Now, those are the men
whom they will trust to handle them, not the keeper of a curiosity shop
in Westminster."
"Admitted," I said testily; "but what's that to do with us at this
precise moment, when none of us know whether we are quite dead or alive?
Let the Government try to get them first, then we can act. We can
either side with your father, the hunchback, or with the authorities;
but, for heaven's sake, don't worry about it now, here amongst all this
crowd who want to treat us like conquering heroes or half-dead voyagers,
and who won't be put off with a bow, but will want to hear all about us,
and all about our adventures, and how the deuce we managed to arrive in
safety at this point at all."
"They must be tricked," whispered Casteno, with a savage oath.
"Tricked, do you see? You and I have too big a job on just now to pose
as popular heroes. We must take those manuscripts from the hunchback
whilst he is unconscious, and we must get away with them before he or
Miss Napier can have any idea that they or we have gone."
"But that would be a theft," I gasped.
"Not a bit of it," returned Casteno. "Those documents never really
belonged to the hunchback at all, for the dead priest in whose
possession they were found had no title to them."
"Then to whom do they belong?" I questioned.
"Why, to the Order in Mexico, of course," replied the Spaniard. "Now
you are warned, be ready, and keep close to me." And he turned a
smiling face to the crowd who had drawn back from us in respectful
sympathy, thinking, doubtless, that we wished to condole with each other
on the unfortunate state of our companions. In an instant, too, he
seized on this last pretext and acted on it. "Will some of you
gentlemen," he cried in those clear, ringing tones of his, "carry our
three senseless friends here to some place where they can be left in
perfect safety and quietness? We have come on this flying machine trip
from the floral fete at Shrewsbury, but, unfortunately, our leader got
burned to death, and we have all had a terrible shock."
"Poor things! Poor things!" murmured some of the bystanders nearest to
us, and instantly the demeanour of the crowd changed, for they realised
something of the horror of poor Captain Sparhawk's end.
In silence an avenue was opened out for us, a waggonette with a pair of
horses was driven up to the side of the fallen machine, and, tenderly
and carefully, Doris, the hunchback, and the professor were lifted on to
the sides and borne to a farm outbuilding about two hundred yards
distant. Here the five of us were left alone, whilst the two or three
strangers who had constituted themselves our chief helpers closed the
place upon us as they sallied forth to find us doctors and some suitable
refreshments.
"Now," cried Casteno to me immediately I had seen that Doris was safe
and was comfortably placed on a great heap of hay, "understand, we have
not a moment to lose. Any second they may return, or some daring and
inquisitive journalist may force his way in to interview us or to
describe our battered condition. You pretend to be holding your flask
to my father's lips, whilst I search his clothes. Then if one of them
comes to their senses or one of our newly-made friends return it won't
look at all suspicious." And, as half mechanically I did as he had
directed, he flung himself on his knees beside the prostrate hunchback
and passed his hands rapidly over his clothes.
Evidently he knew a good deal of Peter Zouche's methods, for I don't
think his search lasted ten seconds. All at once his fingers closed
over a tiny bag, something like a Catholic scapular, that had been slung
around the hunchback's neck. With trembling fingers he tore this open,
and disclosed to view the three precious manuscripts, which he instantly
seized and packed away in his pocket.
Then he made the bag look as natural as he could, and restored it to its
position under the old man's singlet. As he rose to his feet again I
saw that his face was ghastly white, and his teeth chattered like a man
stricken with ague.
"My God," he muttered, wiping the great beads of perspiration that had
gathered about his temples, "isn't this chase stern--awful? I doubt if
even I should have dared to have tried a terrible move like this had I
not known that there, at St Bruno's at Hampstead, was the key to these
documents awaiting me. But I felt I could not falter now when Camille
Velasquon had braved so much in bringing it from Mexico to London for
me. But, bah! what cowards we are all of us sometimes." And he reeled,
and I am sure he would have fainted had I not instantly caught him
myself and pressed the flask to his lips.
"Now to be off--to be off," he said wildly a moment later, pushing me
aside and staggering towards the exit from the tent. "I feel I can't
breathe here now that I have got these documents. Every nerve I have
seems standing on end urging me to be off."
I turned to look at Doris lying so peacefully in that corner, and then,
half distracted, turned to follow him, but as I did so somebody started
up and confronted us. It was the Professor Stephen Leopardi! His
aspect now was wild and threatening, but we thought merely that the
terrible experiences he had been through above the clouds had
temporarily disturbed the balance of his senses and that we could soothe
him like a child.
"You must not go," he panted, his eyes rolling and his fingers clawing
the empty air. "You must stay with me, I want you. I have seen you.
There is much to explain."
"Quite so," I returned lightly, "but just now we are not in a mood for
conversation, are we? Wait until our companions recover themselves and
my friend and I have had a little fresh air, will you? Then we can all
meet and discuss things, but at present--"
"At present you would steal from that poor man the most precious things
he has," thundered the old fellow, and to our horror he sprang between
us and the exit and then pointed to the prostrate form of the hunchback.
"Oh! never, never shall you escape like that." And before we realised
what he was up to he raised his voice and shrieked: "Help! help! help!"