Captured
That mad whirl downward of our wrecked cruiser is now to me more of
a memory of some strange and torturing dream than a memory of actual
happenings. Flung sidewise and downward against the bridge-room's
floor as our cruiser whirled over with that mighty crash from above, I
glimpsed Macklin and Hilliard tossed about there with me, rolling over
and over. The black gloom of night about us, the mass of our onrushing
ships above, the colossal brilliant air-city beneath, the two wrecked
cruisers that were tumbling downward with our own--all these things
seemed to whirl about us like some great wheel of swift-succeeding
impressions as we glimpsed them in that mad moment through the
bridge-room's whirling windows.
It seemed but a single brief moment before I glimpsed the great mass
of lights, the soaring towers, of the air-city beneath rushing up
toward us with unearthly speed. Even as I glimpsed it another turn of
the spinning ship had thrown Macklin and Hilliard over again, and this
time I clutched for a hold, found one upon the cruiser's wheel. Then,
with the droning of the still-operating motors and the cries of my two
companions and of the crew beneath loud in my ears, I reached with a
great effort toward the control of the motors, clinging to my hold with
a supreme effort. My fingers found that control, but at the moment
they did so I heard a last hoarse cry from Macklin, glimpsed but yards
beneath us, it seemed, the smooth surface of one of the city's narrow
streets, and then flung over the control, shifting all the power of the
motors from our horizontal tube-propellers to our vertical ones. The
next moment a blaze of light seemed all about us, there was a terrific
crash, and as I was hurled back across the bridge-room by the impact,
my head met the metal wall of it and consciousness left me.
When I came to it was to the realization of someone's hands endeavoring
to revive me. I opened my eyes to find myself lying on a long seat of
metal, with above me the metal ceiling of a white-lit room, and with
Macklin and Hilliard bending anxiously over me. I strove to speak to
them, desisted as my first movement made apparent to me a painful
swelling on the side of my head. And then with their helping arms
behind my back I sat up, looked dazedly about me. Then, the memory of
what had happened rushed suddenly back upon me and I was filled with an
abrupt dismay.
For the white-lit room in which I sat, seeming an ante-room to other
chambers beyond, held beside us three a half-dozen of men in the
green, tight-fitting uniforms of the European Federation's forces,
alike save in colour to our own black uniforms. They were ranged
before us, watching us closely, and there swung at the belt of each a
shining, long-barrelled heat-pistol, one of those hand-weapons that
throw heat-cartridges smaller than the great heat-shells and bombs,
but as destructive and deadly on a smaller scale. These six European
Federation soldiers had their heat-pistols ready beneath their hands,
and were contemplating us intently. And as I saw that, and glimpsed
also through the open door to the right of us a great, smooth-floored
plaza and immense buildings towering up into the outside night,
brilliant with lights, and heard the roar of the crowds that seethed
among those buildings, I remembered all that had befallen us, clutched
Macklin's arm tightly.
"The cruiser fell!" I exclaimed. "I remember the crash, now--then this
is Berlin, Macklin, and we're captured!"
"Captured," Macklin quietly said. "You and Hilliard and I were the
only ones to survive our cruiser's crash, Brant--and we survived only
because we were in the ship's bridge-room, its upmost part, when it
crashed. You had been stunned, and before Hilliard and I could recover
from that crash the European guards had swarmed up over the wreck and
captured us, taking us here to the great central electrostatic tower."
"We three the only survivors?" I repeated. "Then--then all our crew--?"
Macklin did not answer, but as his eyes held mine I read my answer in
them, and as I did so something hard seemed to form in my throat. Our
crew--the hundred cheery lads that had manned my cruiser for long, and
each of whom I had known by name--and all annihilated in that great
crash downward which we three in the bridge-room had alone escaped.
I felt Macklin's understanding grip on my shoulder, and then we were
suddenly recalled to realization of our position as a door in the
ante-room's left side clicked open, another green-uniformed figure
emerging from within. He spoke a brief order to our guards in the
European tongue, that Latin-Teutonic combination of languages which
was universal throughout the European Federation and which I myself
spoke and understood to some extent. Instantly our guards motioned us
to the door from which the other had emerged, and as we passed through
that door before them we found ourselves in a larger and circular room,
white-lit like the first.
It was, I saw instantly, the central control-room of the great
power-tower, of the whole great air-city of Berlin. Like the similar
control-room in the power-tower of New York it held on its walls
panel upon panel of dials and gleaming-knobbed switches, while at the
center of the room were also six great controls that directed the
great air-city's movements through the air in any direction, and the
single power or speed-control. Beside these was another great raised
table-map, this one mounted upon a solid block of metal, with upon it
the red circles of the world's air-cities. And beside that map there
sat now a dozen or more men in the same green uniform as our guards,
though with metal wing-like insignia upon their sleeves. They were,
I knew without asking, the highest Air Chiefs and officers of all
the European Federation, gathered here in the control-room of that
Federation's capital city.
The Captors' Threat
For a moment we three faced them in silence, our guards watchful still
behind us, and then the center-most of the seated figures, a swarthy,
black-haired officer with black, probing eyes, whose five metal
wing-insignia marked him as the First Air Chief of the European forces,
spoke to us, in our own tongue.
"You are Captain, First Officer and Second Officer of the American
Federation cruiser which crashed in our streets just as the main body
of your ships escaped," he said, and even at the words my heart raced
with sudden gladness. Our ships had escaped safely back over the
Atlantic, then, as I had known they would! "----and we desire to know,"
the European First Air Chief was continuing, "just what forces remain
to the Americans and which engaged in this attack."
I faced him in utter silence, my own eyes meeting his probing black
ones calmly, and at my silence I saw a contraction of the muscles about
those eyes, a sudden flush beneath his swarthy skin.
"I think it would be best for you to answer," he said quietly, "nor
need you think that silence will help your countrymen in any way. For
though your cruisers struck a great blow at us here in Berlin this
night, though word has reached me that as great a one was struck by
other American ships at Peking, these are but two of the two hundred
great air-cities of our two Federations, but a fraction of our great
forces. And we know that your fleets lost many ships in the battles of
yesterday despite their victories, and desire to know what forces are
left them."
Still in stony silence I stood, my eyes meeting squarely the eyes of
the men before me, while beside me Macklin and Hilliard stood in the
same stiff silence. I saw the European Commander's flush of anger
deepen, saw him half-rise with hand clenched to hurl an order at our
guards, and then he had relaxed back into his seat, was smiling grimly.
"A most unwise course to follow, Captain, you may believe me. I take
it that your officers are as mule-headed? Well, there is no immediate
hurry and a few days of consideration, of meditation, may change your
minds. As a subject for your meditations, you may take my promise
to you that unless you become more communicative at the end of the
fortnight I give you, we shall be forced to use somewhat unpleasant
procedures with you. An earnest consideration of that fact will, I
think, change your viewpoint somewhat."
He turned, snapped an order in his own tongue to the captain of
the guards behind us. "A cell in the one hundredth story for these
three--put them with the other American, and if after a fortnight
they're still stubborn, we'll deal with all four."
Immediately our guards had marched us back to the door through which
we had entered, and across the ante-room beyond through another door
and into a short, broad hall along the sides of which rested the great
tower's lift-cage. We were ordered into one of the cages, our guards
holding their heat-pistols full upon us now, and then as a stud was
pressed and the motors' power was turned through the cage's powerful
vertical tube-propellers, those tube-propellers drove us up with a thin
whistling of air up through the narrow shaft the cages moved in, up
until in a moment more we had stopped and were emerging into a similar
hall on the great tower's hundredth floor. From that hall we moved into
a short corridor that ran the width of the great tower, which at this
height was but a hundred or more feet in diameter, its slender pinnacle
tapering as it rose to its tip, while much of that pinnacle's space was
occupied by the great connections which carried the city's electrical
power down from the mighty tower's tip.
Along that corridor we went, one lined with solid metal doors on either
side, and finally were halted before one of those doors. Then one of
our guards drew from a pocket a small instrument resembling an electric
torch, from which he flashed a tiny beam into a transparent-fronted
little opening in the wall beside the door. At once there came a
clicking of locks, and the door swung open, its locks unbolted by the
beam of light or force, rather, whose vibratory rate was exactly tuned
to affect a delicate receiver tuned to the same frequency, set in the
wall and controlling the lock. These vibration-locks, indeed, had long
ago replaced the old, clumsy keys, and were far safer in that they
responded only to one certain frequency vibration out of the millions
possible, and thus could be opened only by one who knew the correct
frequency. Now, as the door swung open, our guards pointed inside with
their heat-pistols and perforce we stepped within, the door snapping
shut behind us.
We found ourselves in a small, metal-walled cell some ten feet
in length and half that in width, furnished with but a few metal
bunk-racks swung from the walls. At its farther end from us was the
only opening beside the door, a small square window that was quite open
and unbarred, and that looked out over all the colossal mass of the
great air-city of Berlin, a giant field of blazing lights stretching
far around and beneath the great tower in which we were prisoned. Then,
as we gazed about the little cell with our eyes becoming accustomed
to its lack of light, we made out suddenly a figure standing near its
window, a dark, erect figure who seemed watching us for the moment and
who then was striding across the cell toward us.
"Brant!" he exclaimed, as his eyes made out our faces through the dusk.
"Brant--and you were with the ships that attacked the city but now--you
were captured in some way!"
But now my own eyes had penetrated the dusk enough to recognize the
features of the man who was gripping my arms, the keen, daredevil
countenance that I remembered at once.
"Connell!" I cried. "You prisoned here! Then you're the other American
the European First Air Chief ordered us prisoned with. But I had
thought you dead!"
"Dead I might be as well as here," said Connell, suddenly somber. "For
four weeks I have been here, Brant--for weeks before the beginning of
this war. And now that this war has begun I, who alone might save our
American Federation from annihilation in it, am prisoned here with only
death awaiting me, and that in a few days."
I stared at him, astonished. Connell had been one of the cruiser
captains of the American Federation forces for several years, and had
been a friend of my own in those years. A year before he had withdrawn
from active duty, no one knew to where, and finally, but a few weeks
before the breaking forth of this war, our First Air Chief had told
us in answer to our queries that Connell had been sent upon a special
mission, but that since he had not reported for several weeks he had
undoubtedly met death in the course of it. To meet him here, in the
heart of Berlin and prisoned with ourselves, astounded me, and the more
so since from his first words we understood that he had been confined
thus for weeks even before war had burst upon us. But now, motioning
us to seats on the bunk-racks beside us, Connell was questioning us
eagerly as to the course of the combat between the great Federations so
far, and his eyes shone when we described to him that terrific battle
over and in the Atlantic that we had fought but a day before, and that
daring attack on Berlin that he had himself witnessed from his window.
"I saw the European Federation's fleet massing and sailing westward
yesterday," he said, "and knew it was launching its great attack, knew
when it returned disorganized and shattered that the American fleet
had beaten back that attack. But I did not expect this attack you made
on Berlin tonight, and was as astounded as all in the city when you
swooped down with your great bombs. A great blow, Brant--a great and
successful blow against the whole European Federation, yet such a blow
alone cannot halt the menace which it and the Asiatic Federation are
preparing to loose upon our own nation. Such a blow, nor a hundred such
blows, would avail but little in the end against the stupendous plans
and forces that are preparing and massing even now to roll out upon the
American Federation in an avalanche of doom!"
A Strange Tale
He paused, and in the dusky cell Macklin and Hilliard and I sat as
silent as himself, gazing toward him in sudden startled surprise. From
far out over the great air-city about us came the droning of rushing
ships and the dim roar of voices from beneath. But Connell was speaking
again--
"You, nor anyone else, knew where I went when I left active service
in our fleet, none but the first Air Chief, who sent me. That was a
year ago, and he told me then that it was evident that the European
and Asiatic Federations were preparing to attack us, and that rumors
had been heard of some mighty new weapon or plan with which, if their
ordinary forces failed, they would completely crush us. Hundreds of
agents, said the First Air Chief, were being sent to the European and
Asiatic air-cities to try to learn the nature of this new weapon, and
I was one of those to be sent to Berlin, as I knew the European tongue
thoroughly. I was to go in disguise, was to endeavor to work myself
into the European Federation fleet, and was then to risk everything in
an effort to find out what this great new plan or weapon was. And so in
disguise, a year ago, I came here.
"Eight months it took me to work my way into the European fleet,
eight months in which I was chiefly occupied in establishing my new
false identity as a European citizen. Then I enlisted in the fleet,
entering the motor-section. Of course, as a cruiser-captain in our own
fleet, all types of motors were perfectly familiar to me, and I had no
difficulty in swiftly rising through various promotions to the status
of under-officer in one of the European cruisers. Then came at last the
opportunity for which I had waited for months, and which I had begun to
despair of ever occurring. I was ordered to report back from my cruiser
to the First Air Chief's headquarters here in Berlin, and when I did
report I was questioned by a board of a half-dozen European officers
on my knowledge of motors and tube-propellers. It must have seemed to
them that I had unusual ability and knowledge for a mere under-officer,
for they informed me that I had proved satisfactory and that I had been
selected to form one of the workers on a great new work that was being
carried out secretly, and ordered me to report to a certain compartment
in the great air-city's base.
"I reported there, eager now as I sensed myself on the trail of that
which I sought, and found that there were whole vast compartments in
the city's great base in which only selected men and certain high
officers of the European fleet were permitted to venture. These were
the compartments in which were placed the giant tube-propellers which
are set horizontally in the great air-city's base, and which when the
power of its great motors is turned into them move the city in any
desired direction. Every air-city in the world has, as you know, these
great tube-propellers that move it about. But as you know too, so
much of the motors' power must be used in the life of the city, that
the horizontal tube-propeller can only move the great cities through
the air at an extremely slow rate of speed. It is a predicament which
cannot be altered, either, by adding more motors, since to add them you
must add to the city's size, and so the problem remains the same.
"But now, as I found when I first entered those compartments, these
European Federation officers and inventors had solved that problem!
They had devised a way that would enable them to send their gigantic
air-cities rushing through the air at almost the speed of a cruiser
itself! They had done this by devising a wholly new form of horizontal
tube-propeller capable of infinitely greater tractive effect on the
air and rotating at a much higher rate of speed. Thus the great air
cities, miles across and with all their towers upon them, could rush
through the air at hundreds of miles an hour, needing only to use their
vertical tubes when they were hovering motionless in mid-air or were
moving very slowly.
"And _this_ was the great weapon, the great plan, of the European and
Asiatic Federations! For I saw at once that it was a great weapon
indeed, a terrific weapon which would enable them to annihilate all
the air-cities and peoples of our own nation. You see what it meant?
It meant that they could gather together all their scores of giant
air-cities, outnumbering our own one hundred cities by two to one,
and could rush over the oceans at awful speed toward our American
air-cities, could fall upon them with all the giant batteries of
heat-guns with which each colossal city is equipped, like our own. And
because our own would not be able to move at that tremendous speed,
because our own air-cities could only move at a comparatively creeping
rate through the air, they would be able to mass their outnumbering
forces around our own cities and blast them from the air, annihilating
them and all the millions of our people inside them, sending them
hurtling to earth in titanic fusing wrecks!
"To rush forth to battle, to the annihilation of our own cities, in
their great air-cities! To send those gigantic cities of the air,
Berlin and Peking and Tokio and all the scores of others of the two
great Federations, thundering through the air to battle, each with
its masses of towers on it. They have made provision for all people
who are not entirely engaged in battle, to descend to the earth and
remain there in specially constructed buildings. This will help also to
reduce the weight of the cities. That was their great plan, their great
weapon, and I knew that with it, even as they said, they could burst
forth and annihilate our own air-cities. But, holding still to my work
there in the lower compartments, I strove to penetrate the heart of the
secret, the design of the great new horizontal tube-propellers which
were to accomplish this, to send the mighty cities rushing through the
air at such immense speed. Each of the great air-cities of the European
and Asiatic Federations, as I learned, was being secretly equipped
with these new tube-propellers, and I knew that if I could learn
their secret, could take that secret back with me, our own American
air-cities could be equipped with the new tubes likewise and could
meet the attacking cities at equal speed, on equal terms, even though
outnumbered.
The Great Danger
"So I endeavored in every way to penetrate the secret of the new tubes,
to ascertain their construction, which was jealously guarded by the
European and Asiatic Air Chiefs. And at last, hardly a month ago, I
did that, was able to make my way from my own work to one of the great
tube-propellers which was being installed in another compartment, and
by taking a place among those working on it was able to learn the
details of its construction. That construction was simple enough, I
found, amounting in fact to hardly more than a use of many smaller
tubes within the main tube-propeller, smaller tubes which drew air
from different directions upward and ahead, and thus by their shaping
and construction were able to fling a great air-city supported by them
onward through the air at that tremendous speed. I had learned the
great secret for which hundreds of our agents had sought, and needed
only to escape with that secret.
"I needed only to escape, to race back to my own land, and knew that
it would take our own engineers but a very short time to fit our own
cities with similar speed-tubes, since though the European and Asiatic
forces had been working with them for months that work so far had
been mostly experimentation. But it was then, when I tried to escape,
that my luck came abruptly to an end. For I was captured by the
fleet-officers here in Berlin as I was on the very point of leaving,
captured when the false identity which I had established at such pains
was upset at the last moment through the detection of one of the
documents I had forged. I was captured, and knowing that I had within
my brain that great secret of theirs which would make their air-cities
resistless, they would never, I knew, release me. They took me at once
before their commander, the First Air Chief of the European fleet,
and then by him and by a number of the Asiatic Air Chiefs also I was
questioned exhaustively.
"They wanted most to know what other American agents like myself
were hidden within their air-cities. They knew that those agents or
the greater part of them were known to me, and they knew that if I
described or named them they would be able to catch them all and thus
prevent the possibility of another spy learning their great secret as I
had done. I refused utterly, though, to give them the information they
wished, to reveal to them my fellow-agents in the various cities. At
last they saw, after days of questioning and half-torture, that they
could not as yet wring from me that information, so confined me here
in a cell high in the central tower with the information that only
death awaited me within days unless I acceded to their demands. And,
confined here, I saw from the window that the whole European Federation
fleet had begun to mass here at the air-city of Berlin, quietly and
unobtrusively, and guessed then that they meant to loose their attack
upon the American Federation.
"The great tubes that were to move their cities through the air at such
terrific speed were not yet finished, but they did not wait for these,
launching out their great fleet of cruisers which with the Asiatic
fleet outnumbered the American ships by two to one and should be able
to overwhelm them, they thought. I think that their reason for starting
that attack so soon, before their greater preparations were completely
finished, was that they feared lest another spy like myself might
discover their great secret and escape with it. So they let loose their
fleets upon the American Federation to begin the war and forestall that
contingency by beating down the American forces in a first tremendous
attack. If that first great attack failed, they could swiftly complete
the preparations that would make their air-cities of such immense speed
and power, and then could launch all those air-cities upon the American
ones in a second attack that nothing could resist.
"And even now, despite that daring and deadly attack which your ships
made here upon Berlin tonight, and upon Peking, as you say, the great
preparations of the European and Asiatic Federations are going swiftly
on, and soon now those preparations will be completed and their great
air-cities will be able to whirl through the air at that tremendous
speed. And then will come the end, for our American Federation. The
two hundred air-cities of the European and Asiatic Federations will
flash upon our own nation from east and west, with all their millions
of people and giant batteries of heat-guns, and will send our own
slow-moving air-cities crashing to earth, will send all the scores of
cities and all the millions of people of the American Federation into
destruction and death!"
"Destruction and death!" Connell's voice seemed echoing still about
us there in the silence when he had ceased, seemed beating like great
drum-notes of doom in our ears. Macklin--Hilliard--they sat beside
me in the dark cell as silent as myself. And in that moment we heard
again, from outside and far beneath, the great throbbing roar of
the life of all the mighty air-city about us, the humming rush of
cruisers to and fro above it and the dull mingled voices of its great
crowds, coming dimly up to our silent little cell high in the mighty
electrostatic tower. Then suddenly I had risen to my feet.
"Destruction and death--but there must be some way in which we can
prevent it!" I cried.
"What way is there?" Connell's tone was low, hopeless. "We only know
what looms above our nation, know that these preparations are coming to
their end, that these air-cities plan to rush upon our own. We cannot
halt the preparations that are going on in every air-city of the two
great enemy Federations."
"But if we could warn our own!" I said. "If we could get what you have
learned back to the American Federation--could install in all our own
air-cities similar new tube-propellers--then our cities could at least
meet the attack of the enemy cities with equal speed and power."
"But how to get back?" asked Connell. "How to escape from here? It
could be done, if we could escape, for the new tube-propellers could be
put in our own air-cities swiftly enough, yet to escape is impossible.
I have been here days, weeks, Brant, with the one thought of escape
uppermost, but the thing is hopeless."
* * * * *
I strode to the square little window, looked forth from it. It was
quite open and unbarred, and large enough too to allow one to pass
through it, yet as I projected my head from it and gazed up and
downward in the darkness I saw that there was no need of bars across
it. For the little window was set directly in the sheer, towering side
of the mighty power-tower's pinnacle. Far up above our level soared
that tremendous tapering tower, so far that the tip seemed among the
stars above, while far below, a thousand feet at least, lay the smooth
metal of the great plaza. And though there were other windows below and
above us, each was separated a full ten feet or more from the other,
and, as we knew, to merely escape from our cell into another level of
the great tower would avail us nothing, since to gain the plaza outside
we would need to pass through the tower's lower levels thronged always
with armed guards. It seemed, indeed, that as Connell had said there
was no hope of escape for us, the door being solid, thick metal, and
as I turned back toward the other three something of Connell's own
hopelessness had taken root within my heart.
And that hopelessness grew within me in the hours that followed. For
when day came and illumined with brilliant light all the giant air-city
that stretched far around us it seemed only to emphasize the utter
helplessness of our position. Far beneath on the great plaza lay many
cruisers, and could we win to one of them we might well make a break
at top speed across the Atlantic, since so simple in design and so
unvarying in their exhaustless power-supply are modern air-cruisers
that one man alone at their bridge-room controls could operate
them. Yet to win down to those cruisers, down to the great plaza's
surface--that seemed impossible. And so as that day waned, and night
swept over the great floating mass of the towers of Berlin, to be
followed by day again, my despair was waxing ever stronger, deeper.
For during those days we could see plainly from our window the great
preparations going on still in the air-city about us. Already throngs
of workers had cleared away the twisted and fused wreckage that had
been made by the attack of our ships, and new masses of supplies were
pouring into Berlin in shipload after shipload from all the air-cities
of the European Federation, to replace those we had destroyed in
their great arsenals. The air seemed filled, indeed, with great
freight-carriers and official cruisers arriving and departing. And
beneath all this great surface activity and preparation, we knew, down
in the great tube-propeller compartments of the air-city's mighty base,
other and greater preparations were going on, other and different
tube-propellers were replacing the city's tubes, and swiftly the time
was approaching when all the city would be able to rush meteor-like
through the air.
It was that knowledge that made our despair most deep. For though there
was now a lull, apparently, in the great war's course, the European and
Asiatic forces preparing for their final giant blow, and the Americans
gathering their own forces apprehensively to resist the next attack,
we knew that it was but the lull before the final terrible storm that
was to settle the fate of earth's three mighty nations. And we knew,
too, that it was the fate of our own American Federation that would be
sealed in that gigantic attack, unless Connell could make his way soon
to our land with his great secret. And that he could not do so, that he
could not even escape from the little cell in which we were prisoned,
was all so clear to us that almost I wished that death had come to me
in the cruiser's crash to spare me the torture of mind that I and all
of us were now undergoing.
It was a torture accentuated, I think, by the complete emptiness and
eventlessness of those hours and days. Save for what we could see from
our high window upon the city around us, we were as cut off from the
world as though upon the moon. Twice each day, at dawn and at dusk, our
door was opened by the guards that brought our food, that food being as
in our own air-cities the paste-like synthetic compounds of artificial
proteins and fats and carbohydrates which had decades before replaced
the old natural foods. But though our door was thus flung open twice
each day, there was no hope of escape for us in that fact. For the two
guards who brought our food in to us carried their heat-pistols always
in one hand, and always, night and day, there watched in the corridor
outside a full score of similarly armed guards by whom one could not
hope to pass living toward the cage-lifts. It seemed indeed, as Connell
had said, that weeks of frenzied meditation could never disclose any
plausible plan of escape, and so I lapsed with him into a state of
half-lassitude that had been induced by our utter despair.
And so days passed. Not even the prospect of our own deaths which I
knew to be looming before us, was sufficient to rouse me from that
lassitude, not even the fact that at the end of that fortnight, as I
had guessed, the great attack of the air-cities was to be launched
upon the American Federation, and that it was for that reason that our
captors had given us that time.
Connell, Macklin, myself--we three had faced in our time perils and
risks enough, but so overwhelming was the doom that hung over us and
over our nation now that it stunned us, held us in stupefied despair.
But one of us there was that was not so stunned, and that was Hilliard,
my young second officer. His eager, restive nature, chafing at our
imprisonment and at the thing that was looming for our land, resisted
stubbornly the deep hopelessness that had settled upon the rest of
us, and hour after hour he spent in pacing about the little cell, or
in striving to devise some means for escaping from it. And at last,
upon the fourth day of our imprisonment there in the tower, he turned
suddenly toward us with an eager cry upon his lips.