STARTING SKYWARDS
Two years have passed away since the meeting at Newbiggin described in
the last chapter. They have been years of varied and incessant toil,
research, forethought, and preparation.
The Professor continued his scientific lectures in Cambridge for one
more academic year and took a house for the vacation at Cullercoats.
Carysfort stuck to his old quarters near to Newbiggin, where his
workshops were erected. Abercromby kept with him, working like a dock
labourer, as the engineer used often to say. Radcliffe held on to
his curacy at Oxford and drew crowds, at least so Abercromby always
declared, for when he could spare himself a holiday he ran down to
see him. His rector, a man notorious for his orthodoxy though his
sympathies ran in a somewhat different channel, would have been much
startled had he known the character of the studies in which his curate
delighted.
Many works that bore on astronomy and kindred subjects were to be found
in his library, and once a person, happening to drop in, casually
remarked that the undergraduate who had evidently left his books behind
him when he went down must have been a man of wide reading.
Study is generally supposed to make a man pale and thin, but upon the
curate it had a contrary effect. He seemed, as time went on, to get
better and stronger. He sunk the whole of his private means in his
friends’ enterprise, and supported himself for the last few months on
the merest pittance.
One bright June evening he and Abercromby met on the railway platform
at Cullercoats. They walked together to Beverley Terrace and had tea
and supper with the Professor and Carysfort.
“Matters are approaching a crisis, old man,” said Abercromby. “The
Professor tells me we must pack our week-end boxes in a month, in fact,
to be precise, July 22nd is the day fixed.”
A spasm of pain shot across Radcliffe’s face but he only said, “I will
be ready.”
“Write me down an ass,” said Abercromby. “We must alter the date,
Professor.”
“Quite so,” answered Carmichael. “Venus is approaching the minimum
distance, but a margin of ten days could be allowed.”
“There shall not be a margin of ten minutes as far as I am concerned,”
replied Radcliffe. “After all, it is best for me that I should bid an
eternal farewell to this earth on that date. It has been chosen for me,
and I accept it.”
“Let me tell you how matters stand,” said Carysfort. “We had our
trial trip last night. It was quite dark, there was no moon, so we
could start unobserved. We passed over Rothbury at a height of about
two miles, then we drifted towards Newcastle, and when we were over
Ponteland we soared straight towards the zenith. We saw the sun rise
in the east, and then found that our most difficult task was to get
back again before it rose over the Tyne. We were quite outside the
atmosphere and saw the earth at a rather unusual altitude. It was a bit
ghastly I allow, but we knew already we had succeeded.”
“Abercromby was splendid,” said the Professor; “he stood in the outer
balcony in that rarefied atmosphere till I had to drag him in.”
“I drew the line at going off pop,” said Abercromby, “because I
naturally felt that though I might be of little use at the best of
times, yet if by chance I burst I might even be less.”
“Did any people see you as you descended?” asked Radcliffe.
“Only two bounders walking in from Woodhorn, and though it was barely
six o’clock they had both been tippling. They ran down the road
screaming, but we put on speed and were safe over the garden wall and
our machine in its proper place before they could do any harm. It was a
near shave though, and we have voted for no more trips till the final
start.”
“What I have chiefly feared,” said the Professor, “was that some
meddling Government official would insist upon knowing what we were
about. However, being in England, I knew I was in the easiest place
to destroy the British Empire if I desired so to do, as nobody would
believe it of me, and everybody would think it uncharitable to say
it of me, so I had no bother except from the surveyor of taxes. It
happened that some patriotic gentleman not very far off was perfecting
an airship to render England invulnerable to the Germans, but many
liberal-minded clergymen and laymen think he would show a more broad
spirit of Christianity if he gave it to the Kaiser. Thanks to this good
man I have been much less an object of curiosity than I might have
been.”
“Suppose we just take a stroll on the Tynemouth sands and talk over
details,” said Carysfort. “To-morrow, if you can stay, you must come
with us to Newbiggin and inspect the machine for yourself. Full
particulars must wait until then.”
Radcliffe assented with pleasure. They strolled along as far as they
could, talking and discussing, while a band was playing “All in the
hush of twilight,” and a negro minstrel performance was going on near
the Palace Pier. There was a sort of open-air concert, two vocalists
having sung “Beauty’s home, Killarney,” and “Phil the Fluter’s Ball,”
sang “Love launched a fairy boat.” The people encored and they sang it
again. Radcliffe stood listening, and only Frank Abercromby noticed
that his eyes were full of tears. Carysfort, who voted the whole
proceedings a deadly nuisance, at last pulled him away, and resumed
discussions upon mathematics and locomotion.
After supper the party had a further walk along the Cullercoats
promenade and then retired to rest in readiness for a visit to
Newbiggin in the early hours of the morning.
The party were gathered in due course before the great steel-grey
machine with its fans, its balconies, and its long steel prow. They
mounted the short ladder that gave access to the interior, which
consisted of an upper-deck dining-room lighted with electricity, with
large windows, the glass of which was protected by steel shutters
easily workable and short steel projections. There was a long table in
the centre with chairs, around the thickly padded walls ran couches and
divans, and in recesses various collections of books, instruments of
all kinds, and other articles, each firmly secured to the wall.
Below the dining-room, approached by a hatchway, were small cabins
with comfortable hammocks, and, below these, the engine-room and the
store-rooms. At one end of the dining-room a flight of steps with
protecting hand-rail led to the conning-tower where the upper steering
apparatus was fixed, communicating with electric bells with the lower
duplicate steering apparatus in the engine-room. There was direct
communication by bells and telephones with each several part of the
machine.
In order that nothing useful might be forgotten, each member, every
four months, wrote out a list of necessary and desirable things and
sent them in to the Professor. Twice over the list was carefully
revised. Abercromby reminded them one day that the only thing he
could think of was to give a name to the machine, and they decided to
christen her the “Asteroid.”
* * * * *
At six o’clock on the evening of July 22nd the whole company was
assembled in the parlour of the lonely house at Newbiggin. It was a
close thunderous summer evening, the sea had scarce a ripple, and the
air was most oppressively still.
Abercromby in vain tried to revive their spirits by his jokes and
sallies, but a solemn sadness hung over the company, yet combining with
it an emotion of undaunted resolve.
“Now, friends and comrades,” said the Professor, “I propose in an
hour’s time that we take final possession of the Asteroid. The work
of cutting loose from our moorings will, even then, occupy a certain
while, but I suggest that we start skywards at eight p.m.
“Now it is my duty to say that I offer a final opportunity to any one,
if he has the least misgivings, to draw back; I shall think none the
worse of him. We are sensible men, and we must for the last time look
difficulties in the face ere we are committed beyond recall.”
“There are no difficulties,” retorted Abercromby.
“Pardon me, my dear fellow, but that is nonsense. To begin with, we
run the risk of our motive force failing us or going wrong, in which
case we should fall back at ruinous speed upon the earth, and be either
burned to cinders in its atmosphere or pulverised upon its surface.
Then we have a struggle to wage against the attractive force of the
sun, and I need not point out what sort of death will await us that way.
“Supposing we get near to Venus, we have to encounter the fall upon its
surface, which, with all our care, may be deadly. Once arrived, we may
find its air unbreathable, and its heat too great for human life. Its
people may capture us and deprive us of our machine, thus preventing
us for ever from returning home; and they may even torture us and
kill us. Then we have the terrors of the return journey, which are of
a precisely similar kind to those of the outward, with the possible
variation that we may find a lunatic asylum awaiting us in the place of
an international welcome. These are the odds: ponder them for the last
time.”
“I have pondered them over and over again,” said Carysfort, “and for me
they have no terrors.”
“I object to no item in the Professor’s black list except the
terrestrial lunatic asylum,” said Abercromby, “and we have only to
avoid British territory, and, being true Britons, we shall be sure of a
hearty welcome.”
“To me the journey to Venus is but the prelude to a longer journey,”
replied Clarence Radcliffe, “but, till my work is done, I shall not ask
to die. I have risen superior to that, chiefly through the kindness of
you, my brothers.”
“Jackson, what have you to say?” said the Professor.
“Bless you, sir! I’ll just be after going where you go, and if the
Lord brings us all safe back I’ll tell the folks at home that I’ve
been and gone and had a real good time of it. But you must leave me
the polishing-up of the machine, sir. You’ll do the steering, and I
the scrubbing. When I laid my old mother to rest in Elton churchyard I
buried the last who would miss me, and I thought as how I would like to
go clear away, only you are taking me a bit farther than I reckoned.”
“Well done, honest Tom,” said Carysfort. “If every master had as good a
helper as Carmichael has in you, there would be a little more sensible
work carried out in this spoiled land of ours.”
“Just one word, Professor,” put in Abercromby. “If things go all right,
how long do you mean to stay away?”
“Only a few months if Venus is not inhabited, two or three years if
it is,” replied the Professor. “I have written out a full and concise
account of our intentions and shall leave it behind me. I have also
addressed a letter to the Home Secretary. Of course the secret of our
discovery is carefully guarded, but I have told who we are and where
we are going. I have left full instructions as to my property and this
packet shall be posted as soon as you have all signed your names to it.
Another shall be sent to the Mayor of Newcastle, and a third shall be
left on the table. And now we had better sign, as we are all agreed.”
This having been done, the two postal packets were sent off. Radcliffe
asked that they should invoke the Divine blessing upon their
enterprise, to which all consented, and then they silently left the
house, and proceeded to the place, sheltered behind high walls, where
the Asteroid was poised ready for its vast and thrilling flight.
Abercromby remarked that they had not as many to see them start as
Columbus or Sir John Franklin had, to which fact the Professor yielded
the most hearty and even cheerful assent.
The final preparations took up a shorter time than was expected, and
at 7.30 p.m. on that cloudy July evening Carmichael took his post in
the conning-tower; the others stood upon the outer balcony, Abercromby
assuring the Professor that as soon as they had got outside the earth’s
atmosphere he would button up his greatcoat and leisurely come in.
“Farewell to England!” said the engineer simply. “May we find our
country a little more open to common sense when we come back.”
Jackson evidently thought that Mr. Frank would give them a colossal
joke at the moment of starting, but perhaps, unknown to himself, the
power to do so failed him at the last moment. He put his arm through
Clarence Radcliffe’s and said, “Say something for me, old chap; I’m
hanged if I can.”
“May God bless all in the world who are in sorrow, and may we bring
them back something to help them,” answered Radcliffe.
“Start the car, Professor, or I shall make an ass of myself,” sung out
Abercromby. “No, hold hard, please. Tom has got a last message for the
old country.”
“God save the King,” said Jackson, pulling off his cap.
“Most correct and admirable,” replied Abercromby; “nothing could be
less open to hostile criticism. Now, Professor, if Nelson were here he
would tell us that every man’s duty was to fly. Go ahead, and just give
us a peep of Northumbria before we finally vanish.”
A moment more and Newbiggin, from the old church on the wave-worn
promontory to the Eagle Rocks, lay many hundreds of feet below them.