AN irregular procession was now formed, at the head of which walked the
two returned exiles, each with his father by his side, and followed by
the rest of the company. They passed out of the reception-room, down
the wide entrance-hall, and out of the great arched portal which opened
on to the square.
As they appeared at the top of the spacious flight of marble steps
which led from it down to the pavement, a mighty cheer of welcome went
up from a hundred thousand throats, the peals of bells in the four
towers which rose from the angles of the Council Hall sent forth the
signal to all the other belfries of the city, and, amidst the jubilant
chorus that instantly burst forth, the scene of the reinvestiture
was reached. Then the great bell in the dome tolled out one sonorous
warning note, and instantly there was silence on the earth and in the
air.
This was at the moment that the procession, after passing half round
the square along the broad path left for it by the cheering throng,
halted in front of the main entrance to the Temple of Aeria, which
faced towards the south, in the middle of the magnificent façade
fronting a marble-paved avenue of double rows of palms and tree-ferns
which ran in a straight line for three miles down to the shores of the
lake.
The Aerians had progressed far beyond the stage of semi-barbaric pomp
and display, and so the ceremony of restoring to Alan and Alexis the
rights of citizenship, of which the Golden Wings were the symbol,
solemn as it was, was also simple in the extreme.
As the vast curtains which hung over the main doors of the Temple swung
aside to admit them, they fell out of the procession and doffed their
sable head-gear. The President and his fellow Councillors went on and
took up their position in front of the three pillars under the centre
of the dome.
Then a guard of honour, composed of a hundred of their shipmates and
companions-in-arms from Kerguelen, marched up to the door and formed
into two files, between which Alan and Alexis walked down the aisle
through the space left by the orderly throng that filled the vast
building from the floor to the topmost tier of the rows of seats which
rose half-way up the lofty walls, and so came in front of the President
and the Council.
Here their guard halted and formed a semicircle, leaving them in the
open space within it. A breathless silence fell upon the assembled
thousands as they dropped on one knee before the President. Then, in a
voice whose every accent rang distinctly to the farthest corners of the
huge building, he said--
“Alan Arnold and Alexis Masarov, the year of your probation ended with
the rising of this morning’s sun. You have been tried and you have not
been found wanting, and that of which the arch-enemy of our race robbed
you for a time you have regained by manly valour and patient devotion.
“Therefore, by command of the Supreme Council, and with the consent of
all the citizens of Aeria, I restore to you the symbols of those rights
which you lost and have regained.
“In the presence of God and this assembly, and on the holy ground
that is sanctified by the ashes of those mighty ancestors of ours who
bequeathed to us the empire of the world, I replace the Golden Wings
upon your brows, in the full belief that from the higher and happier
sphere they now inhabit they are looking down with approval upon the
act.
“Rise now, recrowned Princes of the Air, and in the near approaching
day of battle go forth with fearless hearts and stainless honour to do
that which the voice of duty and the needs of humanity shall bid you
do!”
As he ceased speaking he held out a hand to each of them, and so they
rose to their feet again, once more wearing the Golden Wings, once more
free and equal amidst their peers of the Royal race of Aeria. As they
did so a burst of jubilant melody rolled out, apparently from all parts
of the Temple at once.
It was the opening chorus of a triumphal march which the greatest
living musician of Aeria, and therefore of the world, had composed in
honour of the day and the event, and as its splendid harmonies rolled
out from the hidden organ through the vast interior, and through the
open portals into the square beyond, the great assembly filed out in
four streams from the Temple, and all Aeria made ready to give itself
up to feasting and merry-making for the rest of the day.
For three days Aeria kept high festival in honour of the home-coming
of the son of the President and his companion in exile, but for all
that there was sterner business in hand than merry-making for those
in authority. Save in the almost impossible event of overtures of
peace being received from the Sultan, war which, in the nature of the
circumstances, could hardly fail to be universal, would actually begin
at daybreak on the 16th of May, that is to say in five days after the
return of Alan and Alexis.
The greater part, therefore, even of the days of rejoicing was really
spent in hard work by those upon whom had devolved the tremendous
responsibility of counteracting as far as was possible the designs of
conquest and oppression to which Olga Romanoff, by means of her fatal
beauty and subtle diplomacy, had succeeded in irrevocably committing
Khalid the Magnificent.
Early on the morning of the day following the reinvestiture of Alan
and Alexis with the symbols of Aerian citizenship a council of war was
held in the President’s palace, which was attended by all the members
of the ruling Council, the chief engineers of the settlement, and the
admirals in command of the aerial and sea navies and the squadrons
posted at the various stations throughout the world.
Before this assembly Alan, who had already entered upon the active
discharge of his duties as Commander-in-Chief of all the forces of
Aeria and the Federation, laid the details of his plans of attack and
defence, and invited criticism upon them.
The same day Alan transferred his flag and his crew from the _Ithuriel_
to the _Avenger_, while Alexis took possession of a splendid vessel of
the same type, to which the name _Orion_ had been given, after that of
the air-ship commanded by Alan Tremayne in the battle of Armageddon.
Alexis, however, had very little difficulty in obtaining the consent
of the Council to his substituting another name for this, with the
consequence that the prize taken from the enemy resumed her Russian
name, and remained in Aeria as a trophy of the skill of her captors.
Perhaps in his heart Alan would have dearly liked to have made a
similar change in the name of the _Avenger_, but it was impossible for
him to propose it, situated as he was with regard to Alma.
Alexis and Isma had taken the shortest, and therefore the wisest,
course out of the terribly delicate and embarrassing position which
had been created by the unholy passions and ruthless treachery of Olga
Romanoff. They had tacitly agreed to ignore it _in toto_, and to begin
again where they had left off nearly seven years before, and thus it
came to pass that Isma’s own pretty hands spilled the christening wine
over the shapely bows of her formidable namesake.
The first use that Alan made of his new ship was to test her immense
capabilities to the utmost, so that he might know what demands he might
safely make upon her in possible emergencies. He rushed her at full
speed round the mountain bulwarks of Aeria, a distance of two hundred
and fifty miles, and found that she completed the circuit in just
twenty-five minutes, which gave a speed of six hundred miles an hour.
Alexis followed, and covered the same distance in twenty-seven minutes
and a half in the _Isma_.
These trials proved that the new Aerian vessels were from fifty to
seventy-five miles an hour faster than the models on which their
enemies had been building their new fleets--a fact which, unless Olga
and her ally had made a corresponding improvement in their battleships,
might be expected to have a considerable effect on the issue of the
coming war.
After the speed-trials the soaring powers of the two vessels were
tried, and it was demonstrated that their machinery was sufficiently
powerful to carry them to altitudes beyond which it was not possible
for human beings to breathe. After this all the defences of Aeria were
visited and examined in detail, and then on the second day after their
arrival in the valley Alan and Alexis divided all the air-ships at
their disposal into two squadrons, each numbering nearly four hundred
vessels, one of which, commanded by Alan, guarded the valley, while
the other, under Alexis, constituted an attacking force, the duty of
which was to find out, if possible, any weak point in the defensive
organisation.
From noon to midnight the mimic battle went on in strict accordance
with the accepted rules of aerial warfare, but though Alexis and the
captains of his fleet tried everything that skill or daring could
suggest, the defence proved too strong for them, and during the whole
twelve hours they were unable to bring a single vessel into such a
position that she could send a shell into Aeria without previously
exposing herself to a fire that must have annihilated her in an instant.
This aerial review was the concluding spectacle of the festivities, and
it was watched by the occupants of thousands of pleasure-craft, whose
interest in it was sharpened by the knowledge that before many days a
conflict such as it portrayed might be raging in deadly earnest round
the mountain bulwarks of their hitherto inviolate domain.
So consummate was the skill displayed by Alan in this defence that
as soon as the _Avenger_ touched ground after the review was over
he was summoned to the Council Chamber in the President’s palace to
receive the thanks of the Senate and cordial expression of the perfect
confidence that the people of Aeria would feel, whatever the magnitude
of the war might prove to be, while the conduct of the campaign was in
his hands and those of Alexis, whose tactics had also been so perfect
that, without once putting a single ship in danger, he had made it
impossible for Alan to do anything more than remain strictly on the
defensive.
On the following day, the 14th, the motive power of all the vessels
was renewed, ammunition laid in, and all the guns and engines minutely
inspected, so that there might be no chance of failure when the moment
of trial came. Then the final arrangements for the defence of Aeria
itself were perfected, and when that was done, the Vale of Paradise, as
its inhabitants fondly called their lovely land, was a vast fortress
compared with which the strongholds of the present day would be as
harmless and defenceless as molehills.
Four hundred aerial battleships of what were now called the first and
second classes, ranging in speed from four to five hundred and fifty
miles an hour and mounting from ten to twenty guns each, were to patrol
the outer walls of the mountains, at distances of five and ten miles
from them and at elevations varying from two to ten thousand feet.
These were divided into two fleets of two hundred each which relieved
each other every six hours, so that their supply of motive power might
be constantly renewed.
In addition to these, two squadrons of twenty-five of the most powerful
warships of the newest type alternately kept watch and ward against
surprise in the upper regions of the air from fifteen to twenty
thousand feet above the valley, while all round the great circuit of
the mountains were planted in the most favourable positions nearly a
thousand land batteries mounting three, five, and ten guns each, which,
if necessary, would be able to surround Aeria with a zone of storm and
flame which nothing living could pass and still live.
[Illustration: BATTERIES WHICH WOULD BE ABLE TO SURROUND AERIA WITH A
ZONE OF STORM AND FLAME. _Page 248._]
By day the range of vision from the decks of the sentinel ships would
make surprise impossible, and at night the great electric suns on the
summits of the mountains, aided by hundreds of search-lights flashing
through the darkness in every direction, made an attack under cover
of the darkness almost equally hopeless.
The news of the alliance between Olga and the Sultan had acted like a
trumpet-call to battle on the proud and martial spirit of the Aerians.
Generation after generation their young men had been trained in the
arts of war as well as in those of peace, for the wisdom of their
ancestors had foreseen that, in the ordinary progress of science, it
was impossible for many generations to pass without some independent
solution of the problem of aerial navigation, which must, sooner or
later, result in a challenge of their supremacy.
Consequently, all through the years of profound peace which the outside
world had enjoyed under their rule, their vigilance had never slept for
a moment, and their men and ships and materials of war were kept in the
highest possible state of efficiency. Thus, though the Aerian nation
numbered little more than a million souls, inhabiting a territory
of some two hundred and fifty square miles, the amount of effective
strength that it was able to put forth on an emergency was totally
disproportionate to its size.
Living in a region of inexhaustible fertility and boundless mineral
wealth, with no idle or mere consuming classes, no politics, and
no laws that a child of ten could not understand, they led simple,
natural, and busy lives, accumulating immense public and private
riches, which were as constantly expended in increasing the splendour
and power of the State, which, as a whole, was the expression of the
wealth and patriotism of its citizens.
No sooner had the alliance of their enemies become an accomplished
fact than they devoted the whole of their vast resources to increasing
their offensive and defensive armaments to the utmost of their power.
Reserves of material that had been stored up year after year had been
drawn upon, the mighty natural forces that they had brought into
subjection laboured night and day for them, and ships and machinery
and guns came into existence as though at the bidding of some race of
magicians.
Magazines were filled with immense stores of ammunition, potential
death and destruction such as had never been wielded by human hands
before--and commanders and officers for all the battleships of the
Federation had been sent out as each squadron of vessels was completed.
In a word, Aeria had donned her panoply of war, and stood armed at
all points, ready to fight the world if necessary in defence of the
priceless heritage which its citizens had received from their fathers,
the giants who in the days of the Terror had taken despotism and
oppression by the throat and flung them headlong out of the world.
The defences of Aeria were to be under the immediate command of the
President. All the oceanic stations, save Kerguelen, Teneriffe,
Bermuda, and Hawaii, had been abandoned so as to permit of greater
concentration of forces, while fifty new ones had been established in
different parts of Europe and the British Islands, for here the brunt
of the attack was to be expected, and here the enemy must be met and
crushed if Anglo-Saxon civilisation was to be saved from a new era of
militarism and personal oppression.
Alan and Alexis were to take command of the Western and Eastern fleets
into which the aerial forces were to be divided, Alan in the West
with Britain as his chief base of operation, and Alexis in the East
with the Balkan Peninsula as his base between the Russian and Moslem
headquarters.
The naval fleets, in three divisions, the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and
Pacific squadrons, had already received their general instructions,
and were waiting at their various rendezvous for the outbreak of
hostilities. The Atlantic squadron blocked the Straits of Gibraltar,
the Narrow Seas of Britain, and the approaches to the Baltic, the
Mediterranean division patrolled the Inland Sea from Gibraltar to
Cyprus, and the Pacific fleet were blockading the southern approach to
the Red Sea, ready to operate against any junction of the Indian and
African sea forces of the Sultan.
At midnight, on the 14th, Alan and Alexis were to set out for their
respective fields of operation, and that evening there was a farewell
banquet given by the Council in the President’s palace in honour of
them and the commanders of their ships. Many a hearty toast was given
and drunk in the sparkling golden wine of Aeria, and many a hearty
God-speed and loving farewell passed between those who remained at home
and those who were going forth to do battle for them and for the peace
of the world in distant skies, and to pass through the fiery storm of
such warfare as had never been waged in the world before.
Just before twelve, when the fleets were ready to take the air, and
the last farewells were being said, the _Avenger_ and the _Isma_ were
lying on the roof of the President’s palace, and their commanders were
standing by the gangway steps which hung down from the deck-chambers,
the centres of two little groups of grave, silent men and sorrowing
women, their nearest and dearest in a land where all were friends.
The last blessings of fathers and mothers had been given and taken,
and then came the hardest farewells of all. Isma and Alexis parted as
declared lovers will part as long as the Fates are cruel, but when
Alan took Alma’s hands in his for the last time, and looked down upon
the pale loveliness of her perfect face and into the clear calm depths
of her eyes, the word that he had been longing to say ever since his
return died upon his lips.
The contrast between her stainless purity and the darkness of the blot
that Olga’s unholy passion had placed upon his life rose up in all its
horror for the hundredth time before him, and once more the impassable
gulf opened between them. All that he could say was--
“Good-bye, Alma! You, too, will wish me God-speed, won’t you?”
“With all my heart, yes, Alan,” she replied in low, sweet, steady
tones. “God guard you in your good work and send you back in safety to
us. You will come back rich in honours and followed by the blessings of
the world you are going to rescue from the oppressors”--
“Or I shall never come! Good-bye, Alma, good-bye, all!” he said,
breaking upon her speech, for he could bear to hear no more, and as he
spoke he stooped and kissed her forehead as he had kissed Isma’s a few
moments before. Then he turned and ran up the steps just as Alexis took
his last kiss and did the same.
As they gained the decks of their ships the great bell in the dome
of the Temple boomed out the first stroke of twelve. At the sixth
stroke the electric suns on the summits of the mountains blazed out
simultaneously at a hundred points, a long, deep roar of thunder rolled
round the bulwarks of Aeria, and with search-lights flashing out ahead
and astern, the four hundred battleships of the two squadrons rose into
the air and swept up towards the Ridge.
[Illustration: THE FOUR HUNDRED BATTLESHIPS OF THE TWO SQUADRONS ROSE
INTO THE AIR. _Page 252._]
A thousand feet above it they stopped and hung for a moment motionless
in mid-air. Then the roar of a thousand shells exploding far up
in the quaking sky answered the salutes from the sentinel ships,
and then, still signalling farewells with their search-lights, the
squadrons swept out into the ocean of darkness that loomed round the
light-girdled realm of Aeria.