EASTWARD HO!
Not all the stern discipline that had been enforced by the
Master--discipline already like a second nature to this band of
adventurous men--could quite prevent a little confusion on board the
Eagle of the Sky.
As the huge machine crashed, plunged, staggered, then righted herself
and soared aloft, shouts echoed down the corridors, shots crackled
from the lower gallery and from a few open ports.
At sound of them, and of faint, far cries from the Palisades, with
a futile spatter of pistol-and rifle-fire, the Master frowned. This
intrusion of disorder lay quite outside his plans. He had hoped for a
swift and quiet getaway. Complications had been introduced. Under his
breath he muttered something as he manipulated the controls.
The major, laughing a bit wildly, leaned from the shattered window and
let drive a few last pot-shots into the dark, at the faint flicker
of lights along the crest of the black cliff. In the gloom of the
pilot-house, his shoulders bulked huge as he fired. Captain Alden,
staggering back, sat down heavily on one of the sofa-lockers.
One or two faint shots still popped, along the cliff, with little
pin-pricks of fire in the dark. Then all sounds of opposition
vanished. The _Nissr_, upborne at her wonderful climbing-angle toward
the clouds painted by her searchlight--clouds like a rippled, moonlit
veil through which peeped faint stars--spiraled above the Hudson and
in a vast arc turned her beak into the south.
Disorder died. Silence fell, save for the whistling of the sudden wind
of the airship's own motion, and for the steadily mounting drone of
the huge propellers.
"Made it all right, by God!" exclaimed Bohannan, excitedly. "No
damage, either. If the floats had smashed when they hit the gate,
there'd have been a devil of an explosion--vacuum collapsing, you
know. Close call, but we made it! Now, if--"
"That will do!" the Master curtly interrupted, with steadfast eyes
peering out through the conning windows. Now that the first _élan_ of
excitement had spent itself, this strange man had once more resumed
his mantle of calm. Upborne on the wings of wondrous power, wings
all aquiver with their first stupendous leap into the night-sky,
the Master--impassive, watchful, cool--seemed as if seated in his
easy-chair at _Niss'rosh_.
"That will do, Major!" he repeated. "None of your extravagance, sir!
No time now for rodomontade!" He glanced swiftly round, saw Captain
Alden by the dim aura of light reflected from the instrument-board.
Blood reddened the captain's left sleeve.
"Wounded, Captain?"
"Only a scratch!"
"Report to Dr. Lombardo. And have Simonds, in charge of the stores,
replace this broken pane."
"Yes, sir!"
Alden saluted with a blood-stained hand, slipped his gun back into its
holster and got up. He swayed a little, with the swinging slide of the
air-liner and with the weakness that nerve-shock of a wound brings.
But coolly enough he slid open the door leading into the main
corridor, and passed through, closing the door after him. Where his
hand touched the metal, red stains showed. Neither man of the pair now
left in the pilot-house made any comments. This was all in the day's
work--this and whatever else might befall.
Spiraling vastly, up, up climbed the giant plane. A colder air nipped
through the broken window. Cloud-wisps began to blur the glass; the
stars began to burn more whitely in a blacker sky.
The Master touched a button at the left side of the steering-post.
Below his feet, as they rested in their metal stirrups, an aluminum
plate silently slid back. An oblong of dim light blurred up through
the heavy plate-glass sheet it had masked.
Glancing down, the Master saw far, far below him a slowly rotating
vagueness of waters black and burnished, of faintly twinkling lights.
Lights and water drew backward, as the rotary motion gave way to a
southern course. The Master slowed the helicopters. A glance at the
altimeter showed him 1,965 feet. The compass in its binnacle gave him
direction.
"Pit number one!" he sharply exclaimed into the phone connecting
therewith.
"Yes, sir!" came back the observer's voice.
"Keep a sharp eye out for _Niss'rosh_! Remember, two red lights
showing there!"
"Yes, sir. I'll report as soon as I pick them up."
The Master, knowing his course thither should be S.E. by S., drew the
liner to that exact angle. Under his skilled touch at the wheel, the
compass needle steadied to the dot. The searchlight lanced its way
ahead, into the vague drift of the smoke arising from New York.
"Sight it, yet?" demanded the Master, presently.
"Yes, sir. Just picked it up. Hold hard, sir!"
Almost at once, the Master also got a glimpse of two tiny pin-pricks
of crimson, high in air above the city-mass. Swiftly _Nissr_ drew
over the building. Far, very far down in the chasm of emptiness,
tiny strings of light--infinitesimal luminous beads on invisible
threads--marked Broadway, Fifth Avenue, countless other streets. The
two red winks drew almost underneath.
Down plunged the searchlight, picking _Niss'rosh_ out of the gloom.
Through the floor-glass, the Master could descry it clearly. He
slowed, circled, playing with vacuum-lift, helicopters, engines, as
if they had been keys of a familiar instrument. Presently the liner
hovered, poised, sank, remained a little over 750 feet above the
observatory on the roof-top.
"Cracowicz!" ejaculated the Master, into the phone again, as his deft
fingers made another connection. A foreign voice answered: "Yes, sir!"
alertly.
"Ready in the lower gallery now, with the winch and tackles!" bade the
Master.
Again came: "Yes, sir!" from the man in charge of the three who
already knew perfectly well what was expected of them. As _Nissr_
slowly turned, a trap opened in the bottom of her lower gallery,
almost directly between the two forward vacuum-floats, and down sped a
little landing nacelle or basket at the end of a fine steel cable.
Swiftly the electric winch dropped the nacelle, containing three men.
It slowed, at their command, through the phone that led up the wire.
With hardly a jar, the basket landed on the roof.
The men jumped out, made fast their tackles to Captain Alden's plane
there, leaped in again and signaled: "Hoist away!"
With noiseless speed the winch gathered in the cable. Up swooped the
nacelle. As it cleared the roof, _Nissr_ purred forward, slid away,
gathered speed over the city where already the alarm had been given.
In four minutes the men had safely landed in the lower gallery once
more, and the plane was being hoisted by davits and made fast on the
upper platform, known as the take-off, which served as a runway for
planes leaving the ship or alighting thereon.
Over the light-spangled city the giant air-liner gathered way.
Three or four searchlights had already begun trying to pick her
up. Quiverings of radiance reached out for her, felt into the void,
whirled like cosmic spokes. The Brooklyn Navy Yard whipped the
upper air for her. Down on Sandy Hook, a slim spear of light stabbed
questingly through the night. Then all at once the monster light on
Governor's Island caught her, dazzling into the Master's eyes.
He only smiled, as he sheered eastward, dropped East River behind and
unloosed the Sky-eagle's course above Brooklyn.
"Just a little fireworks, as a send-off, Major," said he, notching the
speed ahead, ever ahead, till a whipping gale began to beat in at the
broken pane. "They got word of it pretty quick, eh? I suppose they'll
send up a few planes after us."
"_After_ us, yes!" exulted the major. "Faith, they'll be after us, all
right--a devil of a long way after!"
To this the Master gave no answer, but signaled Auchincloss in the
engine-room for full speed. Now a subtle tremor possessed the
vast fabric, mistress of the upper spaces and the night. The
close-compacted lights beneath commenced to sprinkle out into tenuous
dots. The tiny blazing fringe of Coney burned a moment very far
below, then slid away, under the glass flooring. Still heading
sharply upward, with altimeter needle steadily mounting, with the cold
becoming ever greater, the liner flung herself out boldly over the jet
plain of ocean.
Right into the eye of heaven she seemed to point, into a vast and
profound blackness, that, as the Master snicked off the no-longer
needed searchlight, unleashed myriad stars--stars which leaped out of
the velvet night. Already man and the works of man lay far behind. If
there had been any tentative pursuit, the Legionaries knew nothing of
it. Outdistancing pursuit as an eagle distances sparrows, the liner
gloried in her swift trajectory.
The Master nodded, well pleased. Bohannan laughed like a boy, and
holstered his gun. He moved over to the starboard window, out of the
gale. With mocking eyes he watched the futile searchlight at the Hook.
"They've got as much chance of overhauling us as the proverbial
celluloid cat has of catching the asbestos rat," said he. "A clean
getaway, barring the little damage we've taken--this window, and
Alden, and--"
"Better unpack your kit, and settle down," the Master dryly
interrupted him. "Take a look around and see that everything's
shipshape. Be sure the port and starboard watches are chosen.
Everything's been arranged, already, but in dealing with human
beings there's bound to be a little confusion. They aren't
automata--unfortunately. And, Major!"
"Yes, sir?" answered Bohannan, who despite his familiarity with the
Master was now constrained to formality. Resentment sounded in his
voice.
"Send Brodeur to relieve me, in about ten minutes."
"Yes, sir," repeated the Celt. For a moment, standing there in the
gloom of the pilot-house, he eyed the dim, watchful figure at the
wheel. Then he turned, slid the door, and disappeared.
As he walked aft, past the aluminum ladder that led to the upper
galleries, he muttered with dudgeon:
"He rates us two for a nickel, that's plain enough--plain as paint!
Well, all right. I'll stand for it; but there may be others that--"
He left the words unfinished, and went to do the Master's bidding.
Alone, the Master smiled. Wine of victory pulsed in his blood and
brain. Power lay under his hand, that closed with joy upon it. Power
not only over this hardy Legion, but power in perspective over--
"God, if I can do it!" he whispered, and fell silent. His eyes rested
on the instruments before him, their white dials glowing under the
little penthouses of their metal shields. Altitude now showed 2,437
feet, and still rising. Tachometers gave from 2,750 to 2,875 r.p.m.
for the various propellers. Speed had gone above 190 miles per hour.
No sign of man remained, save, very far below through a rift in the
pale, moonlit waft of cloud, a tiny light against a coal-black plain
of sea--the light of a slow, crawling steamer--a light which almost at
once dropped far behind.
Vast empty spaces on all hands, above, below, engulfed _Nissr_. The
Master felt himself alone with air and sky, with power, with throbbing
dreams and visions.
"If it can be done!" he repeated. "But--there's no 'if' to it, at
all. It _can_ be! It _shall_! The biggest thing ever attempted in this
world! A dream that's never been dreamed, before! And if it can't,
well, a dream like that is far more than worth dying for. A dream that
can come true--by God, that shall come true!"
His hands tightened on the wheel. You would have said he was trying to
infuse some of his own overflowing strength into the mechanism that,
whirling, zooning with power, needed no more. The gleam in his eyes,
there in the dark pilot-house, seemed almost that of a fanatic. His
jaw hardened, his nostrils expanded.
This strange man's face was now wholly other than it had been only a
week before, drawn and lined by ennui. Now vast ambitions dominated
and infused it with virile force.
As he held the speeding air-liner to her predetermined course through
voids of night and mystery, he peered with burning eagerness at the
beckoning stars along the world's far, eastern rim.
"Behold now, Allah!" he cried suddenly. "_Labbayk_![1] I come!"
[Footnote 1: _Labbayk_ (I am here) is the cry of all Mohammedan
pilgrims as they approach the holy city of Mecca.]