STORM BIRDS
The first slow light of day, "under the opening eyelids of the morn,"
found the Master up in the screened observation gallery at the tip of
the port aileron. Here were mounted two of the six machine-guns that
comprised _Nissr's_ heavier armament; and here, too, were hung a dozen
of the wonderful life-preservers--combination anti-gravity turbines
and vacuum-belt, each containing a signal-light, a water-distiller and
condensed foods--that, invented by Brixton Hewes, soon after the close
of the war, had done so much to make air-travel safe.
Major Bohannan was with the Master. Both men, now in uniform,
showed little effect of the sleepless night they had passed. Wine of
excitement and stern duties to perform, joined with powerful bodies,
made sleeplessness and labor trivialities.
For an hour the two had been standing there, wrapped in their long
military overcoats, while _Nissr_ had swooped on her appointed ways,
with hurtling trajectory that had cleft the dark. Somewhat warmed by
piped exhaust-gases though the glass-enclosed gallery had been, still
the cold had been marked; for without, in the stupendous gulf of
emptiness that had been rushing away beneath and all about them, no
doubt the thermometer would have sunk below zero.
_Nissr's_ altitude was now very great, ranging between 17,500 and
21,000 feet, so as to take advantage of the steady eastward setting
wind in the higher air-lanes. A hard, frozen moonlight, from the
steely disk sinking down the western sky, had slashed ink-black
shadows of struts and stanchions across the gallery, and had flung
_Nissr's_ larger shadow down the hungering abysses of the sky that
yawned beneath.
That shadow had danced and quivered at fantastic speed across dazzling
moonlit fields of cloud, ever keeping pace with the Sky Eagle, now
leaping across immense and silent drifts of white, now plunging,
vanishing into black abysses that showed the ocean spinning backward,
ever backward toward the west.
With the coming of dawn, the shadow had faded, and the watchers' eyes
had been turned ahead for some first sight of the out-riders of
the attacking fleets. Bohannan, a little nervous in spite of his
well-seasoned fighting-blood, had smoked a couple of cigars in the
sheltered gallery, pacing up and down with coat-collar about his ears
and with hands thrust deep in pockets. The Master, likewise muffled,
had refused all proffers of tobacco and had contented himself with a
few khat leaves.
Silence had, for the most part, reigned between them. Up here in the
gallery, conversation was not easy. The hurricane of _Nissr's_ flight
shrieked at times with shrill stridor and with whistlings as of a
million witches bound for some infernal Sabbath on the Matterhorn. A
good deal of vibration and of shuddering whipped the wing-tip, too;
all was different, here, from the calm warmth, comfort, and security
of the fuselage.
The men seemed standing on the very pinion-feathers of some fabled
roc, sweeping through space. Above, below, complete and overwhelming
vacancy clutched for them. The human is not yet born who can stand
thus upon the tip of such a plane, and feel himself wholly at ease.
As darkness faded, however, and as approaching dawn began to burn
its slow way up the stupendous vaults of space above the eastern
cloud-battlements--battlements flicked with dull crimson, blood-tinged
blotches, golden streaks and a whole phantasmagoria of shifting
hues--something of the oppression of night fell from the two men.
"Well, we're still carrying on. Things are still going pretty much
O.K., sir," proffered the major, squinting into the East--the cold,
red East, infinitely vast, empty, ripe with possibilities. "A good
start! Close to a thousand miles we've made; engines running to a
hair; men all fitting into the jobs like clockwork. Everything all
right to a dot, eh?"
The Master nodded silently, keeping dark eyes fixed on the horizon of
cloud-rack. Above, the last faint prickings of stars were fading. The
moon had paled to a ghostly circle. Shuddering, _Nissr_ fled, with
vapory horizons seemingly on her own level so that she appeared at the
bottom of an infinite bowl. Bohannan, feeling need of speech, tried to
be casual as he added:
"I don't feel sleepy. Do you? Seems like I'd never want to sleep
again. Faith, this _is_ living! You've got us all enthused. And your
idea of putting every man-jack in uniform was bully! Nothing like
uniforms--even a jumble of different kinds, like ours--to cement men
together and give them the _esprit de corps._ If we go through as
we've begun--"
The Master interrupted him with a cold glance of annoyance. The Celt's
exuberance jarred on his soul. Since the affair with "Captain Alden,"
the Master's nerves had gone a little raw.
Bohannan rallied bravely.
"Of course," he went on, "it was unfortunate about that New Zealand
chap going West. He looked like a right good fellow. But, well--_c'est
la guerre!_ And I know he wouldn't have chosen a finer grave than the
bottom of the Atlantic, where he's sleeping now.
"By the way, how did Alden come out? Much hurt, was he? I know, of
course, he didn't go back to the sick-bay. So he couldn't have been
badly wounded, or he would be--"
"The Arabs have a saying, my dear fellow," dryly answered the Master,
"that one ear is worth ten thousand tongues. Ponder it well!"
The major's look of astonishment annoyed the Master, even while it
hurt him. He took scant pleasure in rebuffing this old friend; but
certainly "Captain Alden" would not bear discussing. Feeling himself
in a kind of _impasse_ regarding Alden, and fearing some telltale
expression in his eyes, the Master swung up his binoculars and once
more swept the cloud-horizons from northeast to southeast.
"We ought to be sighting some of the attackers, before long," judged
he. "I'm rather curious to see them--to see flies attacking an eagle.
I haven't had a real chance of testing out the neutralizers. Their
operation, in actual practice, ought to be interesting."
He tried to speak coldly, impersonally; but he well realized a certain
strained quality in his voice. Even now, in the hour of impending
attack, his thoughts could not remain wholly fixed on the enemy
which--so the wireless informed him--lay only a little beyond the
haze-enshrouded, burning rim of cloudland.
Despite every effort of the will, he kept mentally reverting to
the midships port stateroom containing the woman. He could not keep
himself from wondering how she was getting on. Her wound, he hoped--he
felt confident--could not be serious.
Had it been, of course, the woman would have asked some further aid.
And since the moment when he had left her, no word had come to him.
More than once, temptation had whispered: "Go to her! She has deceived
you, and you are master here. But, above all, you are a man!"
Twice he had all but yielded to this inner voice. But he had not
yielded. Another and a sterner voice had said: "She is an interloper.
She has no rights. Why give her another thought?"
This voice had prevailed. The Master had told himself only a few hours
more remained, at all events, before the woman should be cast off and
abandoned in whatever strange land might befall--probably Morocco, or
it might be the Spanish colony of Rio de Oro on the western fringes
of the Sahara. After that, what responsibility for her safety or her
welfare would be his? Why, he had none, even now!
"But, man," the small voice insinuated, "she came to you on an errand
of mercy, to nurse and care for such as might fall ill or be wounded.
It was not wholly the desire for adventure that led her to deceive
you. Her motive was high and fine!"
"A curse on all women!" retorted the other voice. "Away with her!" And
this sterner voice again prevailed. Still, at thought that sometime
during the day now close at hand he was to see the last of this woman
who had stood there before him in his cabin, with dark eyes looking
into his, with eager, oval face upturned to his, with all that glory
of lustrous hair a flood about her shoulders, something unknown,
unwonted, fingered at the latchets of his heart.
He realized that he felt strange, uneasy, uprooted from his sober
aplomb. Unknown irritations possessed him. Under his breath he
muttered an Arabic cynicism about woman, from the fourth chapter of
the Koran: "Men shall have the preeminence above women, because Allah
hath caused the one of them to excel the other!"
Then came the philosophical reflection:
"Man, you were seeking new sensations, new experiences, to stir your
pulses. This woman has given you many. She has served her purpose. Now
let her go!"
Thus, seeming to have reached a certain finality of decision, he
dismissed her again from his mind--for perhaps the twentieth time--and
with new care once more began studying the gold-edged, shining clouds
where now a dull, broad arc of molten metal had burned its way out of
the mists.
The Master slid colored ray-filters over his binoculars, to shield
his eyes from the direct dazzle of the rising sun, and swept that
incandescent arc. Suddenly he drew a sharp intake of breath.
"Sighted something, eh?" demanded the major, already recovered from
the snub administered.
"See for yourself, Major, what you make of it! Right in the sun's eye,
and off to southward--all along that fantastic, crimson cloud-castle."
Bohannan's gaze narrowed through his own glasses. Bracing his powerful
legs against the quivering jar of the aileron, he brushed the horizon
into his eager vision. The glasses steadied. There, of a truth, black
midges had appeared, coming up over the world's rim like a startled
covey of quail.