THE "ARIEL."
On the sixth stroke of twelve that night the Scotch express drew out
of Euston Station. At half-past nine the next morning, the _Lurline_,
Lord Alanmere's yacht, steamed out of Port Patrick Harbour, and at
one o'clock precisely she dropped her anchor in the little inlet that
served for a harbour at Drumcraig.
Colston had the quarter-boat lowered and pulled ashore without a
moment's delay, and as his foot touched the shore Arnold grasped his
hand, and, after the first words of welcome, asked for the latest
news of Natasha.
Without immediately answering, Colston put his arm through his, drew
him away from the men who were standing about, and told him as
briefly and gently as he could the terrible news of the calamity that
had befallen the Brotherhood, and the errand upon which he had come.
Arnold received the blow as a brave man should--in silence. His now
bronzed face turned pale, his brows contracted, and his teeth
clenched till Colston could hear them gritting upon each other. Then
a great wave of agony swept over his soul as a picture too horrible
for contemplation rose before his eyes, and after that came calm, the
calm of rapid thought and desperate resolve.
He remembered the words that Natasha had used in a letter that she
had given him when she took leave of him in Russia. "We shall trust
to you to rescue us, and, if that is no longer possible, to avenge
us."
Yes, and now the time had come to justify that trust and prove his
own devotion. It should be proved to the letter, and if there was
cause for vengeance, the proof should be written in blood and flame
over all the wide dominions of the Tsar. Grief might come after, when
there was time for it; but this was the hour of action, and a strange
savage joy seemed to come with the knowledge that the safety of the
woman he loved now depended mainly upon his own skill and daring.
Colston respected his silence, and waited until he spoke. When he did
he was astonished at the difference that those few minutes had made
in the young engineer. The dreamer and the enthusiast had become the
man of action, prompt, stern, and decided. Colston had never before
heard from his lips the voice in which he at length said to him--
"Where is this place? How far is it as the crow flies from here?"
"At a rough guess I should say about two thousand two hundred miles,
almost due east, and rather less than two hundred miles on the other
side of the Ourals."
"Good! That will be twenty hours' flight for us, or less if this
south-west wind holds good."
"What!" exclaimed Colston. "Twenty hours, did you say? You must
surely be making some mistake. Don't you mean forty hours? Think of
the enormous distance. Why, even then we should have to travel over
sixty miles an hour through the air."
"My dear fellow, I don't make mistakes where figures are concerned.
The paradox of aërial navigation is 'the greater the speed the less
the resistance.'
"In virtue of that paradox I am able to tell you that the speed of
the _Ariel_ in moderate weather is a hundred and twenty miles an
hour, and a hundred and twenty into two thousand two hundred goes
eighteen times and one-third. This is Wednesday, and we have to be on
the Asiatic frontier at daybreak on Friday. We shall start at dusk
to-night, and you shall see to-morrow's sun set over the Ourals."
"That means from the eastern side of the range!"
"Of course. There will be no harm in being a few hours too soon. In
case we may have a long cruise, I must have additional stores, and
power-cylinders put on board. Come, you have not seen the _Ariel_
yet.
"I have made several improvements on the model, as I expected to do
when I came to the actual building of the ship, and, what is more
important than that, I have immensely increased the motive power and
economised space and weight at the same time. In fact, I don't
despair now of two hundred miles an hour before very long. Come!"
The engineer and the enthusiast had now come to the fore again, and
the man and the lover had receded, put back, as it were, until the
time for love, or perchance for sorrow, had come.
He put his arm through Colston's, and led him up a hill-path and
through a little gorge which opened into a deep valley, completely
screened on all sides by heather-clad hills. Sprinkled about the
bottom of this valley were a few wooden dwelling-houses and
workshops, and in the centre was a huge shed, or rather an enclosure
now, for its roof had been taken off.
In this lay, like a ship in a graving-dock, a long, narrow,
grey-painted vessel almost exactly like a sea-going ship, save for
the fact that she had no funnel, and that her three masts, instead of
yards, each carried a horizontal fan-wheel, while from each of her
sides projected, level with the deck, a plane twice the width of the
deck and nearly as long as the vessel herself.
They entered the enclosure and walked round the hull. This was
seventy feet long and twelve wide amidships, and save for size it was
the exact counterpart of the model already described.
As soon as he had taken Colston round the hull, and roughly explained
its principal features, reserving more detailed description and the
inspection of the interior for the voyage, he gave the necessary
orders for preparing for a lengthy journey, and the two went on board
the _Lurline_ to dinner, which Colston had deferred in order to eat
it in Arnold's company.
After dinner they carefully discussed the situation in order that
every possible accident might be foreseen, argued the pros and cons
of the venture in all their bearings, and even went so far as to plan
the vengeance they would take should, by any chance, the rescue fail
or come too late.
The instructions, signed by Natas himself, were very precise on
certain essential points, and in their broad outlines, but, like all
wisely planned instructions to such men as these, they left ample
margin for individual initiative in case of emergency.
Some of the stores of the _Lurline_ had to be transferred to the
_Ariel_, and these were taken ashore after dinner, and at the same
time Colston made his first inspection of the interior of the
air-ship, under the guidance of her creator. What struck him most at
first sight was the apparent inadequacy of the machinery to the
attainment of the tremendous speed at which Arnold had promised they
should travel.
There were four somewhat insignificant-looking engines in all. Of
these, one drove the stern propeller, one the side propellers, and
two the fan-wheels on the masts. He learnt as soon as the voyage
began, that, by a very simple switch arrangement, the power of the
whole four engines could be concentrated on the propellers; for, once
in the air, the lifting wheels were dispensed with and lowered on
deck, and the ship was entirely sustained by the pressure of the air
under her planes.
There was not an ounce of superfluous wood or metal about the
beautifully constructed craft, but for all that she was complete in
every detail, and the accommodation she had for crew and passengers
was perfectly comfortable, and in some respects cosy in the extreme.
Forward there was a spacious cabin with berths for six men, and aft
there were separate cabins for six people, and a central saloon for
common use.
On deck there were three structures, a sort of little conning tower
forward, a wheel-house aft, and a deck saloon amidships. All these
were, of course, so constructed as to offer the least possible
resistance to the wind, or rather the current created by the vessel
herself when flying through the air at a speed greater than that of
the hurricane itself.
All were closely windowed with toughened glass, for it is hardly
necessary to say that, but for such a protection, every one who
appeared above the level of the deck would be almost instantly
suffocated, if not whirled overboard, by the rush of air when the
ship was going at full speed. Her armament consisted of four long,
slender cannon, two pointing over the bows, and two over the stem.
The crew that Arnold had chosen for the voyage consisted, curiously
enough, of men belonging to the four nationalities which would be
principally concerned in the Titanic struggle which a few weeks would
now see raging over Europe. Their names were Andrew Smith,
Englishman, and coxswain; Ivan Petrovitch, Russian; Franz Meyer,
German; and Jean Guichard, Frenchman. Diverse as they were, there
never were four better workers, or four better friends.
They had no country but the world, and no law save those which
governed their Brotherhood. They conversed in assorted but perfectly
intelligible English, for the very simple reason that Mr. Andrew
Smith consistently refused to attempt even the rudiments of any other
tongue.
While the stores were being put on board, Arnold made a careful
examination of every part of the machinery, and then of the whole
vessel, in order to assure himself that everything was in perfect
order. This done, he gave his final instructions to those of the
little community who were left behind to await the arrival of the
steamer, and as the sun sank behind the western ridges of the island,
he went on board the _Ariel_ with Colston, took his place at the
wheel, and ordered the fan-wheels to be set in motion.
Colston was standing by the open door of the wheel-house as Arnold
communicated his order to the engine-room by pressing an electric
button, one of four in a little square of mahogany in front of the
wheel.
There was no vibration or grinding, as would have been the case in
starting a steamer, but only a soft whirring, humming sound, that
rose several degrees in pitch as the engines gained speed, and the
fan-wheels revolved faster and faster until they sang in the air, and
the _Ariel_ rose without a jar or a tremor from the ground, slowly at
first, and then more and more swiftly, until Colston saw the ground
sinking rapidly beneath him, and the island growing smaller and
smaller, until it looked like a little patch on the dark grey water
of the sea.
Away to the north and west he could see the innumerable islands of
the Hebrides, while to the east the huge mountainous mass of the
mainland of Scotland loomed dark upon the horizon.
When the barometer marked eight hundred feet above the sea-level, the
_Ariel_ passed through a stratum of light clouds, and on the upper
side of this the sun was still shining, shooting his almost level
rays across it as though over some illimitable sea of white fleecy
billows, whose crests were tipped with rosy, golden light.
Above the surface of this fairy sea rose north-eastward the black
mass of Ben More on the Island of Mull, and to the southward, the
lesser peaks of Jura and Islay.
While he was still wrapped in admiration of the strange beauty of
this, to him, marvellous scene, the _Ariel_ had risen to a thousand
feet, still almost in a vertical line from the island. Arnold now
pressed another button, and the stern propeller began to revolve
swiftly and noiselessly, and Colston saw the waves of the cloud-sea
begin to slip behind, although so smooth was the working of the
machinery, and the motion of the air-ship, that, but for this, he
could hardly have guessed that he was in motion.
Arnold now turned a few spokes of the wheel, and headed the _Ariel_
due east by the compass. Then he touched a third button. The side
propellers began to turn swiftly on their axes, and, at the same time
the speed of the fan-wheels slackened, and gradually stopped.
Colston now began to feel the air rushing by him in a stream so rapid
and strong, that he had to take hold of the side of the wheel-house
doorway to steady himself.
"I think you had better come inside and shut the door," said Arnold.
"We are getting up speed now, and in a few minutes you won't be able
to hold yourself there. You'll be able to see just as well inside."
Colston did as he was bidden, and as soon as he was safely inside
Arnold pulled a lever beside the wheel, and slightly inclined the
planes from forward aft. At the same time the fan-wheels began to
slide down the masts until they rested upon the deck.
"Now, you shall see her fly," said Arnold, taking a speaking-tube
from the wall and whistling thrice into it.
Colston felt a slight tremor in the deck beneath his feet, and then a
lifting movement. He staggered a little, and said to Arnold--
"What's that? Are we going higher still?"
"Yes," replied the engineer. "She is feeling the air-planes now under
the increased speed. I am going up to fifteen hundred feet, so that
we shall only have the highest peaks to steer clear of in crossing
Scotland. Now, use your eyes, and you will see something worth
looking at."
The upper part of the wheel-house was constructed almost entirely of
glass, and so Colston could see just as well as if he had been on
deck outside. He did use his eyes. In fact, for some time to come,
all his other senses seemed to be merged in that of sight, for the
scene was one of such rare and marvellous beauty, and the sensations
that it called up were of so completely novel a nature, that, for the
time being, he felt as though he had been suddenly transported into
fairyland.
The cloud-sea now lay about seven hundred feet beneath them. The sun
had sunk quite below the horizon, even at that elevation; but his
absence was more than made up for by the nearly full moon, which had
risen to the southward, as though to greet the conqueror of the air,
and was spreading a flood of silvery radiance over the snowy plain
beneath, through the great gaps in which they could see the darker
sheen of the moving sea-waves.
Their course lay almost exactly along the fifty-sixth parallel of
latitude, and took them across Argyle, Dumbarton, and Stirlingshire
to the head of the Firth of Forth. As they approached the mainland,
Colston saw one or two peaks rise up out of the clouds, and soon they
were sweeping along in the midst of a score or so of these. To the
left Ben Lomond towered into the clear sky above his attendant peaks,
and to the right the lower summits of the Campsie Fells soon rose a
few miles ahead.
The rapidity with which these mountain-tops rose up on either side,
and were left behind, proved to Colston that the _Ariel_ must be
travelling at a tremendous speed, and yet, but for a very slight
quivering of the deck, there was no motion perceptible, so smoothly
did the air-ship glide through the elastic medium in which she
floated.
So engrossed was he with the unearthly beauty of the new world into
which he had risen, that for nearly two hours he stood without
speaking a word. Arnold, wrapped in his own thoughts, maintained a
like silence, and so they sped on amidst a stillness that was only
broken by the soft whirring of the propellers, and the singing of the
wind past the masts and stays.
At length a faint sound like the dashing of breakers on a rocky coast
roused Colston from his reverie, and he turned to Arnold and said--
"What is that? Not the sea, surely!"
"Yes, those are the waves of the Firth of Forth breaking on the
shores of Fife."
"What! Do you mean to tell me that we have crossed Scotland already?
Why, we have not been an hour on the way yet!"
"Oh yes, we have," replied the engineer. "We have been nearly two.
You have been so busy looking about you that you have not noticed how
the time has passed. We have travelled a little over two hundred and
forty miles. We are over the German Ocean now, and as there will be
no more hills until we reach the Ourals we can go down a little."
As he spoke he moved the lever beside him about an inch, and
instantly the clouds seemed to rise up toward them as the _Ariel_
swept downwards in her flight. A hundred feet above them Arnold
touched the lever again, and the air-ship at once resumed her
horizontal course.
Then he put her head a little more to the northward, and called down
the speaking tube for Andrew Smith to come and relieve him. A minute
later Smith's head appeared at the top of the companion-ladder which
led from the saloon to the wheel-house, and Arnold gave him the wheel
and the course, saying at the same time to Colston--
"Now, come down and have something to eat, and then we will have a
smoke and a chat and go to bed. There is nothing more to be seen
until the morning, and then I will show you Petersburg as it looks
from the clouds."
"If you told me you would show me the Ourals themselves, I should
believe you after what I have seen," replied Colston, as together
they descended the companion-way from the wheel-house to the saloon.
"Ah, I'm afraid that would be too much even for the _Ariel_ to
accomplish in the time," said Arnold. "Still, I think I can guarantee
that you shall cross Europe in such time as no man ever crossed it
before."