FIRST BLOOD.
After supper the two friends ascended to the deck saloon for a smoke,
and to continue their discussion of the tremendous events in which
they were so soon to be taking part. They found the _Ariel_ flying
through a cloudless sky over the German Ocean, whose white-crested
billows, silvered by the moonlight, were travelling towards the
north-east under the influence of the south-west breeze from which
the engineer had promised himself assistance when they started.
"We seem to be going at a most frightful speed," said Colston,
looking down at the water. "There's a strong south-west breeze
blowing, and yet those white horses seem to be travelling quite the
other way."
"Yes," replied Arnold, looking down. "This wind will be travelling
about twenty miles an hour, and that means that we are making nearly
a hundred and fifty. The German Ocean here is five hundred miles
across, and we shall cross it at this rate in about three hours and a
half, and if the wind holds over the land we shall sight Petersburg
soon after sunrise.
"The sun will rise to-morrow morning a few minutes after five by
Greenwich time, which is about two hours behind Petersburg time.
Altogether we shall make, I expect, from two to two and a half hours'
gain on time."
The two men talked until a few minutes after ten, and then went to
bed. Colston, who had been travelling all the previous night, began
to feel drowsy in spite of the excitement of the novel voyage, and
almost as soon as he lay down in his berth dropped off into a sound,
dreamless sleep, and knew nothing more until Arnold knocked at his
door and said--
"If you want to see the sun rise, you had better get up. Coffee will
be ready in a quarter of an hour."
Colston pulled back the slide which covered the large oblong pane of
toughened glass which was let into the side of his cabin and looked
out. There was just light enough in the grey dawn to enable him to
see that the _Ariel_ was passing over a sea dotted in the distance
with an immense number of islands.
"The Baltic," he said to himself as he jumped out of bed. "This is
travelling with a vengeance! Why, we must have travelled a good deal
over a thousand miles during the night. I suppose those islands will
be off the coast of Finland. If so, we are not far from Petersburg,
as the _Ariel_ seems to count distance."
The most magnificent spectacle that Colston had ever seen in his
life, or, for the matter of that, ever dreamed of, was the one that
he saw from the conning-tower of the _Ariel_ while the sun was rising
over the vast plain of mingled land and water which stretched away to
the eastward until it melted away into the haze of early morning.
The sky was perfectly clear and cloudless, save for a few light
clouds that hung about the eastern horizon, and were blazing gold and
red in the light of the newly-risen sun. The air-ship was flying at
an elevation of about two thousand feet, which appeared to be her
normal height for ordinary travelling. There was land upon both sides
of them, but in front opened a wide bay, the northern shores of which
were still fringed with ice and snow.
"That is the Gulf of Finland," said Arnold. "The winter must have
been very late this year, and that probably means that we shall find
the eastern side of the Ourals still snow-bound."
"So much the better," replied Colston. "They will have a much better
chance of escape if there is good travelling for a sleigh."
"Yes," replied Arnold, his brows contracting as he spoke. "Do you
know, if it were not for the Master's explicit orders, I should be
inclined to smash up the station at Ekaterinburg a few hours
beforehand, and then demand the release of the whole convict train,
under penalty of laying the town in ruins."
Colston shook his head, saying--
"No, no, my friend, we must have a little more diplomacy than that.
Your thirst for the life of the enemy will, no doubt, be fully
gratified later on. Besides, you must remember that you would
probably blow some hundreds of perfectly innocent people to pieces,
and very possibly a good many friends of the Cause among them."
"True," replied Arnold; "I didn't think of that; but I'll tell you
what we can do, if you like, without transgressing our instructions
or hurting any one except the soldiers of the Tsar, who, of course,
are paid to slaughter and be slaughtered, and so don't count."
"What is that?" asked Colston.
"We shall be passing over Kronstadt in a little over an hour, and we
might take the opportunity of showing his Majesty the Tsar what the
_Ariel_ can do with the strongest fortress in Europe. How would you
like to fire the first shot in the war of the Revolution?"
Colston was silent for a few moments, and then he looked up and
said--
"There is not the slightest reason why we should not take a shot at
Kronstadt, if only to give the Russians a foretaste of favours to
come. Still, I won't fire the first shot on any account, simply
because that honour belongs to you. I'll fire the second with
pleasure."
"Very good," replied Arnold. "We'll have two shots apiece, one each
as we approach the fortress, and one each as we leave it. Now come
and take a preparatory lesson in the new gunnery."
They went down into the chief saloon, and there Arnold showed Colston
a model of the new weapon with which the _Ariel_ was armed, and
thoroughly explained the working of it. After this they went to the
wheel-house, where Arnold inclined the planes at a sharper angle, and
sent the _Ariel_ flying up into the sky, until the barometer showed
an elevation of three thousand feet.
Then he signalled to the engine-room, the fan-wheels rose from the
deck, as if by their own volition, and, as soon as they reached their
places, began to spin round faster and faster, until Colston could
again hear the high-pitched singing sound that he had heard as the
_Ariel_ rose from Drumcraig Island.
At the same time the speed of the vessel rapidly decreased; the side
propellers ceased working, and the stern-screw revolved more and more
slowly, until the speed came down to about thirty miles an hour.
By this time the great fortress of Kronstadt could be distinctly seen
lying upon its island, like some huge watch-dog crouched at the
entrance to his master's house, guarding the way to St. Petersburg.
"Now," said Arnold, "we can go outside without any fear of being
blown off into space."
They went out and walked forward to the bow. Arrived there they found
two of the men, each with a curious-looking shell in his arms. The
projectiles were about two feet long and six inches in diameter, and
were, as Arnold told Colston, constructed of _papier-maché_. There
were three blades projecting from the outside, and running spirally
from the point to the butt. These fitted into grooves in the inside
of the cannon, which were really huge air-guns twenty feet long,
including the air-chamber at the breech.
The projectiles were placed in position, the breeches of the guns
closed, and a minute later the air-chambers were filled with air at a
pressure of two hundred atmospheres, pumped from the forward engines
through pipes leading up to the guns for the purpose.
"Now," said Arnold, "we're ready! Meanwhile you two can go and load
the two after guns."
The men saluted and retired, and Arnold continued--
"Just take a look down with your glasses and see if they see us. I
expect they do by this time."
Colston put his field-glass to his eyes, and looked down at the
fortress, which was now only six or seven miles ahead.
"Yes," he said, "at any rate I can see a lot of little figures
running about on the roof of one of the ramparts, which I suppose are
soldiers. What's the range of your gun? I should say the fortress is
about six miles off now."
"We can hit it from here, if you like," replied Arnold, "and if we
were a thousand feet higher I could send a shell into Petersburg.
See! there is the City of Palaces. Away yonder in the distance you
can just see the sun shining on the houses. We could see it quite
plainly if it wasn't for the haze that seems to be lying over the
Neva."
While he was speaking, Arnold trained the gun according to a scale on
a curved steel rod which passed through a screw socket in the breech
of the piece.
"Now," he said. "Watch!"
He pressed a button on the top of the breech. There was a sharp but
not very loud sound as the compressed air was released; something
rushed out of the muzzle of the gun, and a few seconds later, Colston
could see the missile boring its way through the air, and pursuing a
slanting but perfectly direct path for the centre of the fortress.
A second later it struck. He could see a bright greenish flash as it
smote the steel roof of the central fort. Then the fort seemed to
crumble up and dissolve into fragments, and a few moments later a
dull report floated up into the sky mingled, as he thought, with
screams of human agony.
For a moment he stared in silence through the glasses, then he turned
to Arnold and said in a voice that trembled with violent emotion--
"Good God, that is awful! The whole of the centre citadel is gone as
though it had been swept off the face of the earth. I can hardly see
even the ruins of it. Surely that's murder rather than war!"
"No more murder than the use of torpedoes in naval warfare, as far as
I can see," replied Arnold coolly. "Remember, too," he continued in a
sterner tone, "that fortress belongs to the power that flogged Radna
and has captured Natasha. Come, let's see what execution you can do."
He crossed the deck and set the other gun by its scale, saying as he
did so--
"Put your finger on the button and press when I tell you."
Colston did as he was bid, and as his finger touched the little knob
his hand was as firm as though he had been making a shot at
billiards.
"Now!"
He pressed the button down hard. There was the same sharp sound, and
a second messenger of destruction sped on its way towards the doomed
fortress.
[Illustration: "Good God, that is awful."
_See page 82._]
They saw it strike, and then came the flash, and after that a huge
cloud of dust mingled with flying objects that might have been blocks
of masonry, guns, or human bodies, rose into the air, and then fell
back again to the earth.
"There goes one of the angles of the fortification into the sea,"
said Arnold, as he saw the effects of the shot. "Kronstadt won't be
much good when the war breaks out, it strikes me. I suppose they'll
be replying soon with a few rifle shots. We'd better quicken up a
bit."
He went aft to the wheel-house, followed by Colston, and signalled
for the three propellers to work at their utmost speed. The order was
instantly obeyed; the fan-wheels ceased revolving, and under the
impetus of her propellers the _Ariel_ leapt forwards and upwards like
an eagle on its upward swoop, rose five hundred feet in the air, and
then swept over Kronstadt at a speed of more than a hundred miles an
hour.
As they passed over they saw a series of flashes rise from one of the
untouched portions of the fortress, but no bullets came anywhere near
them. In fact, they must have passed through the air two or three
miles astern of the flying _Ariel_. No soldier who ever carried a
rifle could have sent a bullet within a thousand yards of an object
seventy feet long travelling over a hundred miles an hour at a height
of nearly four thousand feet, and so the Russians wasted their
ammunition.
As soon as they had passed over the fortress, Arnold signalled for
the propellers to stop, and the fan-wheels to revolve again at half
speed. The air-ship stopped within three miles, and remained
suspended in air over the opening mouth of the Neva. Then the two
after guns were trained upon the fortress, and Colston and Arnold
fired them together.
The two shells struck at the same moment, one in each of two angles
of the ramparts. Their impact was followed by a tremendous explosion,
far greater than could be accounted for by the shells themselves.
"There goes one, if not two, of his powder magazines. Look! half the
fortress is a wreck. I wonder which fired the lucky shot."
The man who a year before had been an inoffensive student of
mechanics and an enthusiast dreaming of an unsolved problem, spoke of
the frightful destruction of life and the havoc that he had caused by
just pressing a button with his finger, as coolly and quietly as a
veteran officer of artillery might have spoken of shelling a fort.
There were two reasons for this almost miraculous change. One was to
be found in the bitter hatred of Russian tyranny which he had imbibed
during the last six months, and the other was the fact that the woman
for whom he would have himself died a thousand deaths if necessary,
was a captive in Russian chains, being led at that moment to slavery
and degradation.
As soon as they had seen the effects of the last two shots, Arnold
said with a grim, half-smile on his lips--
"I think it will be better if we don't show ourselves too plainly to
Petersburg. It will take some time for the news of the destruction of
Kronstadt to reach the city, and, of course, there will be the
wildest rumours as to the agency by which it was done, so we may as
well leave them to argue the matter out among themselves."
He signalled again to the engine-room, and with the united aid of her
planes and fan-wheels the _Ariel_ mounted up and up into the sky,
driven only by the stern-propeller and with the force of the other
engines concentrated on the lifting wheels, until a height of five
thousand feet was reached.
At that height she would have looked, if she could have been seen at
all, nothing more than a little grey spot against the blue of the
sky, and as they heard afterwards she passed over St. Petersburg
without being noticed.
From St. Petersburg to Tiumen, as the crow flies, the distance is
1150 English miles, and nine hours after she had passed over the
Capital of the North, the _Ariel_ had winged her way over the Ourals
and the still snow-clad forests of the eastern slopes, past the
tear-washed Pillar of Farewells, and had come to a rest after her
voyage of two thousand two hundred miles, including the delay at
Kronstadt, in twenty hours almost to the minute, as her captain had
predicted.