AERIA FELIX.
Every one on board the _Ariel_ was astir the next morning as soon as
the first rays of dawn were shooting across the vast plain that
stretched away to the eastward, and by the time it was fairly
daylight breakfast was over and all were anxiously speculating as to
what they would find on the other side of the tremendous cliffs, on
an eyrie in which they had found a resting-place for the night.
As soon as all was ready for a start, Arnold said to Natasha, who was
standing alone with him on the after part of the deck--
"If you would like to steer the _Ariel_ into your new kingdom, I
shall be delighted to give you the lesson in steering that I promised
you yesterday."
Natasha saw the inner meaning of the offer at a glance, and replied
with a smile that made his blood tingle--
"That would be altogether too great a responsibility for a beginner.
I might run on to some of these fearful rocks. But if you will take
the helm when the dangerous part comes, I will learn all I can by
watching you."
"As long as you are with me in the wheel-house for the next hour or
so," said Arnold, with almost boyish frankness, "I shall be content.
I need scarcely tell you why I want to be alone with you when we
first sight this new home of our future empire."
"I have half a mind not to come after that very injudicious speech.
Still, if only for the sake of its delightful innocence, I will
forgive you this time. You really must practise the worldly art of
dissimulation a little, or I shall have to get the Princess to play
chaperon."
Natasha spoke these words in a bantering tone, and with a flush on
her lovely cheeks, that forced Arnold to cut short the conversation
for the moment, by giving an order to Andrew Smith, who at that
instant put his head out of the wheel-house door to say--
"All ready, sir!"
"Very well," replied Arnold. "I will take the wheel, and do you tell
every one to keep under cover."
Smith saluted, and disappeared, and then Natasha and Arnold went into
the wheel-house, while Colston and the Princess took their places in
the deck-saloon, the two men off duty going into the conning tower
forward.
"Why every one under cover, Captain Arnold?" asked Natasha, as soon
as the two were ensconced in the wheel-house and the door shut.
"Because I am going to put the _Ariel_ through her paces, and enter
Aeria in style," replied he, signalling for the fan-wheels to
revolve. "The fact is that, so far as I can see, these mountains are
too high for us to rise over them by means of the lifting-wheels,
which are only calculated to carry the ship to a height of about five
thousand feet. After that the air gets too rarefied for them to get a
solid grip. Now, these mountains look to me more like seven thousand
feet high."
"Then how will you get over them?"
"I shall first take a cruise and see if I can find a negotiable gap,
and then leap it."
"What! Leap seven thousand feet?"
"No; you forget that we shall be over five thousand up when we take
the jump, and I have no doubt that we shall find a place where a
thousand feet or so more will take us over. That we shall rise easily
with the planes and propellers, and you will see such a leap as man
never made in the world before."
While he was speaking the _Ariel_ had risen from the ground, and was
hanging a few hundred feet above the little plateau. He gave the
signal for the wheels to be lowered, and the propellers to set to
work at half-speed. Then he pulled the lever which moved the
air-planes, and the vessel sped away forwards and upwards at about
sixty miles an hour.
Arnold headed her away from the mountains until he had got an offing
of a couple of miles, and then he swung her round and skirted the
cliffs, rising ever higher and higher, and keeping a sharp look-out
for a depression among the ridges that still towered nearly three
thousand feet above them.
When he had explored some twenty miles of the mountain wall, Arnold
suddenly pointed towards it, and said--
"There is a place that I think will do. Look yonder, between those
two high peaks away to the southward. That ridge is not more than six
thousand feet from the earth, and the _Ariel_ can leap that as easily
as an Irish hunter would take a five-barred gate."
"It looks dreadfully high from here," said Natasha, in spite of
herself turning a shade paler at the idea of taking a six thousand
foot ridge at a flying leap. She had splendid nerves, but this was
her first aërial voyage, and it was also the first time that she had
ever been brought so closely face to face with the awful grandeur of
Nature in her own secret and solitary places.
She would have faced a levelled rifle without flinching, but as she
looked at that frowning mass of rocks towering up into the sky, and
then down into the fearful depths below, where huge trees looked like
tiny shrubs, and vast forests like black patches of heather on the
earth, her heart stood still in her breast when she thought of the
frightful fate that would overwhelm the _Ariel_ and her crew should
she fail to rise high enough to clear the ridge, or if anything went
wrong with her machinery at the critical moment.
"Are you sure you can do it?" she asked almost involuntarily.
"Perfectly sure," replied Arnold quietly, "otherwise I should not
attempt it with you on board. The _Ariel_ contains enough explosives
to reduce her and us to dust and ashes, and if we hit that ridge
going over, she would go off like a dynamite shell. No, I know what
she can do, and you need not have the slightest fear!"
"I am not exactly afraid, but it _looks_ a fearful thing to attempt."
"If there were any danger I should tell you--with my usual lack of
dissimulation. But really there is none, and all you have to do is to
hold tight when I tell you, and keep your eyes open for the first
glimpse of Aeria."
By this time the _Ariel_ was more than ten miles away from the
mountains. Arnold, having now got offing enough, swung her round
again, headed her straight for the ridge between the two peaks, and
signalled "full speed" to the engine-room.
In an instant the propellers redoubled their revolutions, and the
_Ariel_ gathered way until the wind sang and screamed past her masts
and stays. She covered eight miles in less than four minutes, and it
seemed to Natasha as though the rock-wall were rushing towards them
at an appalling speed, still frowning down a thousand feet above
them. For the instant she was all eyes. She could neither open her
lips nor move a limb for sheer, irresistible, physical terror. Then
she heard Arnold say sharply--
"Now, hold on tight!"
The nearest thing to her was his own arm, the hand of which grasped
one of the spokes of the steering wheel. Instinctively she passed her
own arm under it, and then clasped it with both her hands. As she did
so she felt the muscles tighten and harden. Then with his other hand
he pulled the lever back to the full, and inclined the planes to
their utmost.
Suddenly, as though some Titan had overthrown it, the huge black wall
of rock in front seemed to sink down into the earth, the horizon
widened out beyond it, and the _Ariel_ soared upwards and swept over
it nearly a thousand feet to the good.
"Ah!"
The exclamation was forced from her white lips by an impulse that
Natasha had no power to resist. All the pride of her nature was
conquered and humbled for the moment by the marvel that she had seen,
and by the something, greater and stranger than all, that she saw in
the man beside her who had worked this miracle with a single touch of
his hand. A moment later she had recovered her self-possession. She
unclasped her hands from his arm, and as the colour came back to her
cheeks she said, as he thought, more sweetly than she had ever spoken
to him before--
"My friend, you have glorious nerves where physical danger is
concerned, and now I freely forgive you for fainting in the
Council-chamber when Martinov was executed. But don't try mine again
like that if you can help it. For the moment I thought that the end
of all things had come. Oh, look! What a paradise! Truly this is a
lovely kingdom that you have brought me to!"
[Illustration: "The _Ariel_ sank down after the leap across the
ridge."
_See page 123._]
"And one that you and I will yet reign over together," replied Arnold
quietly, as he moved the lever again and allowed the _Ariel_ to sink
smoothly down the other side of the ridge over which she had taken
her tremendous leap.
When she had called it a paradise, Natasha had used almost the only
word that would fitly describe the scene that opened out before them
as the _Ariel_ sank down after her leap across the ridge. The
interior of the mountain mass took the form of an oval valley, as
nearly as they could guess about fifty miles long by perhaps thirty
wide. All round it the mountains seemed to rise unbroken by a single
gap or chasm to between three and four thousand feet above the lowest
part of the valley, and above this again the peaks rose high into the
sky, two of them to the snow-line, which in this latitude was over
15,000 feet above the sea.
Of the two peaks which reached to this altitude, one was at either
end of a line drawn through the greater length of the valley, that is
to say, from north to south. At least ten other peaks all round the
walls of the valley rose to heights varying from eight to twelve
thousand feet.
The centre of the valley was occupied by an irregularly shaped lake,
plentifully dotted with islands about its shores, but quite clear of
them in the middle. In its greatest length it would be about twelve
miles long, while its breadth varied from five miles to a few hundred
yards. Its sloping shores were covered with the most luxuriant
vegetation, which reached upwards almost unbroken, but changing in
character with the altitude, until there was a regular series of
transitions, from the palms and bananas on the shores of the lake, to
the sparse and scanty pines and firs that clung to the upper slopes
of the mountains.
The lake received about a score of streams, many of which began as
waterfalls far up the mountains, while two of them at least had their
origin in the eternal snows of the northern and southern peaks. So
far as they could see from the air-ship, the lake had no outlet, and
they were therefore obliged to conclude that its surplus waters
escaped by some subterranean channel, probably to reappear again as a
river welling from the earth, it might be, hundreds of miles away.
Of inhabitants there were absolutely no traces to be seen, from the
direction in which the _Ariel_ was approaching. Animals and birds
there seemed to be in plenty, but of man no trace was visible, until
in her flight along the valley the _Ariel_ opened up one of the many
smaller valleys formed by the ribs of the encircling mountains.
There, close by a clump of magnificent tree-ferns, and nestling under
a precipitous ridge, covered from base to summit with dark-green
foliage and brilliantly-coloured flowers, was a well-built log-hut
surrounded by an ample verandah, also almost smothered in flowers,
and surmounted by a flagstaff from which fluttered the tattered
remains of a Union-Jack.
In a little clearing to one side of the hut, a man, who might very
well have passed for a modern edition of Robinson Crusoe, so far as
his attire was concerned, was busily skinning an antelope which hung
from a pole suspended from two trees. His back was turned towards
them, and so swift and silent had been their approach that he did not
hear the soft whirring of the propellers until they were within some
three hundred yards of him.
Then, just as he looked round to see whence the sound came, Andrew
Smith, who was standing in the bows near the conning tower, put his
hands to his mouth and roared out a regular sailor's hail--
"Thomas Jackson, ahoy!"
The man straightened himself up, stared open-mouthed for a moment at
the strange apparition, and then, with a yell either of terror or
astonishment, bolted into the house as hard as he could run.
As soon as he was able to speak for laughing at the queer incident,
Arnold sent the fan-wheels aloft and lowered the _Ariel_ to within
about twenty feet of the ground over a level patch of sward, across
which meandered a little stream on its way to the lake. While she was
hanging motionless over this, the man who had fled into the house
reappeared, almost dragging another man, somewhat similarly attired,
after him, and pointing excitedly towards the _Ariel_.
The second comer, if he felt any astonishment at the apparition that
had invaded his solitude, certainly betrayed none. On the contrary,
he walked deliberately from the hut to the bit of sward over which
the _Ariel_ hung motionless, and, seeing two ladies leaning on the
rail that ran round the deck, he doffed his goatskin cap with a
well-bred gesture, and said, in a voice that betrayed not the
slightest symptom of surprise--
"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen! Good morning, and welcome to
Aeria! I see that the problem of aërial navigation has been solved; I
always said it would be in the first ten years of the twentieth
century, though I often got laughed at by the wiseacres who know
nothing until they see a thing before their noses. May I ask whether
that little message that I sent to the outside world some years ago
has procured me the pleasure of this visit?"
"Yes, Mr. Holt. Your little balloon was picked up about three years
ago in the Gulf of Guinea, and, after various adventures and much
discussion, has led to our present voyage."
"I am delighted to hear it. I suppose there were plenty of noodles
who put it down to a practical joke or something of that sort? What's
become of Stanley? Why didn't he come out and rescue me, as he did
Emin? Not glory enough, I suppose? It would bother him, too, to get
over these mountains, unless he flew over. By the way, has he got an
air-ship?"
"No," replied Arnold, with a laugh. "This is the only one in
existence, and she has not been a week afloat. But if you'll allow
us, we'll come down and get generally acquainted, and after that we
can explain things at our leisure."
"Quite so, quite so; do so by all means. Most happy, I'm sure. Ah!
beautiful model. Comes down as easily as a bird. Capital mechanism.
What's your motive-power? Gas, electricity--no, not steam, no
funnels! Humph! Very ingenious. Always said it would be done some
day. Build flying navies next, and be fighting in the clouds. Then
there'll be general smash. Serve 'em right. Fools to fight. Why can't
they live in peace?"
While Louis Holt was running along in this style, jerking his words
out in little short snappy sentences, and fussing about round the
air-ship, she had sunk gently to the earth, and her passengers had
disembarked.
Arnold for the time being took no notice of the questions with regard
to the motive-power, but introduced first himself, then the ladies,
and then Colston, to Louis Holt, who may be described here, as
elsewhere, as a little, bronzed, grizzled man, anywhere between
fifty-five and seventy, with a lean, wiry, active body, a good square
head, an ugly but kindly face, and keen, twinkling little grey eyes,
that looked straight into those of any one he might be addressing.
The introductions over, he was invited on board the _Ariel_, and a
few minutes later, in the deck-saloon, he was chattering away
thirteen to the dozen, and drinking with unspeakable gusto the first
glass of champagne he had tasted for nearly five years.