A NAVY OF THE FUTURE.
Arnold's instructions from the Council had been to remain in Aeria,
and make a thorough exploration of the wonderful region described in
Louis Holt's manuscript, until the time came for him to meet the
_Avondale_, the steamer which was to bring out the materials for
constructing the Terrorists' aërial navy.
Louis Holt and his faithful retainer, during the three years and a
half that they had been shut up in it from the rest of the world, had
made themselves so fully acquainted with its geography that very
little of its surface was represented by blanks on the map which the
former had spent several months in constructing, and so no better or
more willing guides could have been placed at their service than they
were.
Holt was an enthusiastic naturalist, and he descanted at great length
on the strangeness of the flora and fauna that it had been his
privilege to discover and classify in this isolated and hitherto
unvisited region. It appeared that neither its animals nor its plants
were quite like those of the rest of the continent, but seemed rather
to belong to an anterior geological age.
From this fact he had come to the conclusion that at some very remote
period, while the greater portion of Northern Africa was yet
submerged by the waters of that ocean of which what is now the Sahara
was probably the deepest part, Aeria was one of the many islands that
had risen above its surface; and that, as the land rose and the
waters subsided, its peculiar shape had prevented the forms of life
which it contained from migrating or becoming modified in the
struggle for existence with other forms, just as the flora and fauna
of Australia have been shut off from those of the rest of the world.
There were no traces of human inhabitants to be found; but there were
apparently two or three families of anthropoid apes, that seemed, so
far as Holt had been able to judge--for they were extremely shy and
cunning, and therefore difficult of approach--to be several degrees
nearer to man, both in structure and intelligence, than any other
members of the Simian family that had been discovered in other parts
of the world.
As may well be imagined, a month passed rapidly and pleasantly away,
what with exploring excursions by land and air, in the latter of
which by no means the least diverting element was the keen and
quaintly-expressed delight of Louis Holt at the new method of travel.
Two or three times Arnold had, for his satisfaction, sent the _Ariel_
flying over the ridge across which she had entered Aeria, but he had
always been content with a glimpse of the outside world, and was
always glad to get back again to the "happy valley," as he invariably
called his isolated paradise.
The brief sojourn in this delightful land had brought back all the
roses to Natasha's lovely cheeks, and had completely restored both
her and the Princess to the perfect health that they had lost during
their short but terrible experience of Russian convict life; but
towards the end of the month they both began to get restless and
anxious to get away to the rendezvous with the steamer that was
bringing their friends and comrades out from England.
So it came about that an hour or so after sunrise on Friday, the 20th
of May, the company of the _Ariel_ bade farewell for a time to Louis
Holt and his companion, leaving with them a good supply of the
creature comforts of civilisation which alone were lacking in Aeria,
rose into the air, and disappeared over the ridge to the north-west.
They had rather more than 2500 miles of plain and mountain and desert
to cross, before they reached the sea-coast on which they expected to
meet the steamer, and Arnold regulated the speed of the _Ariel_ so
that they would reach it about daybreak on the following morning.
The voyage was quite uneventful, and the course that they pursued led
them westward through the Zegzeb and Nyti countries, then
north-westward along the valley of the Niger, and then westward
across the desert to the desolate sandy shores of the Western Sahara,
which they crossed at sunrise on the Sunday morning, in the latitude
of the island which was to form their rendezvous with the steamer.
They sighted the island about an hour later, but there was no sign of
any vessel for fifty miles round it. The ocean appeared totally
deserted, as, indeed, it usually is, for there is no trade with this
barren and savage coast, and ships going to and from the southward
portions of the continent give its treacherous sandbanks as wide a
berth as possible. This, in fact, was the principal reason why this
rocky islet, some sixty miles from the coast, had been chosen by the
Terrorists for their temporary dockyard.
According to their calculations, the steamer would not be due for
another twenty-four hours at the least, and at that moment would be
about three hundred miles to the northward. The _Ariel_ was therefore
headed in that direction, at a hundred miles an hour, with a view to
meeting her and convoying her for the rest of her voyage, and
obviating such a disaster as Natasha's apprehensions pointed to.
The air-ship was kept at a height of two thousand feet above the
water, and a man was stationed in the forward conning tower to keep a
bright look-out ahead. For more than three hours she sped on her way
without interruption, and then, a few minutes before twelve, the man
in the conning tower signalled to the wheel-house--"Steamer in
sight."
The signal was at once transmitted to the saloon, where Arnold was
sitting with the rest of the party; he immediately signalled
"half-speed" in reply to it, and went to the conning tower to see the
steamer for himself.
She was then about twelve miles to the northward. At the speed at
which the _Ariel_ was travelling a very few minutes sufficed to bring
her within view of the ocean voyagers. A red flag flying from the
stern of the air-ship was answered by a similar one from the mainmast
of the steamer. The _Ariel's_ engines were at once slowed down, the
fan-wheels went aloft, and she sank gently down to within twenty feet
of the water, and swung round the steamer's stern.
As soon as they were within hailing distance, those on board the
air-ship recognised Nicholas Roburoff and his wife, Radna Michaelis,
and several other members of the Inner Circle, standing on the bridge
of the steamer. Handkerchiefs were waved, and cries of welcome and
greeting passed and re-passed from the air to the sea, until Arnold
raised his hand for silence, and, hailing Roburoff, said--
"Are you all well on board?"
"Yes, all well," was the reply, "though we have had rather a risky
time of it, for war was generally declared a fortnight ago, and we
have had to run the blockade for a good part of the way. That is why
we are a little before our time. Can you come nearer? We have some
letters for you."
"Yes," replied Arnold. "I'll come alongside. You go ahead, I'll do
the rest."
So saying, he ran the _Ariel_ up close to the quarter of the
_Avondale_ as easily as though she had been lying at anchor instead
of going twenty miles an hour through the water, and went forward and
shook hands with Roburoff over the rail, taking a packet of letters
from him at the same time. Meanwhile Colston, who had grasped the
situation at a glance, had swung himself on to the steamer's deck,
and was already engaged in an animated conversation with Radna.
The first advantage that Arnold took of the leisure that was now at
his disposal, was to read the letter directed to himself that was
among those for Natasha, the Princess, and Colston, which had been
brought out by the _Avondale_. He recognised the writing as
Tremayne's, and when he opened the envelope he found that it
contained a somewhat lengthy letter from him, and an enclosure in an
unfamiliar hand, which consisted of only a few lines, and was signed
"Natas."
He started as his eye fell on the terrible name, which now meant so
much to him, and he naturally read the note to which it was appended
first. There was neither date nor formal address, and it ran as
follows:--
You have done well, and fulfilled your promises as a true man
should. For the personal service that you have rendered to me I
will not thank you in words, for the time may come when I shall
be able to do so in deeds. What you have done for the Cause was
your duty, and for that I know that you desire no thanks. You
have proved that you hold in your hands such power as no single
man ever wielded before. Use it well, and in the ages to come men
shall remember your name with blessings, and you, if the Master
of Destiny permits, shall attain to your heart's desire.
NATAS.
Arnold laid the little slip of paper down almost reverently, for, few
as the words were, they were those of a man who was not only Natas,
the Master of the Terror, but also the father of the woman whose
love, in spite of his oath, was the object to the attainment of which
he held all things else as secondary, and who therefore had the power
to crown his life-work with the supreme blessing without which it
would be worthless, however glorious, for he knew full well that,
though he might win Natasha's heart, she herself could never be his
unless Natas gave her to him.
The other letter was from Tremayne, dated more than a fortnight
previously, and gave him a brief _résumé_ of the course of events in
Europe since his voyage of exploration had begun. It also urged him
to push on the construction of the aërial navy as fast as possible,
as there was now no telling where or how soon its presence might be
required to determine the issue of the world-war, the first
skirmishes of which had already taken place in Eastern Europe. Natas
and the Chief were both in London, making the final arrangements for
the direction of the various diplomatic and military agents of the
Brotherhood throughout Europe. From London they were to go to
Alanmere, where they would remain until all arrangements were
completed. As soon as the fleet was built and the crews and
commanders of the air-ships had thoroughly learned their duties, the
flagship was to go to Plymouth, where the _Lurline_ would be lying.
The news of her arrival would be telegraphed to Alanmere, and Natas
and Tremayne would at once come south and put to sea in her. The
air-ship was to wait for them at a point two hundred miles due
south-west of the Land's End, and pick them up. The yacht was then to
be sunk, and the Executive of the Terrorists would for the time being
vanish from the sight of men.
It is unnecessary to say that Arnold carried out the plans laid down
in this letter in every detail, and with the utmost possible
expedition. The _Avondale_ arrived the next day at the island which
had been chosen as a dockyard, and the ship-building was at once
commenced.
All the material for constructing the air-ships had been brought out
completely finished as far as each individual part was concerned, and
so there was nothing to do but to put them together. The crew and
passengers of the steamer included the members of the Executive of
the Inner Circle, and sixty picked members of the Outer Circle,
chiefly mechanics and sailors, destined to be first the builders and
then the crews of the new vessels.
These, under Arnold's direction, worked almost day and night at the
task before them. Three of the air-ships were put together at a time,
twenty men working at each, and within a month from the time that the
_Avondale_ discharged her cargo, the twelve new vessels were ready to
take the air.
They were all built on the same plan as the _Ariel_, and eleven of
them were practically identical with her as regards size and speed;
but the twelfth, the flagship of the aërial fleet, had been designed
by Arnold on a more ambitious scale.
This vessel was larger and much more powerful than any of the others.
She was a hundred feet long, with a beam of fifteen feet amidships.
On her five masts she carried five fan-wheels, capable of raising her
vertically to a height of ten thousand feet without the assistance of
her air-planes, and her three propellers, each worked by duplex
engines, were able to drive her through the air at a speed of two
hundred miles an hour in a calm atmosphere.
She was armed with two pneumatic guns forward and two aft, each
twenty-five feet long and with a range of twelve miles at an altitude
of four thousand feet; and in addition to these she carried two
shorter ones on each broadside, with a range of six miles at the same
elevation. She also carried a sufficient supply of power-cylinders to
give her an effective range of operations of twenty thousand miles
without replenishing them.
In addition to the building materials and the necessary tools and
appliances for putting them together, the cargo of the _Avondale_ had
included an ample supply of stores of all kinds, not the least
important part of which consisted of a quantity of power-cylinders
sufficient to provide the whole fleet three times over.
The necessary chemicals and apparatus for charging them were also on
board, and the last use that Arnold made of the engines of the
steamer, which he had disconnected from the propeller and turned to
all kinds of uses during the building operations, was to connect them
with his storage pumps and charge every available cylinder to its
utmost capacity.
At length, when everything that could be carried in the air-ships had
been taken out of the steamer, she was towed out into deep water, and
then a shot from one of the flagship's broadside guns sent her to the
bottom of the sea, so severing the last link which had connected the
now isolated band of revolutionists with the world on which they were
ere long to declare war.
The naming of the fleet was by common consent left to Natasha, and
her half-oriental genius naturally led her to appropriately name the
air-ships after the winged angels and air-spirits of Moslem and other
Eastern mythologies. The flagship she named the _Ithuriel_, after the
angel who was sent to seek out and confound the Powers of Darkness in
that terrific conflict between the upper and nether worlds, which was
a fitting antetype to the colossal struggle which was now to be waged
for the empire of the earth.
Arnold's first task, as soon as the fleet finally took the air, was
to put the captains and crews of the vessels through a thorough
drilling in management and evolution. A regular code of signals had
been arranged, by means of which orders as to formation, speed,
altitude, and direction could be at once transmitted from the
flagship. During the day flags were used, and at night flashes from
electric reflectors.
The scene of these evolutions was practically the course taken by the
_Ariel_ from Aeria to the island; and as the captains and lieutenants
of the different vessels were all men of high intelligence, and
carefully selected for the work, and as the mechanism of the
air-ships was extremely simple, the whole fleet was well in hand by
the time the mountain mass of Aeria was sighted a week after leaving
the island.
Arnold in the _Ithuriel_ led the way to a narrow defile on the
south-western side, which had been discovered during his first visit,
and which admitted of entrance to the valley at an elevation of about
3000 feet. Through this the fleet passed in single file soon after
sunrise one lovely morning in the middle of June, and within an hour
the thirteen vessels had come to rest on the shores of the lake.
Then for the first time, probably, since the beginning of the world,
the beautiful valley became the scene of a busy activity, in the
midst of which the lean wiry figure of Louis Holt seemed to be here,
there, and everywhere at once, doing the honours of Aeria as though
it were a private estate to which the Terrorists had come by his
special invitation.
He was more than ever delighted with the air-ships, and especially
with the splendid proportions of the _Ithuriel_, and the brilliant
lustre of her polished hull, which had been left unpainted, and shone
as though her plates had been of burnished silver. Altogether he was
well pleased with this invasion of a solitude which, in spite of its
great beauty and his professed contempt for the world in general, had
for the last few months been getting a good deal more tedious than he
would have cared to admit.
In the absence of Natas and the Chief, the command of the new colony
devolved, in accordance with the latter's directions, upon Nicholas
Roburoff, who was a man of great administrative powers, and who set
to work without an hour's delay to set his new kingdom in order,
marking out sites for houses and gardens, and preparing materials for
building them and the factories for which the water-power of the
valley was to be utilised.
Arnold, as admiral of the fleet, had transferred the command of the
_Ariel_ to Colston, but he retained him as his lieutenant in the
_Ithuriel_ for the next voyage, partly because he wanted to have him
with him on what might prove to be a momentous expedition, and partly
because Natasha, who was naturally anxious to rejoin her father as
soon as possible, wished to have Radna for a companion in place of
the Princess, who had elected to remain in the valley. As another
separation of the lovers, who, according to the laws of the
Brotherhood, now only waited for the formal consent of Natas to their
marriage, was not to be thought of, this arrangement gave everybody
the most perfect satisfaction.
Three days sufficed to get everything into working order in the new
colony, and on the morning of the fourth the _Ithuriel_, having on
board the original crew of the _Ariel_, reinforced by two engineers
and a couple of sailors, rose into the air amidst the cheers of the
assembled colonists, crossed the northern ridge, and vanished like a
silver arrow into space.