The Great Airship Part 23

"Yes; to your machine. Aeroplanes are notoriously dangerous.

I--I--really think that I'll not----"

"Sorry, Mr. Reitberg," came Joe's curt answer. "But we must push ahead.

If you wish to join us at all you must come now, and on the biplane."

The pompous city magnate put the telephone down with something approaching a groan. Indeed, his features were positively haggard, his fat cheeks hung flaccid, his mouth drooped, his eyes were bloodshot. He might, indeed, have been a condemned criminal. And then Adolf's sneering laughter stung him to some show of courage, or perhaps it was desperation.

"It is the only, the last chance," he said. "I'll go. I'll risk travel in this abominable machine. Herman!"

He tugged at the bell and shouted for his butler.

"Call the car round," he ordered magnificently. "Put my baggage on board, and--er--please be careful of this box. It's very valuable."

"In fact, there is gla.s.s inside, old curios," added Adolf, guffawing as the man shut the door behind him. "Curios for dear Andrew Provost. A present from London city to the great airs.h.i.+p! A token of love and esteem from Carl Reitberg."

The ruffian was a humorous fellow at times, and his cynical mind often perceived a vein of fun where others saw nothing. His confederate's nervousness, the dilemma into which he had managed to introduce himself in his efforts to get aboard the airs.h.i.+p provided Adolf with a vast amount of amus.e.m.e.nt, and he was sn.i.g.g.e.ring still when his friend marched ponderously out of the establishment.

"_Bon voyage!_" called Adolf after him, as he stood on the steps of the gorgeous mansion, his undamaged arm tucked beneath his coat tails, a cigar of Carl's most expensive brand between his teeth, and a smile wrinkling his somewhat sardonic features. "_Bon voyage!_ Have no fears.

I'll look after things in your absence."

But oh that voyage! Oh the terror before starting! Carl Reitberg, sportsman, cut but a sorry figure as he shook Joe's honest hand and clambered into the cab of the biplane.

"But--but you'll never venture to rise above the ground in this?" he cried aghast. "It's not even made of steel or wood. It's transparent stuff, and looks frightfully fragile."

"Try it," grinned d.i.c.k, who was one of the party. "Ask Alec to jump on the wings, or--oh, I know, Mr. Reitberg, try a ride on one yourself!

It'd be a ripping sensation to lie out there on one of the planes while she was soaring."

"Brat! Conceited young mids.h.i.+pman! Wants kicking!" Carl thought angrily.

"But if they've come all the way from the neighbourhood of Adrianople, why, I suppose the machine is strong enough. Horrible it seems to me!

But I must screw up my courage. Ah! He's started his engine. Why couldn't he wait a little longer till I'd settled down. Stay still there, young man. We're moving, and if you get too much to one side the thing will capsize once we're off the ground."

Alec regarded the trembling magnate with a pitying smile, though quite politely. "Oh, that's with ordinary aeroplanes, sir," he said loftily.

"You can't upset this. You ask Joe. We'll try, just to impress you."

"Try to upset the machine when in the air! Madness!" Carl positively scowled at Alec, and then at d.i.c.k, catching him grinning. Then his attention was called elsewhere. Joe shut down his bypa.s.s valve abruptly.

The propellers roared. The biplane shot forward and mounted into the air as if eager for a struggle. They were up a hundred yards before their pa.s.senger had had time to fasten his grip quite to his own liking on the edge of the cab. Then Joe banked her.

"Put me down!" roared Carl, scared out of his senses, for the machine had tilted, and from his own position he could look direct to the ground beneath. He felt the machine slipping bodily sideways.

"Got in an air hole," observed Joe calmly. "Skidding a trifle. But she can't go far. The cross sections between the planes hold her up nicely.

Up we go again, turning all the time. Hold on for a moment."

It was truly a terrifying experience for Carl, and he never quite became accustomed to this new form of locomotion. Even when Joe, having elevated the machine to the height of ten thousand feet, set the automatic gear in motion, and, lighting a cigarette in the shelter of the cab, went to chat with the Major, the magnate felt far from happy.

"But--but," he quavered, "leave the steering gear! Who, then, controls this machine? What is to prevent us being dashed to pieces?"

"Atoms, rather," suggested d.i.c.k, always ready with something likely to improve the occasion.

"Eh?" asked Carl.

"You said pieces," grinned the mids.h.i.+pman. "We're ten thousand feet up.

We wouldn't make jelly even if we fell. We'd be smashed to atoms."

"Horrible! Loathsome young fool!" thought Carl, groaning at the mere mention of such an ending. "Anything will be more pleasant than this.

When will this awful trip be over?"

Flying steadily at over one hundred miles an hour it can be reckoned that the biplane soon swallowed up distance. In fact, late that afternoon she was over Italy, while an hour afterwards she swooped out over the Adriatic Sea, where she sighted the airs.h.i.+p. Not that the latter was easily visible. But a practised eye could make her out.

"See--the airs.h.i.+p," said the Major, pointing towards her for Carl's benefit.

"Ah! Yes. Then we sink to the water?"

"No--we swoop towards her and land on her deck."

"In midair! Is it--is it really safe?" asked this nervous pa.s.senger.

"As houses," interjected d.i.c.k. "Hold on, sir! Don't speak to Joe, or he might make an error and drop us over the edge."

It was a huge, if unkind, joke to watch the twitching face of the magnate, and, as is often enough the way of youth, d.i.c.k and Alec enjoyed Carl's discomfiture immensely. But they were near the s.h.i.+p now. Joe sent his biplane higher, till she was two thousand feet above the air vessel.

Then he banked, banked till the machine looked as if she would turn turtle. But there was a master man at the controls, and at once the biplane dived downward, curling spirally, with her engine stopped, till she looked as if she would drop through the heart of the s.h.i.+p below her.

Then the engine hummed, the propellers revolved, the biplane righted, dived swiftly, rose a yard or two, and then dropped without a quiver on the broad back waiting to receive her.

"Welcome!" said Mr. Andrew Provost, accosting the party, and helping Carl Reitberg to alight. "Welcome to the s.h.i.+p which by your own challenge you yourself helped to erect."

He led him to the lift, escorted him down to the gallery below, and showed him his cabin. In fact, Andrew did all that a host who is a gentleman could do for a guest. He didn't like Mr. Reitberg; he made no pretence of doing so. He was polite as a matter of course, and because it was good manners. But whatever he thought of this stout little magnate, indeed, whether he suspected the true depths of his sporting instincts, Andrew never imagined that he had just welcomed a crafty ruffian, a schemer, a mean-hearted man who, now that he was safely aboard, would leave no stone unturned till he had wrecked the vessel. As for Carl, he sat himself down by that precious box of his and mopped his forehead.

"I've put up with a heap," he said. "Now my time's coming."

CHAPTER XIII

To the North-west Frontier

It would be difficult to find anywhere an individual who settles down to new surroundings, to luxury, or to privation so quickly, so easily, and with so little discussion as does your British Tommy or Jack Tar. Given a piece of good cake tobacco, a jack knife, and a pipe, he will, so long as he has a few boon companions, soon have the air humming with his yarns or his songs. In fact, both of these estimable beings are right good fellows. Let us descend, therefore, to the men's quarters aboard the great airs.h.i.+p. Lined with sleeping bunks on either side, with huge windows which made it possible to provide the best of ventilation, furnished with electric radiators for use in cold lat.i.tudes, or when flying at a great alt.i.tude, the part a.s.signed to the men was a paradise compared with the quarters they might have expected. And on the evening after the return of Joe and his party with the stout and nervous magnate, Hurst and Hawkins and their cronies were gathered together, smoking like chimneys and chattering like a cageful of monkeys. As might well be expected also, their superiors in the saloon came in for some discussion.

"I was a talkin' of 'im," reiterated Hawkins, licking his lips, for he had removed his pipe for that particular reason; "of Mr. Alec Jardine; and I says as 'e's the boy fer a sailor. 'E's like d.i.c.ky, so 'e is, and d.i.c.ky's the properest sailor as ever I set eyes on."

"To which I agrees," exclaimed Private Larkin, Jim Larkin as he was known, no less a person than Major Harvey's soldier servant. "'E's a sailor, 'e is. And p'raps 'ed make a soldier too, fer all I knows. But this here Alec, why, he's got the cut of a soldier, 'e 'as. Don't you deny it."

He was almost ferocious as he addressed himself to Hawkins, and we must admit that one unaccustomed to those in the men's quarters might have even been alarmed. For Private Larkin was not blessed with the most attractive of countenances. To begin with, his head was remarkably big, too big for his body, and most of the head seemed to be composed of a pair of fat, bulging cheeks, above which were a couple of equally bulging eyes which had a most disagreeable habit of fixing upon people, staring them out of countenance, and then of squinting. They were at it now. Hawkins blew fiercely into his pipe.

"Stow that 'ere squintin', s.h.i.+pmate," he growled. "A man ain't never sure what you're lookin' at. Fust it's 'is face. Then it's 'is boots, then it's--it's what not. Now, you nor I ain't likely to agree on that 'ere youngster. You says he'd make a soldier. I says as 'es fair cut out fer a sailor. Let's leave it at that in case we gets to quarrelling.

Let's jaw about this here fat little feller, him as the papers called a sportsman."

"Sportsman!" chimed in Hurst in his most scornful tones. "I like that.