THE ANGEL OF THE REVOLUTION

MORRISON AND GIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.

Drawn by Edwin S. Hope.

NATASHA

THE ANGEL

OF THE

REVOLUTION

A Tale of the Coming Terror

BY

GEORGE GRIFFITH

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY FRED. T. JANE

FIFTH EDITION

LONDON

TOWER PUBLISHING COMPANY LIMITED

91 Minories, E.C.

1894

Copyrighted Abroad] [All Foreign Rights Reserved

TO

CYRIL ARTHUR PEARSON

TO WHOSE SUGGESTION

THE WRITING OF THIS STORY

WAS PRIMARILY DUE

THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE INSCRIBED

BY

THE AUTHOR

CONTENTS.

CHAP.PAGE

I. AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR, 1

II. AT WAR WITH SOCIETY, 8

III. A FRIENDLY CHAT, 16

IV. THE HOUSE ON CLAPHAM COMMON, 23

V. THE INNER CIRCLE, 30

VI. NEW FRIENDS, 37

VII. THE DAUGHTER OF NATAS, 46

VIII. LEARNING THE PART, 54

IX. THE BEGINNING OF SORROWS, 63

X. THE "ARIEL," 70

XI. FIRST BLOOD, 78

XII. IN THE MASTER'S NAME, 85

XIII. FOR LIFE OR DEATH, 91

XIV. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MOMENT, 98

XV. A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY, 103

XVI. A WOOING IN MID-AIR, 110

XVII. AERIA FELIX, 119

XVIII. A NAVY OF THE FUTURE, 127

XIX. THE EVE OF BATTLE, 135

XX. BETWEEN TWO LIVES, 141

XXI. JUST IN TIME, 153

XXII. ARMED NEUTRALITY, 162

XXIII. A BATTLE IN THE NIGHT, 169

XXIV. THE NEW WARFARE, 179

XXV. THE HERALDS OF DISASTER, 188

XXVI. AN INTERLUDE, 193

XXVII. ON THE TRACK OF TREASON, 201

XXVIII. A SKIRMISH IN THE CLOUDS, 208

XXIX. AN EMBASSY FROM THE SKY, 216

XXX. AT CLOSE QUARTERS, 225

XXXI. A RUSSIAN RAID, 233

XXXII. THE END OF THE CHASE, 241

XXXIII. THE BREAKING OF THE CHARM, 247

XXXIV. THE PATH OF CONQUEST, 251

XXXV. FROM CHAOS TO ARCADIE, 258

XXXVI. LOVE AND DUTY, 267

XXXVII. THE CAPTURE OF A CONTINENT, 276

XXXVIII. THE BEGINNING OF THE END, 289

XXXIX. THE BATTLE OF DOVER, 295

XL. BELEAGUERED LONDON, 301

XLI. AN ENVOY OF DELIVERANCE, 308

XLII. THE EVE OF ARMAGEDDON, 315

XLIII. THE OLD LION AT BAY, 323

XLIV. THE TURN OF THE BATTLE-TIDE, 331

XLV. ARMAGEDDON, 339

XLVI. VICTORY, 347

XLVII. THE JUDGMENT OF NATAS, 355

XLVIII. THE ORDERING OF EUROPE, 366

XLIX. THE STORY OF THE MASTER, 375

EPILOGUE.—"AND ON EARTH PEACE!" 386

[Pg 1]

THE ANGEL OF THE REVOLUTION.

CHAPTER I.

AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR.

"

Victory! It flies! I am master of the Powers
of the Air at last!"

They were strange words to be uttered, as
they were, by a pale, haggard, half-starved
looking young fellow in a dingy, comfortless
room on the top floor of a South London
tenement-house; and yet there was a triumphant ring in his
voice, and a clear, bright flush on his thin cheeks that spoke at
least for his own absolute belief in their truth.

Let us see how far he was justified in that belief.

To begin at the beginning, Richard Arnold was one of those
men whom the world is wont to call dreamers and enthusiasts
before they succeed, and heaven-born geniuses and benefactors
of humanity afterwards.

He was twenty-six, and for nearly six years past he had
devoted himself, soul and body, to a single idea—to the so far
unsolved problem of aërial navigation.

This idea had haunted him ever since he had been able to
think logically at all—first dimly at school, and then more
clearly at college, where he had carried everything before him
in mathematics and natural science, until it had at last become
a ruling passion that crowded everything else out of his life,
[Pg 2]
and made him, commercially speaking, that most useless of
social units—a one-idea'd man, whose idea could not be put
into working form.

He was an orphan, with hardly a blood relation in the world.
He had started with plenty of friends, mostly made at college,
who thought he had a brilliant future before him, and therefore
looked upon him as a man whom it might be useful to know.

But as time went on, and no results came, these dropped off,
and he got to be looked upon as an amiable lunatic, who was
wasting his great talents and what money he had on impracticable
fancies, when he might have been earning a handsome
income if he had stuck to the beaten track, and gone in for
practical work.

The distinctions that he had won at college, and the
reputation he had gained as a wonderfully clever chemist and
mechanician, had led to several offers of excellent positions
in great engineering firms; but to the surprise and disgust of
his friends he had declined them all. No one knew why, for
he had kept his secret with the almost passionate jealousy of
the true enthusiast, and so his refusals were put down to sheer
foolishness, and he became numbered with the geniuses who
are failures because they are not practical.

When he came of age he had inherited a couple of thousand
pounds, which had been left in trust to him by his father.
Had it not been for that two thousand pounds he would have
been forced to employ his knowledge and his talents conventionally,
and would probably have made a fortune. But it was
just enough to relieve him from the necessity of earning his
living for the time being, and to make it possible for him to
devote himself entirely to the realisation of his life-dream—at
any rate until the money was gone.

Of course he yielded to the temptation—nay, he never gave
the other course a moment's thought. Two thousand pounds
would last him for years; and no one could have persuaded
him that with complete leisure, freedom from all other concerns,
and money for the necessary experiments, he would not
have succeeded long before his capital was exhausted.

So he put the money into a bank whence he could draw it
out as he chose, and withdrew himself from the world to work
out the ideal of his life.
[Pg 3]

Year after year passed, and still success did not come. He
found practice very different from theory, and in a hundred
details he met with difficulties he had never seen on paper.
Meanwhile his money melted away in costly experiments
which only raised hopes that ended in bitter disappointment.
His wonderful machine was a miracle of ingenuity, and was
mechanically perfect in every detail save one—it would do
no practical work.

Like every other inventor who had grappled with the
problem, he had found himself constantly faced with that fatal
ratio of weight to power. No engine that he could devise
would do more than lift itself and the machine. Again and
again he had made a toy that would fly, as others had done
before him, but a machine that would navigate the air as a
steamer or an electric vessel navigated the waters, carrying
cargo and passengers, was still an impossibility while that
terrible problem of weight and power remained unsolved.

In order to eke out his money to the uttermost, he had
clothed and lodged himself meanly, and had denied himself
everything but the barest necessaries of life.

Thus he had prolonged the struggle for over five years of
toil and privation and hope deferred, and now, when his last
sovereign had been changed and nearly spent, success—real,
tangible, practical success—had come to him, and the discovery
that was to be to the twentieth century what the steam-engine
had been to the nineteenth was accomplished.

He had discovered the true motive power at last.

Two liquefied gases—which, when united, exploded spontaneously—were
admitted by a clockwork escapement in
minute quantities into the cylinders of his engine, and worked
the pistons by the expansive force of the gases generated by
the explosion. There was no weight but the engine itself and
the cylinders containing the liquefied gases. Furnaces, boilers,
condensers, accumulators, dynamos—all the ponderous apparatus
of steam and electricity—were done away with, and he
had a power at command greater than either of them.

There was no doubt about it. The moment that his trembling
fingers set the escapement mechanism in motion, the
model that embodied the thought and labour of years rose into
the air as gracefully as a bird on the wing, and sailed round
[Pg 4]
and round in obedience to its rudder, straining hard at the
string which prevented it from striking the ceiling. It was
weighted in strict proportion to the load that the full-sized
air-ship would have to carry. To increase this was merely a
matter of increasing the power of the engine and the size of
the floats and fans.

The room was a large one, for the house had been built for a
better fate than letting in tenements, and it ran from back to
front with a window at each end. Out of doors there was a
strong breeze blowing, and as soon as Arnold was sure that his
ship was able to hold its own in still air, he threw both the
windows open and let the wind blow straight through the
room. Then he drew the air-ship down, straightened the
rudder, and set it against the breeze.

In almost agonised suspense he watched it rise from the
floor, float motionless for a moment, and then slowly forge
ahead in the teeth of the wind, gathering speed as it went.
It was then that he had uttered that triumphant cry of
"Victory!" All the long years of privation and hope deferred
vanished in that one supreme moment of innocent and bloodless
conquest, and he saw himself master of a kingdom as wide
as the world itself.

He let the model fly the length of the room before he
stopped the clockwork and cut off the motive power, allowing
it to sink gently to the floor. Then came the reaction. He
looked steadfastly at his handiwork for several moments in
silence, and then he turned and threw himself on to a shabby
little bed that stood in one corner of the room and burst into
a flood of tears.

Triumph had come, but had it not come too late? He knew
the boundless possibilities of his invention—but they had still
to be realised. To do this would cost thousands of pounds,
and he had just one half-crown and a few coppers. Even
these were not really his own, for he was already a week
behind with his rent, and another payment fell due the next
day. That would be twelve shillings in all, and if it was not
paid he would be turned into the street.

As he raised himself from the bed he looked despairingly
round the bare, shabby room. No; there was nothing there
that he could pawn or sell. Everything saleable had gone
[Pg 5]
already to keep up the struggle of hope against despair. The
bed and wash-stand, the plain deal table, and the one chair
that comprised the furniture of the room were not his. A
little carpenter's bench, a few worn tools and odds and ends of
scientific apparatus, and a dozen well-used books—these were
all that he possessed in the world now, save the clothes on his
back, and a plain painted sea-chest in which he was wont to
lock up his precious model when he had to go out.

His model! No, he could not sell that. At best it would
fetch but the price of an ingenious toy, and without the secret
of the two gases it was useless. But was not that worth
something? Yes, if he did not starve to death before he could
persuade any one that there was money in it. Besides, the
chest and its priceless contents would be seized for the rent
next day, and then—

"God help me! What am I to do?"

The words broke from him like a cry of physical pain, and
ended in a sob, and for all answer there was the silence of the
room and the inarticulate murmur of the streets below coming
up through the open windows.

He was weak with hunger and sick with excitement,
for he had lived for days on bread and cheese, and that
day he had eaten nothing since the crust that had served him
for breakfast. His nerves, too, were shattered by the intense
strain of his final trial and triumph, and his head was getting
light.

With a desperate effort he recovered himself, and the
heroic resolution that had sustained him through his long
struggle came to his aid again. He got up and poured
some water from the ewer into a cracked cup and drank it.
It refreshed him for the moment, and he poured the rest
of the water over his head. That steadied his nerves and
cleared his brain. He took up the model from the floor, laid
it tenderly and lovingly in its usual resting-place in the
chest. Then he locked the chest and sat down upon it to
think the situation over.

Ten minutes later he rose to his feet and said aloud—

"It's no use. I can't think on an empty stomach. I'll go
out and have one more good meal if it's the last I ever have in
the world, and then perhaps some ideas will come."
[Pg 6]

So saying, he took down his hat, buttoned his shabby
velveteen coat to conceal his lack of a waistcoat, and went out,
locking the door behind him as he went.

Five minutes' walk brought him to the Blackfriars Road,
and then he turned towards the river and crossed the bridge
just as the motley stream of city workers was crossing it in
the opposite direction on their homeward journey.

At Ludgate Circus he went into an eating-house and fared
sumptuously on a plate of beef, some bread and butter, and a
pint mug of coffee. As he was eating a paper-boy came in
and laid an Echo on the table at which he was sitting. He
took it up mechanically, and ran his eye carelessly over the
columns. He was in no humour to be interested by the tattle
of an evening paper, but in a paragraph under the heading of
Foreign News a once familiar name caught his eye, and he
read the paragraph through. It ran as follows:—

Railway Outrage in Russia.

When the Berlin-Petersburg express stopped last night at Kovno, the first
stop after passing the Russian frontier, a shocking discovery was made in the
smoking compartment of the palace car which has been on the train for the
last few months. Colonel Dornovitch, of the Imperial Police, who is understood
to have been on his return journey from a secret mission to Paris, was
found stabbed to the heart and quite dead. In the centre of the forehead were
two short straight cuts in the form of a T reaching to the bone. Not long ago
Colonel Dornovitch was instrumental in unearthing a formidable Nihilist conspiracy,
in connection with which over fifty men and women of various social
ranks were exiled for life to Siberia. The whole affair is wrapped in the
deepest mystery, the only clue in the hands of the police being the fact that
the cross cut on the forehead of the victim indicates that the crime is the work,
not of the Nihilists proper, but of that unknown and mysterious society usually
alluded to as the Terrorists, not one of whom has ever been seen save in his
crimes. How the assassin managed to enter and leave the car unperceived
while the train was going at full speed is an apparently insoluble riddle.
Saving the victim and the attendants, the only passengers in the car who had
not retired to rest were another officer in the Russian service and Lord Alanmere,
who was travelling to St. Petersburg to resume, after leave of absence, the
duties of the Secretaryship to the British Embassy, to which he was appointed
some two years ago.

"Why, that must be the Lord Alanmere who was at Trinity
in my time, or rather Viscount Tremayne, as he was then,"
mused Arnold, as he laid the paper down. "We were very
good friends in those days. I wonder if he'd know me now,
and lend me a ten-pound note to get me out of the infernal fix
[Pg 7]
I'm in? I believe he would, for he was one of the few really
good-hearted men I have so far met with.

"If he were in London I really think I should take courage
from my desperation, and put my case before him and ask his
help. However, he's not in London, and so it's no use wishing.
Well, I feel more of a man for that shillingsworth of food and
drink, and I'll go and wind up my dissipation with a pipe and
a quiet think on the Embankment."
[Pg 8]

CHAPTER II.

AT WAR WITH SOCIETY.

When Richard Arnold reached the Embankment
dusk had deepened into night, so far, at least,
as nature was concerned. But in London in
the beginning of the twentieth century there
was but little night to speak of, save in the
sense of a division of time. The date of the
paper which contained the account of the tragedy on the Russian
railway was September 3rd, 1903, and within the last ten years
enormous progress had been made in electric lighting.

The ebb and flow in the Thames had at last been turned to
account, and worked huge turbines which perpetually stored
up electric power that was used not only for lighting, but
for cooking in hotels and private houses, and for driving
machinery. At all the great centres of traffic huge electric
suns cast their rays far and wide along the streets, supplementing
the light of the lesser lamps with which they were
lined on each side.

The Embankment from Westminster to Blackfriars was
bathed in a flood of soft white light from hundreds of great
lamps running along both sides, and from the centre of each
bridge a million candle-power sun cast rays upon the water
that were continued in one unbroken stream of light from
Chelsea to the Tower.

On the north side of the river the scene was one of brilliant
and splendid opulence, that contrasted strongly with the half-lighted
gloom of the murky wilderness of South London, dark
and forbidding in its irredeemable ugliness.

From Blackfriars Arnold walked briskly towards Westminster,
[Pg 9]
bitterly contrasting as he went the lavish display of
wealth around him with the sordid and seemingly hopeless
poverty of his own desperate condition.

He was the maker and possessor of a far greater marvel
than anything that helped to make up this splendid scene, and
yet the ragged tramps who were remorselessly moved on from
one seat to another by the policemen as soon as they had
settled themselves down for a rest and a doze, were hardly
poorer than he was.

For nearly four hours he paced backwards and forwards,
every now and then stopping to lean on the parapet, and once
or twice to sit down, until the chill autumn wind pierced his
scanty clothing, and compelled him to resume his walk in order
to get warm again.

All the time he turned his miserable situation over and over
again in his mind without avail. There seemed no way out of
it; no way of obtaining the few pounds that would save him
from homeless beggary and his splendid invention from being lost
to him and the world, certainly for years, and perhaps for ever.

And then, as hour after hour went by, and still no cheering
thought came, the misery of the present pressed closer and
closer upon him. He dare not go home, for that would be to
bring the inevitable disaster of the morrow nearer, and, besides,
it was home no longer till the rent was paid. He had two
shillings, and he owed at least twelve. He was also the maker
of a machine for which the Tsar of Russia had made a standing
offer of a million sterling. That million might have been
his if he had possessed the money necessary to bring his invention
under the notice of the great Autocrat.

That was the position he had turned over and over in his
mind until its horrible contradictions maddened him. With a
little money, riches and fame were his; without it he was a
beggar in sight of starvation.

And yet he doubted whether, even in his present dire
extremity, he could, had he had the chance, sell what might
be made the most terrific engine of destruction ever thought
of to the head and front of a despotism that he looked upon as
the worst earthly enemy of mankind.

For the twentieth time he had paused in his weary walk to
and fro to lean on the parapet close by Cleopatra's Needle.
[Pg 10]
The Embankment was almost deserted now, save by the tramps
and a few isolated wanderers like himself. For several minutes
he looked out over the brightly glittering waters below him,
wondering listlessly how long it would take him to drown if
he dropped over, and whether he would be rescued before he
was dead, and brought back to life, and prosecuted the next
day for daring to try and leave the world save in the conventional
and orthodox fashion.

Then his mind wandered back to the Tsar and his million,
and he pictured to himself the awful part that a fleet of air-ships
such as his would play in the general European war that
people said could not now be put off for many months longer.
As he thought of this the vision grew in distinctness, and he
saw them hovering over armies and cities and fortresses, and
raining irresistible death and destruction down upon them.
The prospect appalled him, and he shuddered as he thought
that it was now really within the possibility of realisation;
and then his ideas began to translate themselves involuntarily
into words which he spoke aloud, completely oblivious for the
time being of his surroundings.

"No, I think I would rather destroy it, and then take my
secret with me out of the world, than put such an awful power
of destruction and slaughter into the hands of the Tsar, or, for
the matter of that, any other of the rulers of the earth. Their
subjects can butcher each other quite efficiently enough as it is.
The next war will be the most frightful carnival of destruction
that the world has ever seen; but what would it be like if I
were to give one of the nations of Europe the power of raining
death and desolation on its enemies from the skies! No, no!
Such a power, if used at all, should only be used against and
not for the despotisms that afflict the earth with the curse of
war!"

"Then why not use it so, my friend, if you possess it, and
would see mankind freed from its tyrants?" said a quiet voice
at his elbow.

The sound instantly scattered his vision to the winds, and
he turned round with a startled exclamation to see who had
spoken. As he did so, a whiff of smoke from a very good
cigar drifted past his nostrils, and the voice said again in the
same quiet, even tones—
[Pg 11]

"You must forgive me for my bad manners in listening to
what you were saying, and also for breaking in upon your
reverie. My excuse must be the great interest that your
words had for me. Your opinions would appear to be exactly
my own, too, and perhaps you will accept that as another
excuse for my rudeness."

It was the first really kindly, friendly voice that Richard
Arnold had heard for many a long day, and the words were so
well chosen and so politely uttered that it was impossible to
feel any resentment, so he simply said in answer—

"There was no rudeness, sir; and, besides, why should a
gentleman like you apologise for speaking to a"—

"Another gentleman," quickly interrupted his new acquaintance.
"Because I transgressed the laws of politeness in doing
so, and an apology was due. Your speech tells me that we are
socially equals. Intellectually you look my superior. The rest
is a difference only of money, and that any smart swindler can
bury himself in nowadays if he chooses. But come, if you have
no objection to make my better acquaintance, I have a great
desire to make yours. If you will pardon my saying so, you
are evidently not an ordinary man, or else, something tells me,
you would be rich. Have a smoke and let us talk, since we
apparently have a subject in common. Which way are you
going?"

"Nowhere—and therefore anywhere," replied Arnold, with a
laugh that had but little merriment in it. "I have reached a
point from which all roads are one to me."

"That being the case I propose that you shall take the one
that leads to my chambers in Savoy Mansions yonder. We
shall find a bit of supper ready, I expect, and then I shall ask
you to talk. Come along!"

There was no more mistaking the genuine kindness and sincerity
of the invitation than the delicacy with which it was
given. To have refused would not only have been churlish,
but it would have been for a drowning man to knock aside a
kindly hand held out to help him; so Arnold accepted, and
the two new strangely met and strangely assorted friends
walked away together in the direction of the Savoy.

The suite of rooms occupied by Arnold's new acquaintance
was the beau ideal of a wealthy bachelor's abode. Small, compact,
[Pg 12]
cosy, and richly furnished, yet in the best of taste withal,
the rooms looked like an indoor paradise to him after the bare
squalor of the one room that had been his own home for over
two years.

His host took him first into a dainty little bath-room to
wash his hands, and by the time he had performed his scanty
toilet supper was already on the table in the sitting-room.
Nothing melts reserve like a good well-cooked meal washed
down by appropriate liquids, and before supper was half over
Arnold and his host were chatting together as easily as though
they stood on perfectly equal terms and had known each other
for years. His new friend seemed purposely to keep the conversation
to general subjects until the meal was over and his
pattern man-servant had removed the cloth and left them
together with the wine and cigars on the table.

As soon as he had closed the door behind him his host
motioned Arnold to an easy-chair on one side of the fireplace,
threw himself into another on the other side, and said—

"Now, my friend, plant yourself, as they say across the
water, help yourself to what there is as the spirit moves you,
and talk—the more about yourself the better. But stop. I
forgot that we do not even know each other's name yet. Let
me introduce myself first.

"My name is Maurice Colston; I am a bachelor, as you see.
For the rest, in practice I am an idler, a dilettante, and a good
deal else that is pleasant and utterly useless. In theory, let
me tell you, I am a Socialist, or something of the sort, with
a lively conviction as to the injustice and absurdity of the
social and economic conditions which enable me to have
such a good time on earth without having done anything
to deserve it beyond having managed to be born the son of
my father."

He stopped and looked at his guest through the wreaths
of his cigar smoke as much as to say: "And now who
are you?"

Arnold took the silent hint, and opened his mouth and his
heart at the same time. Quite apart from the good turn he
had done him, there was a genial frankness about his unconventional
host that chimed in so well with his own nature that
he cast all reserve aside, and told plainly and simply the story
[Pg 13]
of his life and its master passion, his dreams and hopes and
failures, and his final triumph in the hour when triumph itself
was defeat.

His host heard him through without a word, but towards the
end of his story his face betrayed an interest, or rather an
expectant anxiety, to hear what was coming next that no mere
friendly concern of the moment for one less fortunate than
himself could adequately account for. At length, when Arnold
had completed his story with a brief but graphic description of
the last successful trial of his model, he leant forward in his
chair, and, fixing his dark, steady eyes on his guest's face, said
in a voice from which every trace of his former good-humoured
levity had vanished—

"A strange story, and truer, I think, than the one I told you.
Now tell me on your honour as a gentleman: Were you really
in earnest when I heard you say on the embankment that
you would rather smash up your model and take the secret
with you into the next world, than sell your discovery to the
Tsar for the million that he has offered for such an air-ship
as yours?"

"Absolutely in earnest," was the reply. "I have seen
enough of the seamy side of this much-boasted civilisation of
ours to know that it is the most awful mockery that man ever
insulted his Maker with. It is based on fraud, and sustained
by force—force that ruthlessly crushes all who do not bow the
knee to Mammon. I am the enemy of a society that does not
permit a man to be honest and live, unless he has money and
can defy it. I have just two shillings in the world, and I
would rather throw them into the Thames and myself after
them than take that million from the Tsar in exchange for an
engine of destruction that would make him master of the
world."

"Those are brave words," said Colston, with a smile. "Forgive
me for saying so, but I wonder whether you would repeat
them if I told you that I am a servant of his Majesty the
Tsar, and that you shall have that million for your model and
your secret the moment that you convince me that what you
have told me is true."

Before he had finished speaking Arnold had risen to his feet.
He heard him out, and then he said, slowly and steadily—
[Pg 14]

"I should not take the trouble to repeat them; I should
only tell you that I am sorry that I have eaten salt with a
man who could take advantage of my poverty to insult me.
Good night."

He was moving towards the door when Colston jumped up
from his chair, strode round the table, and got in front of him.
Then he put his two hands on his shoulders, and, looking
straight into his eyes, said in a tone that vibrated with
emotion—

"Thank God, I have found an honest man at last! Go and
sit down again, my friend, my comrade, as I hope you soon
will be. Forgive me for the foolishness that I spoke! I am
no servant of the Tsar. He and all like him have no more
devoted enemy on earth than I am. Look! I will soon prove
it to you."

As he said the last words, Colston let go Arnold's shoulders,
flung off his coat and waistcoat, slipped his braces off his
shoulders, and pulled his shirt up to his neck. Then he turned
his bare back to his guest, and said—

"That is the sign-manual of Russian tyranny—the mark of
the knout!"

Arnold shrank back with a cry of horror at the sight. From
waist to neck Colston's back was a mass of hideous scars and
wheals, crossing each other and rising up into purple lumps,
with livid blue and grey spaces between them. As he stood,
there was not an inch of naturally-coloured skin to be seen. It
was like the back of a man who had been flayed alive, and then
flogged with a cat-o'-nine-tails.

Before Arnold had overcome his horror his host had re-adjusted
his clothing. Then he turned to him and said—

"That was my reward for telling the governor of a petty
Russian town that he was a brute-beast for flogging a poor
decrepit old Jewess to death. Do you believe me now when I
say that I am no servant or friend of the Tsar?"

"Yes, I do," replied Arnold, holding out his hand, "you were
right to try me, and I was wrong to be so hasty. It is a failing
of mine that has done me plenty of harm before now. I think
I know now what you are without your telling me. Give me a
piece of paper and you shall have my address, so that you can
come to-morrow and see the model—only I warn you that you
[Pg 15]
will have to pay my rent to keep my landlord's hands off it.
And then I must be off, for I see it's past twelve."

"You are not going out again to-night, my friend, while I
have a sofa and plenty of rugs at your disposal," said his host.
"You will sleep here, and in the morning we will go together
and see this marvel of yours. Meanwhile sit down and make
yourself at home with another cigar. We have only just
begun to know each other—we two enemies of Society!"
[Pg 16]

CHAPTER III.

A FRIENDLY CHAT.

Soon after eight the next morning Colston came
into the sitting-room where Arnold had slept
on the sofa, and dreamt dreams of war and
world-revolts and battles fought in mid-air
between aërial navies built on the plan of his
own model. When Colston came in he was
just awake enough to be wondering whether the events of the
previous night were a reality or part of his dreams—a doubt
that was speedily set at rest by his host drawing back the
curtains and pulling up the blinds.

The moment his eyes were properly open he saw that he was
anywhere but in his own shabby room in Southwark, and the
rest was made clear by Colston saying—

"Well, comrade Arnold, Lord High Admiral of the Air,
how have you slept? I hope you found the sofa big and
soft enough, and that the last cigar has left no evil effects
behind it."

"Eh? Oh, good morning! I don't know whether it was the
whisky or the cigars, or what it was; but do you know I
have been dreaming all sorts of absurd things about battles
in the air and dropping explosives on fortresses and turning
them into small volcanoes. When you came in just now I
hadn't the remotest idea where I was. It's time to get up,
I suppose?"

"Yes, it's after eight a good bit. I've had my tub, so the
bath-room is at your service. Meanwhile, Burrows will be laying
the table for breakfast. When you have finished your tub,
come into my dressing-room, and let me rig you out. We are
[Pg 17]
about of a size, and I think I shall be able to meet your most
fastidious taste. In fact, I could rig you out as anything—from
a tramp to an officer of the Guards."

"It wouldn't take much change to accomplish the former,
I'm afraid. But, really, I couldn't think of trespassing so far
on your hospitality as to take your very clothes from you.
I'm deep enough in your debt already."

"Don't talk nonsense, Richard Arnold. The tone in which
those last words were said shows me that you have not duly
laid to heart what I said last night. There is no such thing as
private property in the Brotherhood, of which I hope, by this
time to-morrow, you will be an initiate.

"What I have here is mine only for the purposes of the
Cause, wherefore it is as much yours as mine, for to-day we are
going on the Brotherhood's business. Why, then, should you
have any scruples about wearing the Brotherhood's clothes?
Now clear out and get tubbed, and wash some of those absurd
ideas out of your head."

"Well, as you put it that way, I don't mind, only remember
that I don't necessarily put on the principles of the Brotherhood
with its clothes."

So saying, Arnold got up from the sofa, stretched himself,
and went off to make his toilet.

When he sat down to breakfast with his host half an hour
later, very few who had seen him on the Embankment the night
before would have recognised him as the same man. The tailor,
after all, does a good deal to make the man, externally at least,
and the change of clothes in Arnold's case had transformed him
from a superior looking tramp into an aristocratic and decidedly
good-looking man, in the prime of his youth, saving only for
the thinness and pallor of his face, and a perceptible stoop in
the shoulders.

During breakfast they chatted about their plans for the day,
and then drifted into generalities, chiefly of a political nature.

The better Arnold came to know Maurice Colston the more
remarkable his character appeared to him; and it was his
growing wonder at the contradictions that it exhibited that
made him say towards the end of the meal—

"I must say you're a queer sort of conspirator, Colston.
My idea of Nihilists and members of revolutionary societies has
[Pg 18]
always taken the form of silent, stealthy, cautious beings, with
a lively distrust and hatred of the whole human race outside
their own circles. And yet here are you, an active member
of the most terrible secret society in existence, pledged to
the destruction of nearly every institution on earth, and
carrying your life in your hand, opening your heart like a
schoolboy to a man you have literally not known for twenty-four
hours.

"Suppose you had made a mistake in me. What would
there be to prevent me telling the police who you are,
and having you locked up with a view to extradition to
Russia?"

"In the first place," replied Colston quietly, "you would not
do so, because I am not mistaken in you, and because, in your
heart, whether you fully know it or not, you believe as I do
about the destruction that is about to fall upon Society.

"In the second place, if you did betray my confidence, I
should be able to bring such an overwhelming array of the
most respectable evidence to show that I was nothing like what
I really am, that you would be laughed at for a madman; and,
in the third place, there would be an inquest on you within
twenty-four hours after you had told your story. Do you
remember the death of Inspector Ainsworth, of the Criminal
Investigation Department, about six months ago?"

"Yes, of course I do. Hermit and all as I was, I could
hardly help hearing about that, considering what a noise it
made. But I thought that was cleared up. Didn't one of that
gang of garotters that was broken up in South London a couple
of months later confess to strangling him in the statement that
he made before he was executed?"

"Yes, and his widow is now getting ten shillings a week for
life on account of that confession. Birkett no more killed
Ainsworth than you did; but he had killed two or three others,
and so the confession didn't do him very much harm.

"No; Ainsworth met his death in quite another way. He
accepted from the Russian secret police bureau in London a
bribe of £250 down and the promise of another £250 if he
succeeded in manufacturing enough evidence against a member
of our Outer Circle to get him extradited to Russia on a
trumped-up charge of murder.
[Pg 19]

"The Inner Circle learnt of this from one of our spies in the
Russian London police, and——, well, Ainsworth was found
dead with the mark of the Terror upon his forehead before he
had time to put his treachery into action. He was executed
by two of the Brotherhood, who are members of the Metropolitan
police force, and who were afterwards complimented by
the magistrate for the intelligent efforts they had made in
bringing the murderers to justice."

Colston told the dark story in the most careless of tones
between the puffs of his after-breakfast cigarette. Arnold
stifled his horror as well as he was able, but he could not help
saying, when his host had done—

"This Brotherhood of yours is well named the Terror; but
was not that rather a murder than an execution?"

"By no means," replied Colston, a trifle coldly. "Society
hangs or beheads a man who kills another. Ainsworth knew
as well as we did that if the man he tried to betray by
false evidence had once set foot in Russia, the torments of
a hundred deaths would have been his before he had been
allowed to die.

"He betrayed his office and his faith to his English masters
in order to commit this vile crime, and so he was killed as a
murderous and treacherous reptile that was not fit to live. We
of the Terror are not lawyers, and so we make no distinctions
between deliberate plotting for money to kill and the act of
killing itself. Our law is closer akin to justice than the hair-splitting
fraud that is tolerated by Society."

Either from emotional or logical reasons Arnold made no
reply to this reasoning, and, seeing he remained silent, Colston
resumed his ordinary nonchalant, good-humoured tone, and
went on—

"But come, that will be horrors enough for to-day. We
have other business in hand, and we may as well get to it
at once. About this wonderful invention of yours. Of course
I believe all you have told me about it, but you must remember
that I am only an agent, and that I am inexorably bound
by certain rules, in accordance with which I must act.

"Now, to be perfectly plain with you, and in order that we
may thoroughly understand each other before either of us
commits himself to anything, I must tell you that I want to
[Pg 20]
see this model flying ship of yours in order to be able to report
on it to-night to the Executive of the Inner Circle, to whom I
shall also want to introduce you. If you will not allow me to
do that say so at once, and, for the present at least, our negotiations
must come to a sudden stop."

"Go on," said Arnold quietly; "so far I consent. For the
rest I would rather hear you to the end."

"Very well. Then if the Executive approve of the invention,
you will be asked to join the Inner Circle at once, and to
devote yourself body and soul to the Society and the accomplishment
of the objects that will be explained to you. If
you refuse there will be an end of the matter, and you
will simply be asked to give your word of honour to reveal
nothing that you have seen or heard, and then allowed to
depart in peace.

"If, on the other hand, you consent, in consideration of the
immense importance of your secret—which there is no need to
disguise from you—to the Brotherhood, the usual condition of
passing through the Outer Circle will be dispensed with, and
you will be trusted as absolutely as we shall expect you to
trust us.

"Whatever funds you then require to manufacture an air-ship
on the plan of your model will be placed at your disposal,
and a suitable place will be selected for the works that you
will have to build. When the ship is ready to take the air
you will, of course, be appointed to the command of her, and
you will pick your crew from among the workmen who will
act under your orders in the building of the vessel.

"They will all be members of the Outer Circle, who will
not understand your orders, but simply obey them blindly,
even to the death. One member of the Inner Circle will act
as your second in command, and he will be as perfectly trusted
as you will be, so that in unforeseen emergencies you will be
able to consult with him with perfect confidence. Now I think
I have told you all. What do you say?"

Arnold was silent for a few minutes, too busy for speech
with the rush of thoughts that had crowded through his brain
as Colston was speaking. Then he looked up at his host and
said—

"May I make conditions?"
[Pg 21]

"You may state them," replied he, with a smile, "but, of
course, I don't undertake to accept them without consultation
with my—I mean with the Executive."

"Of course not," said Arnold. "Well, the conditions that I
should feel myself obliged to make with your Executive would
be, briefly speaking, these: I would not reveal to any one the
composition of the gases from which I derive my motive force.
I should manufacture them myself in given quantities, and
keep them always under my own charge.

"At the first attempt to break faith with me in this respect
I would blow the air-ship and all her crew, including myself,
into such fragments as it would be difficult to find one of them.
I have and wish for no life apart from my invention, and I
would not survive it."

"Good!" interrupted Colston. "There spoke the true
enthusiast. Go on."

"Secondly, I would use the machine only in open warfare—when
the Brotherhood is fighting openly for the attainment of
a definite end. Once the appeal to force has been made I will
employ a force such as no nation on earth can use without me,
and I will use it as unsparingly as the armies and fleets
engaged will employ their own engines of destruction on one
another. But I will be no party to the destruction of defenceless
towns and people who are not in arms against us. If I am
ordered to do that I tell you candidly that I will not do it. I
will blow the air-ship itself up first."

"The conditions are somewhat stringent, although the sentiments
are excellent," replied Colston; "still, of myself I can
neither accept nor reject them. That will be for the Executive
to do. For my own part I think that you will be able to
arrive at a basis of agreement on them. And now I think we
have said all we can say for the present, and so if you are
ready we'll be off and satisfy my longing to see the invention
that is to make us the arbiters of war—when war comes, which
I fancy will not be long now."

Something in the tone in which these last words were
spoken struck Arnold with a kind of cold chill, and he shivered
slightly as he said in answer to Colston—

"I am ready when you are, and no less anxious than you to
set eyes on my model. I hope to goodness it is all safe! Do
[Pg 22]
you know, when I am away from it I feel just like a woman
away from her first baby."

A few minutes later two of the most dangerous enemies of
Society alive were walking quietly along the Embankment
towards Blackfriars, smoking their cigars and chatting as conventionally
as though there were no such things on earth as
tyranny and oppression, and their necessarily ever-present
enemies conspiracy and brooding revolution.
[Pg 23]

CHAPTER IV.

THE HOUSE ON CLAPHAM COMMON.

Twenty minutes' walk took Arnold and Colston
to the door of the tenement-house in which the
former had lived since his fast-dwindling store
of money had convinced him of the necessity
of bringing his expenses down to the lowest
possible limit if he wished to keep up the
struggle with fate very much longer.

As they mounted the dirty, evil-smelling staircase, Colston
said—

"Phew! Verily you are a hero of science if you have
brought yourself to live in a hole like this for a couple of
years rather than give up your dream, and grow fat on the
loaves and fishes of conventionality."

"This is a palace compared with some of the rookeries about
here," replied Arnold, with a laugh. "The march of progress
seems to have left this half of London behind as hopeless.
Ten years ago there were a good many thousands of highly
respectable mediocrities living on this side of the river, but
now I am told that the glory has departed from the very best
of its localities, and given them up to various degrees of squalor.
Vice, poverty, and misery seem to gravitate naturally southward
in London. I don't know why, but they do. Well, here
is the door of my humble den."

As he spoke he put the key in the lock, and opened the
door, bidding his companion enter as he did so.

Arnold's anxiety was soon relieved by finding the precious
model untouched in its resting-place, and it was at once
brought out. Colston was delighted beyond his powers of
[Pg 24]
expression with the marvellous ingenuity with which the
miracle of mechanical skill was contrived and put together;
and when Arnold, after showing and explaining to him all the
various parts of the mechanism and the external structure, at
length set the engine working, and the air-ship rose gracefully
from the floor and began to sail round the room in the wide
circle to which it was confined by its mooring-line, he stared at
it for several minutes in wondering silence, following it round
and round with his eyes, and then he said in a voice from
which he vainly strove to banish the signs of the emotion that
possessed him—

"It is the last miracle of science! With a few such ships
as that one could conquer the world in a month!"

"Yes, that would not be a very difficult task, seeing that
neither an army nor a fleet could exist for twelve hours with
two or three of them hovering above it," replied Arnold.

The trial over, Arnold set to work and took the model partly
to pieces for packing up; and while he was putting it away in
the old sea-chest, Colston counted out ten sovereigns and laid
them on the table. Hearing the clink of the gold, Arnold
looked up and said—

"What is that for? A sovereign will be quite enough to get
me out of my present scrape, and then if we come to any
terms to-night it will be time enough to talk about payment."

"The Brotherhood does not do business in that way," was
the reply. "At present your only connection with it is a
commercial one, and ten pounds is a very moderate fee for the
privilege of inspecting such an invention as this. Anyhow,
that is what I am ordered to hand over to you in payment for
your trouble now and to-night, so you must accept it as it is
given—as a matter of business."

"Very well," said Arnold, closing and locking the chest as
he spoke, "if you think it worth ten pounds, the money will
not come amiss to me. Now, if you will remain and guard the
household gods for a minute, I will go and pay my rent and
get a cab."

Half an hour later his few but priceless possessions were
loaded on a four-wheeler and Arnold had bidden farewell for
ever to the dingy room in which he had passed so many hours
of toil and dreaming, suffering and disappointment. Before
[Pg 25]
lunch time they were safely bestowed in a couple of rooms
which Colston had engaged for him in the same building in
which his own rooms were.

In the afternoon, among other purchases, a more convenient
case was bought for the model, and in this it was packed with
the plans and papers which explained its construction, ready
for the evening journey.

The two friends dined together at six in Colston's rooms,
and at seven sharp his servant announced that the cab was at
the door. Within ten minutes they were bowling along the
Embankment towards Westminster Bridge in a luxuriously
appointed hansom of the newest type, with the precious case
lying across their knees.

"This is a comfortable cab," said Arnold, when they had
gone a hundred yards or so. "By the way, how does the man
know where to go? I didn't hear you give him any directions."

"None were necessary," was the reply. "This cab, like a
good many others in London, belongs to the Brotherhood, and
the man who is driving is one of the Outer Circle. Our Jehus
are the most useful spies that we have. Many is the secret of
the enemy that we have learnt from, and many is the secret
police agent who has been driven to his rendezvous by a
Terrorist who has heard every word that has been spoken on
the journey."

"How on earth is that managed?"

"Every one of the cabs is fitted with a telephonic arrangement
communicating with the roof. The driver has only to
button the wire of the transmitter up inside his coat so that
the transmitter itself lies near to his ear, and he can hear even
a whisper inside the cab.

"The man who is driving us, for instance, has a sort of
retainer from the Russian Embassy to be on hand at certain
hours on certain nights in the week. Our cabs are all better
horsed, better appointed, and better driven than any others
in London, and, consequently, they are favourites, especially
among the young attachés, and are nearly always employed by
them on their secret missions or love affairs, which, by the
way, are very often the same thing. Our own Jehu has a job
on to-night, from which we expect some results that will
mystify the enemy not a little. We got our first suspicions of
[Pg 26]
Ainsworth from a few incautious words that he spoke in one of
our cabs."

"It's a splendid system, I should think, for discovering the
movements of your enemies," said Arnold, not without an
uncomfortable reflection on the fact that he was himself now
completely in the power of this terrible organisation, which had
keen eyes and ready hands in every capital of the civilised
world. "But how do you guard against treachery? It is well
known that all the Governments of Europe are spending money
like water to unearth this mystery of the Terror. Surely all
your men cannot be incorruptible."

"Practically they are so. The very mystery which
enshrouds all our actions makes them so. We have had a
few traitors, of course; but as none of them has ever survived
his treachery by twenty-four hours, a bribe has lost its attraction
for the rest."

In such conversation as this the time was passed, while the
cab crossed the river and made its way rapidly and easily along
Kennington Road and Clapham Road to Clapham Common.
At length it turned into the drive of one of those solid abodes of
pretentious respectability which front the Common, and pulled
up before a big stucco portico.

"Here we are!" exclaimed Colston, as the doors of the cab
automatically opened. He got out first, and Arnold handed
the case to him, and then followed him.

Without a word the driver turned his horse into the road
again and drove off towards town, and as they ascended the
steps the front door opened, and they went in, Colston saying
as they did so—

"Is Mr. Smith at home?"

"Yes, sir; you are expected, I believe. Will you step into
the drawing-room?" replied the clean-shaven and immaculately
respectable man-servant, in evening dress, who had opened the
door for them.

They were shown into a handsomely furnished room lit with
electric light. As soon as the footman had closed the door
behind him, Colston said—

"Well, now, here you are in the conspirators' den, in the
very headquarters of those Terrorists for whom Europe is being
ransacked constantly without the slightest success. I have
[Pg 27]
often wondered what the rigid respectability of Clapham
Common would think if it knew the true character of this
harmless-looking house. I hardly think an earthquake in
Clapham Road would produce much more sensation than such
a discovery would.

"And now," he continued, his tone becoming suddenly much
more serious, "in a few minutes you will be in the presence of
the Inner Circle of the Terrorists, that is to say, of those who
practically hold the fate of Europe in their hands. You know
pretty clearly what they want with you. If you have thought
better of the business that we have discussed you are still at
perfect liberty to retire from it, on giving your word of honour
not to disclose anything that I have said to you."

"I have not the slightest intention of doing anything of the
sort," replied Arnold. "You know the conditions on which I
came here. I shall put them before your Council, and if they
are accepted your Brotherhood will, within their limits, have no
more faithful adherent than I. If not, the business will simply
come to an end as far as I am concerned, and your secret will
be as safe with me as though I had taken the oath of membership."

"Well said!" replied Colston, "and just what I expected
you to say. Now listen to me for a minute. Whatever you
may see or hear for the next few minutes say nothing till you
are asked to speak. I will say all that is necessary at first.
Ask no questions, but trust to anything that may seem strange
being explained in due course—as it will be. A single indiscretion
on your part might raise suspicions which would be as
dangerous as they would be unfounded. When you are asked
to speak do so without the slightest fear, and speak your mind
as openly as you have done to me."

"You need have no fear for me," replied Arnold. "I think
I am sensible enough to be prudent, and I am quite sure that
I am desperate enough to be fearless. Little worse can happen
to me than the fate that I was contemplating last night."

As he ceased speaking there was a knock at the door. It
opened and the footman reappeared, saying in the most
commonplace fashion—

"Mr. Smith will be happy to see you now, gentlemen. Will
you kindly walk this way?"
[Pg 28]

They followed him out into the hall, and then, somewhat to
Arnold's surprise, down the stairs at the back, which apparently
led to the basement of the house.

The footman preceded them to the basement floor and
halted before a door in a little passage that looked like the
entrance to a coal cellar. On this he knocked in peculiar
fashion with the knuckles of one hand, while with the other he
pressed the button of an electric bell concealed under the paper
on the wall. The bell sounded faintly as though some distance
off, and as it rang the footman said abruptly to Colston—

"Das Wort ist Freiheit."

Arnold knew German enough to know that this meant
"The word is 'Freedom,'" but why it should have been spoken
in a foreign language mystified him not a little.

While he was thinking about this the door opened, as if by a
released spring, and he saw before him a long, narrow passage,
lit by four electric arcs, and closed at the other end by a door,
guarded by a sentry armed with a magazine rifle.

He followed Colston down the passage, and when within a
dozen feet of the sentry, he brought his rifle to the "ready,"
and the following strange dialogue ensued between him and
Colston—

"Quien va?"

"Zwei Freunde der Bruderschaft."

"Por la libertad?"

"Für Freiheit über alles!"

"Pass, friends."

The rifle grounded as the words were spoken, and the sentry
stepped back to the wall of the passage.

At the same moment another bell rang beyond the door, and
then the door itself opened as the other had done.

They passed through, and it closed instantly behind them,
leaving them in total darkness.

Colston caught Arnold by the arm, and drew him towards
him, saying as he did so—

"What do you think of our system of passwords?"

"Pretty hard to get through unless one knew them, I should
think. Why the different languages?"

"To make assurance doubly sure every member of the Inner
Circle must be conversant with four European languages. On
[Pg 29]
these the changes are rung, and even I did not know what the
two languages were to be to-night before I entered the house,
and if I had asked for 'Mr. Brown' instead of 'Mr. Smith,' we
should never have got beyond the drawing-room.

"When the footman told me in German that the word was
'Freedom,' I knew that I should have to answer the challenge
of the sentry in German. I did not know that he would
challenge in Spanish, and if I had not understood him, or had
replied in any other language but German, he would have shot
us both down without saying another word, and no one would
ever have known what had become of us. You will be exempt
from this condition, because you will always come with me.
I am, in fact, responsible for you."

"H'm, there doesn't seem much chance of any one getting
through on false pretences," replied Arnold, with an irrepressible
shudder. "Has any one ever tried?"

"Yes, once. The two gentlemen whose disappearance made
the famous 'Clapham Mystery' of about twelve months ago.
They were two of the smartest detectives in the French service,
and the only two men who ever guessed the true nature of this
house. They are buried under the floor on which you are
standing at this moment."

The words were spoken with a cruel inflexible coldness,
which struck Arnold like a blast of frozen air. He shivered,
and was about to reply when Colston caught him by the arm
again, and said hurriedly—

"H'st! We are going in. Remember what I said, and don't
speak again till some one asks you to do so."

As he spoke a door opened in the wall of the dark chamber
in which they had been standing for the last few minutes, and
a flood of soft light flowed in upon their dazzled eyes. At the
same moment a man's voice said from the room beyond in
Russian—

"Who stands there?"

"Maurice Colston and the Master of the Air," replied Colston
in the same language.

"You are welcome," was the reply, and then Colston, taking
Arnold by the arm, led him into the room.
[Pg 30]

CHAPTER V.

THE INNER CIRCLE.

As soon as Arnold's eyes got accustomed to the
light, he saw that he was in a large, lofty room
with panelled walls adorned with a number of
fine paintings. As he looked at these his gaze
was fascinated by them, even more than by the
strange company which was assembled round
the long table that occupied the middle of the room.

Though they were all manifestly the products of the highest
form of art, their subjects were dreary and repulsive beyond
description. There was a horrible realism about them
which reminded him irresistibly of the awful collection of
pictorial horrors in the Musée Wiertz, in Brussels—those works
of the brilliant but unhappy genius who was driven into insanity
by the sheer exuberance of his own morbid imagination.

Here was a long line of men and women in chains staggering
across a wilderness of snow that melted away into the horizon
without a break. Beside them rode Cossacks armed with long
whips that they used on men and women alike when their
fainting limbs gave way beneath them, and they were like to
fall by the wayside to seek the welcome rest that only death
could give them.

There was a picture of a woman naked to the waist, and tied
up to a triangle in a prison yard, being flogged by a soldier with
willow wands, while a group of officers stood by, apparently
greatly interested in the performance. Another painting showed
a poor wretch being knouted to death in the market-place of a
Russian town, and yet another showed a young and beautiful
woman in a prison cell with her face distorted by the horrible
[Pg 31]
leer of madness, and her little white hands clawing nervously
at her long dishevelled hair.

Arnold stood for several minutes fascinated by the hideous
realism of the pictures, and burning with rage and shame at the
thought that they were all too terribly true to life, when he
was startled out of his reverie by the same voice that had
called them from the dark room saying to him in English—

"Well, Richard Arnold, what do you think of our little
picture gallery? The paintings are good in themselves, but it
may make them more interesting to you if you know that they
are all faithful reproductions of scenes that have really taken
place within the limits of the so-called civilised and Christian
world. There are some here in this room now who have
suffered the torments depicted on those canvases, and who
could tell of worse horrors than even they portray. We should
like to know what you think of our paintings?"

Arnold glanced towards the table in search of Colston, but
he had vanished. Around the long table sat fourteen masked
and shrouded forms that were absolutely indistinguishable
one from the other. He could not even tell whether they
were men or women, so closely were their forms and faces
concealed. Seeing that he was left to his own discretion,
he laid the case containing the model, which he had so
far kept under his arm, down on the floor, and, facing the
strange assembly, said as steadily as he could—

"My own reading tells me that they are only too true to
the dreadful reality. I think that the civilised and Christian
Society which permits such crimes to be committed against
humanity, when it has the power to stop them by force of
arms, is neither truly civilised nor truly Christian."

"And would you stop them if you could?"

"Yes, if it cost the lives of millions to do it! They would
be better spent than the thirty million lives that were lost last
century over a few bits of territory."

"That is true, and augurs well for our future agreement.
Be kind enough to come to the table and take a seat."

The masked man who spoke was sitting in the chair at
the foot of the table, and as he said this one of those sitting
at the side got up and motioned to Arnold to take his place.
As soon as he had done so the speaker continued—
[Pg 32]

"We are glad to see that your sentiments are so far in
accord with our own, for that fact will make our negotiations
all the easier.

"As you are aware, you are now in the Inner Circle of the
Terrorists. Yonder empty chair at the head of the table is
that of our Chief, who, though not with us in person, is ever
present as a guiding influence in our councils. We act as he
directs, and it was from him that we received news of you
and your marvellous invention. It is also by his direction
that you have been invited here to-night with an object that
you are already aware of.

"I see from your face that you are about to ask how this
can be, seeing that you have never confided your secret to
any one until last night. It will be useless to ask me, for I
myself do not know. We who sit here simply execute the
Master's will. We ask no questions, and therefore we can
answer none concerning him."

"I have none to ask," said Arnold, seeing that the speaker
paused as though expecting him to say something. "I came
at the invitation of one of your Brotherhood to lay certain
terms before you, for you to accept or reject as seems good to
you. How you got to know of me and my invention is, after
all, a matter of indifference to me. With your perfect system
of espionage you might well find out more secret things than
that."

"Quite so," was the reply. "And the question that we
have to settle with you is how far you will consent to assist
the work of the Brotherhood with this invention of yours,
and on what conditions you will do so."

"I must first know as exactly as possible what the work
of the Brotherhood is."

"Under the circumstances there is no objection to your
knowing that. In the first place, that which is known to
the outside world as the Terror is an international secret
society underlying and directing the operations of the various
bodies known as Nihilists, Anarchists, Socialists—in fact, all
those organisations which have for their object the reform
or destruction, by peaceful or violent means, of Society as it
is at present constituted.

"Its influence reaches beyond these into the various trade
[Pg 33]
unions and political clubs, the moving spirits of which are all
members of our Outer Circle. On the other side of Society
we have agents and adherents in all the Courts of Europe,
all the diplomatic bodies, and all the parliamentary assemblies
throughout the world.

"We believe that Society as at present constituted is
hopeless for any good thing. All kinds of nameless brutalities
are practised without reproof in the names of law and order,
and commercial economics. On one side human life is a
splendid fabric of cloth of gold embroidered with priceless
gems, and on the other it is a mass of filthy, festering rags,
swarming with vermin.

"We think that such a Society—a Society which permits
considerably more than the half of humanity to be sunk in
poverty and misery while a very small portion of it fools
away its life in perfectly ridiculous luxury—does not deserve
to exist, and ought to be destroyed.

"We also know that sooner or later it will destroy itself,
as every similar Society has done before it. For nearly forty
years there has now been almost perfect peace in Europe.
At the same time, over twenty millions of men are standing
ready to take the field in a week.

"War—universal war that will shake the world to its
foundations—is only a matter of a little more delay and a
few diplomatic hitches. Russia and England are within
rifleshot of each other in Afghanistan, and France and Germany
are flinging defiances at each other across the Rhine.

"Some one must soon fire the shot that will set the world
in a blaze, and meanwhile the toilers of the earth are weary
of these dreadful military and naval burdens, and would care
very little if the inevitable happened to-morrow.

"It is in the power of the Terrorists to delay or precipitate
that war to a certain extent. Hitherto all our efforts have
been devoted to the preservation of peace, and many of the
so-called outrages which have taken place in different parts
of Europe, and especially in Russia, during the last few years,
have been accomplished simply for the purpose of forcing the
attention of the administrations to internal affairs for the
time, and so putting off what would have led to a declaration
of war.
[Pg 34]

"This policy has not been dictated by any hope of avoiding
war altogether, for that would have been sheer insanity.
We have simply delayed war as long as possible, because we
have not felt that we have been strong enough to turn the tide
of battle at the right moment in favour of the oppressed ones
of the earth and against their oppressors.

"But this invention of yours puts a completely different
aspect on the European situation. Armed with such a
tremendous engine of destruction as a navigable air-ship must
necessarily be, when used in conjunction with the explosives
already at our disposal, we could make war impossible to our
enemies by bringing into the field a force with which no army
or fleet could contend without the certainty of destruction.
By these means we should ultimately compel peace and enforce
a general disarmament on land and sea.

"The vast majority of those who make the wealth of the
world are sick of seeing that wealth wasted in the destruction
of human life, and the ruin of peaceful industries. As soon,
therefore, as we are in a position to dictate terms under such
tremendous penalties, all the innumerable organisations with
which we are in touch all over the world will rise in arms and
enforce them at all costs.

"Of course, it goes without saying that the powers that are
now enthroned in the high places of the world will fight
bitterly and desperately to retain the rule that they have held
for so long, but in the end we shall be victorious, and then on
the ruins of this civilisation a new and a better shall arise.

"That is a rough, brief outline of the policy of the Brotherhood,
which we are going to ask you to-night to join. Of
course, in the eyes of the world we are only a set of fiends,
whose sole object is the destruction of Society, and the
inauguration of a state of universal anarchy. That, however,
has no concern for us. What is called popular opinion is
merely manufactured by the Press according to order, and
does not count in serious concerns. What I have described to
you are the true objects of the Brotherhood; and now it
remains for you to say, yes or no, whether you will devote
yourself and your invention to carrying them out or not."

For two or three minutes after the masked spokesman of
the Inner Circle had ceased speaking, there was absolute
[Pg 35]
silence in the room. The calmly spoken words which deliberately
sketched out the ruin of a civilisation and the establishment
of a new order of things made a deep impression on
Arnold's mind. He saw clearly that he was standing at the
parting of the ways, and facing the most tremendous crisis
that could occur in the life of a human being.

It was only natural that he should look back, as he did, to
the life from which a single step would now part him for ever,
without the possibility of going back. He knew that if he
once put his hands to the plough, and looked back, death,
swift and inevitable, would be the penalty of his wavering.
This, however, he had already weighed and decided.

Most of what he had heard had found an echo in his own
convictions. Moreover, the life that he had left had no charms
for him, while to be one of the chief factors in a world-revolution
was a destiny worthy both of himself and his invention.
So the fatal resolution was taken, and he spoke the words that
bound him for ever to the Brotherhood.

"As I have already told Mr. Colston," he began by saying,
"I will join and faithfully serve the Brotherhood if the conditions
that I feel compelled to make are granted"—

"We know them already," interrupted the spokesman, "and
they are freely granted. Indeed, you can hardly fail to see
that we are trusting you to a far greater extent than it is
possible for us to make you trust us, unless you choose to do
so. The air-ship once built and afloat under your command,
the game of war would to a great extent be in your own hands.
True, you would not survive treachery very long; but, on the
other hand, if it became necessary to kill you, the air-ship
would be useless, that is, if you took your secret of the motive
power with you into the next world."

"As I undoubtedly should," added Arnold quietly.

"We have no doubt that you would," was the equally quiet
rejoinder. "And now I will read to you the oath of membership
that you will be required to sign. Even when you have
heard it, if you feel any hesitation in subscribing to it, there
will still be time to withdraw, for we tolerate no unwilling or
half-hearted recruits."

Arnold bowed his acquiescence, and the spokesman took a
piece of paper from the table and read aloud—
[Pg 36]

"I, Richard Arnold, sign this paper in the full knowledge that
in doing so I devote myself absolutely for the rest of my life to
the service of the Brotherhood of Freedom, known to the world as
the Terrorists. As long as I live its ends shall be my ends, and
no human considerations shall weigh with me where those ends
are concerned. I will take life without mercy, and yield my own
without hesitation at its bidding. I will break all other laws to
obey those which it obeys, and if I disobey these I shall expect
death as the just penalty of my perjury."

As he finished reading the oath, he handed the paper to
Arnold, saying as he did so—

"There are no theatrical formalities to be gone through.
Simply sign the paper and give it back to me, or else tear it
up and go in peace."

Arnold read it through slowly, and then glanced round the
table. He saw the eyes of the silent figures sitting about him
shining at him through the holes in their masks. He laid the
paper down on the table in front of him, dipped a pen in an
inkstand that stood near, and signed the oath in a firm, unfaltering
hand. Then—committed for ever, for good or evil,
to the new life that he had adopted—he gave the paper back
again.

The President took it and read it, and then passed it to the
mask on his right hand. It went from one to the other round
the table, each one reading it before passing it on, until it got
back to the President. When it reached him he rose from his
seat, and, going to the fireplace, dropped it into the flames, and
watched it until it was consumed to ashes. Then, crossing the
room to where Arnold was sitting, he removed his mask with
one hand, and held the other out to him in greeting, saying as
he did so—

"Welcome to the Brotherhood! Thrice welcome! for your
coming has brought the day of redemption nearer!"
[Pg 37]

CHAPTER VI.

NEW FRIENDS.

As Arnold returned the greeting of the President,
all the other members of the Circle rose from
their seats and took off their masks and the
black shapeless cloaks which had so far completely
covered them from head to foot.

Then, one after the other, they came forward
and were formally introduced to him by the President. Nine of
the fourteen were men, and five were women of ages varying from
middle age almost to girlhood. The men were apparently all
between twenty-five and thirty-five, and included some half-dozen
nationalities among them.

All, both men and women, evidently belonged to the educated,
or rather to the cultured class. Their speech, which seemed to
change with perfect ease from one language to another in the
course of their somewhat polyglot converse, was the easy flowing
speech of men and women accustomed to the best society,
not only in the social but the intellectual sense of the word.

All were keen, alert, and swift of thought, and on the face
of each one there was the dignifying expression of a deep and
settled purpose which at once differentiated them in Arnold's
eyes from the ordinary idle or merely money-making citizens
of the world.

As each one came and shook hands with the new member of
the Brotherhood, he or she had some pleasant word of welcome
and greeting for him; and so well were the words chosen, and so
manifestly sincerely were they spoken, that by the time he had
shaken hands all round Arnold felt as much at home among
them as though he were in the midst of a circle of old friends.
[Pg 38]

Among the women there were two who had attracted his
attention and roused his interest far more than any of the
other members of the Circle. One of these was a tall and
beautifully-shaped woman, whose face and figure were those of
a woman in the early twenties, but whose long, thick hair was
as white as though the snows of seventy winters had drifted
over it. As he returned her warm, firm hand-clasp, and looked
upon her dark, resolute, and yet perfectly womanly features,
the young engineer gave a slight start of recognition. She
noticed this at once and said, with a smile and a quick flash
from her splendid grey eyes—

"Ah! I see you recognise me. No, I am not ashamed of my
portrait. I am proud of the wounds that I have received in
the war with tyranny, so you need not fear to confess your
recognition."

It was true that Arnold had recognised her. She was the
original of the central figure of the painting which depicted
the woman being flogged by the Russian soldiers.

Arnold flushed hotly at the words with the sudden passionate
anger that they roused within him, and replied in a low, steady
voice—

"Those who would sanction such a crime as that are not fit
to live. I will not leave one stone of that prison standing upon
another. It is a blot on the face of the earth, and I will wipe
it out utterly!"

"There are thousands of blots as black as that on earth, and
I think you will find nobler game than an obscure Russian
provincial prison. Russia has cities and palaces and fortresses
that will make far grander ruins than that—ruins that will be
worthy monuments of fallen despotism," replied the girl, who
had been introduced by the President as Radna Michaelis.
"But here is some one else waiting to make your acquaintance.
This is Natasha. She has no other name among us, but you
will soon learn why she needs none."

Natasha was the other woman who had so keenly roused
Arnold's interest. Woman, however, she hardly was, for she
was seemingly still in her teens, and certainly could not have
been more than twenty.

He had mixed but little with women, and during the past
few years not at all, and therefore the marvellous beauty of the
[Pg 39]
girl who came forward as Radna spoke seemed almost unearthly
to him, and confused his senses for the moment as some potent
drug might have done. He took her outstretched hand in
awkward silence, and for an instant so far forgot himself as to
gaze blankly at her in speechless admiration.

She could not help noticing it, for she was a woman, and for
the same reason she saw that it was so absolutely honest and
involuntary that it was impossible for any woman to take
offence at it. A quick bright flush swept up her lovely face
as his hand closed upon hers, her darkly-fringed lids fell for an
instant over the most wonderful pair of sapphire-blue eyes that
Arnold had ever even dreamed of, and when she raised them
again the flush had gone, and she said in a sweet, frank voice—

"I am the daughter of Natas, and he has desired me to bid
you welcome in his name, and I hope you will let me do so in
my own as well. We are all dying to see this wonderful
invention of yours. I suppose you are going to satisfy our
feminine curiosity, are you not?"

The daughter of Natas! This lovely girl, in the first sweet
flush of her pure and innocent womanhood, the daughter of the
unknown and mysterious being whose ill-omened name caused
a shudder if it was only whispered in the homes of the rich
and powerful; the name with which the death-sentences of the
Terrorists were invariably signed, and which had come to be
an infallible guarantee that they would be carried out to the
letter.

No death-warrants of the most powerful sovereigns of
Europe were more certain harbingers of inevitable doom than
were those which bore this dreaded name. Whether he were
high or low, the man who received one of them made ready
for his end. He knew not where or when the fatal blow
would be struck. He only knew that the invisible hand of the
Terror would strike him as surely in the uttermost ends of the
earth as it would in the palace or the fortress. Never once
had it missed its aim, and never once had the slightest clue
been obtained to the identity of the hand that held the knife
or pistol.

Some such thoughts as these flashed one after another
through Arnold's brain as he stood talking with Natasha. He
saw at once why she had only that one name. It was
[Pg 40]
enough, and it was not long before he learnt that it was the
symbol of an authority in the Circle that admitted of no
question.

She was the envoy of him whose word was law, absolute and
irrevocable, to every member of the Brotherhood; to disobey
whom was death; and to obey whom had, so far at least, meant
swift and invariable success, even where it seemed least to be
hoped for.

Of course, Natasha's almost girlish question about the air-ship
was really a command, which would have been none the
less binding had she only had her own beauty to enforce it.
As she spoke the President and Colston—who had only lost
himself for the time behind a mask and cloak—came up to
Arnold and asked him if he was prepared to give an exhibition
of the powers of his model, and to explain its working and
construction to the Circle at once.

He replied that everything was perfectly ready for the trial,
and that he would set the model working for them in a few
minutes. The President then told him that the exhibition
should take place in another room, where there would be much
more space than where they were, and bade him bring the box
and follow him.

A door was now opened in the wall of the room remote from
that by which he and Colston had entered, and through this
the whole party went down a short passage, and through
another door at the end which opened into a very large apartment,
which, from the fact of its being windowless, Arnold
rightly judged to be underground, like the Council-chamber that
they had just left.

A single glance was enough to show him the chief purpose
to which the chamber was devoted. The wall at one end was
covered with arm-racks containing all the newest and most
perfect makes of rifles and pistols; while at the other end,
about twenty paces distant, were three electric signalling
targets, graded, as was afterwards explained to him, to one,
three, and five hundred yards range.

In a word, the chamber was an underground range for rifle
and pistol practice, in which a volley could have been fired
without a sound being heard ten yards away. It was here
that the accuracy of the various weapons invented from
[Pg 41]
time to time was tested; and here, too, every member of
the Circle, man and woman, practised with rifle and pistol
until an infallible aim was acquired. A register of scores
was kept, and at the head of it stood the name of Radna
Michaelis.

A long table ran across the end at which the arm-racks
were, and on this Arnold laid the case containing the model,
he standing on one side of the table, and the members of the
Circle on the other, watching his movements with a curiosity
that they took no trouble to disguise.

He opened the case, feeling something like a scientific
demonstrator, with an advanced and critical class before him.
In a moment the man disappeared, and the mechanician and
the enthusiast took his place. As each part was taken out
and laid upon the table, he briefly explained its use; and then,
last of all, came the hull of the air-ship.

This was three feet long and six inches broad in its midships
diameter. It was made in two longitudinal sections of polished
aluminium, which shone like burnished silver. It would have
been cigar-shaped but for the fact that the forward end was
drawn out into a long sharp ram, the point of which was on
a level with the floor of the hull amidships as it lay upon the
table. Two deep bilge-plates, running nearly the whole length
of the hull, kept it in an upright position and prevented the
blades of the propellers from touching the table. For about
half its whole length the upper part of the hull was flattened
and formed a deck from which rose three short strong masts,
each of which carried a wheel of thin metal whose spokes were
six inclined fans something like the blades of a screw.

A little lower than this deck there projected on each side a
broad, oblong, slightly curved sheet of metal, very thin, but
strengthened by means of wire braces, till it was as rigid as a
plate of solid steel, although it only weighed a few ounces.
These air-planes worked on an axis amidships, and could be
inclined either way through an angle of thirty degrees. At
the pointed stern there revolved a powerful four-bladed
propeller, and from each quarter, inclined slightly outwards
from the middle line of the vessel, projected a somewhat
smaller screw working underneath the after end of the air-planes.
[Pg 42]

The hull contained four small double-cylinder engines, one
of which actuated the stern-propeller, and the other three the
fan-wheels and side-propellers. There were, of course, no
furnaces, boilers, or condensers. Two slender pipes ran into
each cylinder from suitably placed gas reservoirs, or power-cylinders,
as the engineer called them, and that was all.

Arnold deftly and rapidly put the parts together, continuing
his running description as he did so, and in a few minutes the
beautiful miracle of ingenuity stood complete before the wondering
eyes of the Circle, and a murmur of admiration ran from
lip to lip, bringing a flush of pleasure to the cheek of its creator.

"There," said he, as he put the finishing touches to the
apparatus, "you see that she is a combination of two principles—those
of the Aëronef and the Aëroplane. The first reached
its highest development in Jules Verne's imaginary "Clipper
of the Clouds," and the second in Hiram Maxim's Aëroplane.
Of course, Jules Verne's Aëronef was merely an idea, and one
that could never be realised while Robur's mysterious source of
electrical energy remained unknown—as it still does.

"Maxim's Aëroplane is, as you all know, also an unrealised
ideal so far as any practical use is concerned. He has succeeded
in making it fly, but only under the most favourable
conditions, and practically without cargo. Its two fatal defects
have been shown by experience to be the comparatively overwhelming
weight of the engine and the fuel that he has to
carry to develop sufficient power to rise from the ground and
progress against the wind, and the inability of the machine to
ascend perpendicularly to any required height.

"Without the power to do this no air-ship can be of any use
save under very limited conditions. You cannot carry a railway
about with you, or a station to get a start from every time
you want to rise, and you cannot always choose a nice level
plain in which to come down. Even if you could the Aëroplane
would not rise again without its rails and carriage. For purposes
of warfare, then, it may be dismissed as totally useless.

"In this machine, as you see, I have combined the two
principles. These helices on the masts will lift the dead
weight of the ship perpendicularly without the slightest help
from the side-planes, which are used to regulate the vessel's
flight when afloat. I will set the engines that work them in
[Pg 43]
motion independently of the others which move the propellers,
and then you will see what I mean."

As he spoke, he set one part of the mechanism working.
Those watching saw the three helices begin to spin round, the
centre one revolving in an opposite direction to the other two,
with a soft whirring sound that gradually rose to a high-pitched
note.

When they attained their full speed they looked like solid
wheels, and then the air-ship rose, at first slowly, and then
more and more swiftly, straight up from the table, until it
strained hard at the piece of cord which prevented it from
reaching the roof.

A universal chorus of "bravas" greeted it as it rose, and
every eye became fixed on it as it hung motionless in the
air, sustained by its whirling helices. After letting it remain
aloft for a few minutes Arnold pulled it down again, saying as
he did so—

"That, I think, proves that the machine can rise from any
position where the upward road is open, and without the
slightest assistance of any apparatus. Now it shall take a
voyage round the room.

"You see it is steered by this rudder-fan under the stern
propeller. In the real ship it will be worked by a wheel, like
the rudder of a sea-going vessel; but in the model it is done
by this lever, so that I can control it by a couple of strings
from the ground."

He went round to the other side of the table while he was
speaking, and adjusted the steering gear, stopping the engines
meanwhile. Then he put the model down on the floor, set all
four engines to work, and stood behind with the guiding-strings
in his hands. The spectators heard a louder and
somewhat shriller whirring noise than before, and the beautiful
fabric, with its shining, silvery hull and side-planes, rose
slantingly from the ground and darted forward down the room,
keeping Arnold at a quick run with the rudder-strings tightly
strained.

Like an obedient steed, it instantly obeyed the slightest pull
upon either of them, and twice made the circuit of the room
before its creator pulled it down and stopped the machinery.

The experiment was a perfect and undeniable success in
[Pg 44]
every respect, and not one of those who saw it had the
slightest doubt as to Arnold's air-ship having at last solved
the problem of aërial navigation, and made the Brotherhood
lords of a realm as wide as the atmospheric ocean that
encircles the globe.

As soon as the model was once more resting on the table,
the President came forward and, grasping the engineer by
both hands, said in a voice from which he made but little
effort to banish the emotion that he felt—

"Bravo, brother! Henceforth you shall be known to the
Brotherhood as the Master of the Air, for truly you have been
the first among the sons of men to fairly conquer it. Come,
let us go back and talk, for there is much to be said about
this, and we cannot begin too soon to make arrangements for
building the first of our aërial fleet. You can leave your
model where it is in perfect safety, for no one ever enters this
room save ourselves."

So saying the President led the way to the Council-chamber,
and there, after the Ariel—as it had already been decided to
name the first air-ship—had been christened in anticipation in
twenty-year old champagne, the Circle settled down at once to
business, and for a good three hours discussed the engineer's estimate
and plans for building the first vessel of the aërial fleet.

At length all the practical details were settled, and the
President rose in token of the end of the conference. As he
did so he said somewhat abruptly to Arnold—

"So far so good. Now there is nothing more to be done
but to lay those plans before the Chief and get his authority
for withdrawing out of the treasury sufficient money to
commence operations. I presume you could reproduce them
from memory if necessary—at any rate, in sufficient outline to
make them perfectly intelligible?"

"Certainly," was the reply. "I could reproduce them in
fac simile without the slightest difficulty. Why do you ask?"

"Because the Chief is in Russia, and you must go to him
and place them before him from memory. They are far too
precious to be trusted to any keeping, however trustworthy.
There are such things as railway accidents, and other forms of
sudden death, to say nothing of the Russian customs, false
arrests, personal searches, and imprisonments on mere suspicion.
[Pg 45]

"We can risk none of these, and so there is nothing for it
but your going to Petersburg and verbally explaining them
to the Chief. You can be ready in three days, I suppose?"

"Yes, in two, if you like," replied Arnold, not a little taken
aback at the unexpected suddenness of what he knew at once
to be the first order that was to test his obedience to the
Brotherhood. "But as I am absolutely ignorant of Russia and
the Russians, I suppose you will make such arrangements as
will prevent my making any innocent but possibly awkward
mistakes."

"Oh yes," replied the President, with a smile, "all arrangements
have been made already, and I expect you will find
them anything but unpleasant. Natasha goes to Petersburg
in company with another lady member of the Circle whom you
have not yet seen.

"You will go with them, and they will explain everything
to you en route, if they have no opportunity of doing so before
you start. Now let us go upstairs and have some supper. I
am famished, and I suppose every one else is too."

Arnold simply bowed in answer to the President; but one
pair of eyes at least in the room caught the quick, faint flush
that rose in his cheek as he was told in whose company he was
to travel. As for himself, if the journey had been to Siberia
instead of Russia, he would have felt nothing but pleasure at
the prospect after that.

They left the Council-chamber by the passage and the
ante-room, the sentry standing to attention as they passed
him, each giving the word in turn, till the President came last
and closed the doors behind him. Then the sentry brought
up the rear and extinguished the lights as he left the passage.

Fifteen minutes later there sat down to supper, in the
solidly comfortable dining-room of the upper house, a party
of ladies and gentlemen who chatted through the meal as
merrily and innocently as though there were no such things
as tyranny or suffering in the world, and whom not the
most acute observer would have taken for the most dangerous
and desperately earnest body of conspirators that ever plotted
the destruction, not of an empire, but of a civilisation and a
social order that it had taken twenty centuries to build up.
[Pg 46]

CHAPTER VII.

THE DAUGHTER OF NATAS.

Supper was over about eleven, and then the
party adjourned to the drawing-room, where for
an hour or so Arnold sat and listened to such
music and singing as he had never heard in his
life before. The songs seemed to be in every
language in Europe, and he did not understand
anything like half of them, so far, at least, as the words were
concerned.

They were, however, so far removed from the average
drawing-room medley of twaddle and rattle that the music
interpreted the words into its own universal language, and
made them almost superfluous.

For the most part they were sad and passionate, and once
or twice, especially when Radna Michaelis was singing, Arnold
saw tears well up into the eyes of the women, and the brows
of the men contract and their hands clench with sudden
passion at the recollection of some terrible scene or story that
was recalled by the song.

At last, close on midnight, the President rose from his seat
and asked Natasha to sing the "Hymn of Freedom." She
acknowledged the request with an inclination of her head, and
then as Radna sat down to the piano, and she took her place beside
it, all the rest rose to their feet like worshippers in a church.

The prelude was rather longer than usual, and as Radna
played it Arnold heard running through it, as it were, echoes
of all the patriotic songs of Europe from "Scots Wha Hae"
and "The Shan van Voght" to the forbidden Polish National
Hymn and the Swiss Republican song, which is known in
[Pg 47]
England as "God Save the Queen." The prelude ended with
a few bars of the "Marseillaise," and then Natasha began.

It was a marvellous performance. As the air changed from
nation to nation the singer changed the language, and at the
end of each verse the others took up the strain in perfect
harmony, till it sounded like a chorus of the nations in
miniature, each language coming in its turn until the last
verse was reached.

Then there was silence for a moment, and then the opening
chords of the "Marseillaise" rang out from the piano, slow
and stately at first, and then quickening like the tread of an
army going into battle.

Suddenly Natasha's voice soared up, as it were, out of the
music, and a moment later the Song of the Revolution rolled
forth in a flood of triumphant melody, above which Natasha's
pure contralto thrilled sweet and strong, till to Arnold's
intoxicated senses it seemed like the voice of some angel
singing from the sky in the ears of men, and it was not until
the hymn had been ended for some moments that he was
recalled to earth by the President saying to him—

"Some day, perhaps, you will be floating in the clouds, and
you will hear that hymn rising from the throats of millions
gathered together from the ends of the earth, and when you
hear that you will know that our work is done, and that there
is peace on earth at last."

"I hope so," replied the engineer quietly, "and, what is
more, I believe that some day I shall hear it."

"I believe so too," suddenly interrupted Radna, turning
round on her seat at the piano, "but there will be many a
battle-song sung to the accompaniment of battle-music before
that happens. I wish"—

"That all Russia were a haystack, and that you were beside
it with a lighted torch," said Natasha, half in jest and half
in earnest.

"Yes, truly!" replied Radna, turning round and dashing
fiercely into the "Marseillaise" again.

"I have no doubt of it. But, come, it is after midnight,
and we have to get back to Cheyne Walk. The princess will
think we have been arrested or something equally dreadful.
Ah, Mr. Colston, we have a couple of seats to spare in the
[Pg 48]
brougham. Will you and our Admiral of the Air condescend
to accept a lift as far as Chelsea?"

"The condescension is in the offer, Natasha," replied Colston,
flushing with pleasure and glancing towards Radna the while.
Radna answered with an almost imperceptible sign of consent,
and Colston went on: "If it were in an utterly opposite
direction"—

"You would not be asked to come, sir. So don't try to
pay compliments at the expense of common sense," laughed
Natasha before he could finish. "If you do you shall sit
beside me instead of Radna all the way."

There was a general smile at this retort, for Colston's
avowed devotion to Radna and the terrible circumstances out
of which it had sprung was one of the romances of the Circle.

As for Arnold, he could scarcely believe his ears when he
heard that he was to ride from Clapham Common to Chelsea
sitting beside this radiantly beautiful girl, behind whose
innocence and gaiety there lay the shadow of her mysterious
and terrible parentage.

Lovely and gentle as she seemed, he knew even now how
awful a power she held in the slender little hand whose
nervous clasp he could still feel upon his own, and this
knowledge seemed to raise an invisible yet impassable barrier
between him and the possibility of looking upon her as under
other circumstances it would have been natural for a man to
look upon so fair a woman.

Natasha's brougham was so far an improvement on those of
the present day that it had two equally comfortable seats, and
on these the four were cosily seated a few minutes after the
party broke up. To Arnold, and, doubtless, to Colston also, the
miles flew past at an unheard-of speed; but for all that, long
before the carriage stopped at the house in Cheyne Walk, he
had come to the conviction that, for good or evil, he was now
bound to the Brotherhood by far stronger ties than any social
or political opinions could have formed.

After they had said good-night at the door, and received an
invitation to lunch for the next day to talk over the journey to
Russia, he and Colston decided to walk to the Savoy, for it was
a clear moonlit night, and each had a good deal to say to the
other, which could be better and more safely said in the open
[Pg 49]
air than in a cab. So they lit their cigars, buttoned up their
coats, and started off eastward along the Embankment to
Vauxhall.

"Well, my friend, tell me how you have enjoyed your
evening, and what you think of the company," said Colston,
by way of opening the conversation.

"Until supper I had a very pleasant time of it. I enjoyed
the business part of the proceedings intensely, as any other
mechanical enthusiast would have done, I suppose. But I
frankly confess that after that my mind is in a state of complete
chaos, in the midst of which only one figure stands out
at all distinctly."

"And that figure is?"

"Natasha. Tell me—who is she?"

"I know no more as to her true identity than you do, or else
I would answer you with pleasure."

"What! Do you mean to say"—

"I mean to say just what I have said. Not only do I not
know who she is, but I do not believe that more than two or
three members of the Circle, at the outside, know any more
than I do. Those are, probably, Nicholas Roburoff, the
President of the Executive, and his wife, and Radna Michaelis."

"Then, if Radna knows, how comes it that you do not know?
You must forgive me if I am presuming on a too short acquaintance;
but it certainly struck me to-night that you had very
few secrets from each other."

"There is no presumption about it, my dear fellow," replied
Colston, with a laugh. "It is no secret that Radna and I are
lovers, and that she will be my wife when I have earned her."

"Now you have raised my curiosity again," interrupted
Arnold, in an inquiring tone.

"And will very soon satisfy it. You saw that horrible
picture in the Council-chamber? Yes. Well, I will tell you
the whole story of that some day when we have more time;
but for the present it will be enough for me to tell you that I
have sworn not to ask Radna to come with me to the altar
while a single person who was concerned in that nameless
crime remains alive.

"There were five persons responsible for it to begin with—the
governor of the prison, the prefect of police for the district, a
[Pg 50]
spy, who informed against her, and the two soldiers who
executed the infernal sentence. It happened nearly three
years ago, and there are two of them alive still—the governor
and the prefect of police.

"Of course the Brotherhood would have removed them long
ago had it decided to do so; but I got the circumstances laid
before Natas, by the help of Natasha, and received permission
to execute the sentences myself. So far I have killed three
with my own hand, and the other two have not much longer
to live.

"The governor has been transferred to Siberia, and will
probably be the last that I shall reach. The prefect is now in
command of the Russian secret police in London, and unless
an accident happens he will never leave England."

Colston spoke in a cold, passionless, merciless tone, just as
a lawyer might speak of a criminal condemned to die by the
ordinary process of the law, and as Arnold heard him he
shuddered. But at the same time the picture in the Council-chamber
came up before his mental vision, and he was forced
to confess that men who could so far forget their manhood as
to lash a helpless woman up to a triangle and flog her till her
flesh was cut to ribbons, were no longer men but wild beasts,
whose very existence was a crime. So he merely said—

"They were justly slain. Now tell me more about Natasha."

"There is very little more that I can tell you, I'm afraid.
All I know is that the Brotherhood of the Terror is the conception
and creation of a single man, and that that man is Natas,
the father of Natasha, as she is known to us. His orders come
to us either directly in writing through Natasha, or indirectly
through him you have heard spoken of as the Chief."

"Oh, then the Chief is not Natas?"

"No, we have all of us seen him. In fact, when he is in
London he always presides at the Circle meetings. You would
hardly believe it, but he is an English nobleman, and Secretary
to the English Embassy at Petersburg."

"Then he is Lord Alanmere, and an old college friend of
mine!" exclaimed Arnold. "I saw his name in the paper the night
before last. It was mentioned in the account of the murder"—

"We don't call those murders, my friend," drily interrupted
Colston; "we call them what they really are—executions."
[Pg 51]

"I beg your pardon; I was using the phraseology of the
newspaper. What was his crime?"

"I don't know. But the fact that the Chief was there when
he died is quite enough for me. Well, as I was saying, the
Chief, as we call him, is the visible and supreme head of the
Brotherhood so far as we are concerned. We know that Natas
exists, and that he and the Chief admit no one save Natasha to
their councils.

"They control the treasury absolutely, and apart from the
contributions of those of the members who can afford to make
them, they appear to provide the whole of the funds. Of
course, Lord Alanmere, as you know, is enormously wealthy,
and probably Natas is also rich. At any rate, there is never
any want of money where the work of the Brotherhood is
concerned.

"The estimates are given to Natasha when the Chief is not
present, and at the next meeting she brings the money in
English gold and notes, or in foreign currency as may be
required, and that is all we know about the finances.

"Perhaps I ought to tell you that there is also a very considerable
mystery about the Chief himself. When he presides
at the Council meetings he displays a perfectly marvellous
knowledge of both the members and the working of the
Brotherhood.

"It would seem that nothing, however trifling, is hidden from
him; and yet when any of us happen to meet him, as we often
do, in Society, he treats us all as the most perfect strangers,
unless we have been regularly introduced to him as ordinary
acquaintances. Even then he seems utterly ignorant of his
connection with the Brotherhood.

"The first time I met him outside the Circle was at a ball at
the Russian Embassy. I went and spoke to him, giving the
sign of the Inner Circle as I did so. To my utter amazement,
he stared at me without a sign of recognition, and calmly
informed me, in the usual way, that I had the advantage of
him.

"Of course I apologised, and he accepted the apology with
perfect good humour, but as an utter stranger would have done.
A little later Natasha came in with the Princess Ornovski,
whom you are going to Russia with, and who is there one of
[Pg 52]
the most trusted agents of the Petersburg police. I told
her what had happened.

"She looked at me for a moment rather curiously with those
wonderful eyes of hers; then she laughed softly, and said,
'Come, I will set that at rest by introducing you; but mind,
not a word about politics or those horrible secret societies, as
you value my good opinion.'

"I understood from this that there was something behind
which could not be explained there, where every other one you
danced with might be a spy, and I was introduced to his Lordship,
and we became very good friends in the ordinary social
way; but I failed to gather the slightest hint from his conversation
that he even knew of the existence of the Brotherhood.

"When we left I drove home with Natasha and the Princess
to supper, and on the way Natasha told me that his Lordship
found it necessary to lead two entirely distinct lives, and that
he adhered so rigidly to this rule that he never broke it even
with her. Since then I have been most careful to respect what,
after all, is a very wise, if not an absolutely necessary, precaution
on his part."

"And, now," said Arnold, speaking in a tone that betrayed
not a little hesitation and embarrassment, "if you can do
so, answer me one more question, and do so as shortly and
directly as you can. Is Natasha in love with, or betrothed to,
any member of the Brotherhood as far as you know?"

Colston stopped and looked at him with a laugh in his eyes.
Then he put his hand on his shoulder and said—

"As I thought, and feared! You have not escaped the
common lot of all heart-whole men upon whom those terrible
eyes of hers have looked. The Angel of the Revolution, as we
call her among ourselves, is peerless among the daughters of
men. What more natural, then, that all the sons of men
should fall speedy victims to her fatal charms? So far as I
know, every man who has ever seen her is more or less in
love with her—and mostly more!

"As for the rest, I am as much in the dark as you are, save
for the fact that I know, on the authority of Radna, that she
is not betrothed to any one, and, so far as she knows, still in the
blissful state of maiden fancy-freedom."
[Pg 53]

"Thank God for that!" said Arnold, with an audible sigh of
relief. Then he went on in somewhat hurried confusion, "But
there, of course, you think me a presumptuous ass, and so I
am; wherefore"—

"There is no need for you to talk nonsense, my dear fellow.
There never can be presumption in an honest man's love, no
matter how exalted the object of it may be. Besides, are you
not now the central hope of the Revolution, and is not yours
the hand that shall hurl destruction on its enemies?

"As for Natasha, peerless and all as she is, has not the poet
of the ages said of just such as her—

She's beautiful, and therefore to be woo'd;

She is a woman: therefore to be won?

"And who, too, has a better chance of winning her than you
will have when you are commanding the aërial fleet of the
Brotherhood, and, like a very Jove, hurling your destroying
bolts from the clouds, and deciding the hazard of war when the
nations of Europe are locked in the death-struggle? Why,
you see such a prospect makes even me poetical.

"Seriously, though, you must not consider the distance
between you too great. Remember that you are a very different
person now to what you were a couple of days ago. Without
any offence, I may say that you were then nameless, while now
you have the chance of making a name that will go down to
all time as that of the solver of the greatest problem of this or
any other age.

"Added to this, remember that Natasha, after all, is a
woman, and, more than that, a woman devoted heart and soul
to a great cause, in which great deeds are soon to be done.
Great deeds are still the shortest way to a woman's heart, and
that is the way you must take if you are to hope for success."

"I will!" simply replied Arnold, and the tone in which the
two words were said convinced Colston that he meant all that
they implied to its fullest extent.
[Pg 54]

CHAPTER VIII.

LEARNING THE PART.

It was nearly eleven the next morning by the time
Arnold and Colston had finished breakfast.
This was mostly due to the fact that Arnold
had passed an almost entirely sleepless night,
and had only begun to doze off towards morning.
The events of the previous evening kept on
repeating themselves in various sequences time after time, until
his brain reeled in the whirl of emotions that they gave rise to.

Although of a strongly mathematical and even mechanical
turn of mind, the young engineer was also an enthusiast, and
therefore there was a strong colouring of romance in his nature
which lifted him far above the level upon which his mere
intellect was accustomed to work.

Where intellect alone was concerned—as, for instance, in
the working out of a problem in engineering or mechanics—he
was cool, calculating, and absolutely unemotional. His
highly-disciplined mind was capable of banishing every other
subject from consideration save the one which claimed the
attention of the hour, and of incorporating itself wholly with
the work in hand until it was finished.

These qualities would have been quite sufficient to assure
his success in life on conventional lines. They would have
made him rich, and perhaps famous, but they would never
have made him a great inventor; for no one can do anything
really great who is not a dreamer as well as a worker.

It was because he was a dreamer that he had sacrificed
everything to the working out of his ideal, and risked his life
on the chance of success, and it was for just the same reason
[Pg 55]
that the tremendous purposes of the Brotherhood had been
able to fire his imagination with luridly brilliant dreams of a
gigantic world-tragedy in which he, armed with almost supernatural
powers, should play the central part.

This of itself would have been enough to make all other
considerations of trivial moment in his eyes, and to bind him
irrevocably to the Brotherhood. He saw, it is true, that a
frightful amount of slaughter and suffering would be the price
either of success or failure in so terrific a struggle; but he also
knew that that struggle was inevitable in some form or other,
and whether he took a part in it or not.

But since the last sun had set a new element had come into
his life, and was working in line with both his imagination
and his ambition. So far he had lived his life without any
other human love than what was bound up with his recollections
of his home and his boyhood. As a man he had
never loved any human being. Science had been his only
mistress, and had claimed his undivided devotion, engrossing
his mind and intellect completely, but leaving his heart free.

And now, as it were in an instant, a new mistress had come
forward out of the unknown. She had put her hand upon
his heart, and, though no words of human speech had passed
between them, save the merest commonplaces, her soul had
said to his, "This is mine. I have called it into life, and for
me it shall live until the end."

He had heard this as plainly as though it had been said to
him with the lips of flesh, and he had acquiesced in the
imperious claim with a glad submission which had yet to be
tinged with the hope that it might some day become a mastery.

Thus, as the silent, sleepless hours went by, did he review
over and over again the position in which he found himself
on the threshold of his strange new life, until at last physical
exhaustion brought sleep to his eyes if not to his brain, and
he found himself flying over the hills and vales of dreamland
in his air-ship, with the roar of battle and the smoke of ruined
towns far beneath him, and Natasha at his side, sharing with
him the dominion of the air that his genius had won.

At length Colston came in to tell him that the breakfast
was spoiling, and that it was high time to get up if they
intended to be in time for their appointment at Chelsea. This
[Pg 56]
brought him out of bed with effective suddenness, and he made
a hasty toilet for breakfast, leaving more important preparations
until afterwards.

During the meal their conversation naturally turned chiefly
on the visit that they were to pay, and Colston took the
opportunity of explaining one or two things that it was
necessary for him to know with regard to the new acquaintance
that he was about to make at Chelsea.

"So far as the outside world is concerned," said he, "Natasha
is the niece of the Princess Ornovski. She is the daughter
of a sister of hers, who married an English gentleman, named
Darrel, who was drowned with his wife about twelve years
ago, when the Albania was wrecked off the coast of Portugal.
The Princess had a sister, who was drowned with her husband
in the Albania, and she left a daughter about Natasha's then
age, but who died of consumption shortly after in Nice.

"Under these circumstances, it was, of course, perfectly
easy for the Princess to adopt Natasha, and introduce her
into Society as her niece as soon as she reached the age of
coming out.

"This has been of immense service to the Brotherhood, as
the Princess is, as I told you, one of the most implicitly
trusted allies of the Petersburg police. She is received
at the Russian Court, and is therefore able to take Natasha
into the best Russian Society, where her extraordinary beauty
naturally enables her to break as many hearts as she likes,
and to learn secrets which are of the greatest importance to
the Brotherhood.

"Her Society name is Fedora Darrel, and it will scarcely be
necessary to tell you that outside our own Circle no such
being as Natasha has any existence."

"I perfectly understand," replied Arnold. "The name
shall never pass my lips save in privacy, and indeed it is
hardly likely that it will ever do so even then, for your
habit of calling each other by your Christian names is too
foreign to my British insularity."

"It is a Russian habit, as you, of course, know, and added
to that, we are, so far as the Cause is concerned, all brothers
and sisters together, and so it comes natural to us. Anyhow,
you will have to use it with Natasha, for in the Circle she has
[Pg 57]
no other name, and to call her Miss Darrel there would be to
produce something like an earthquake."

"Oh, in that case, I daresay I shall be able to avoid the
calamity, though there will seem to be a presumption about it
that will not make me very comfortable at first."

"Too much like addressing one's sweetheart, eh?"

This brought the conversation to a sudden stop, for Arnold's
only reply to it was a quick flush, and a lapse into silence that
was a good deal more eloquent than any verbal reply could
have been. Colston noticed it with a smile, and got up and
lit a pipe.

For the first time for a good few years Arnold took considerable
pains with his toilet that morning. A new fit-out had
just been delivered by a tailor who had promised the things
within twenty-four hours, and had kept his word. The consequences
were that he was able to array himself in perfect
morning costume, from his hat to his boots, and that was what
it had not been his to do since he left college.

Colston had recommended him in his easy friendly way to
pay scrupulous attention to externals in the part that he would
henceforth have to play before the world. He fully saw the
wisdom of this advice, for he knew that, however well a part
may be played, if it is not dressed to perfection, some sharp
eyes will see that it is a part and not a reality.

The playing of his part was to begin that day, and he
recognised that at least one of the purposes of his visit to
Natasha was the determining of what that part was to be.
He thus looked forward with no little curiosity to the events
of the afternoon, quite apart from the supreme interest that
centred in his hostess.

They started out nearly a couple of hours before they were
due at Cheyne Walk, as they had several orders to give with
regard to Arnold's outfit for the journey that was before him;
and this done, they reached the house about a quarter of an
hour before lunch time.

They were received in the most delightful of sitting-rooms
by a very handsome, aristocratic-looking woman, who might
have been anywhere between forty and fifty. She shook
hands very cordially with Arnold, saying as she did so—

"Welcome, Richard Arnold! The friends of the Cause are
[Pg 58]
mine, and I have heard much about you already from Natasha,
so that I already seem to know you. I am very sorry that I
was not able to be at the Circle last night to see what you had
to show. Natasha tells me that it is quite a miracle of genius."

"She is too generous in her praise," replied Arnold, speaking
as quietly as he could in spite of the delight that the words
gave him. "It is no miracle, but only the logical result of
thought and work. Still, I hope that it will be found to
realise its promise when the time of trial comes."

"Of that I have no doubt, from all that I hear," said the
Princess. "Before long I shall hope to see it for myself. Ah,
here is Natasha. Come, I must introduce you afresh, for you
do not know her yet as the world knows her."

Arnold heard the door open behind him as the Princess
spoke, and, turning round, saw Natasha coming towards him
with her hand outstretched and a smile of welcome on her
beautiful face. Before their hands met the Princess moved
quietly between them and said, half in jest and half in
earnest—

"Fedora, permit me to present to you Mr. Richard Arnold,
who is to accompany us to Russia to inspect the war-balloon
offered to our Little Father the Tsar. Mr. Arnold, my niece,
Fedora Darrel. There, now you know each other."

"I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. Arnold,"
said Natasha, with mock gravity as they shook hands. "I
have heard much already of your skill in connection with aërial
navigation, and I have no doubt but that your advice will be
of the greatest service to his Majesty."

"That is as it may be," answered Arnold, at once entering
into the somewhat grim humour of the situation. "But if it
is possible I should like to hear something a little definite as
to this mission with which I have been, I fear, undeservingly
honoured. I have been very greatly interested in the problem
of aërial navigation for some years past, but I must confess
that this is the first I have heard of these particular war-balloons."

"It is for the purpose of enlightening you on that subject
that this little party has been arranged," said the Princess,
turning for the moment away from Colston, with whom she
was talking earnestly in a low tone. "Ha! There goes the
[Pg 59]
lunch-bell. Mr. Colston, your arm. Fedora, will you show
Mr. Arnold the way?"

Arnold opened the door for the Princess to go out, and then
followed with Natasha on his arm. As they went out, she
said in a low tone to him—

"I think, if you don't mind, you had better begin at once to
call me Miss Darrel, so as to get into the way of it. A slip
might be serious, you know."

"Your wishes are my laws, Miss Darrel," replied he, the
name slipping as easily off his tongue as if he had known
her by it for months. It may have been only fancy on
his part, he thought he felt just the lightest imaginable
pressure on his arm as he spoke. At any rate, he was
vain enough or audacious enough to take the impression for
a reality, and walked the rest of the way to the dining-room
on air.

The meal was dainty and perfectly served, but there were no
servants present, for obvious reasons, and so they waited on
themselves. Colston sat opposite the Princess and carved the
partridges, while Arnold was vis-à-vis to Natasha, a fact which
had a perceptible effect upon his appetite.

"Now," said the Princess, as soon as every one was helped,
"I will enlighten you, Mr. Arnold, as to your mission to
Russia. One part of the business, I presume, you are already
familiar with?"

Arnold bowed his assent, and she went on—

"Then the other is easily explained. Interested as you are
in the question, I suppose there is no need to tell you that
for several years past the Tsar has had an offer open to all the
world of a million sterling for a vessel that will float in the
air, and be capable of being directed in its course as a ship at
sea can be directed."

"Yes, I am well aware of the fact. Pray proceed." As he
said this Arnold glanced across the table at Natasha, and
a swift smile and a flash from her suddenly unveiled eyes
told him that she, too, was thinking of how the world's history
might have been altered had the Tsar's million been paid for
his invention. Then the Princess went on—

"Well, through a friend at the Russian Embassy, I have
learnt that a French engineer has, as he says, perfected a
[Pg 60]
balloon constructed on a new principle, which he claims will
meet the conditions of the Tsar's offer.

"My friend also told me that his Majesty had decided to
take an entirely disinterested opinion with regard to this
invention, and asked me if I could recommend any English
engineer who had made a study of aërial navigation, and who
would be willing to go to Russia, superintend the trials of the
war-balloon, and report as to their success or otherwise.

"This happened a few days ago only, and as I had happened
to read an article that you will remember you wrote about
six months ago in the Nineteenth, or, as it is now called, the
Twentieth Century, I thought of your name, and said I would
try to find some one. Two days later I got news from the
Circle of your invention—never mind how; you will learn
that later on—and called at the Embassy to say I had found
some one whose judgment could be absolutely relied upon.
Now, wasn't that kind of me, to give you such a testimonial
as that to his Omnipotence the Tsar of All the Russias?"

Once more Arnold bowed his acknowledgments—this time
somewhat ironically, and Natasha interrupted the narrative by
saying with a spice of malice in her voice—

"No doubt the Little Father will duly recognise your
kindness, Princess, when he gets quite to the bottom of the
matter."

"I hope he will," replied the Princess, "but that is a matter
of the future—and of considerable doubt as well." Then,
turning to Arnold again, she continued—

"You will now, of course, see the immense advantage there
appeared to be in getting you to examine these war-balloons.
They are evidently the only possible rivals to your own invention
in the field, and therefore it is of the utmost importance
that you should know their strength or their weakness, as the
case may be.

"Well, that is all I have to say, so far. It has been decided
that you shall go, if you are willing, with us to Petersburg
the day after to-morrow to see the balloon, and make your
report. All your expenses will be paid on the most liberal
scale, for the Tsar is no niggard in spending either his own or
other people's money, and you will have a handsome fee into
the bargain for your trouble."
[Pg 61]

"So far as the work is concerned, of course, I undertake it
willingly," said Arnold, as the Princess stopped speaking.
"But it hardly seems to me to be right that I should take
even the Tsar's money under such circumstances. To tell
you the truth, it looks to me rather uncomfortably like false
pretences."

Again Natasha's eyes flashed approval across the table, but
nevertheless she said—

"You seem to forget, my friend, that we are at war with
the Tsar, and all's fair in—in love and war. Besides, if you
have any scruples about keeping the fee for your professional
services—which, after all, you will render as honestly as though
it were the merest matter of business—you can put it into
the treasury, and so ease your conscience. Remember, too," she
went on more seriously, "how the enormous wealth of this
same Tsar has swollen by the confiscation of fortunes whose
possessors had committed no other crime than becoming
obnoxious to the corrupt bureaucracy."

"I will take the fee if I fairly earn it, Miss Darrel," replied
Arnold, returning the glance as he spoke, "and it shall be my
first contribution to the treasury of the Brotherhood."

"Spoken like a sensible man," chimed in the Princess.
"After all, it is no worse than spoiling the Egyptians, and you
have scriptural authority for that. However, you can do as
you like with his Majesty's money when you get it. The
main fact is that you have the opportunity of going to earn
it, and that Colonel Martinov is coming here to tea this afternoon
to bring our passports, specially authorising us to travel
without customs examination or any kind of questioning to
any part of the Tsar's dominions, and that, I can assure you,
is a very exceptional honour indeed."

"Who did you say? Martinov? Is that the Colonel
Martinov who is the director of the secret police here?" asked
Colston hurriedly.

"Yes," replied the Princess, "the same. Why do you
ask?"

"Because," said Colston quietly, "he received the sentence
of death nearly a month ago, and to-morrow night he will be
executed, unless there is some accident. It was he who stood
with the governor of Brovno in the prison-yard and watched
[Pg 62]
Radna Michaelis flogged by the soldiers. I received news
this morning that the arrangements are complete, and that the
sentence will be carried out to-morrow night."

"Yes, that is so," added Natasha, as Colston ceased speaking.
"Everything is settled. It is therefore well that he should
do something useful before he meets his fate."

"How curious that it should just happen so!" said the
Princess calmly, as she rose from the table and moved towards
the door followed by Natasha.

As soon as the ladies had left the room, Colston and Arnold
lit their cigarettes and chatted while they smoked over their
last glass of claret. Arnold would have liked to have asked
more about the coming tragedy, but something in Colston's
manner restrained him; and so the conversation remained on
the subject of the Russian journey until they returned to the
sitting-room.
[Pg 63]

CHAPTER IX.

THE BEGINNING OF SORROWS.

On the 6th of March 1904, just six months after
Arnold's journey to Russia, a special meeting of
the Inner Circle of the Terrorists took place in
the Council-chamber, at the house on Clapham
Common.

Although it was only attended by twelve
persons all told, and those men and women whose names were
unknown outside the circle of their own Society and the records
of the Russian police, it was the most momentous conference
that had taken place in the history of the world since the
council of war that Abdurrhaman the Moslem had held with
his chieftains eleven hundred and seventy-two years before,
and, by taking their advice, spared the remnants of Christendom
from the sword of Islam.

Then the fate of the world hung in the balance of a council
of war, and the supremacy of the Cross or the Crescent depended,
humanly speaking, upon the decision of a dozen
warriors. Now the fate of the civilisation that was made
possible by that decision, lay at the mercy of a handful of
outlaws and exiles who had laboriously brought to perfection
the secret schemes of a single man.

The work of the Terrorists was finally complete. Under the
whole fabric of Society lay the mines which a single spark
would now explode, and above this slumbering volcano the
earth was trembling with the tread of millions of armed men,
divided into huge hostile camps, and only waiting until
Diplomacy had finished its work in the dark, and gave the
long-awaited signal of inevitable and universal war.
[Pg 64]

To-night that spark was to be shaken from the torch of
Revolution, and to-morrow the first of the mines would
explode. After that, if the course to be determined on by
the Terrorist Council failed to arrive at the results which it
was designed to reach, the armies of Europe would fight their
way through the greatest war that the world had ever seen,
the Fates would once more decide in favour of the strongest
battalions, the fittest would triumph, and a new era of military
despotism would begin—perhaps neither much better nor much
worse than the one it would succeed.

If, on the other hand, the plans of the Terrorists were
successfully worked out to their logical conclusion, it would
not be war only, but utter destruction that Society would have
to face. And then with dissolution would come anarchy.
The thrones of the world would be overthrown, the fabric of
Society would be dissolved, commerce would come to an end,
the structure that it had taken twenty centuries of the discipline
of war and the patient toil of peace to build up, would
crumble into ruins in a few short months, and then—well, after
that no man could tell what would befall the remains of the
human race that had survived the deluge. The means of
destruction were at hand, and they would be used without
mercy, but for the rest no man could speak.

When Nicholas Roburoff, the President of the Executive,
rose in his place at eight o'clock to explain the business in
hand, every member present saw at a glance, by the gravity of
his demeanour, that the communication that he had to make
was of no ordinary nature, but even they were not prepared
for the catastrophe that he announced in the first sentence
that he uttered.

"Friends," he said, in a voice that was rendered deeply
impressive by the emotion that he vainly tried to conceal, "it
is my mournful duty to tell you that she whom any one of us
would willingly shed our blood to serve or save from the
slightest evil, our beautiful and beloved Angel of the Revolution,
as we so fondly call her, Natasha, the daughter of the
Master, has, in the performance of her duty to the Cause, fallen
into the hands of Russia."

Save for a low, murmuring groan that ran round the table,
the news was received in silence. It was too terrible, too
[Pg 65]
hideous in the awful meaning that its few words conveyed, for
any exclamations of grief, or any outburst of anger, to express
the emotions that it raised.

Not one of those who heard it but had good reason to know
what it meant for a revolutionist to fall into the hands of
Russia. For a man it meant the last extremity of human
misery that flesh and blood could bear, but for a young and
beautiful woman it was a fate that no words could describe—a
doom that could only be thought of in silence and despair;
and so the friends of Natasha were silent, though they did not
yet despair. Roburoff bowed his head in acknowledgment of
the inarticulate but eloquent endorsement of his words, and
went on—

"You already know the outcome of Richard Arnold's visit to
Russia; how he was present at the trial of the Tsar's war-balloon,
and was compelled to pronounce it such a complete success, that
the Autocrat at once gave orders for the construction of a fleet
of fifty aërostats of the same pattern; and how, thanks to the
warning conveyed by Anna Ornovski, he was able to prevent
his special passport being stolen by a police agent, and so
to foil the designs of the chief of the Third Section to stop
him taking the secret of the construction of the war-balloon
out of Russia. You also know that he brought back the
Chief's authority to build an air-ship after the model which
was exhibited to us here, and that since his return he has been
prosecuting that work on Drumcraig Island, one of the possessions
of the Chief in the Outer Hebrides, which he placed at
his disposal for the purpose.

"You know, also, that Natasha and Anna Ornovski went to
Russia partly to discover the terms of the secret treaty that
we believed to exist between France and Russia, and partly to
warn, and, if possible, remove from Russian soil a large number
of our most valuable allies, whose names had been revealed to
the Minister of the Interior, chiefly through the agency of the
spy Martinov, who was executed in this room six months ago.

"The first part of the task was achieved, not without
difficulty, but with complete success, and of that more anon.
The second part was almost finished when Natasha and Anna
Ornovski were surprised in the house of Alexei Kassatkin, a
member of the Moscow Nihilist Circle, in the Bolshoi
[Pg 66]
Dmitrietka. He had been betrayed by one of his own
servants, and a police visit was the result.

"Added to this there is reason to believe that she had, quite
apart from this, become acquainted with enough official secrets
to make her removal desirable in high quarters. I need not
tell you that that is the usual way in which the Tsar rewards
those of his secret servants who get to know too much.

"The fact of her being found in the house of a betrayed
Nihilist was taken as sufficient proof of sympathy or complicity,
and she was arrested. Natasha, as Fedora Darrel,
claimed to be a British subject, and, as such, to be allowed
to go free in virtue of the Tsar's safe conduct, which she
exhibited. Instead of that she was taken before the chief
of the Moscow police, rudely interrogated, and then brutally
searched. Unhappily, in the bosom of her dress was found
a piece of paper bearing some of the new police cypher. That
was enough. That night they were thrown into prison, and
three days later taken to the convict depot under sentence of
exile by administrative process to Sakhalin for life.

"You know what that means for a beautiful woman like
Natasha. She will not go to Sakhalin. They do not bury beauty
like hers in such an abode of desolation as that. If she cannot
be rescued, she will only have two alternatives before her. She
will become the slave and plaything of some brutal governor or
commandant at one of the stations, or else she will kill herself.
Of course, of these two she would choose the latter—if she
could and when she could. Should she be driven to that last
resort of despair, she shall be avenged as woman never yet was
avenged; but rescue must, if possible, come before revenge.

"The information that we have received from the Moscow
agent tells us that the convict train to which Natasha and
Anna Ornovski are attached left the depot nearly a fortnight
ago; they were to be taken by train in the usual way to
Nizhni Novgorod, thence by barge on the Volga and Kama to
Perm, and on by rail to Tiumen, the forwarding station for the
east. Until they reach Tiumen they will be safe from anything
worse than what the Russians are pleased to call
'discipline,' but once they disappear into the wilderness of
Siberia they will be lost to the world, and far from all law but
the will of their official slave-drivers.
[Pg 67]

"It has, therefore, been decided that the rescue shall be
attempted before the chain-gang leaves Tiumen, if it can be
reached in time. As nearly as we can calculate, the march
will begin on the morning of Friday the 9th, that is to say, in
three nights and one day from now. Happily we possess the
means of making the rescue, if it can be accomplished by
human means. I have received a report from Richard Arnold
saying that the Ariel is complete, and that she has made a
perfectly satisfactory trial trip to the clouds. The Ariel is the
only vehicle in existence that could possibly reach the frontier
of Siberia in the given time, and it is fitting that her first duty
should be the rescue of the Angel of the Revolution from the
clutches of the Tyrant of the North.

"Alexis Mazanoff, it is the will of the Master that you shall
take these instructions to Richard Arnold and accompany him
on the voyage in order to show him what course to steer, and
assist him in every way possible. You will find the Chief's
yacht at Port Patrick ready to convey you to Drumcraig
Island. When you have heard what is further necessary for
you to hear, you will take the midnight express from Euston.
Have you any preparations to make?"

"No," replied Mazanoff, or Colston, to call him by a name
more familiar to the reader. "I can start in half an hour if
necessary, and on such an errand you may, of course, depend
on me not to lose much time. I presume there are full
instructions here?"

"Yes, both for the rescue and for your conduct afterwards,
whether you are successful or unsuccessful," said the President.
Then turning to the others he continued—

"You may now rest assured that all that can be done to
rescue Natasha will be done, and we must therefore turn to
other matters. I said a short time ago that the conditions
of the secret treaty between France and Russia had been
discovered by the two brave women who are now suffering
for their devotion to the cause of the Revolution. A full copy
of them is in the hands of the Chief, who arrives in London
to-day, and will at once lay the documents before Mr. Balfour,
the Premier.

"It is extremely hostile to England, and amounts, in fact, to
a compact on the part of France to declare war and seize the
[Pg 68]
Suez Canal, as soon as the first shot is fired between Great
Britain and Russia. In return for this, Russia is to invade
Germany and Austria, destroy the eastern frontier fortresses
with her fleet of war-balloons, and then cross over and do the
same on the Rhine, while France at last throws herself upon
her ancient foe.

"Meanwhile, the French fleet is to concentrate in the
Mediterranean as quietly and rapidly as possible, before war
actually breaks out, so as to be able to hold the British and
Italians in check, and shut the Suez Canal, while Russia, who
is pushing her troops forward to the Hindu Kush, gets ready
for a dash at the passes, and a rush upon Cashmere, before
Britain can get sufficient men out to India by the Cape to give
her very much trouble.

"As there also exists a secret compact between Britain and
the Triple Alliance, binding all four powers to declare war the
moment one is threatened, the disclosure of this treaty must
infallibly lead to war in a few weeks. In addition to this,
measures have been taken to detach Italy from the Triple
Alliance at the last moment, if possible. Success in this
respect is, however, somewhat uncertain.

"To make assurance doubly sure, the Chief informs me that
he has ordered Ivan Brassoff, who is in command of a large
reconnoitring party on the Afghan side of the Hindu Kush,
to provoke reprisals from a similar party of Indian troops who
have been told off to watch their movements. Captain Brassoff
is one of us, and can be depended upon to obey at all costs.
He will do this in a fortnight from now, and therefore we may
feel confident that Great Britain and Russia will be at war
within a month.

"With the first outbreak of war our work for the present
ceases, so far as active interference goes. We shall therefore
withdraw from the scene of action until the arrival of the
supreme moment when the nations of Europe shall be locked
in the death-struggle, and the fate of the world will rest in our
hands. The will of the Master now is that all the members of
the Brotherhood shall at once wind up their businesses, and
turn all of their possessions that are not portable and useful
into money.

"A large steamer has been purchased and manned with
[Pg 69]
members of the Outer Circle who are sailors by profession.
She is now being loaded at Liverpool with all the machinery
and materials necessary for the construction of twelve air-ships
like the Ariel. This steamer, when ready for sea, will sail,
ostensibly, for Rio de Janeiro with a cargo of machinery, but
in reality for Drumcraig, where she will embark the workmen
who will be left there by the Ariel with all the working plant
on the island, and from there she will proceed to a lonely
island off the West Coast of Africa, between Cape Blanco and
Cape Verde, where new works will be set up and the fleet of
air-ships put together as rapidly as possible.

"The position of this island is in the instructions which
Alexis Mazanoff takes to Drumcraig to-night, and the Ariel
will rendezvous there when the work that is in hand for her is
done. The members of the Brotherhood will, of course, go in
the steamer as passengers for Rio, so that no suspicions may
be aroused, and every one must be ready to embark in ten days
from now.

"That is all I have to say at present in the name of the
Master. And now, Alexis Mazanoff, it is time you set out.
We shall remain here and discuss every detail fully so that
nothing may be overlooked. You will find that everything
has been provided for in the instructions you have, so go, and
may the Master of Destiny be with you!"

As he spoke he held out his hand, which the young man
grasped heartily, saying—

"Farewell! I will obey to the death, and if success can be
earned we will earn it. If not, you shall hear of the Ariel's
work in Russia before the week is out."

He then took leave of the other members of the Council,
coming last to Radna. As their hands clasped she said—

"I wish I could come with you, but that is impossible. But
bring Natasha back to us safe and sound, and there is nothing
that you can ask of me that I will not say 'yes' to. Go, and
God speed your good work. Farewell!"

For all answer he took her in his arms before them all.
Their lips met in one long silent kiss, and a moment later he
had gone to strike the first blow in the coming world-war, and
to bring the beginning of sorrows on the Tyrant of the North.
[Pg 70]

CHAPTER X.

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
[Pg 71]
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
[Pg 72]
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,
[Pg 73]
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
[Pg 74]
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
[Pg 75]
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
[Pg 76]
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.
[Pg 77]

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."
[Pg 78]

CHAPTER XI.

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
[Pg 79]
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."
[Pg 80]

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
[Pg 81]
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
[Pg 82]
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.

"Good God, that is awful."

See page 82.
[Pg 83]

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
[Pg 84]
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.
[Pg 85]

CHAPTER XII.

IN THE MASTER'S NAME.

The Ariel, in order to avoid being seen from the
town, had made a wide circuit to the northward
at a considerable elevation, and as soon as a
suitable spot had been sought out by means of
the field-glasses, she dropped suddenly and
swiftly from the clouds into the depths of the
dense forest through which the Tobolsk road runs from Tiumen
to the banks of the Tobol.

From Tiumen to the Tobol is about twenty-five miles by
road. The railway, which was then finished as far as Tomsk,
ran to Tobolsk by a more northerly and direct route than the
road, but convicts were still marched on foot along the great
post road after the gangs had been divided at Tiumen according
to their destinations.

The spot which had been selected for the resting-place of the
Ariel was a little glade formed by the bend of a frozen stream
about five miles east of the town, and at a safe distance from
the road.

Painted a light whitish-grey all over, she would have been
invisible even from a short distance as she lay amid the snow-laden
trees, and Arnold gave strict orders that all the window-slides
were to be kept closed, and no light shown on any
account.

Every precaution possible was taken to obviate a discovery
which should seriously endanger the success of the rescue, but,
nevertheless, the fan-wheels were kept aloft, and everything
was in readiness to rise into the air at a moment's notice
should any emergency require them to do so.
[Pg 86]

It was a little after three o'clock on the Thursday afternoon
when the Ariel settled down in her resting-place, and half an
hour later Colston and Ivan Petrovitch appeared on deck
completely disguised, the former as a Russian fur trader, and
the latter as his servant.

All the arrangements for the rescue had been once more
gone over in every detail, and just before he swung himself
over the side Colston shook hands for the last time with
Arnold, saying as he did so—

"Well, good-bye again, old fellow! Ivan shall come back
and bring you the news, if necessary; but if he doesn't come,
don't be uneasy, but possess your soul in patience till you hear
the whistle from the road in the morning. I expect the train
will get in sometime during the night, and in that case we
shall have everything ready to make the attempt soon after
daybreak, if not before.

"If we can get as far as this without being pursued we shall
come right on board. If not we must trust to our horses and
our pistols to keep the Cossacks at a distance till you can
help us. In any case, rest assured that once clear of Tiumen, we
shall never be taken alive. Those are the Master's orders, and
I will shoot Natasha myself before she goes back to captivity."

"Yes, do so," replied Arnold. His lips quivered as he
spoke, but there was no tremor in the hand with which he
gripped Colston's in farewell. "She will prefer death to
slavery, and I shall prefer it for her. But if you have to do it
you will at least have the consolation of knowing that within
twelve hours of your death the Tsar shall be lying buried
beneath the ruins of the Peterhof Palace. I will have his life
for hers if only I live to take it."

"I will tell her," said Colston simply, "and if die she must,
she will die content."

So saying, he descended the little rope-ladder, followed by
Ivan, and in a few moments the two were lost in the deep
shadow of the trees, while Arnold went down into the saloon
to await with what patience he might the moment that would
decide the fate of the daughter of Natas and the man who had
gone, as he would so gladly have done, to risk his life to restore
her to liberty.

Rather more than half an hour's tramp through the forest
[Pg 87]
brought Colston and Ivan out on the road at a point a little
less than five miles from Tiumen.

Colston was provided with passports and permits to travel
for himself and Ivan. These, of course, were forged on genuine
forms which the Terrorists had no difficulty in obtaining
through their agents in high places, who were as implicitly
trusted as the Princess Ornovski had been but a few months
before.

So skilfully were they executed, however, that it would have
been a very keen official eye that had discovered anything
wrong with them. They described him as "Stepan Bakuinin,
fur merchant of Nizhni Novgorod, travelling in pursuit of his
business, with his servant, Peter Petrovitch, also of Nizhni
Novgorod."

Instead of going straight into the town by the main road
they made a considerable detour and entered it by a lane that
led them through a collection of miserable huts occupied by
the poorest class of Siberian mujiks, half peasants, half townsfolk,
who cultivate their patches of ground during the brief
spring and summer, and struggle through the long dreary
winter as best they can on their scanty savings and what work
they can get to do from the Government or their richer
neighbours.

Colston had never been in Tiumen before, but Ivan had,
for ten years before he had voluntarily accompanied his
father, who had been condemned to five years' forced labour
on the new railway works from Tiumen to Tobolsk, for
giving a political fugitive shelter in his house. He had
died of hard labour and hard usage, and that was one reason
why Ivan was a member of the Outer Circle of the Terrorists.

He led his master through the squalid suburb to the
business part of the town, which had considerably developed
since the through line to Tobolsk and Tomsk had been
constructed, and at length they stopped before a comfortable-looking
house in the street that ends at the railway station.

They knocked, gave their names, and were at once admitted.
The servant who opened the door to them led them to a room
in which they found a man of about fifty in the uniform of a
sub-commissioner of police. As Colston held out his hand to
him he said—
[Pg 88]

"In the Master's name!"

The official took his hand, and, bending over it, replied in a
low tone—

"I am his servant. What is his will?"

"That Anna Ornovski and Fedora Darrel, the English girl
who was taken with her, be released as soon as may be," replied
Colston. "Is the train from Ekaterinburg in yet?"

"Not yet. The snow is still deep between here and the
mountains. The winter has been very severe and long. We
have almost starved in Tiumen in spite of the railway. There
has been a telegram from Ekaterinburg to say that the train
descended the mountain safely, and one from Kannishlov to
say that we expect it soon after ten to-night."

"Good! That is sooner than we expected in London. We
thought it would not reach here till to-morrow morning."

"In London! What do you mean? You cannot have come
from London, for there has been no train for two days."

"Nevertheless I have come from London. I left England
yesterday evening."

"Yesterday evening! But, with all submission, that is impossible.
If there were a railway the whole distance it could
not be done."

"To the Master there is nothing impossible. Look! I
received that the evening I left London."

As he spoke, Colston held out an envelope. The Russian
examined it closely. It bore the Ludgate Hill post-mark,
which was dated "March 7."

Colston's host bent over it with almost superstitious
reverence, and handed it back, saying humbly—

"Forgive my doubts, Nobleness! It is a miracle! I ask no
more. The Tsar himself could not have done it. The Master
is all powerful, and I am proud to be his servant, even to the
death."

Although the twentieth century had dawned, the Siberian
Russians were still inclined to look even upon the railway as a
miracle. This man, although he occupied a post of very considerable
responsibility and authority under the Russian
Government, was only a member of the Outer Circle of the
Terrorists, as most of the officials were, and therefore he knew
nothing of the existence of the Ariel, and Colston purposely
[Pg 89]
mystified him with the apparent miracle of his presence in
Tiumen after so short an absence from London, in order to
command his more complete obedience in the momentous work
that was on hand.

He allowed the official a few moments to absorb the full
wonder of the seeming marvel, and then he replied—

"Yes, we are all his servants to the death. At least I know
of none who have even thought of treason to him and lived to
put their thoughts into action. But tell me, are all the arrangements
complete as far as you can make them? Much depends
upon how you carry them out, you know, to say nothing of
the two thousand roubles that I shall hand to you as soon as
the two ladies are delivered into my charge."

"All is arranged, Nobleness," replied the official, bowing
involuntarily at the mention of the money. "Such of the
prisoners, that is to say the politicals, who can afford to pay
for the privilege, may, by the new regulations, be lodged in
the houses of approved persons during their sojourn in Tiumen,
if it be only for a night, and so escape the common prison.

"We knew at the police bureau of the arrest of the Princess
Ornovski some days ago, and I have obtained permission from
the chief of police to lodge her Highness and her companion
in misfortune—if they are prepared to pay what I shall ask.
It has come to be looked upon as a sort of perquisite of diligent
officials, and as I have been very diligent here I had no
difficulty in getting the permission—which I shall have to pay
for in due course."

"Just so! Nothing for nothing in Russian official circles.
Very good. Now listen. If this escape is successfully accomplished
you will be degraded and probably punished into
the bargain for letting the prisoners slip through your fingers.
But that must not happen if it can be prevented.

"Now this has been foreseen, as everything is with the
Master; and his orders are that you shall take this passport—which
you will find in perfect order, save for the fact
that the date has been slightly altered—from me as soon as
I have got the ladies safely in the troika out on the Tobolsk
road, put off the livery of the Tsar, disguise yourself as effectually
as may be, and take the first train back to Perm and
Nizhni Novgorod as Stepan Bakuinin, fur merchant.
[Pg 90]

"The servant you can leave behind on any excuse. From
Novgorod you can travel viâ Moscow to Königsberg, and, if
you will take my advice, you will get out of Russia as soon as
the Fates will let you."

"It shall be done, Nobleness. But how will the disappearance
of Dmitri Soudeikin, sub-commissioner of police, be
accounted for?"

"That also has been provided for. Before you go you will
pin this with a dagger to your sitting-room table."

The official took the little piece of paper which Colston held
out to him as he spoke. It read thus—

Dmitri Soudeikin, sub-commissioner of police at Tiumen, has been removed
for over-zeal in the service of the Tsar.

Natas.

Soudeikin bowed almost to the ground as the dreaded name
of the Master of the Terror met his eyes, and then he said, as
he handed the paper back—

"It is so! The Master sees all, and cares for the least of
his servants. My life shall be forfeited if the ladies are not
released as I have said."

"It probably will be," returned Colston drily. "None of us
expect to get out of this business alive if it does not succeed.
Now that is all I have to say for the present. It is for you to
bring the ladies here as your prisoners, to see us out of the
town before daybreak, and to have the troika in readiness for
us on the Tobolsk road. Then see to yourself and I will be
responsible for the rest."

As it still wanted more than two hours to the expected
arrival of the train, Soudeikin had the samovar, or tea-urn,
brought in, and Colston and Ivan made a hearty meal after
their five-mile walk through the snow. Then they and their
host lit their pipes, and smoked and chatted until a distant
whistle warned Soudeikin that the train was at last approaching
the station, and that it was time for him to be on duty to
receive his convict-lodgers.
[Pg 91]

CHAPTER XIII.

FOR LIFE OR DEATH.

No time had ever seemed so long to Colston as did
the hour and a half which passed after the
departure of Soudeikin until his return. He
would have given anything to have accompanied
him to the station, but it would have
been so very unwise to have incurred the risk
of being questioned, and perhaps obliged to show the passport
that Soudeikin was to use, that he controlled his impatience
as best he could, and let events take their course.

At length, when he had looked at his watch for the fiftieth
time, and found that it indicated nearly half-past eleven, there
was a heavy knock at the door. As it opened, Colston heard
a rattle of arms and a clinking of chains. Then there was a
sound of gruff guttural voices in the entrance-hall, and the
next moment the door of the room was thrown open, and
Soudeikin walked in, followed by a young man in the uniform
of a lieutenant of the line, and after them came two soldiers,
to one of whom was handcuffed the Princess Ornovski, and to
the other Natasha.

Shocked as he was at the pitiable change that had taken
place in the appearance of the two prisoners since he had last
seen them in freedom, Colston was far too well trained in the
school of conspiracy to let the slightest sign of surprise or
recognition escape him.

He and Ivan rose as the party entered, greeted Soudeikin
and saluted the officer, hardly glancing at the two pale,
haggard women in their rough grey shapeless gowns and
hoods as they stood beside the men to whom they were chained.
[Pg 92]

As the officer returned Colston's salute he turned to
Soudeikin and said civilly enough—

"I did not know you had another guest. I hope we shall
not overcrowd you."

"By no means," replied the commissioner, waving his hand
toward Colston as he spoke. "This is only my nephew, Ernst
Vronski, who is staying with me for a day or two on his way
through to Nizhni Novgorod with his furs, and that is his
servant, Ivan Arkavitch. You need not be uneasy. I have
plenty of rooms, as I live almost alone, and I have set apart
one for the prisoners which I think will satisfy you in every
way. Would it please you to come and see it?"

"Yes, we will go now and get them put in safety for the
night, if you will lead the way."

As the party left the room Colston caught one swift glance
from Natasha which told him that she understood his presence
in the house fully, and he felt that, despite her miserable
position, he had an ally in her who could be depended upon.

The officer carefully examined the room which had been
provided for the two prisoners, tried the heavy shutters with
which the windows were closed, and took from Soudeikin the
keys of the padlocks to the bars which ran across them. He
then directed the prisoners to be released from their handcuffs
and locked them in the room, stationing one of the soldiers at
the door and sending the other to patrol the back of the house
from which the two windows of the room looked out.

At the end of two hours the sentries were to change places,
and in two hours more they were to be relieved by a detachment
from the night patrol. This arrangement had been
foreseen by Soudeikin, and it had been settled that the
rescue was to be attempted as soon as the guard had been
changed.

This would give the prisoners time to get a brief but much
needed rest after their long and miserable journey from Perm,
penned up like sheep in iron-barred cattle trucks, and it would
leave the drowsiest part of the night, from four o'clock to
sunrise, for the hazardous work in hand.

"That is a pretty girl you have there, captain," said Colston,
as the officer returned to the sitting-room. "Is she for the
mines or Sakhalin?"
[Pg 93]

"For Sakhalin by sentence, but as a matter of fact for
neither, as far as I can see."

"You mean that the Little Father will pardon her or give
her a lighter sentence, I suppose."

The officer grinned meaningly as he replied—

"Nu vot! That is hardly likely. What I mean is that
Captain Kharkov, who is in command of the convict train from
here, has had instructions to convey her as comfortably as
possible, and with no more fatigue than is necessary, to Tchit,
in the Trans-Baikal, and that he is also charged with a letter
from the Governor of Perm to the Governor of Tchit.

"You know these gentlemen like to do each other a good
turn when they can, and so, putting two and two together, I
should say that his Excellency of Perm has concluded that our
pretty prisoner will serve to beguile the dulness of that Godforsaken
hole in which his Excellency of Tchit is probably dying
of ennui. She will be more comfortable there than at Sakhalin,
and it is a lucky thing for her that she has found favour in his
Excellency's eyes."

Colston could have shot the fellow where he sat leering
across the table; but though his blood was at boiling point, he
controlled himself sufficiently to make a reply after the same
fashion, and soon after took his leave and retired for the night.

At four o'clock the guard was changed. The new officer,
after taking the keys, unlocked the door of the room in which
Natasha and the Princess were confined, and roused them up
to satisfy himself that they were still in safe keeping. It was
a brutal formality, but perfectly characteristic of Siberian
officialism.

The man who had been on guard so far joined the patrol
and returned to the barracks, while the new officer made himself
comfortable with a bottle of brandy, with which Soudeikin
had obligingly provided him, in the sitting-room. It was a
bitterly cold night, and he drank a couple of glasses of it in
quick succession. Ten minutes after he had swallowed the
second he rolled backwards on the couch on which he was
sitting and went fast asleep. A few moments later he had
ceased to breathe.

Then the door opened softly and Soudeikin and Colston
slipped into the room. The former shook him by the shoulder.
[Pg 94]
His eyes remained half closed, his head lolled loosely from
side to side, and his arms hung heavily downwards.

"He's gone," whispered Soudeikin; and, without another
word, they set to work to strip the uniform off the lifeless
body. Then Colston dressed himself in it and gave his own
clothes to Soudeikin.

As soon as the change was effected, Colston took the keys
and went to the door at which the sentry was keeping guard.
The man was already half asleep, and blinked at him with
drowsy eyes as he challenged him. For all answer the
Terrorist levelled his pistol at his head and fired. There was
a sharp crack that could hardly have been heard on the other
side of the wall, and the man tumbled down with a bullet
through his brain.

Colston stepped over the corpse, unlocked the door, and
found Natasha and the Princess already dressed in male attire
as two peasant boys, with sheepskin coats and shapkas, and
wide trousers tucked into their half boots. These disguises
had been provided beforehand by Soudeikin, and hidden in
the bed in which they were to sleep.

Colston grasped their hands in silence, and the three left
the room. In the passage they found Ivan and Soudeikin,
the former dressed in the uniform of the soldier who had been
on guard outside the house, and whose half-stripped corpse
was now lying buried in the snow.

"Ready?" whispered Soudeikin.

"Have you finished in there?" asked Colston, jerking his
thumb towards the sitting-room.

Soudeikin nodded in reply, and the five left the house by the
back door.

It was then after half-past four. Fortunately it was a
dark cloudy morning, and the streets of the town were utterly
deserted. By ones and twos they stole through the by-streets
and lanes without meeting a soul, until Soudeikin at length
stopped at a house on the eastern edge of the town about a
mile from the Tobolsk road.

He tapped at one of the windows. The door was softly
opened by an invisible hand, and they entered and passed
through a dark passage and out into a stable-yard behind the
house. Under a shed they found a troika, or three-horse
[Pg 95]
sleigh, with the horses ready harnessed, in charge of a man
dressed as a mujik.

They got in without a word, all but Soudeikin, who went
to the horses' heads, while the other man went and opened
the gates of the yard. The bells had been removed from the
harness, and the horses' feet made no sound as Soudeikin led
them out through the gate. Ivan took the reins, and Colston
held out his hand from the sleigh. There was a roll of notes
in it, and as he gave it to Soudeikin he whispered—

"Farewell! If we succeed, the Master shall know how
well you have done your part."

Soudeikin took the money with a salute and a whispered
farewell, and Ivan trotted his horses quietly down the lane
and swung round into the road at the end of it.

So far all had gone well, but the supreme moment of peril
had yet to come. A mile away down the road was the guard-house
on the Tobolsk road leading out of the town, and this
had to be passed before there was even a chance of safety.

As there was no hope of getting the sleigh past unobserved,
Colston had determined to trust to a rush when the moment
came. He had given Natasha and the Princess a magazine
pistol apiece, and held a brace in his own hands; so among
them they had a hundred shots.

Ivan kept his horses at an easy trot till they were within
a hundred yards of the guard-house. Then, at a sign from
Colston, he suddenly lashed them into a gallop, and the sleigh
dashed forward at a headlong speed, swept round the curve
past the guard-house, hurling one of the sentries on guard to
the earth, and away out on to the Tobolsk road.

The next instant the notes of a bugle rang out clear and
shrill just as another sounded from the other end of the
town. Colston at once guessed what had happened. The
inspector of the patrols, in going his rounds, had called at
Soudeikin's house to see if all was right, and had discovered
the tragedy that had taken place. He looked back and saw
a body of Cossacks galloping down the main street towards
the guard-house, waving their lanterns and brandishing their
spears above their heads.

"Whip up, Ivan, they will be on us in a couple of minutes!"
he cried and Ivan swung his long whip out over his horses'
[Pg 96]
ears, and shouted at them till they put their heads down and
tore over the smooth snow in gallant style.

By the time the race for life or death really began they had
a good mile start, and as they had only four more to go Ivan
did not spare his cattle, but plied whip and voice with a will
till the trees whirled past in a continuous dark line, and the
sleigh seemed to fly over the snow almost without touching it.

Still the Cossacks gained on them yard by yard, till at the
end of the fourth mile they were less than three hundred
yards behind. Then Colston leant over the back of the sleigh,
and taking the best aim he could, sent half a dozen shots
among them. He saw a couple of the flying figures reel and
fall, but their comrades galloped heedlessly over them, yelling
wildly at the tops of their voices, and every moment lessening
the distance between themselves and the sleigh.

Colston fired a dozen more shots into them, and had the
satisfaction of seeing three or four of them roll into the snow.
At the same time he put a whistle to his lips, and blew a long
shrill call that sounded high and clear above the hoarse yells
of the Cossacks.

Their pursuers were now within a hundred yards of them,
and Natasha, speaking for the first time since the race had
begun, said—

"I think I can do something now."

As she spoke she leaned out of the sleigh sideways, and
began firing rapidly at the Cossacks. Shot after shot told
either upon man or beast, for the daughter of Natas was one
of the best shots in the Brotherhood; but before she had fired a
dozen times a bright gleam of white light shot downwards over
the trees, apparently from the clouds, full in the faces of their
pursuers.

Involuntarily they reined up like one man, and their yells
of fury changed in an instant into a general cry of terror. The
Cossacks are as brave as any soldiers on earth, and they can
fight any mortal foe like the fiends that they are, but here was
an enemy they had never seen before, a strange, white, ghostly-looking
thing that floated in the clouds and glared at them
with a great blazing, blinding eye, dazzling them and making
their horses plunge and rear like things possessed.

They were not long left in doubt as to the intentions of their
[Pg 97]
new enemy. Something came rushing through the air and
struck the ground almost at the feet of their first rank. Then
there was a flash of green light, a stunning report, and men and
horses were rent into fragments and hurled into the air like
dead leaves before a hurricane.

Only three or four who had turned tail at once were left
alive; and these, without daring to look behind them, drove
their spurs into their horses' flanks and galloped back to
Tiumen, half mad with terror, to tell how a demon had come
down from the skies, annihilated their comrades, and carried
the fugitives away into the clouds upon its back.

When they reached the town it was a scene of the utmost
panic. Soldiers were galloping and running hither and thither,
bugles were sounding, and the whole population were turning
out into the snow-covered streets. On every lip there were
only two words—"Natas!" "The Terrorists!"

The death sentence on Soudeikin, the sub-commissioner of
police, had been found pinned with a dagger to the table in the
room in which lay the body of the lieutenant, with the bloody
T on his forehead. Soudeikin had vanished utterly, leaving
only his uniform behind him; so had the two prisoners for
whom he had made himself responsible, and at the door of their
room lay the corpse of the sentry with a bullet-hole clean
through his head from front to back, while in the snow under
one of the windows of the room lay the body of the other
sentry, stabbed through the heart.

From the very midst of one of the strongholds of Russian
tyranny in Siberia, two important prisoners and a police official
had been spirited away as though by magic, and now upon the
top of all the wonder and dismay came the fugitive Cossacks
with their wild tale about the air-demon that had swooped
down and destroyed their troop at a single blow. To crown
all, half an hour later three horses, mad with fear, came
galloping up the Tobolsk road, dragging behind them an empty
sleigh, to one of the seats of which was pinned a scrap of paper
on which was written—

"The daughter of Natas sends greeting to the Governor of
Tiumen, and thanks him for his hospitality."
[Pg 98]

CHAPTER XIV.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MOMENT.

On the morning of Tuesday, the 9th of March
1904, the Times published the following telegram
at the head of its Foreign Intelligence:—

Astounding Occurrence in Russia.

Destruction of Kronstadt by an unknown Air-Ship.

(From our own Correspondent.)

St. Petersburg, March 8th, 4 P.M.

Between six and seven this morning, the fortress of Kronstadt was partially
destroyed by an unknown air-ship, which was first sighted approaching from the
westward at a tremendous speed.

Four shots in all were fired upon the fortress, and produced the most appalling
destruction. There was no smoke or flame visible from the guns of the air-ship,
and the explosives with which the missiles were charged must have been far
more powerful than anything hitherto used in warfare, as in the focus of the
explosion masses of iron and steel and solid masonry were instantly reduced to
powder.

Two shots were fired as the strange vessel approached, and two as she left the
fortress. The two latter exploded over one of the powder magazines, dissolved
the steel roof to dust, and ignited the whole contents of the magazine, blowing
that portion of the fortification bodily into the sea. At least half the garrison
has disappeared, most of the unfortunate men having been practically annihilated
by the terrific force of the explosions.

The air-ship was not of the navigable balloon type, and is described by the
survivors as looking more like a flying torpedo-boat than anything else. She
flew no flag, and there is no clue to her origin.

After destroying the fortress, she ascended several thousand feet, and continued
her eastward course at such a prodigious speed, that in less than five minutes
she was lost to sight.

The excitement in St. Petersburg almost reaches the point of panic. All
efforts to keep the news of the disaster secret have completely failed, and I have
therefore received permission to send this telegram, which has been revised by
the Censorship, and may therefore be accepted as authentic.
[Pg 99]

Within an hour of the appearance of this telegram, which
appeared only in the Times, the Russian Censorship having
refused to allow any more to be despatched, the astounding
news was flying over the wires to every corner of the world.

The Times had a lengthy and very able article on the subject,
which, although by no means alarmist in tone, told the world,
in grave and weighty sentences, that there could now be no
doubt but that the problem of aërial navigation had been
completely solved, and that therefore mankind stood confronted
by a power that was practically irresistible, and which changed
the whole aspect of warfare by land and sea.

In the face of this power, the fortresses, armies, and fleets of
the world were useless and helpless. The destruction of
Kronstadt had proved that to demonstration. From a height
of several thousand feet, and a distance of nearly seven miles,
the unknown air-vessel had practically destroyed, with four
shots from her mysterious, smokeless, and flameless guns, the
strongest fortress in Europe. If it could do that, and there
was not the slightest doubt but that it had done so, it could
destroy armies wholesale without a chance of reprisals, sink
fleets, and lay cities in ruins, at the leisure of those who
commanded it.

And here arose the supreme question of the hour—a question
beside which all other questions of national or international
policy sank instantly into insignificance—Who were those who
held this new and appalling power in their hands? It was
hardly to be believed that they were representatives of any
regularly-constituted national Power, for, although the air was
full of rumours of war, there was at present unbroken peace all
over the world.

Even in the hands of a recognised Power, the possession of
such a frightful engine of destruction could not be viewed by
the rest of the world with anything but the gravest apprehension,
for that Power, however insignificant otherwise, would
now be in a position to terrorise any other nation, or league of
nations, however great. Manifestly those who had built the
one air-vessel that had been seen, and had given such conclusive
proof of her terrible powers, could construct a fleet if
they chose to do so, and then the world would be at their
mercy.
[Pg 100]

If, however, as seemed only too probable, the machine was
in the hands of a few irresponsible individuals, or, still worse,
in those of such enemies of humanity as the Nihilists, or that
yet more mysterious and terrible society who were popularly
known as the Terrorists, then indeed the outlook was serious
beyond forecast or description. At any moment the forces of
destruction and anarchy might be let loose upon the world, in
such fashion that little less than the collapse of the whole
fabric of Society might be expected as the result.

The above necessarily brief and imperfect digest gives only
the headings of an article which filled nearly two columns of
the Times, and it is needless to say that such an article in the
leading columns of the most serious and respectable newspaper
in the world produced an intense impression wherever it
was read.

Of course the telegram was instantly copied by the evening
papers, which ran out special editions for the sole purpose of
reproducing it, with their own comments upon it, which, after
all, were not much more original than the telegram. Meanwhile
the Berliner Tageblatt, the Newe Freie Presse, the
Kölnische Zeitung, and the Journal des Débats had received
later and somewhat similar telegrams, and had given their
respective views of the catastrophe to the world.

By noon all the capitals of Europe were in a fever of
expectation and apprehension. The cables had carried the
news to America and India; and when the evening of the
same day brought the telegraphic account of the extraordinary
occurrence at Tiumen in the grey dusk of the early morning,
proving almost conclusively that the rescue had been effected
by the same agency that had destroyed Kronstadt, and that,
worse than all, the air-vessel was at the command of Natas,
the unknown Chief of the mysterious Terrorists, excitement
rose almost to frenzy, and everywhere the wildest rumours
were accepted as truth.

In a word, the "psychological moment" had come all over
Europe, the moment in which all men were thinking of the
same thing, discussing the same event, and dreading the same
results. To have found a parallel state of affairs, it would have
been necessary to go back more than a hundred years, to the
[Pg 101]
hour when the head of Louis XVI. fell into the basket of the
guillotine, and the monarchies of Europe sprang to arms to
avenge his death.

Meanwhile other and not less momentous events had,
unknown to the newspapers or the public, been taking place
in three very different parts of the world.

On the evening of Saturday, the 6th, Lord Alanmere had
called upon Mr. Balfour in Downing Street, and laid the
duplicates of the secret treaty between France and Russia, and
copies of all the memoranda appertaining to it, before him,
and had convinced him of their authenticity. At the same
time he showed him plans of the war-balloons, of which a
fleet of fifty would within a few days be at the command of
the Tsar.

The result of this interview was a meeting of a Cabinet
Council, and the immediate despatch of secret orders to
mobilise the fleet and the army, to put every available ship
into commission, and to double the strength of the Mediterranean
Squadron at once. That evening three Queen's
messengers left Charing Cross by the night mail, one for
Berlin, one for Vienna, and one for Rome, each of them
bearing a copy of the secret treaty.

On Monday morning a Council of Ministers was held at
the Peterhof Palace in St. Petersburg, presided over by the
Tsar, and convened to discuss the destruction of Kronstadt.

At this Council it was announced that the fleet of war-balloons
would be ready to take the air in a week's time from
then, and that the concentration of troops on the Afghan
frontier was as complete as it could be without provoking
immediate hostilities with Britain. In fact, so close were the
Cossacks and the Indian troops to each other, both on the
Pamirs and on the western slopes of the Hindu Kush, that a
collision might be expected at any moment.

The Council of the Tsar decided to let matters take their
course in the East, and to make all arrangements with France
to simultaneously attack the Triple Alliance as soon as the
war-balloons had been satisfactorily tested.

Soon after daybreak on Wednesday, the 10th, an affair of
outposts took place near the northern end of the Sir Ulang
Pass of the Hindu Kush, between two considerable bodies of
[Pg 102]
Cossacks and Ghoorkhas, in which, after a stubborn fight, the
Russians gave way before the magazine fire of the Indian
troops, and fled, leaving nearly a fourth of their number on
the field.

The news of this encounter reached London on Wednesday
night, and was published in the papers on Thursday morning,
together with the intelligence that the fight had been watched
from a height of nearly three thousand feet by a small party of
men and women in an air-ship, evidently a vessel of war, from
the fact that she carried four long guns. She took no part in
the fight, and as soon as it was over went off to the south-west
at a speed which carried her out of sight in a few minutes.
[Pg 103]

CHAPTER XV.

A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY.

While all Europe was thrilling with the apprehension
of approaching war, and the excitement
caused by the appearance of the strange air-ship
and the news of its terrible exploits at Kronstadt
and Tiumen, the Ariel herself was quietly
pursuing her way in mid-air south-westerly
from the scene of the skirmish outside the Sir Ulang Pass.

She was bound for a region in the midst of Africa, which,
even in the first decade of the twentieth century, was still
unknown to the geographer and untrodden by the explorer.

Fenced in by huge and precipitous mountains, round whose
bases lay vast forests and impenetrable swamps and jungles,
from whose deadly areas the boldest pioneers had turned
aside as being too hopelessly inhospitable to repay the cost and
toil of exploration, it had remained undiscovered and unknown
save by two men, who had reached it by the only path by
which it was accessible—through the air and over the mountains
which shut it in on every side from the external world.

These two adventurous travellers were a wealthy and
eccentric Englishman, named Louis Holt, and Thomas Jackson,
his devoted retainer, and these two had taken it into their
heads—or rather Louis Holt had taken it into his head—to
achieve in fact the feat which Jules Verne had so graphically
described in fiction, and to cross Africa in a balloon.

They had set out from Zanzibar towards the end of the
last year of the nineteenth century, and, with the exception
of one or two vague reports from the interior, nothing more
had been heard of them until, nearly a year later, a collapsed
[Pg 104]
miniature balloon had been picked up in the Gulf of Guinea
by the captain of a trading steamer, who had found in the
little car attached to it a hermetically sealed meat-tin, which
contained a manuscript, the contents of which will become
apparent in due course.

The captain of the steamer was a practical and somewhat
stupid man, who read the manuscript with considerable
scepticism, and then put it away, having come to the conclusion
that it was no business of his, and that there was no
money in it anyhow. He thought nothing more of it until
he got back to Liverpool, and then he gave it to a friend of
his, who was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and
who duly laid it before that body.

It was published in the Transactions, and there was some
talk of sending out an expedition under the command of an
eminent explorer to rescue Louis Holt and his servant; but
when that personage was approached on the subject, it was
found that the glory would not be at all commensurate with
the expense and risk, and so, after being the usual nine days'
wonder, and being duly elaborated by several able editors in
the daily and weekly press, the strange adventures of Louis
Holt had been dismissed, as of doubtful authenticity, into
the limbo of exhausted sensations.

One man, however, had laid the story to heart somewhat
more seriously, and that was Richard Arnold, who, on reading
it, had formed the resolve that, if ever his dream of aërial
navigation were realised, the first use he would make of his
air-ship would be to discover and rescue the lonely travellers
who were isolated from the rest of the world in the strange,
inaccessible region of which the manuscript had given a brief
but graphic and fascinating account. He was now carrying
out that resolve, and at the same time working out a portion
of a plan that was not his own, and which he had been very
far from foreseeing when he made the resolution.

Louis Holt's original MS. had been purchased by the
President of the Inner Circle, and the Ariel was now, in fact,
on a voyage of exploration, the object of which was the
discovery of this unknown region, with a view to making it
the seat of a settlement from which the members of the
Executive could watch in security and peace the course of
[Pg 105]
the tremendous struggle which would, ere long, be shaking
the world to its foundations.

In such a citadel as this, fenced in by a series of vast
natural obstacles, impassable to all who did not possess the
means of aërial locomotion, they would be secure from molestation,
though all the armies of Europe sought to attack them;
and the Ariel could, if necessary, traverse in twenty-five hours
the three thousand odd miles which separated it from the
centre of Europe.

After the rescue of Natasha and the Princess on the
Tobolsk road, the Ariel, in obedience to the orders of the
Council, had shaped her course southward to the western
slopes of the Hindu Kush, in order to be present at the
prearranged attack of the Cossacks on the British reconnoitring
force.

Arnold's orders were simply to wait for the engagement,
and only to watch it, unless the British were attacked in
overwhelming numbers. In that case he was to have dispersed
the Russian force, as the plan of the Terrorists did
not allow of any advantage being gained by the soldiers of
the Tsar in that part of the world just then.

As the British had defeated them unaided, the Ariel had
taken no part in the affair, and, after vanishing from the
sight of the astonished combatants, had proceeded upon her
voyage of discovery.

As a good month would have to elapse before she could
keep her rendezvous with the steamer that was to bring
out the materials for the construction of the new air-ships
from England, there was plenty of time to make the voyage
in a leisurely and comfortable fashion. As soon, therefore,
as he was out of sight of the skirmishers, he had reduced the
speed of the Ariel to about forty miles an hour, using only
the stern-propeller driven by one engine, and supporting the
ship on the air-planes and two fan-wheels.

At this speed he would traverse the three thousand odd
miles which lay between the Hindu Kush and "Aeria"—as
Louis Holt had somewhat fancifully named the region that
could be reached only through the air—in a little over seventy-five
hours, or rather more than three days.

Those three days were the happiest that his life had so far
[Pg 106]
contained. The complete success of his invention, and the
absolute fulfilment of his promises to the Brotherhood, had
made him a power in the world, and a power which, as he
honestly believed, would be used for the highest good of mankind
when the time came to finally confront and confound the
warring forces of rival despotisms.

But far more than this in his eyes was the fact that he had
been able to use the unique power which his invention had
placed in his hands, to rescue the woman that he loved so
dearly from a fate which, even now that it was past, he could
not bring himself to contemplate.

When she had first greeted him in the Council-chamber of
the Inner Circle, the distance that had separated her from him
had seemed immeasurable, and she—the daughter of Natas
and the idol of the most powerful society in the world—might
well have looked down upon him—the nameless dreamer of
an unrealised dream, and a pauper, who would not have known
where to have looked for his next meal, had the Brotherhood
not had faith in him and his invention.

But now all that was changed. The dream had become the
reality, and the creation of his genius was bearing her with
him swiftly and smoothly through a calm atmosphere, and
under a cloudless sky, over sea and land, with more ease than
a bird wings its flight through space. He had accomplished
the greatest triumph in the history of human discovery. He
had revolutionised the world, and ere long he would make war
impossible. Surely this entitled him to approach even her on
terms of equality, and to win her for his own if he could.

Natasha saw this too as clearly as he did—more clearly,
perhaps; for, while he only arrived at the conclusion by a
process of reasoning, she reached it intuitively at a single step.
She knew that he loved her, that he had loved her from the
moment that their hands had first met in greeting, and, peerless
as she was among women, she was still a woman, and the
homage of such a man as this was sweet to her, albeit it was
still unspoken.

She knew, too, that the hopes of the Revolution, which, before
all things human, claimed her whole-souled devotion, now
depended mainly upon him, and the use that he might make of
the power that lay in his hands, and this of itself was no light
[Pg 107]
bond between them, though not necessarily having anything
to do with affection.

So far she was heart-whole, and though many had attempted
the task, no man had yet made her pulses beat a stroke faster for
his sake. Ever since she had been old enough to know what
tyranny meant, she had been trained to hate it, and prepared
to work against it, and, if necessary, to sacrifice herself body
and soul to destroy it.

Thus hatred rather than love had been the creed of her life
and the mainspring of her actions, and, save her father and
her one friend Radna, she stood aloof from mankind and its
loves and friendships, rather the beautiful incarnation of an
abstract principle than a woman, to whom love and motherhood
were the highest aims of existence.

More than this, she was the daughter of a Jew, and therefore
held herself absolutely at her father's disposal as far as marriage
was concerned, and if he had given her in wedlock even to a
Russian official, telling her that the Cause demanded the sacrifice,
she would have obeyed, though her heart had broken in the
same hour.

Although he had never hinted directly at such a thing, the
conviction had been growing upon her for the last two or three
years that Natas really intended her to marry Tremayne, and
so, in the case of his own death, form a bond that should hold
him to the Brotherhood when the chain of his own control was
snapped. Though she instinctively shrank from such a union
of mere policy, she would enter it without hesitation at her
father's bidding, and for the sake of the Cause to which her life
was devoted.

How great such a sacrifice would be, should it ever be asked
of her, no one but herself could ever know, for she was perfectly
well aware that in Tremayne's strange double life there
were two loves, one of which, and that not the real and natural
one, was hers.

Had she felt that she had the disposal of herself in her own
hands, she would not, perhaps, have waited with such painful
apprehension the avowal which hour after hour, now that they
were brought into such close and constant relationships on board
this little vessel high in mid-air, she saw trembling on the lips
of her rescuer.
[Pg 108]

Arnold's life of hard, honest work, and his constant habit of
facing truth in its most uncompromising forms, had made
dissimulation almost impossible to him; and added to that,
situated as he was, there was no necessity for it. Colston
knew of his love, and the Princess had guessed it long ago.
Did Natasha know his open secret? Of that he hardly dared
to be sure, though something told him that the inevitable
moment of knowledge was near at hand.

For the first twenty-four hours of the voyage he had seen
very little of either her or the Princess, as they had mostly
remained in their cabins, enjoying a complete rest after the
terrible fatigue and suffering they had gone through since
their capture in Moscow, but on the Thursday morning they
had had breakfast in the saloon with him and Colston, and had
afterwards spent a portion of the morning on deck, deeply
interested in watching the fight between the British and
Russians. Thanks to Radna's foresight, they had each found
a trunk full of suitable clothing on board the Ariel. These
had been taken to Drumcraig by Colston, and placed in the
cabins intended for their use, and so they were able to discard
the uncouth but useful costumes in which they had made
their escape.

In the afternoon Arnold had had to perform the pleasant
task of showing them over the Ariel, explaining the working
of the machinery, and putting the wonderful vessel through
various evolutions to show what she was capable of doing.

He rushed her at full speed through the air, took flying leaps
over outlying spurs of mountain ranges that lay in their path,
swooped down into valleys, and flew over level plains fifty
yards from the ground, like an albatross over the surface of a
smooth tropic sea. Then he soared up from the earth again,
until the horizon widened out to vast extent, and they could
see the mighty buttresses of "the Roof of the World" stretching
out below them in an endless succession of ranges as far as the
eye could reach.

Neither Natasha nor the Princess could find words to at all
adequately express all that they saw and learnt during that
day of wonders, and all night Natasha could hardly sleep for
waking dreams of universal empire, and a world at peace
equitably ruled by a power that had no need of aggression,
[Pg 109]
because all the realms of earth and air belonged to those who
wielded it.

When at last she did go to sleep, it was to dream again,
and this time of herself, the Angel of the Revolution, sharing
the aërial throne of the world-empire with the man who had
made revolutions impossible by striking the sword from the
hand of the tyrants of earth for ever.
[Pg 110]

CHAPTER XVI.

A WOOING IN MID AIR.

After breakfast on the Friday morning,
Natasha and Arnold were standing in the
bows of the Ariel, admiring the magnificent
panorama that lay stretched out five thousand
feet below them.

The air-ship had by this time covered a little
over 2000 miles of her voyage, and was now speeding smoothly
and swiftly along over the south-western shore of the Red Sea,
a few miles southward of the sixteenth parallel of latitude.
Eastward the bright blue waves of the sea were flashing behind
them in the cloudless morning sun; the high mountains of the
African coast rose to right and left and in front of them; and
through the breaks in the chain they could see the huge masses
of Abyssinia to the southward, and the vast plains that stretched
away westward across the Blue and White Niles, away to the
confines of the Libyan Desert.

"What a glorious world!" exclaimed Natasha, after gazing
for many silent minutes with entranced eyes over the limitless
landscape. "And to think that, after all, all this is but a little
corner of it!"

"It is yours, Natasha, if you will have it," replied Arnold
quietly, yet with a note in his voice that warned her that the
moment which she had expected and yet dreaded, had already
come. There was no use in avoiding the inevitable for a time.
It would be better if they understood each other at once; and
so she looked round at him with eyebrows elevated in well-simulated
surprise, and said—

"Mine! What do you mean, my friend?"
[Pg 111]

There was an almost imperceptible emphasis on the last
word that brought the blood to Arnold's cheek, and he answered,
with a ring in his voice that gave unmistakable evidence of the
effort that he was making to restrain the passion that inspired
his words—

"I mean just what I say. All the kingdoms of the world,
and the glory of them, from pole to pole, and from east to west,
shall be yours, and shall obey your lightest wish. I have
conquered the air, and therefore the earth and sea. In two
months from now I shall have an aërial navy afloat that will
command the world, and I—is it not needless to tell you,
Natasha, why I glory in the possession of that power? Surely
you must know that it is because I love you more than all that
a subject world can give me, and because it makes it possible
for me, if not to win you, at least not to be unworthy to attempt
the task?"

It was a distinctly unconventional declaration—such a one,
indeed, as no woman had ever heard since Alexander the
Great had whispered in the ears of Lais his dreams of universal
empire, but there was a straightforward earnestness about it
which convinced her beyond question that it came from no
ordinary man, but from one who saw the task before him clearly,
and had made up his mind to achieve it.

For a moment her heart beat faster than it had ever yet
done at the bidding of a man's voice, and there was a bright
flush on her cheeks, and a softer light in her eyes, as she replied
in a more serious tone than Arnold had ever heard her use—

"My friend, you have forgotten something. You and I are
not a man and a woman in the relationship that exists between
us. We are two factors in a work such as has never been
undertaken since the world began; two units in a mighty
problem whose solution is the happiness or the ruin of the
whole human race. It is not for us to speak of individual love
while these tremendous issues hang undecided in the balance.

"One does not speak of love in the heat of war, and you
and I and those who are with us are at war with the powers
of the earth, and higher things than the happiness of individuals
are at stake. You know my training has been one of
hate and not of love, and till the hate is quenched I must not
know what love is.
[Pg 112]

"Remember your oath—the oath which I have taken as
well as you—'As long as I live those ends shall be my ends, and
no human considerations shall weigh with me where those ends
are concerned.' Is not this love of which you speak a human
consideration that might clash with the purposes of the
Brotherhood whose ends you and I have solemnly sworn to
hold supreme above all earthly things?

"My father has told me that when love takes possession
of a human soul, reason abdicates her throne, and great aims
become impossible. No, no; that great power which you
hold in your hands was not given you just to win the love of
a woman, and I tell you frankly that you will never win mine
with it.

"More than this, if I saw you using it for such an end, I
would take care that you did not use it for long. No man ever
had such an awful responsibility laid upon him as the possession
of this power lays upon you. It is yours to make or mar
the future of the human race, of which I am but a unit. It is
not the power that will ever win either my respect or my love,
but the wisdom and the justice with which it may be used."

"Ah! I see you distrust me. You think that because I
have the power to be a despot, that therefore I may forget
my oath and become one. I forgive you for the thought,
unworthy of you as it is, and also, I hope, of me. No,
Natasha; I am no skilled hand at love-making, for I have
never wooed any mistress but one before to-day, and she is
won only by plain honesty and hard service; just what I
will devote to the winning of you, whether you are to be won
or not—but I must have expressed myself clumsily indeed
for you to have even thought of treason to the Cause.

"You are no more devoted adherent of it than I am. You
have suffered in one way and I in another from the falsehood
and rottenness of present-day Society, but you do not hate it
more utterly than I do, and you would not go to greater
lengths than I would to destroy it. Yours is a hatred of
emotion, and mine is a hatred of reason. I have proved that,
as Society is constituted, it is the worst and not the best
qualities of humanity that win wealth and power, and such
respect as the vulgar of all classes can give. But it is not such
power as this that I would lay at your feet, when I ask you to
[Pg 113]
share the world-empire with me. It is an empire of peace and
not of war that I shall offer to you."

"Then," said Natasha, taking a step towards him, and laying
her hand on his arm as she spoke, "when you have made war
impossible to the rivalry of nations and races, and have proclaimed
peace on earth, then I will give myself to you, body
and soul, to do with as you please, to kill or to keep alive, for
then truly you will have done that which all the generations
of men before you have failed to do, and it will be yours to ask
and to have."

As she spoke these last words Natasha bowed her proudly-carried
head as though in submission to the dictum that her
own lips had pronounced; and Arnold, laying his hand on hers
and holding it for a moment unresisting in his own, said—

"I accept the condition, and as you have said so shall it be.
You shall hear no more words of love from my lips until the
day that peace shall be proclaimed on earth and war shall be
no more; and when that day comes, as it shall do, I will hold
you to your words, and I will claim you and take you, body
and soul, as you have said, though I break every other human
tie save man's love for woman to possess you."

Natasha looked him full in the eyes as he spoke these last
words. She had never heard such words before, and by their
very strength and audacity they compelled her respect and
even her submission. Her heart was still untamed and
unconquered, and no man was its lord, yet her eyes sank
before the steady gaze of his, and in a low sweet voice she
answered—

"So be it! There never was a true woman yet who did
not love to meet her master. When that day comes I shall
have met my master, and I will do his bidding. Till then
we are friends and comrades in a common Cause to which
both our lives are devoted. Is it not better that it should
be so?"

"Yes, I am content. I would not take the prize before I
have won it. Only answer me one question frankly, and then
I have done till I may speak again."

"What is that."

"Have I a rival—not among men, for of that I am careless—but
in your own heart?"
[Pg 114]

"No, none. I am heart-whole and heart-free. Win me if
you can. It is a fair challenge, and I will abide by the result,
be it what it may."

"That is all I ask for. If I do not win you, may Heaven
do so to me that I shall have no want of the love of woman
for ever!"

So saying, he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it, in
token of the compact that was made between them. Then,
intuitively divining that she wished to be alone, he turned
away without another word, and walked to the after end of
the vessel.

Natasha remained where she was for a good half-hour,
leaning on the rail that surrounded the deck, and gazing out
dreamily over the splendid and ever-changing scene that lay
spread out beneath her. Truly it was a glorious world, as
she had said, even now, cursed as it was with war and the
hateful atrocities of human selfishness, and the sordid ambition
of its despots.

What would it be like in the day when the sword should
lie rusting on the forgotten battle-field, and the cannon's
mouth be choked with the desert dust for ever? What was
now a hell of warring passions would then be a paradise of
peaceful industry, and he who had the power, if any man
had, to turn that hell into the paradise that it might be, had
just told her that he loved her, and would create that paradise
for her sake.

Could he do it? Was not this marvellous creation of his
genius, that was bearing her in mid-air over land and sea, as
woman had never travelled before, a sufficient earnest of his
power? Truly it was. And to be won by such a man was
no mean destiny, even for her, the daughter of Natas, and
the peerless Angel of the Revolution.

Situated as they were, it would of course have been impossible,
even if it had been in any way desirable, for Arnold
and Natasha to have kept their compact secret from their
fellow-travellers, who were at the same time their most
intimate friends.

There was not, however, the remotest reason for attempting
to do so. Although with regard to the rest of the world the
members of the Brotherhood were necessarily obliged to live
[Pg 115]
lives of constant dissimulation, among themselves they had
no secrets from each other.

Thus, for instance, it was perfectly well known that
Tremayne, during those periods of his double life in which
he acted as Chief of the Inner Circle, regarded the daughter
of Natas with feelings much warmer than those of friendship
or brotherhood in a common cause, and until Arnold and his
wonderful creation appeared on the scene, he was looked upon
as the man who, if any man could, would some day win the
heart of their idolised Angel.

Of the other love that was the passion of his other life, no
one save Natasha, and perhaps Natas himself, knew anything;
and even if they had known, they would not have considered
it possible for any other woman to have held a man's heart
against the peerless charms of Natasha. In fact they would
have looked upon such rivalry as mere presumption that it
was not at all necessary for their incomparable young Queen
of the Terror to take into serious account.

In Arnold, however, they saw a worthy rival even to the
Chief himself, for there was a sort of halo of romance, even in
their eyes, about this serious, quiet-spoken young genius, who
had come suddenly forth from the unknown obscurity of his
past life to arm the Brotherhood with a power which revolutionised
their tactics and virtually placed the world at their
mercy. In a few months he had become alike their hero and
their supreme hope, so far as all active operations went; and now
that with his own hand he had snatched Natasha from a fate
of unutterable misery, and so signally punished her persecutors,
it seemed to be only in the fitness of things that he should
love her, win her for his own, if won she was to be by any man.

This, at any rate, was the line of thought which led the
Princess and Colston each to express their unqualified satisfaction
with the state of affairs arrived at in the compact that had
been made between Natasha and Arnold—"armed neutrality,"
as the former smilingly described to the Princess while she
was telling her of the strange wooing of her now avowed lover.
Natasha was no woman to be wooed and won in the ordinary
way, and it was fitting that she should be the guerdon of such
an achievement as no man had ever undertaken before, since
the world began.
[Pg 116]

The voyage across Africa progressed pleasantly and almost
uneventfully for the thirty-six hours after the crossing of the
Red Sea. After passing over the mountains of the coast, the
Ariel had travelled at a uniform height of about 3000 feet over
a magnificent country of hill and valley, forest and prairie,
occasionally being obliged to rise another thousand feet or so
to cross some of the ridges of mountain chains which rose into
peaks and mountain knots, some of which touched the snow-line.

Several times the air-ship was sighted by the people of the
various countries over which she passed, and crowds swarmed
out of the villages and towns, gesticulating wildly, and firing
guns and beating drums to scare the flying demon away.

Once or twice they heard bullets singing through the air,
but of these they took little heed, beyond quickening the speed
of the air-ship for the time, knowing that there was not a
chance in a hundred thousand of the Ariel being hit, and that
even if she were the bullet would glance harmlessly off her
smooth hull of hardened aluminium.

Once only they descended in a delightful little valley among
the mountains, which appeared to be totally uninhabited, and
here they renewed their store of fresh water, and laid in one
of fruit, as well as taking advantage of the opportunity to
stretch their legs on terra firma.

This was on the Saturday morning; and when they again
rose into the air to continue their voyage, they saw that they
had crossed the great mountain mass that divides the Sahara
from the little-known regions of Equatorial Africa, and that
in front of them to the south-west lay, as far as the eye could
reach, a boundless expanse of dense forest and jungle and
swamp, a gloomy and forbidding-looking region which it would
be well-nigh impossible to traverse on foot.

Early in the afternoon the four voyagers were gathered in
the deck-saloon, closely examining a somewhat rudely-drawn
chart that was spread out on the table. It was the map that
formed part of the manuscript which had been found in the car
of Louis Holt's miniature balloon, and sketched out his route
from Zanzibar to Aeria, and the country lying round so far as
he had been able to observe it.

"This gives us, after all, very little idea of the distance we
[Pg 117]
have yet to go," said Arnold; "for though Holt has got his
latitude presumably right, we have very little clue to his
longitude, for he says himself that his watch was stopped in
a thunder-storm, and that in the same storm he lost all count
of the distance he had travelled. Added to that, he admits
that he was blown about for twelve days in one direction and
another, so that all we really know is that somewhere across
this fearful wilderness beneath us we shall find Aeria, but
where is still a problem."

"What is your own idea?" asked Colston.

"Not a very clear one, I must confess. At this elevation
we can see about sixty miles as the atmosphere is now, and
as far as we can see to the south-west there is nothing but the
same kind of country that we have under us. We have
travelled rather more than 2700 miles since we left the Hindu
Kush, and according to my reckoning Aeria lies somewhere
between 3000 and 3200 miles south-west of where we started
from on Thursday morning. That means that we are within
between three and five hundred miles of Aeria, unless, indeed,
our calculations are wholly at fault, and at that rate, as we
only have about four and a half hours' daylight left, we shall
not get there to-day at our present speed."

"Couldn't we go a bit faster?" put in Natasha. "You
know I and the Princess are dying to see this mysterious
unknown country that only two other people have ever seen."

"You have but to say so, Natasha, and it is already done,"
replied Arnold, signalling at the same moment to the engine-room
by means of a similar arrangement of electric buttons
to that which was in the wheel-house. "Only you must remember
that you must not go out on deck now, or you will
be blown away like a feather into space."

While he was speaking the three propellers had begun to
revolve at full speed, and the Ariel darted forward with a
velocity that caused the mountains she had just crossed to
sink rapidly on the horizon.

All the afternoon the Ariel flew at full speed over the seemingly
interminable wilderness of swamp and jungle, until, when
the equatorial sun was within a few degrees of the horizon, one
of the crew, who had been stationed in the conning tower at
the bows, signalled to call the attention of the man in the
[Pg 118]
wheel-house. Arnold, who was in the after-saloon at the time,
heard the signal, and hurried forward to the look-out. He
gave one quick glance ahead, signalled "half-speed" to the
engine-room, and then went aft again to the saloon, and said—

"Aeria is in sight!"

Immediately everyone hastened to the deck saloon, from the
windows of which could be seen a huge mass of mountains
looming dark and distinct against the crimsoning western sky.

It rose like some vast precipitous island out of the sea of
forest that lay about its base; and above the mighty rock-walls
that seemed to rise sheer from the surrounding plain at least
a dozen peaks towered into the sky, two of their summits
covered with eternal snow, and shining like points of rosy fire
in the almost level rays of the sun.

As nearly as Arnold could judge in the deceptive state of
the atmosphere, they were still between thirty and forty miles
from it, and as it would not be safe to approach its lofty cliffs
at a high rate of speed in the half light that would so soon
merge into darkness, he said to his companions—

"We shall have to find a resting-place up among the cliffs
on this side to-night, for we have lost the moon, and unless it
were absolutely necessary to cross the mountains in the dark,
I should not care to do so with the ladies on board. Besides,
there is no hurry now that we are here, and we shall get a
much finer first impression of our new kingdom if we cross at
sunrise. What do you think?"

All agreed that this would be the best plan, and so the Ariel
ran up to within a mile of the rocks, and then the forward
engine was connected with the dynamo, and the searchlight,
which had so disconcerted the Cossacks on the Tobolsk road,
was turned on to the cliffs, which they carefully explored, until
they found a little plateau covered with luxuriant vegetation
and well watered, about two thousand feet above the plain
below.

Here it was decided to come to a halt for the night, and
to reserve the exploration of Aeria for the morning, and so the
fan-wheels were sent aloft, and the Ariel, after hovering for a
few minutes over the verdant little plain seeking for a suitable
spot to alight in, sank gently to the earth after her flight of
more than three thousand miles.
[Pg 119]

CHAPTER XVII.

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."
[Pg 120]

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
[Pg 121]
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."
[Pg 122]

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
[Pg 123]
a paradise! Truly this is a lovely kingdom that you have
brought me to!"