“Hallo,” I cried, “look there, land!”
Burnett shaded his eyes.
“I can see nothing. Ah, yes! By Jove! who’s on watch? We ought to be rising.”
As he spoke a sudden pitch of the aëronef nearly upset us—the speed rapidly increased, and the wind became positively cutting.
“We are rising fast,” said Burnett. “See, we are leaving the cloud-bank far below us.”
But a new marvel had just caught my eye, and, clinging to the hand-rail, I gazed upwards in astonishment. The wall of the chamber behind us was continuous with the main mass of the aëronef, which, looking from where we stood, exhibited the graceful lines of a ship’s hull. Round this hull and presumably half-way up it ran the railed passage where we were standing, communicating here and there with doorways let into the grey side. Some thirty feet above us this side curved upwards and inwards so as to terminate in a flat, railed deck on which a few moving heads were just visible. But above this again rose a forest of thin grey poles running up to a vast oblong aëroplane which stretched some way beyond the hull. All these props were carefully stayed together, and those towards the bow were somewhat higher than those in the stern; provision being thus made for the inclination of the aëroplane consistently with due maintenance of the hull’s equilibrium below. In the latter part of the nineteenth century much progress had been made in experiments with aëroplanes; those of Maxim being particularly suggestive and interesting. I was, therefore, at no loss to probe the significance of this portion of the mechanism.
“The captain wishes to see you,” said Burnett, who was talking to a sullen-looking fellow by the doorway; “come along.”
I GAZED UPWARDS IN ASTONISHMENT.
He stepped briskly along the passage, and, when we had gone some fifteen yards, turned up one of the alleys. Entering behind him I came to a small court surrounded with rooms and cabins, leaving which we ascended a spiral staircase to the upper deck. Glancing hastily around I saw five or six men pacing about chatting, while from other courts below came the sounds of singing and laughter. This deck, which capped the entire hull, was no less than eighty yards in length with an extreme breadth of at least thirty-five. Broad at the stern it narrowed off to a sharp point at the bow. The props attached to the aëroplane were set in six rows, curving close together amidships where there stood a small circular citadel, evidently the stronghold of the captain. Here were mounted three or four cannon of the quick-firing sort fashioned out of the same grey substance as the Attila, but the utility of which in a vessel carrying dynamite was not immediately obvious. The citadel itself bore no outward signs of comfort. It had four square windows and a plain hole of an entrance let into bare shining walls. An exterior wall six feet high, surmounted with spikes, and having here and there a recess sheltering a machine gun, enclosed it. A fitter abode for the man I could not conceive. Sullen, isolated, and menacing, it inspired me with a vague premonitory dread.