“The rule is reasonable enough, captain, and requires no defence.”
“It shall be given to one of the delegates when we touch land in Switzerland. A convention of importance is to be held there. But, come, I will take you round the Attila,” and striding by me he passed out of the study.
“What was that land visible just now, captain?” I asked, as we reached one of the stairways that led down into the vessel.
“Holland. The course has since been altered; we find the clouds are lifting, and not wishing to run too high are making off towards the English Channel. To-night we shall cross France, steering above Havre along the channel of the Seine, over Paris, Dijon, the Saone, and the Jura mountains into Switzerland. I had intended to go to Berne, but have been forced to change my plans. We shall stop over a forest not far from Lake Leman, where some fifty delegates will meet us. After that we return to London.”
“For war?”
“For war.”
Down into the depths of the Attila we went, the spiral stair running down a deep and seemingly interminable well. On reaching the bottom my conductor turned off into a passage brightly lit up with the electric light. A rumble and thud of machinery broke on the ear, and in a few seconds we stood in the engine-room of the Attila. My readers are aware of the wonderful advances in electricity made in the early part of the twentieth century, and I need not, therefore, recapitulate them here. In the mechanism of this engine-room there was nothing specially peculiar, but the appropriation of the best modern inventions left nothing to be desired. Electricity, according to the newly introduced method, being generated directly from coal, the force at the disposal of the aëronaut was colossal, and, what was even more expedient, obtained for a trifling outlay of fuel. A short but very thick shaft, revolving with great speed, led, I was told, to a screw without, and by the sides of this monster two others of far humbler dimensions were resting idly on their rollers.
I was now able to solve the riddle of the Attila’s flight. The buoyancy of the vessel was that of an inclined plane driven rapidly through the air by a screw, a device first prominently brought into notice by the nineteenth-century experiments of Maxim. The Attila, albeit light, was, of course, under normal conditions, greatly heavier than the quantity of air she displaced—indispensable condition, indeed, of any real mastery over the subtle element she dwelt in. The balloon is a mere toy at the mercy of the gale and its gas—the Attila seemed wholly indifferent to both. But, desirous of probing the problem to the bottom, I put Hartmann the question—
“What would happen supposing that shaft broke, or the machinery somehow got out of order?”
“Well, we should fall.”