"Then let us suppose that we change our quarters. Are we better off?" asked the Colonel.
"Perhaps. If we can find a crib, sir, that's easier to hold, more ungetatable as one might say."
"For instance," interjected the Major. "You've some such crib in your mind's eye, Dick."
"Well, there's the mosque. It's empty, save for a sentry at the door. There are four towers at least there, and I climbed up one of 'em this very morning. Now, a stairway could be held. There are no doors and windows in all sorts of directions. Besides, we'd be above the beggars who wanted to get us, and that'd be an advantage. We could hold out perhaps till the airship arrived to take us."
It was a likely enough suggestion, and the two soldiers thought well of it. But the Colonel soon put his finger on what appeared to be a weak spot.
"We're up in this tower, let's imagine," he said. "Then the ship comes. We're bottled in perhaps. How do we emerge? How reach the line which this ship throws out to us?"
"Wait. You haven't seen the airship yet," cried Alec. "Wait, sir, and you'll have an eye-opener. She can pick us up easily wherever we are, even on the top of a chimney, for her lift can be manœuvred with an ease and certainty that will astonish you. Oh yes, it don't matter where we happen to get to, Mr. Andrew and Joe can reach us."
There was pride in his voice. His words conveyed the impression that if anything in this world were a success it was the curious lift attached to the great airship, although, as a matter of course, that huge vessel was of even greater excellence. But it can be imagined that to one who had never seen the ship floating in the air, who had never even set foot upon her galleries, nor climbed to the height of her upper deck, it was hard to believe that what Alec described so glowingly could in fact be possible. Not that the gallant Colonel was a sceptic, or in the habit of decrying new inventions, or disbelieving in the possibility of things that he had never seen. On the contrary, he was very much awake and alive to the astonishing progress to be observed on every side, particularly progress appertaining to mechanics. For has not the latter end of the nineteenth century, and the beginning of the present seen an amazing advancement on every hand, an advancement beside which the progress of the so-called Victorian era pales almost to insignificance? Think of the conquest which the internal-explosion motor has accomplished, of the rapid road and sea locomotion it has made possible, of the trackless pathways of the air which it has thrown open to human beings. For the beginning and the end of man's first successful journeys at speed through the air, upon machines heavier than the atmosphere which supports them, is attributable almost solely to the petrol motor, that internal-explosion engine which less than twenty years ago was but the crudest of inventions.
Colonel Steven had kept in close touch with the whole movement, and had, during the hours he lay in prison with the Major, listened to his description of the wonderful airship which Joe Gresson and his uncle had constructed. He was burning to board the vessel, to ferret out its secrets, to understand its construction; and he may be forgiven if he failed to comprehend quite how the ship could manage to remove himself and his friends even from the tower of a mosque, should the party happen to find themselves in such a position. However, the discussion as to their movements was cut short at the moment. Cries were heard from the street, and the Major soon made an important announcement.
"That fellow again!" he cried, in low tones. "He and his followers had run out of sight, and I was in hopes that we had thrown them off the scent. But they are coming back, yes, and numbers have joined them. All the ragtag and bobtail of this terrible city have joined in the search."