“Yes,” replied Ernstein; “but only ten, I am sorry to say. One of them is here, as I told you just now, but we have forty of the others, and I don’t suppose the Russians can bring more than a dozen against us.”
“What do you mean?” said Alan. “They have fifty, every one of them as fast and as powerful as the old Ithuriel. I ought to know,” he continued grimly, “for they were every one of them built under my own eyes.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Ernstein. “I ought to have told you before now that we have already won our first victory, and that though we lost eight vessels we destroyed twenty of the Russians’.” And then he went on to give Alan and Alexis a rapid description of the pursuit of the Revenge, and the havoc wrought at the end of it by the Ithuriel and the Ariel.
“That is glorious news!” said Alan. “But they have thirty ships at their disposal still, and I expect they will bring at least twenty of these against us, and they are all swifter than ours saving only the Ariel. Of course my command ends with the shore, but I think it will be as well if the captain of the Ariel were to come on board the Narwhal so that we could arrange our plans of defence together—I for the sea, and he for the air.”
“But why not come ashore and see him?” said Ernstein. “He and all of us will be delighted to see you on the island.”
“No,” said Alan, shaking his head. “Alexis and I have promised each other never to leave the Narwhal until the Russian sea power is crippled. The day that we set foot on dry land again will be the day that we give back the supremacy of the sea to the Council, so if we two Admirals of the Sea and Air are to meet, the commander of the Ariel must come here.”
“Very well,” said Ernstein. “I understand you. Write a note and I will send the Cachalot back with it. She will bring him back in under half an hour, for he was up at the settlement when I left.”
Alan wrote the letter forthwith, and the Cachalot departed, returning, as her captain had said, in less than half an hour, with Edward Forrest, the commander of the Ariel. He was a lean, wiry, active man of about forty-five, of mixed English, Scotch, and Aerian descent, with short, crisp, curly black hair and smooth-shaven face, rather sharp, regular features, and a pair of keen grey eyes which seemed to look into the very brain of the person he was talking to—a man of prompt decisions and few words, and one of the most able aerial navigators that Aeria could boast of.
He held the rank of admiral, and was responsible for the station of Kerguelen, and the command of the southern seas. He greeted Alan and Alexis courteously, but a trifle stiffly, as though he thought that their indiscretion had been somewhat lightly dealt with by the Council. This, however, was no business of his, for the first law of Aeria was that the decisions of the President and Council were not open to criticism by any private or official citizen whatever his rank or experience.