With Airship and Submarine: A Tale of Adventure

by Harry Collingwood

Lethbridge leaned back on his elbow and contemplated the four tall smoke columns with an expression of very considerable satisfaction.

“That ought to prove effective; and I am prepared to bet that it will, within the next quarter of an hour,” he remarked. “But what was all the talk about, Professor? You seemed to have some difficulty in persuading those fellows to build the fires, I thought.”

“Yes,” admitted von Schalckenberg, “I had. The fact is that, for some reason which I do not understand, ’Msusa is very anxious that we should remain in the village all night; and, since he has already discovered that force will not avail with us, he is now trying guile. He understands perfectly well some of the things I say to him; but when I told him that we wanted a guide to lead us to the river, he professed to be unable to understand me clearly, and replied by gabbling what I believe to be simply a lot of gibberish, ending up with the statement that we shall be able to have a guide to-morrow. The fact is that I rather suspect him of entertaining a desire to possess himself of our rifles, and believe him to be capable to going to considerable lengths to get them; hence his extreme anxiety to keep us here all night. Therefore, when I found that there was no hope of persuading him to let us have a guide to-night, I informed him that we were four very great and powerful witch-doctors, as he must already have seen; and that, if he wished us to remain in the village all night to-night, it would be necessary to light four large fires—one for each of us—to propitiate the evil spirits, so that they should not enter the village during the night and destroy any of the inmates.”

“Well,” exclaimed Lethbridge, “I shall be very greatly surprised—and disappointed, too—if they do not in a very few minutes see an ‘evil spirit’ that will considerably astonish them, and—Ah, hurrah! there she is! Good old Mildmay! I felt certain that he would be on the look-out.”

And, so saying, he sprang to his feet and waved his handkerchief energetically in the direction of the great conical shape that, gleaming and flashing like burnished silver in the rays of the setting sun, at that moment hove in sight over the tree-tops on the north-western margin of the enclosure. Three white-clad figures were standing in the bows of the superstructure, examining the open space through binoculars; and as Lethbridge waved his handkerchief they waved in return, while one—the smallest—was seen to run excitedly aft and dart into the pilot-house. The savages also saw the portentous apparition, and fled, howling with abject terror, to the shelter of their huts; while the Flying Fish, sweeping gracefully round, came to earth within a few feet of the spot where the four white men stood awaiting her arrival. A minute later ’Msusa, watching the four white men from beneath a pile of skins heaped up just within the doorway of his hut, saw them walk in under the huge, mysterious thing that had just descended from the clouds, and inexplicably disappear.

Great were the rejoicings of those left on board the Flying Fish at the safe return of the truants; and equally great, perhaps, was the joy of the truants at finding themselves re-united to their companions, and once more amid the familiar surroundings of their luxurious travelling home. The first brief greetings over, the returned wanderers retired below and indulged in the luxury of a bath, after which they dressed for dinner; and it was while the party were gathered round the dinner-table, an hour or two later, that Sir Reginald related the adventures of himself and his companions during the preceding twenty-four hours.

“It was shocking bad luck that you should have lost that okapi, after all,” remarked Mildmay, with the sympathy of a true sportsman, as Sir Reginald brought his narrative to a close. “However,” he continued, “it is something to have learned that we are in the okapi region; and perhaps you will be more successful next time—that is, unless Sir Reginald is anxious to get away from here.”

Sir Reginald strenuously disavowed any such anxiety, asserting that, on the contrary, he was quite willing to remain where he was for any reasonable length of time, and to take turn and turn about on alternate nights to watch at the drinking-place until they had succeeded in securing a specimen of so interesting and rare an animal. Then he inquired in what manner the occupants of the Flying Fish had passed the day.

“Well,” answered Mildmay, speaking for himself and the ladies, “it was not until breakfast-time that we began to feel in the least degree anxious about you; and, even then, our anxiety—or rather, mine—was not very acute, for, as I explained to the ladies, you might have had exceptionally good sport, and be anxious to save the skins before leaving to return to the ship. But when eleven o’clock arrived with no news of you, I felt convinced that something had gone wrong, and then we all felt ourselves to be in a dilemma. For there were only two courses open to us: first, to stay where we were and await your return; or, secondly, to go in search of you. By adopting the first alternative, we should be on the spot where you would naturally expect to find us if your detention should happen to be merely of an ordinary nature; or if, having happened to encounter a body of hostile savages, you should be holding them at bay while retiring upon the ship. And I may tell you that it was the recognition of some such possibility as this which made me feel very reluctant to leave the spot where we were. On the other hand, however, there was an equal possibility that you might be beset, or otherwise needing our help, at some spot several miles away. I therefore compromised matters as best I could by simply raising the ship some three hundred feet in the air, and keeping a bright look-out in every direction all day. And when I saw those four columns of smoke rise up from among the trees, it didn’t take me above two seconds to make up my mind that you had lighted the fires and that I should find you alongside them.”

The following morning witnessed the departure of the Flying Fish from the open space in which was situated ’Msusa’s village; and profound was the relief of that savage and his friends as, from the obscurity of the interior of their huts, they watched the enormous shining mass, and, by-and-by, saw it quietly rise into the air as of its own volition, and go gently driving out of sight over the tree-tops. Half an hour later, having located the other open space, in which had been witnessed the attack upon the gorilla by the leopard, the ship quietly descended into it; and the hunters, refreshed by a sound night’s sleep, sallied forth and secured the skins of both animals, which proved to be quite uninjured by the depredations of other animals, none of which seemed to have approached them. Then the Flying Fish again rose into the air and wended her way back to her original berth; and it was while she was thus passing from one spot to the other that the mystery was solved of the difficulty which the four lost men had experienced in their endeavours to find the river and thus make their way back to the ship. For, in order to satisfy themselves upon this point, the travellers rose to a height of five thousand feet into the air, from which altitude they not only got a sight of the drinking-place at which their adventure may be said to have begun, but were also enabled to trace the course of the river itself. And they thus discovered that about a mile to the eastward of the drinking-place the river made an S-like bend, some eighteen miles across; also that, instead of wandering steadily south—as they believed they had been, while in pursuit of the wounded okapi—they must have gradually trended away toward the east, until they had gone some miles beyond the double bend in the river; hence their failure to find the stream again.