Before he turned in, Tom had a long talk with Mr. Greatorex, which took an unexpected trend. The two were alone in the cabin. Tom was in the highest spirits, for the greatest difficulty he had foreseen—the difficulty of finding his way about the hill village when he should arrive at it—seemed to have been removed now that he had secured a guide in Abdul.
“You see, it’s just about there,” he said, putting his finger down on the map he had unrolled and spread on the table. “It is barely a hundred miles inland, and without putting any strain on the engines I can do it comfortably in four hours. Of course, we must arrive after dark; so to-morrow night I think we’ll make a start—Timothy and I and the Moor.”
Then it was that the unexpected happened. Mr. Greatorex had been staring gravely at the map. Suddenly he brought his fist down on it with a bang.
“Look here, Tom,” he said, “we’ll drop it.”
Tom was taken too much aback for words.
“Yes, we’ll drop it. I won’t allow it. Suppose anything goes wrong with the machine, where are you? tell me that! In those hills—wild country, wild men—fanatics, you know: hate all Christians, no sense of law and order, won’t pay their taxes, don’t care tuppence for their rulers—oh! I’ve read all about ’em, you know, and ‘pon my soul I don’t know what I was thinking of to come out here at all. We’ve had a pleasant run, we’ve tested the airship; it’ll do, Tom: but now we’ll go back, my boy, to our land of peace and settled government.”
“But what about Sir Mark Ingleton?”
“Hang Ingleton! Ingleton never invented anything! If those Moors get hold of you, England loses an inventor and I lose my man. No, no; we mustn’t meddle with state affairs.”
And then Tom spent an hour in patiently combatting Mr. Greatorex’s objections, and in the end had for his meagre reward the indecisive remark—
“Well, we’ll see, Tom, we’ll see.”