Twice an urgent message came recalling the two Englishmen, but Keane replied with the one word, "Impossible!"
And all this time the raider, who was carefully hiding for a few days, delighted his companions by retailing with much gusto such of these messages as he had been able to piece together from the aerial jumble.
"Let them send all their available machines and pilots out east," he had said to Carl and Max, "then we will quietly slip across Europe to Ireland, where everything is ripe for the promised revolution."
"And the Schwarzwald?" queried Max.
"Oh, we will call there for a few hours en route," replied the pirate, calmly relighting his pipe, "The professor will understand our silence and inactivity."
So the third morning came, and Keane, whose anxiety regarding the still sleeping prisoners had been allayed by Sharpe, who smilingly confessed what he had done, now became fearfully uneasy as to the condition of affairs.
"For heaven's sake light that beacon again!" he ordered. "If assistance does not arrive to-day, all these secrets I have endeavoured to rescue will be lost."
"What will you do?" asked his companion, who was already applying a match to the pile of dried tinder and sticks.
"Blow the whole place up," he replied.
"And shoot the prisoners?" ventured his friend, slyly.