The expected moment soon arrived. He felt the car shiver and jar—the “Border City” had struck.
CHAPTER XXII
PRISONERS
The great hull collided head-on, as Kindale had predicted; then, swinging sideways, scraped and bumped along the rough, scarred side of the mountain, which sloped precipitously downward.
Willie Sloan, pale and trembling, sought courage from the men at his side. A look in Major Carroll’s eyes reassured him.
“We’re all right, my lad,” exclaimed the aeronaut, almost forgetting, in his solicitude for the lad, his own misgivings.
The car still swayed violently. At intervals, as the guide rope drew taut, there came an alarming lurch, which was immediately followed by another sweep forward. Then the huge, unwieldy hull was borne against an almost perpendicular wall of rock with such force that it seemed almost on the point of bursting.
As the air-ship, caught in a vortex of conflicting currents, rebounded, it turned sideways, and presently drifted clear, the guide rope hanging in front of a high precipice. Some distance ahead a pine-covered spur extended out from the mountain.
The eyes and thoughts of all three were centered upon it. The “Border City” was again floating above the rocks. To Willie Sloan, the minutes seemed to drag with intolerable slowness. His heart was beating fast.
“Don’t be afraid, my lad,” again admonished the Major. A grim look settled about the corners of his mouth. “If necessary we can abandon the air-ship as soon as it reaches the spur.”
The “Border City” slowly approached the crags. The tops of the pines, through which the wind soughed with a musical murmur, seemed to bristle upward, as though angry at the intrusion of the monster and bent upon its destruction.