CHAPTER XIV
STORM BIRDS
The first slow light of day, "under the opening eyelids of the morn,"found the Master up in the screened observation gallery at the tip ofthe port aileron. Here were mounted two of the six machine-guns thatcomprised _Nissr's_ heavier armament; and here, too, were hung a dozenof the wonderful life-preservers--combination anti-gravity turbinesand vacuum-belt, each containing a signal-light, a water-distiller andcondensed foods--that, invented by Brixton Hewes, soon after the closeof the war, had done so much to make air-travel safe.
Major Bohannan was with the Master. Both men, now in uniform,showed little effect of the sleepless night they had passed. Wine ofexcitement and stern duties to perform, joined with powerful bodies,made sleeplessness and labor trivialities.
For an hour the two had been standing there, wrapped in their longmilitary overcoats, while _Nissr_ had swooped on her appointed ways,with hurtling trajectory that had cleft the dark. Somewhat warmed bypiped exhaust-gases though the glass-enclosed gallery had been, stillthe cold had been marked; for without, in the stupendous gulf ofemptiness that had been rushing away beneath and all about them, nodoubt the thermometer would have sunk below zero.
_Nissr's_ altitude was now very great, ranging between 17,500 and21,000 feet, so as to take advantage of the steady eastward settingwind in the higher air-lanes. A hard, frozen moonlight, from thesteely disk sinking down the western sky, had slashed ink-blackshadows of struts and stanchions across the gallery, and had flung_Nissr's_ larger shadow down the hungering abysses of the sky thatyawned beneath.
That shadow had danced and quivered at fantastic speed across dazzlingmoonlit fields of cloud, ever keeping pace with the Sky Eagle, nowleaping across immense and silent drifts of white, now plunging,vanishing into black abysses that showed the ocean spinning backward,ever backward toward the west.
With the coming of dawn, the shadow had faded, and the watchers' eyeshad been turned ahead for some first sight of the out-riders ofthe attacking fleets. Bohannan, a little nervous in spite of hiswell-seasoned fighting-blood, had smoked a couple of cigars in thesheltered gallery, pacing up and down with coat-collar about his earsand with hands thrust deep in pockets. The Master, likewise muffled,had refused all proffers of tobacco and had contented himself with afew khat leaves.
Silence had, for the most part, reigned between them. Up here in thegallery, conversation was not easy. The hurricane of _Nissr's_ flightshrieked at times with shrill stridor and with whistlings as of amillion witches bound for some infernal Sabbath on the Matterhorn. Agood deal of vibration and of shuddering whipped the wing-tip, too;all was different, here, from the calm warmth, comfort, and securityof the fuselage.
The men seemed standing on the very pinion-feathers of some fabledroc, sweeping through space. Above, below, complete and overwhelmingvacancy clutched for them. The human is not yet born who can standthus upon the tip of such a plane, and feel himself wholly at ease.
As darkness faded, however, and as approaching dawn began to burnits slow way up the stupendous vaults of space above the easterncloud-battlements--battlements flicked with dull crimson, blood-tingedblotches, golden streaks and a whole phantasmagoria of shiftinghues--something of the oppression of night fell from the two men.
"Well, we're still carrying on. Things are still going pretty muchO.K., sir," proffered the major, squinting into the East--the cold,red East, infinitely vast, empty, ripe with possibilities. "A goodstart! Close to a thousand miles we've made; engines running to ahair; men all fitting into the jobs like clockwork. Everything allright to a dot, eh?"
The Master nodded silently, keeping dark eyes fixed on the horizon ofcloud-rack. Above, the last faint prickings of stars were fading. Themoon had paled to a ghostly circle. Shuddering, _Nissr_ fled, withvapory horizons seemingly on her own level so that she appeared at thebottom of an infinite bowl. Bohannan, feeling need of speech, tried tobe casual as he added:
"I don't feel sleepy. Do you? Seems like I'd never want to sleepagain. Faith, this _is_ living! You've got us all enthused. And youridea of putting every man-jack in uniform was bully! Nothing likeuniforms--even a jumble of different kinds, like ours--to cement mentogether and give them the _esprit de corps._ If we go through aswe've begun--"
The Master interrupted him with a cold glance of annoyance. The Celt'sexuberance jarred on his soul. Since the affair with "Captain Alden,"the Master's nerves had gone a little raw.
Bohannan rallied bravely.
"Of course," he went on, "it was unfortunate about that New Zealandchap going West. He looked like a right good fellow. But, well--_c'estla guerre!_ And I know he wouldn't have chosen a finer grave than thebottom of the Atlantic, where he's sleeping now.
"By the way, how did Alden come out? Much hurt, was he? I know, ofcourse, he didn't go back to the sick-bay. So he couldn't have beenbadly wounded, or he would be--"
"The Arabs have a saying, my dear fellow," dryly answered the Master,"that one ear is worth ten thousand tongues. Ponder it well!"
The major's look of astonishment annoyed the Master, even while ithurt him. He took scant pleasure in rebuffing this old friend; butcertainly "Captain Alden" would not bear discussing. Feeling himselfin a kind of _impasse_ regarding Alden, and fearing some telltaleexpression in his eyes, the Master swung up his binoculars and oncemore swept the cloud-horizons from northeast to southeast.
"We ought to be sighting some of the attackers, before long," judgedhe. "I'm rather curious to see them--to see flies attacking an eagle.I haven't had a real chance of testing out the neutralizers. Theiroperation, in actual practice, ought to be interesting."
He tried to speak coldly, impersonally; but he well realized a certainstrained quality in his voice. Even now, in the hour of impendingattack, his thoughts could not remain wholly fixed on the enemywhich--so the wireless informed him--lay only a little beyond thehaze-enshrouded, burning rim of cloudland.
Despite every effort of the will, he kept mentally reverting tothe midships port stateroom containing the woman. He could not keephimself from wondering how she was getting on. Her wound, he hoped--hefelt confident--could not be serious.
Had it been, of course, the woman would have asked some further aid.And since the moment when he had left her, no word had come to him.More than once, temptation had whispered: "Go to her! She has deceivedyou, and you are master here. But, above all, you are a man!"
Twice he had all but yielded to this inner voice. But he had notyielded. Another and a sterner voice had said: "She is an interloper.She has no rights. Why give her another thought?"
This voice had prevailed. The Master had told himself only a few hoursmore remained, at all events, before the woman should be cast off andabandoned in whatever strange land might befall--probably Morocco, orit might be the Spanish colony of Rio de Oro on the western fringesof the Sahara. After that, what responsibility for her safety or herwelfare would be his? Why, he had none, even now!
"But, man," the small voice insinuated, "she came to you on an errandof mercy, to nurse and care for such as might fall ill or be wounded.It was not wholly the desire for adventure that led her to deceiveyou. Her motive was high and fine!"
"A curse on all women!" retorted the other voice. "Away with her!" Andthis sterner voice again prevailed. Still, at thought that sometimeduring the day now close at hand he was to see the last of this womanwho had stood there before him in his cabin, with dark eyes lookinginto his, with eager, oval face upturned to his, with all that gloryof lustrous hair a flood about her shoulders, something unknown,unwonted, fingered at the latchets of his heart.
He realized that he felt strange, uneasy, uprooted from his soberaplomb. Unknown irritations possessed him. Under his breath hemuttered an Arabic cynicism about woman, from the fourth chapter ofthe Koran: "Men shall have the preeminence above women, because Allahhath caused the one of them to excel the other!"
Then came the philosophical reflection:
"Man, you were seeking new sensations, ne
w experiences, to stir yourpulses. This woman has given you many. She has served her purpose. Nowlet her go!"
Thus, seeming to have reached a certain finality of decision, hedismissed her again from his mind--for perhaps the twentieth time--andwith new care once more began studying the gold-edged, shining cloudswhere now a dull, broad arc of molten metal had burned its way out ofthe mists.
The Master slid colored ray-filters over his binoculars, to shieldhis eyes from the direct dazzle of the rising sun, and swept thatincandescent arc. Suddenly he drew a sharp intake of breath.
"Sighted something, eh?" demanded the major, already recovered fromthe snub administered.
"See for yourself, Major, what you make of it! Right in the sun's eye,and off to southward--all along that fantastic, crimson cloud-castle."
Bohannan's gaze narrowed through his own glasses. Bracing his powerfullegs against the quivering jar of the aileron, he brushed the horizoninto his eager vision. The glasses steadied. There, of a truth, blackmidges had appeared, coming up over the world's rim like a startledcovey of quail.
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