The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 05

by Anthology

  "Of course I shall," replied Sir Harry, flushing in his turn, and slightly inclining his head as though in apology; "and I hope that you will understand that I trenched upon the forbidden ground quite unintentionally."

  "There can be no question of that," she said, with a smile, that awoke in him an unreasoning, and yet not altogether unnatural, desire to embrace the principles of the Utopians on the spot, if he could only embrace her with them, and abjure home, country, and capitalism thenceforth and for ever, for the sake of the only pair of bright eyes that had ever taught him what the magic and mystery of sex really meant.

  They were walking on again now, for somehow Sir Harry had no desire that his sister and Wyndham should overtake them too closely, and by way of shifting the conversation from dangerous ground, he said, after a little interval of silence-

  "Do you know, Miss Dora, I am rapidly coming to the belief that you Utopians have really chosen the better part of life, by leaving the world and all its bothers, and coming out to this paradise of yours to live, as I suppose men and women really were intended to live and would have lived, if the curse of Eden had never been laid upon them."

  "Of course we have," she replied, in a tone which showed that, to her at least, there could be no question about it. "I believe the curse of Eden, in its modern form, at any rate, is simply the spirit of greediness and vain-glory which makes every man want to have more and be something grander than his neighbour. Of course, Nature did not make all men and women equal. We are not by any means equal here even. Naturally, some of us are cleverer, stronger, or more-more-

  "Beautiful, for instance."

  There was no mistaking the look that accompanied Sir Harry's completion of her speech, and she didn't pretend to do so. She looked him frankly in the eyes, and only a deepening of the colour on her pretty cheeks told him that she had taken his interruption as literally as he had intended it to be taken.

  "Yes, Sir Harry, more beautiful, if you like to put it so. It would be absurd to expect it, and that is why we haven't attempted to bring any of the silly theories of what they call Socialism in England, out here with us. We simply believe it to be possible for people to live healthy, natural lives, and develop themselves physically and mentally as far as their powers go, without troubling their heads about all the foolish complications of society, with its different ranks and degrees of wealth and poverty.

  "Still, I must say I am rather surprised at you, finding our life here better than the one at home. I always thought that for a man like yourself, rich, titled, young, and- well, yes- good-looking- there's your compliment back for you - the social life of England made earth as nearly a paradise as possible."

  "Not always," replied Sir Harry, laughing outright at the direct frankness of her unconventional speech. "Of course, fellows like myself have a very good time of it - better, I daresay, than most of us deserve; but still I must say that I have found something in Utopia that I not only never found anywhere else, but never even thought of before. I can't exactly say what it is, because it's so strange to me, and yet it seems something better than anything that either money or position could buy at home."

  "Perhaps it's just a healthy atmosphere, social as well as physical," she suggested. "You know we can breathe freely here; and we live, we don't play at it, or pretend to be something else than we really are, as I used to think people did when I lived in England."

  "I daresay that's it," replied Sir Harry, looking at her with admiring conviction as he spoke, "only you put it more concretely than I thought it. I verily believe you will end by persuading us all to become Utopians before the Calypso is ready for sea again. As for Violet, you seem to have put her quite out of conceit with the old order of things already. I shouldn't be at all surprised to see her turn out, some fine morning, in that delightfully picturesque costume of yours."

  "Ah, wouldn't she look nice in it?" said Dora, with an added sparkle in her eyes at the very thought of such a conversion. "That's all that's wanted to make her quite the prettiest girl on the island."

  "Save one," retorted Sir Harry; "but then, of course, you speak unselfishly."

  "I'm afraid you've brought at least one of the bad habits of fashionable society with you," replied Dora demurely, but yet flushing rosy red again, not altogether with displeasure. "But suppose we walk a little faster. There is Mr. Adams beckoning to us. They're waiting to show you the way into the crater."

  It will not be difficult to surmise, from the tone of this conversation that the young lord of Seaton Abbey was in a fair way of meeting his fate in the far-away spot to which the Fates and his disabled yacht had brought him. What the course of his future fortune might have been, if what, on his part at least, was something more than a chance flirtation had been allowed to pursue its course in peace, can never be known, for only a few hours after they were walking, laughing and chatting thus, up the mountain side, there fell, like a bolt from the blue, a swift and sudden calamity upon the little community of Utopia, which woke it with awful suddenness and violence from its dream of paradise on earth.

  The party dined together in the crater of Mount Plato, and then, as before, separated into pairs which seemed to prefer the amusement of independent exploration. Shortly before five, Adams hailed Sir Harry, and said that it was high time for them to set about returning to the plateau, if they didn't want to be left behind. Sir Harry agreed, and promptly sent forth a lusty "Halloo!" which echoed round the walls of the crater, as a signal to Wyndham and Violet to join them.

  There was no answer. They hallooed again, this time in chorus, and only the echoes replied. Then on consultation, they learnt that none of them had seen the missing pair all the afternoon. Fearing that they might have strayed away and got lost, they made a rapid exploration of the crater, and then, not finding them there, went out on to the mountain side, and continued their search, Adams and Sir Harry still hallooing as they went.

  They searched for an hour without success, and then, when the four met once more at the entrance to the crater, as the sun was beginning to sink behind the opposite western wall, Adams said, "It's no use. They must have gone back to the others for some reason, and yet - I can't understand why they should have done so. Why, what's the matter, Sir Harry? Are you ill?"

  "Look! look!" cried Sir Harry, whose ruddy, bronzed face had suddenly turned to an almost ashen colour. He grasped him by the arm as he spoke, and turned him half round, pointing with his other hand to the secondary cone which Dora had rightly named the Mount Mystery. Instantly all eyes were fixed in a silent stare of amazement and horror on the round ragged hole that marked the smaller crater.

  Out of the black depths, they saw, soaring swiftly and vertically upwards, the strange shape of the mysterious airship which Sir Harry and the lieutenant had seen crossing the hills a week before. They thought they made out something white moving to and fro on its deck. It seemed to sway violently about for a moment or two, and then pitch headlong out of sight into the black gulf beneath. The next moment the air-ship leapt several hundred feet up into the air, and then, in a long, sweeping, upward curve, darted away out over the sea to the north-westward.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  A DOUBLE TRAGEDY.

  IN breathless silence, a silence in which wonder, fear, and horror were blended, the four spectators on the crater of Mount Plato watched the rapidly-played-out drama in the air that could scarcely fail to prove a tragedy which should cast a gloom over the lives, not only of the visitors to Utopia, but also over those of everyone on the island.

  Adams was the first to recover his self-command. Like the others, he had followed the swiftly-moving air-ship on her seaward course until she became a speck in the distance. Then he turned to Sir Harry and said in a tone that he vainly tried to keep steady-

  "Our secret is out-and lost, I'm afraid! I can't understand it yet, but we can talk about that afterwards. There has been foul play over yonder, and something terrible has happened, I am sure. Come along, we'll go over to the ot
her crater. It's no use wasting time talking. Come along- I'll show you the way! You girls had better go back and tell the others, and ask them to send up what help they can. We shall probably want it. You will know where to find us afterwards."

  Dora and Lucy saw at once that this was the thing to do, and they were just starting back to the party on the plateau when Lucy stopped, and without a word ran back into the crater. Hardly four minutes had passed before the others heard a clatter of hoofs, and saw her come tearing at full gallop up the steep path that led out of the crater, seated astride the back of the Shetland pony after the fashion of the ladies of Mexico. She waved her hand to them as she swerved past, and then went away at headlong speed down, the mountain path towards the plateau.

  A narrow, barely-defined path led down the eastern side of Mount Plato into the valley which separated it from the smaller mountain, and along this the three walked rapidly, Adams leading, Sir Harry in the middle, and Dora being at the rear. As soon as they had cleared the rougher ground of the crater, they broke into a trot, which soon brought them to the ascent leading up to the gap, which was now plainly visible in the wall of the second crater. Here their speed was reduced to a walk again, and, as they were climbing the steep ascent, Sir Harry told Adams how the secret of the existence of the air-ship had been accidentally revealed to him and Wyndham a week before.

  "I'm afraid that may do something towards explaining the mystery," said Adams in reply. "I wish to Heaven you had told me about it at once, and then we might have taken some precautions."

  "What do you mean?" asked Sir Harry.

  "I can't explain now," said Adams; "and even if I could, I don't suppose it would do much good. Whatever harm is done is done. Here we are. That is where the air-ship was built, and where it ought to have been in hiding since you came. None of us, as far as I know, knew anything about the trip that she took on the night you speak of. She has only just been completed, after numberless experiments, in her present form, and her trial trip was not to have taken place until you had left the island. That means treachery on someone's part."

  "And that someone is your engineer, Renault," said Sir Harry between his teeth, as he followed Adams down the steep zigzag path that led to the interior of the crater.

  Half-way, Dora, who was still bringing up the rear, stopped, and, pointing with one hand, said-

  "Look yonder, just by the clearing! Don't you see something white up in the trees there, where that big palm is, just by the crater wall?"

  They stopped and looked, and there, sure enough, in the rapidly fading light, they made out a patch of something white showing against the dark green of the foliage.

  "Come along, for God's sake!" almost gasped Sir Harry. "Heaven only knows what that white thing may be."

  And before the words were well out of his mouth, Adams had sprung forward and plunged into a hidden path that ran along the floor of the crater under the trees. Sir Harry and Dora followed hard on his heels, and a few minutes' run brought them out into a little oval clearing, in the midst of which stood a palisading of palm trunks, interlaced with wattles and creepers to a height of about twenty feet.

  A door leading into it stood open, and as Adams ran through this, he paused for a moment, uttered a half stifled cry, and then ran on, followed by the others. In the centre of the enclosure stood a raised platform, some two hundred feet long by a hundred broad, flanked on one side by a row of huts, which evidently served as workshops. The platform was vacant save for a light frame-work of scaffolding which ran across its greater length, and the body of a man which lay beside it, face downwards, with the arms spread out.

  One glance was enough to tell them that it was that of the lieutenant. Adams and Sir Harry leapt on to the platform at the same moment and raised him very gently from the planks. His limbs were limp and inert, and as they lifted him, his head fell forward on his breast.

  "This looks like murder," said Adams, as they raised him. "Good heavens!- to think that we must have had a murder even in Utopia. Look there under his shoulder-blade. He's been stabbed in the back!"

  "Yes," said Sir Harry thickly. "It must have been that, but perhaps he's not quite dead yet. Poor Bertie! I'm afraid that scoundrel overheard us after all, and this is the result."

  "Run and get some water, Dora, quick!" cried Adams. "Have a look in the storeroom and see if there is any brandy or anything of the sort there. Look sharp, there's a good girl!"

  They had just finished bandaging the wound when Dora appeared, with the bottle in one hand and a water-jug in the other. Sir Harry half emptied the brandy into the water and bathed Wyndham's cold, pallid face with it. To his unspeakable relief, his eyes half opened, and a faint sigh escaped from his lips.

  In a moment, Dora had poured some brandy on her handkerchief and squeezed a few drops into his mouth. His eyes opened wider, and another sigh, this time stronger, carne, accompanied by a slight convulsive movement of his chest. Then Sir Harry raised him to a half-sitting position, kneeling beside him, and letting his body rest against his knees.

  He opened his eyes fully, and looked about him with the dazed expression of a man waking from an evil dream. A faint inarticulate sound carne from his lips as Adams held the jug to them. He drank a little almost mechanically, and as he swallowed it, a faint shudder ran through his body. He looked at them with reason dawning in his eyes, and with a painful effort whispered-

  "Where's Violet- and the air-ship- Renault?" and then his head fell back against Sir Harry's arm and he fainted.

  The two men looked at each other blankly for a moment, and Dora, suddenly clasping her hands together, exclaimed in a low, broken voice-

  "Oh, poor Violet! I see it now- I see what happened! Renault must have taken her up in the air-ship with him, and she threw herself out. It was her white dress that we saw falling, and that must be her up in the trees. Carry him to the living-shed and put him in one of the berths. I'll nurse him till the others come, and you go and see if you can find poor Violet. It was an awful fall, but perhaps it hasn't killed her."

  It took them nearly twenty minutes to hack and push their way through the thick undergrowth that lay between the enclosure and the tall palm by the wall of the crater which Dora had pointed out. When they got under it, a single glance upwards showed them that Dora's guess had been right. Lying on the broad, umbrella-like expanse of the great radiating leaves of the palm crest, more than a hundred feet from the ground, lay in a huddled heap a form which could be no other than Violet's.

  The palm trunk leant outwards at a considerable angle from the crater wall, and Adams, slinging the bag of spikes (which, with other necessities for tree-climbing, he had thoughtfully provided himself with) round his neck, and fastening one end of a long rope round his waist, took out a spike and drove it into the sloping side of the trunk as high as he could reach. Then, telling Sir Harry to keep the rope clear, he swarmed up, got his foot upon it, and drove another one in about five feet above it. Then he mounted on to this one and drove in another, and so on up the tree.

  Sir Harry stood below and watched him in the dusk with straining eyes, scarcely daring to breathe in his anxiety lest the swaying of the trunk, which perceptibly increased as he got higher and higher, should dislodge Violet from the top and destroy their last hope by flinging her to the ground. Adams' last spike only carried him to within about ten feet of the top. Sir Harry could just see him stop, and saw in an instant what was the matter.

  "Can't you get any higher?" he shouted. "Shall I get some more spikes and bring them up to you?"

  "No," said Adams, "there is no need for that. I can almost reach the top. Can you climb?"

  "Yes. I can climb up there, at any rate."

  "Very well, then, come up. Does the rope reach to the ground?"

  "Yes, and plenty to spare."

  "All right, then; come along, and be careful."

  Before the words were out of his mouth, Sir Harry had got his foot on the first spike, and was climbing quickly, but ca
utiously, up the trunk. When he reached the last, Adams, putting his arms and legs round the trunk, swarmed up until he got a hold of the root of one of the leaves.

  "Now," he said, "get your foot on to the last spike, hold tight, and let me get my foot on your shoulder."

  Sir Harry did as he was bidden with a steadiness that spoke volumes for his muscles and his nerves, and in another minute Adams had crawled up through the leaves and on to the crest of the tree. Sir Harry waited for a moment in agonised suspense, until he heard him say-

  "She's here, insensible and badly injured, I'm afraid, but I don't believe she's dead. At any rate, we'll have her down in a few minutes. You stop there and get ready to take her."

  Then he hauled up the rope, passed the other end round her body, and made it fast in a loop under her arms. Then slowly, and with infinite care, he raised her from where she was lying, and worked her towards the side, where her brother was waiting to take hold of her. The great leaves of the palm swayed horribly, and Sir Harry expected every moment to see them both go crashing through to the ground, a hundred feet below. But Adams knew what he was about, and the expected never came.