The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 05

by Anthology

  CHAPTER XXV.

  THE "WAR-HAWK'S" FIRST FLIGHT.

  THE most elaborate precautions had been taken by the Syndicate to prevent the Anarchists and their spies from doing anything to hinder the blinding of the Volante and the War-Hawk, the first two vessels of their fleet that were to take the air, and also to keep secret the manner and place of their building.

  As has already been said, the various parts of the ships and their engines and armament had been made by different firms, and these, when completed, were despatched by rail to two different points. The Syndicate had acquired, privately of course, and in names unknown to the world, Lundy Island, off the coast of Devon, and one of the Farne Islands, off the coast of Northumberland, for the purpose of putting the vessels together and equipping them under circumstances which made it possible to keep all strangers and possible traitors away from the spot.

  Thus everything that was necessary for the building and equipment of the Volante had been conveyed by rail to Bristol, and there shipped on board the Irene and taken to Lundy Island, while the materials of the War-Hawk had been sent by rail to North Shields, and conveyed thence by another steamer to the Farne Island. No one was allowed on either of the steamers save those who had been members of the colony of Utopia, and were personally known to the directors; while on the islands the strictest possible watch was kept in order to make sure that no strangers or suspicious persons landed upon them.

  All the building operations had been carried out on both vessels simultaneously, and the day after the last meeting of the Syndicate, Edward Adams and Mr. Austen, with their chosen lieutenants, went, the one west and the other north, to see everything in order, and, as it were, put their respective ships into commission. Adams took with him Tom Harris and Ralf Smith - late of the Mermaid - as lieutenant and engineer, and Dr. Edwards as surgeon. His crew he would find waiting for him on board the Irene, or else on the island.

  The War-Hawk, with whose fortunes the reader will be more particularly concerned, was in a certain sense Sir Harry Milton's own ship, although, at his particular request, Mr. Austen had consented to take command of her. He had spent nearly a hundred thousand pounds out of his own pocket on her, and had spared no expense to make her the most perfect and the most powerful aerial cruiser in existence, and therefore the most certain instrument of his vengeance on the man who had wronged him so wantonly and so deeply.

  From point to point the elongated cylinder which formed the War-Hawk's hull measured two hundred and twenty feet, with an amidships diameter of thirty-five feet. Her triple engines were capable of exerting nine thousand horsepower, six thousand of which could be concentrated on her six lifting fans, which, under these conditions, were capable of lifting a dead weight of four tons, in addition to the hull and engines.

  The engines and gearing were so constructed that while either three or six thousand horse-power could be applied to the lifting fans, leaving three thousand for the driving propellers, the whole nine thousand could be concentrated on the latter, and then the aeroplanes, driven forward at a speed of more than three miles a minute, would more than support the whole weight of the vessel and her cargo.

  For armament she carried two pneumatic shell-guns forward, and two aft, which had been specially designed for the vessels of the Syndicate by Mr. Maxim and Mr. Austen, and which would throw a shell carrying twenty pounds weight of high explosives to a distance of seven miles when fired from an elevation of two thousand feet. On each broadside were four machine guns of the Maxim type, effective at a range of three miles, and with a firing capacity of seven hundred and fifty shots a minute. She was also fitted with six vertical bomb-tubes, each furnished with a releasing apparatus which automatically despatched the projectile the moment that the tube was exactly vertical to the object aimed at.

  Sir Harry had had two objects in view in making the War-Hawk, as he hoped he had made her, the most formidable engine of destruction in existence. First and foremost, of course, was his settled purpose of hunting Max Renault from the world, and taking due vengeance on him for the crimes that be had committed, but hardly second to this came the fact that he had determined to confide the safety of all that was dearest to him on earth to the speed and strength of the splendid craft upon which he had lavished money without stint.

  Violet, who had of course been brought away from France as soon as it was known that there was any danger of war being declared, was now quite convalescent, although the great nerve specialist under whose care she bad been in Paris had been unable to hold out any hope that, without the intervention of a miracle, she would ever be able to walk again. As Dr. Roberts had feared, the injury to her spine had proved to be the most serious of all.

  Her vigorous constitution had triumphed over all her other injuries, severe as they had been. Her general health, and even her spirits were fast coming back to her, but her lower limbs were almost useless, and so she was a prisoner to the invalid chair in which it was only too probable she was condemned to pass the remainder of her waking life.

  As soon as she had learned that her brother was building the War-Hawk, and intended to take the air himself in pursuit of Renault, she had begged and pleaded so hard to be taken with him, that at last, acting on Dr. Roberts's advice, he had yielded.

  "Don't you see, my dear fellow," the late surgeon of the Calypso had said to him, when he expressed his surprise at his advice, "that, after all, this air-ship of yours will probably be the safest place she can be in? You'll always be on the look-out for the enemy. You will know where he is, or, at any rate, where he is not, and if you meet him, you'll only attack him under favourable circumstances; but if you leave your sister on land, you will never know when some of these blackguardly anarchist spies might find her out and kill her just out of pure spite, or when Renault himself might find out where she was, and blow up the building she was living in out of revenge for his former failure.

  "Added to that, in these nervous complaints the all-important thing is to guard against mental worry. If you leave her at home and go careering through the air yourself, she will be in a constant state of anxiety about you,- sleepless nights and all that sort of thing,- and instead of getting stronger and better, she'll simply get weaker and worse out of sheer anxiety for you. Take my advice, and take her with you, and take me, too, to look after her. You know I can make myself useful in other ways than as a sawbones."

  After this, there was nothing for it but to let Violet have her way and make one of the company of the War-Hawk. But this decision speedily opened another question, which was settled in a way that gave Sir Harry not a little secret satisfaction.

  It was quite impossible that, in her helpless condition, Violet could go on board the War-Hawk without one of her own sex as attendant and companion, and for this office Dora Merton volunteered in such decisive terms that she speedily overcame what little opposition she met with. Thus it came to pass that when the air-ship lay on the island on the evening of the 14th of May, ready to take her first flight into the air, her company consisted of Mr. Austen and Sir Harry as joint commanders, Frank Markham as chief engineer, and a crew of eight Utopians, who had been specially trained to the work, Dr. Roberts as ship's surgeon and general utility man, as he described himself, Violet Milton and Dora Merton-whom Violet had ever increasingly strong reasons for regarding as a sister, in fact as well as in fancy, as every day of their intercourse went by.

  The central portion of the War-Hawk's hull had been flattened so as to form a promenade deck about seventy-five feet long by twenty broad, and on this Sir Harry, Mr. Austen, the doctor, and Dora were standing round Violet's chair, waiting for the sinking disc of the sun to disappear over the hills of Northumbria, and so give the signal for the voyage to begin.

  A few moments later, Mr. Austen went to the rail which surrounded the deck, and, leaning over, said to those who were standing about the ship on the land-

  "Is everything clear?"

  "Yes," came the reply; "all clear."

>   "Very well, then," said Mr. Austen, going to the top of the companion-way which led down to the engine-room. "Are you ready with the lifting fans, Markham? You can go ahead when you like. I'm going to take the wheel in the conning-tower now."

  "All ready," came the reply, in Markham's voice, from the engine-room; and then came the click of a lever, the blades of the lifting fans sprang out horizontally from the masts, and began to spin round with ever-increasing speed, and a sound that gradually rose from a soft whirr to a shrill whistle.

  "It doesn't look as though these wheels just turning round in the air like that could lift this great ship and everything on board from the earth, does it? " said Violet, leaning back in her chair and looking up at the revolving fans.

  "The air is a solid, if you only hit it hard enough," said the doctor, quoting from an American authority on aeronautics. "Wait till these fans hit it hard enough, and we shall rise like a fish in the water, or more properly, perhaps, a bird on the wing."

  The whistle of the fans, revolving with ever-increasing rapidity as Markham brought more and more of the engine-power to bear upon them, now rose almost to a scream. A hurricane of wind seemed to beat down upon the steep, sloping awning over the deck for a moment, and then they felt the deck lift and sway beneath their feet. They looked over the side, and saw that the land was sinking away from beneath them, then a bell sounded in the engine-room, and the propellers began to revolve. A gentle breeze seemed to sweep along the deck, and the island slipped away behind them.

  "Look, we are off at last!" cried Dora, clapping her hands in sheer delight. "There's the sea below us now, and the islands- look at them, they are like so many little dots on the water already. What a speed we must be going at, and fancy, we are flying, actually flying! Isn't it glorious? no more obstacles for us now, either on sea or land, no hills to climb, no rough seas to go pitching over or plunging under. We can fly over everything."

  "There's no doubt about that," said Sir Harry, "and I suppose this is actually the first time on record that an angel has flown without wings."

  "Bravo, Harry!" laughed Violet, looking up at Dora's now rosy face. "That's very nice."

  While this conversation bad been going on, the War-Hawk had swung round and was running at about forty miles an hour to the south-westward. Before Violet could make any retort to Dora's last piece of banter, Sir Harry, who had been sweeping the clear seaward horizon with his field-glasses, leant forward suddenly, as though something had caught his attention. He looked hard through the glasses for a moment, and then, taking them from his eyes, said-

  "Violet, you must go below at once. Come along, I'll carry you. Miss Dora, will you get one of the boys to bring the chair down?"

  And before they had time to ask any questions, he had picked his sister up in his arms and was carrying her below to her cabin, followed by Dora. He laid her upon her couch, kissed her, and ran up on deck again without a word. Then, calling the crew up and telling them to prepare the ship for action, he went into the conning-tower and said to Mr. Austen-

  "There are three air-ships coming up yonder from the southward. We have only just left the island in the nick of time."

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  A FLYING FIGHT.

  MR. AUSTEN followed the direction of Sir Harry's finger with his field-glasses, after locking the steering-wheel for the moment.

  "I'm afraid there is no doubt about it," he said, putting the glass down and releasing the wheel again. "As you say, there are three of them, and they are coming up very fast. Of course they cannot be anything but a portion of the Anarchist fleet."

  "That's quite certain," said Sir Harry. "Simply because they can't be ours. Evidently their spies have managed to find out where we were building the War-Hawk, and those three ships have been sent to smash her up before she could get into the air. If they'd been half in hour sooner, they'd leave blown us and the War-Hawk into little pieces- and with Violet and Dora on board too! Phew! It gives one the shivers to think of it. However, thank God, we are all right now. The question is, what shall we do- fight, or run away?"

  "Run away, by all means," replied Mr. Austen, with a grim sort of smile and a meaning twinkle in his eye. "I don't know whether it has ever struck you, but the fact is, that in aerial warfare to run away will not only be to fight, but to fight under the most favourable circumstances. The first, and in fact the only axiom in aerial tactics will be: Get your enemy behind you and below you. Then smash him up."

  "I see, I see. Of course it will be!" exclaimed Sir Harry. "An air-ship flying at a hundred miles an hour cannot use her bow guns with any effect, while her stern guns will be even more effective than if she was stationary. What a fool I was not to think of that before! Well, then, we shall have a trial of heels first, and then a little gun practice at long range, I suppose?"

  "Just so," said Mr. Austen. "Always supposing that those fellows are foolish enough to follow us. Now, as I have had more practice than you have, I'll stop here and manage the ship, and you go aft and fight the two stern guns. You can tell me through the speaking tube what you want in the way of speed or elevation."

  "Yes, that's the plan," said Sir Harry, turning to leave the conning-tower. "They've got the awning down and everything snug by this time, so we're ready for full speed whenever you life."

  "Very good," said Mr. Austen, sending a signal to the engine-room as he spoke. "We'll go up to four thousand feet first. As soon as your range-finder tells you that they are within five miles, you can open fire. Don't be afraid of the ammunition. Our gunners want practice, and we can get plenty more at Lundy. If we can get those fellows to follow us, we'll work round there and join forces with the Volante."

  "All right," said Sir Harry. "I won't spare the shells, I can tell you. I only hope that blackguard Renault is on board one of them, and that I get a shell squarely into her."

  So saying, he closed the door of the conning-tower and descended into the hull of the ship, which was now rising rapidly into the upper strata of the air. He paid a visit first to his sister's cabin, and briefly explained the position of affairs to her and Dora, assuring them that there was no danger,- as there really was not, as long as they could keep the enemy behind them,- and then he went into the after gun-room, where he found the crews standing by the two long guns, which had already been loaded.

  The three anarchist vessels were now about six miles astern, and nearly two thousand feet below the War-Hawk. Of course at that distance they were mere specks floating in the ocean of atmosphere, and to hit them with a point-blank aim was quite out of the question. Still, as the War-Hawk was only moving at a speed of about sixty miles an hour, while they were travelling nearly a hundred, the distance rapidly decreased, and every moment they became more and more distinct.

  "What are you loaded with, Martin?" said Sir Harry to the captain of the starboard gun.

  "Twenty pound melinite in both guns," was the reply.

  "I'm afraid that won't do for these fellows," said Sir Harry. "But still you can try the range with them. I think they've sighted us, for they are evidently rising. Take the two outside ones and try your luck."

  The two gun captains took a careful sight through the range-finders mounted on the breeches of the guns, and then came a long and a sharp whistling hiss, as the air pent up in the breech chambers under the pressure of a hundred atmospheres rushed out, driving the projectiles before it. Sir Harry, with his glasses, had no difficulty in following the two shells, flying as they did in a line with the flight of the War-Hawk, until they vanished into the distance. No result visible to the naked eye followed, but as he took his glasses down from his eyes, he said-

  "Bravo! Capital shots both of them. You got the direction excellently, and I don't think they can have been fifty yards out, either of them. Now we'll try a couple of gelatine time-shells."

  These were shells containing blasting gelatine and a tube filled with liquid oxygen. As the guns were being loaded again, Sir Harry said-

  "Wh
at do your range-finders say now?"

  "Coming down to nine thousand yards and fifteen hundred feet elevation."

  "Then set the shells for six seconds, and let go as soon as you are ready."

  Almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth, the compressed air hissed through the barrels again, and Sir Harry began counting.

  "One-two-three-four-five-six. Ah, there they go! Elevation perfect, but about a hundred yards astern of them. Still, it has shaken them up considerably. Ah, I thought so! they're scattering."

  The moment after the two transient specks of light had appeared in the distance against the now darkening background of the sky, telling of the bursting of the two shells, the two outer anarchist vessels swerved sharply to right and left, and, still mounting upwards and travelling at the utmost speed of which they were capable, swung round in two wide curves, as though they were striving to head the War-Hawk off.

  Watching them closely through his glasses, Sir Harry allowed them to come within three miles of the War-Hawk's quarters, and then asked Mr. Austen to quicken up until the War-Hawk was relatively stationary to them. At the same time he had the two bow guns swung round until they bore on the anarchist vessels on either side.