The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 05

by Anthology

  The desperate resolve that he had taken was really the only reply that he could make to the threat. To save himself and the crew that he believed faithful to his fortunes, it was necessary to sacrifice every one else in the camp, and perhaps to destroy with his own guns, the fleet on which so much labour and so much treasure, bought with the blood of thousands of ruthlessly slaughtered victims, had been spent. But to all this he scarcely gave a thought. He had decided on his course of action, and he was one of those men who never make two decisions. Characteristically, too, he depended solely upon himself to execute his own unspoken sentence upon Hartog. As he rose from the breakfast table in the saloon, he said-

  "Taxil, will you go and relieve François in the conning-tower, and leave Duprez in charge of the engines; then come back and bring the other fellows with you? I want to tell them something that I think it will interest them to hear. I believe there have been some complaints lately about our not taking our comrades sufficiently into our confidence, and it won't do to have any misunderstandings of that sort in work like ours. We'd better get this one cleared up as soon as possible."

  "Very well," said Taxil. "I'll have them here in a minute." And with that he left the saloon.

  "I fink dat is a very vise measure on your part, Monsieur Max," said Hartog, beaming at him through his spectacles with an expression of the most absolutely unsuspecting innocence. "Dere is noding so dangerous as misunderstandings among people like us, aldough I really can't see vy dese fellows cannot follow mit perfect confidence - especially ven dey haf been led as perfectly as you haf led dem."

  "With your very able assistance, friend Franz," interrupted Renault, with a smile, as Taxil re-entered the saloon, followed by six of the crew.

  Taxil and a stalwart Frenchman named Louis André, who acted as second officer, came and stood beside Renault, while the others remained in a group behind Hartog's chair. Then Renault continued, still with a smile on his lips-

  "As you say, however, to people engaged in the desperate work that we have got to do, there is nothing so dangerous as misunderstandings, and it was to clear up one of them which might have had very serious consequences that I have thought fit to call this informal little meeting; and, to begin with, I am going to accuse you, Franz Hartog, before the officers and crew of the Revanche, of treachery to the cause of anarchy and attempted mutiny in the camp. If it had not been for the very great and, indeed, indispensable services that you rendered to us at the beginning, I tell you frankly I would have shot you as I shot Berthauld - on suspicion. As it is, you shall have the opportunity of defending yourself, and if you can clear yourself, why-"

  Renault's speech was never finished, for it ended in a choking, gurgling gasp, and the sound of his body falling heavily to the floor of the saloon. Hartog had heard his indictment without moving a muscle of his face, until he saw Renault's hand moving toward the hilt of a pistol that rested in an open case at his belt. Then he had nodded to Taxil and André.

  Quick as thought, André, with all the skill of a practised garrotter, had whipped a silk handkerchief round Renault's throat, drawn it tight, and then, forcing his knee into the small of his back, flung him to the floor.

  Taxil was on him in an instant, turned him over on his face, and tied his elbows behind his back, before André loosed the suffocating pressure upon his windpipe. Meanwhile, Franz had pulled out a pistol and covered the two girls, saying, as he did so-

  "Sit still, my tear young ladies; dere is no von vants to hurt you; but it might be dangerous for you to move just now. Here, Leon, Mascoll, come and take care of Madame Lea and Miss Sophie, but don't hurt dem unless it is necessary. Now, friendts, Taxil and André, if you have got our late captain safely secured, you may let him up to hear me finish his speech for him."

  Everything had happened with such paralysing rapidity that Max had not been able to make a single movement in self-defence; and the two girls were sitting motionless with fear, each with the barrel of a pistol against the back of her head, before either of them had very well realised what had happened.

  As for Max, even after he had regained his breath, he still seemed too stupefied by the utterly unexpected attack to grasp the astounding fact that the crew, upon whose fidelity he would have staked his existence, had, without the slightest warning, turned traitors to a man, and that the little German had so completely outwitted him that, instead of being his victim, he was now his master.

  Hartog sat quietly grinning and enjoying his bewilderment; but by the time he found his voice again, he had recovered both his senses and his courage, and, casting a glance of unutterable contempt about him,- under which more than one of the crew lowered his eyes in something like shame,- he said, as quietly as if he had been issuing an order in working the ship-

  "You miserable curs! And so it's for this that I made you masters of the air, and put the world at your mercy? And it was for this," he went on, with a glance of scornful hate at Hartog, "that I rescued you and your crew from the bourgeois at Newcastle, when I might have left you to be hanged like the dogs that you are. Well, I suppose I might have expected that from a German, but I didn't think it of you, Taxil. Did you rescue me from Newgate only to turn traitor just when we had the world at our mercy? You might just as well have left me to hang as that."

  "You had better hear what Hartog has to say before I answer that," said Taxil, in a somewhat forced tone, and with a faint flush, as if of shame, on his face.

  "Ja I vill do de talking," said Hartog, folding his arms on the table in front of him and blinking angrily at Max through his spectacles. "Treachery, my late friendt Renault, seems to pe a game dat two can play at, and it is because you haf turned twice and trice traitor to de cause of anarchy and your own comrades, dat dis little accident has happened to you. You had nodings but your own suspicions of me, but I haf proofs against you.

  "First, you stole de paper mit de formula of de fuel vich you had agreed to leave, so dat if you got killed I could make more fuel for der oder ships. You did dat so as to leave all de rest mit no fuel ven dey haf used up vat dey haf, so den dey vould be helpless vile you took de Revanche away, and left dem to be captured and killed by our enemies.

  "After dat, you invited me to come mit you on board dis ship, so dat you could trow me overboard, and keep de secret in your possession. Is not dat de case, Taxil, and did not Sophie Vronsky tell you dat? And did ve not tell der oder captains, and did ve not all resolve dat Max Renault had ceased to be a goot anarchist, and had become a traitor and a tyrant?"

  "Yes," said Taxil, who by this time had recovered his self-possession. "Sophie told me of the plot against you, and I warned you, because I would not be a party to such treachery for anyone's sake. Then I went with you to secure the paper, and we found it stolen. We agreed with the other captains that this was plain proof of treachery, and we decided that, as Max Renault had always treated traitors, so he should be treated himself."

  "And are you all agreed to dat?" said Hartog, looking round at the others. "Vill you haf freedom of action according to de goot principles of anarchy, or vill you haf a tyrant for your master who has already turned traitor?"

  The men glanced at each other for a moment, and then at Max, who still stood defiantly facing them between Taxil and André. Then one of them stepped forward and spoke for the rest.

  "We will have neither tyrants nor traitors," he said, with a scowl at Max. "Comrade Renault has led us well, but we are satisfied that he has used his ability to make us his servants instead of his free and equal comrades. That is contrary to the principles of anarchy, and we will not have it."

  The rest nodded, and then Max broke out, with a short, bitter laugh-

  "Just so! You are too simple and too greedy to see that in work like ours one must lead and the rest follow. Well, do as you like. I am not going to ask my life of a lot of curs like you. The game's up, I suppose, as far as I'm concerned, and it serves me right, because I trusted a woman with my secret, and she, of course, trusted ano
ther.

  "Cherchez la femme, as usual," he continued, with a half-scornful, half-reproachful glance at Lea and Sophie, who sat and heard him with downcast heads and burning cheeks. "I am not the first man who has trusted a woman to his ruin, and I don't suppose I shall be the last. Well, you others, what are you going to do with me? You may as well get it over quickly, and then go to perdition your own way."

  "Dere vill be blenty of time for us to get dere ven ve haf decided vich road to take, Monsieur Max, and dere is no particular hurry about disposing of you. Dere are a great many people in London who vill be glad to see you again, and I haf been tinking dat you shall pay dem a visit to-night, out of consideration for all you haf done - as you vere goot enough to say of me just before you meant to pitch me into de Bay of Biscay. Ve vill not kill you ourselves; you shall haf von chance for your life, and if you do not make de best of it, vell, den, dat is your look-out. Now you will go to your cabin and be taken goot care of. Take dose two girls avay too, and see dat dey don't get up to any mischief. Keep dem in separate cabins for de present."

  Neither Max nor either of the girls made the slightest resistance to what they saw was inevitable. For the present, at any rate, they were entirely at the mercy of Hartog and Taxil, and to resist now would merely be to subject themselves to violence.

  When Max was taken to his cabin, he was tied hand and foot, and then tied again into the hammock in which he always slept while on board the Revanche. André remained on guard over him, and at his first attempt to begin a conversation, curtly told him to hold his tongue if he didn't want to be gagged, so forced him to content himself with silence and his own bitter reflections on the fearfully sudden change in his fortune, and the unknown fate that was awaiting him in London. Lea and Sophie were simply locked in their cabins, and there left,- likewise to their reflections,- while Hartog, Taxil, and the rest arranged their plans for the immediate present.

  Strange as it may seem, neither of the girls had difficulty in recovering their equanimity, in spite of the shock that the scene in the saloon had been to both of them. Mentally and morally they were not women in the best and commonly accepted sense of the word. To begin with, they were criminals, pitiless and unscrupulous, and therefore necessarily of a low moral caste, and this was especially true of Lea.

  Despite her extraordinary physical charms and a highly developed intellect, she was little better than a beautiful animal, who used her beauty and the power it gave her as the means of attainment to the given ends of the moment. Of heart in the womanly sense of the word she had literally none. She had not, and never had had, any real love for Max such as a true woman gives to her lover or her husband.

  She had given herself to him simply because she admired him physically and mentally, and because she saw, or believed she saw, in him a man who would enable her to satisfy at once her ambition and her genuine hatred of organised society.

  But now she saw him defeated in his aims and helpless at the mercy of his enemies with very much the same feelings that a tigress might have seen her lord and master lying mangled and dying under the claws of a stronger than he. She would release him if she could, but more for the sake of continuing to reign with him and of placing him under an obligation to her than of doing him a purely personal service, and in one event, and one only, would she avenge him if he was killed.

  She had firmly resolved that any attempt to make her the slave or plaything of any of the others whom he had ruled, and she had ruled through him, should be fatal to the Revanche and her crew if she could make it so. Taxil she believed to be in love with Sophie, so she feared nothing from him. Hartog she looked upon with utter contempt, now not unmixed with dread and loathing; and as for André and the rest of the crew, she regarded there as animals who might make good servants when held properly in control. As masters any one of them would have been unendurable, and if the worst came to the worst, she was quite prepared to kill herself rather than be made the sport of their brutal passions.

  She was still deep in such thoughts as these, and still vainly seeking for some possible path out of the miserable position in which the last sudden turn of fickle fortune had placed her, when she heard the bolt of the lock shoot back. She looked up as the door opened, and saw Taxil come into the cabin and shut the door behind him.

  CHAPTER XXXIX.

  HARTOG'S REVENGE.

  WELL, M. Taxil, so you have at last deigned to visit one of your captives," she said, with just a suspicion of mockery in her tone, but still smiling not unpleasantly, as he entered. "May I ask to what I am indebted for the honour - for I suppose I am to consider it an honour - of your visit? Have you come to tell me what decision the victors have come to with regard to the disposition of the spoils?"

  She was perfectly cool and collected now. Like all women of ready wit and self-confidence, she had seen in his entrance a call to arms, to a battle of wits, in which the victory would be not to physical strength or the advantage of position, but rather to the arts of subtlety and persuasion. Taxil looked at her as she spoke, flushed slightly, and hesitated for a moment before he replied.

  In that moment Lea saw that she had gained half the victory already. Taxil was a younger man than Renault, and infinitely less skilled in those wiles of her sex of which she was such a perfect mistress. He might be master of the air-ship and Renault's fate, but in her eyes he was a boy, and at a glance she saw that as such she could humour him. She waited for his answer, leaning back on the sofa on which she was seated, and toying with a little bunch of trinkets that hung from the watch-chain fastened to her belt.

  As for Taxil, all his courage and the assurance of triumph seemed to have deserted him the instant that he found himself alone with her. He had come prepared, if necessary, to use threats, and even to proceed to violent measures, to reduce her to submission, in case she objected to the change of command in which the mutiny had resulted. He had been quite prepared, should she prove refractory, to try the effects of imprisonment, if necessary accompanied by short commons, to bring her to look favourably upon his suit; but now that he actually stood in her presence, he felt that in some mysterious fashion their positions had been reversed - that he had become the suitor and she the mistress, to accept or reject as seemed best to her.

  There was no time for him to argue with himself in order to convince himself of the absurdity of this view. She sat there placidly waiting his reply to her question, just as though he had been paying an afternoon call at her house in Paris, rather than visiting one who was virtually his prisoner of war. He had to say something, and that with the best grace he could.

  "I have not come to tell you anything," he said at last in an awkward, constrained voice. "But rather to ask something of you."

  "And that is-?" She lifted her eyebrows for a moment, looked at him inquiringly, and then dropped them again.

  "That is- well, that is, of course, you must understand, Ma'm'zelle Lea, that matters are now altogether changed on board the Revanche, and I at present have the honour to stand where Max Renault stood before the discovery of his treachery-"

  "Through the treachery of others, and those whom he trusted most!" she interrupted, with the mocking note in her voice a little more pronounced. "That is what you were going on to say, I presume. Well, granted that, and what then?"

  "What then? Why, this," he exclaimed, taking a couple of quick strides across the cabin and throwing himself on one knee beside the sofa. "There was no treachery on my part, whatever it may have seemed to you. It was only fidelity to the Cause, for we had proved him traitor first; but even if there had been treachery, surely you do not need to be told what would have made me turn traitor if that had been possible."

  "I?" she said, half lifting her eyelids and looking steadily at him from under the dark long lashes. "I? What have I to understand? I should have thought that that was a question you should have addressed to Sophie rather than to me. Didn't you know that Max was perfectly agreeable to your making a match of it?"

&n
bsp; "Sophie! Bah!" he exclaimed, taking hold of her hand and pressing it passionately to his lips. "Do you think I would have done this for Sophie's sake? No, Lea; whatever you may think of my temerity, I have been flying at higher game than her. It is you that I want, that I have always wanted and loved and hungered for ever since my eyes were first blessed with the vision of your loveliness. It is you that I would ask to share with me the empire which, for your sake, I would dare anything and do anything to conquer. Grant me my prayer, and there is nothing on earth that you shall desire and not obtain if I can give it you. Give me yourself, and, in exchange, I will give you the empire of the world."

  She had heard him to the end in silence. She had not even taken her hand away, but suffered him to hold it and kiss it, as he had done, between his passionately uttered sentences. Instinctively she contrasted this boyish courtship of his with Max's masterful wooing in her boudoir in the Rue Vernet. She saw at a glance how, if at all, she would be able to save herself from becoming the victim of the violence which he certainly could use if he chose, and possibly also of saving Max, who had by no means suffered by the momentary comparison she had made between them.

  "Ah, I see!" she said, with a lazy, indulgent smile. "It is a case of le roi est mort, vive le roi, is it? You have dethroned Max, and you wish me to share the throne with you as I did with him. But that is very cruel to poor Sophie, you know, and not altogether flattering to me. You come to woo me as a conqueror to a captive, and I may as well tell you that in such a guise your suit is hopeless.