The Flying Legion Part 12

"Yes, sir!" came back the observer's voice.

"Keep a sharp eye out for _Niss'rosh_! Remember, two red lights showing there!"

"Yes, sir. I'll report as soon as I pick them up."

The Master, knowing his course thither should be S.E. by S., drew the liner to that exact angle. Under his skilled touch at the wheel, the compa.s.s needle steadied to the dot. The searchlight lanced its way ahead, into the vague drift of the smoke arising from New York.

"Sight it, yet?" demanded the Master, presently.

"Yes, sir. Just picked it up. Hold hard, sir!"

Almost at once, the Master also got a glimpse of two tiny pin-p.r.i.c.ks of crimson, high in air above the city-ma.s.s. Swiftly _Nissr_ drew over the building. Far, very far down in the chasm of emptiness, tiny strings of light--infinitesimal luminous beads on invisible threads--marked Broadway, Fifth Avenue, countless other streets. The two red winks drew almost underneath.

Down plunged the searchlight, picking _Niss'rosh_ out of the gloom.

Through the floor-gla.s.s, the Master could descry it clearly. He slowed, circled, playing with vacuum-lift, helicopters, engines, as if they had been keys of a familiar instrument. Presently the liner hovered, poised, sank, remained a little over 750 feet above the observatory on the roof-top.

"Cracowicz!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Master, into the phone again, as his deft fingers made another connection. A foreign voice answered: "Yes, sir!"

alertly.

"Ready in the lower gallery now, with the winch and tackles!" bade the Master.

Again came: "Yes, sir!" from the man in charge of the three who already knew perfectly well what was expected of them. As _Nissr_ slowly turned, a trap opened in the bottom of her lower gallery, almost directly between the two forward vacuum-floats, and down sped a little landing nacelle or basket at the end of a fine steel cable.

Swiftly the electric winch dropped the nacelle, containing three men.

It slowed, at their command, through the phone that led up the wire.

With hardly a jar, the basket landed on the roof.

The men jumped out, made fast their tackles to Captain Alden's plane there, leaped in again and signaled: "Hoist away!"

With noiseless speed the winch gathered in the cable. Up swooped the nacelle. As it cleared the roof, _Nissr_ purred forward, slid away, gathered speed over the city where already the alarm had been given.

In four minutes the men had safely landed in the lower gallery once more, and the plane was being hoisted by davits and made fast on the upper platform, known as the take-off, which served as a runway for planes leaving the s.h.i.+p or alighting thereon.

Over the light-spangled city the giant air-liner gathered way.

Three or four searchlights had already begun trying to pick her up. Quiverings of radiance reached out for her, felt into the void, whirled like cosmic spokes. The Brooklyn Navy Yard whipped the upper air for her. Down on Sandy Hook, a slim spear of light stabbed questingly through the night. Then all at once the monster light on Governor's Island caught her, dazzling into the Master's eyes.

He only smiled, as he sheered eastward, dropped East River behind and unloosed the Sky-eagle's course above Brooklyn.

"Just a little fireworks, as a send-off, Major," said he, notching the speed ahead, ever ahead, till a whipping gale began to beat in at the broken pane. "They got word of it pretty quick, eh? I suppose they'll send up a few planes after us."

"_After_ us, yes!" exulted the major. "Faith, they'll be after us, all right--a devil of a long way after!"

To this the Master gave no answer, but signaled Auchincloss in the engine-room for full speed. Now a subtle tremor possessed the vast fabric, mistress of the upper s.p.a.ces and the night. The close-compacted lights beneath commenced to sprinkle out into tenuous dots. The tiny blazing fringe of Coney burned a moment very far below, then slid away, under the gla.s.s flooring. Still heading sharply upward, with altimeter needle steadily mounting, with the cold becoming ever greater, the liner flung herself out boldly over the jet plain of ocean.

Right into the eye of heaven she seemed to point, into a vast and profound blackness, that, as the Master snicked off the no-longer needed searchlight, unleashed myriad stars--stars which leaped out of the velvet night. Already man and the works of man lay far behind. If there had been any tentative pursuit, the Legionaries knew nothing of it. Outdistancing pursuit as an eagle distances sparrows, the liner gloried in her swift trajectory.

The Master nodded, well pleased. Bohannan laughed like a boy, and holstered his gun. He moved over to the starboard window, out of the gale. With mocking eyes he watched the futile searchlight at the Hook.

"They've got as much chance of overhauling us as the proverbial celluloid cat has of catching the asbestos rat," said he. "A clean getaway, barring the little damage we've taken--this window, and Alden, and--"

"Better unpack your kit, and settle down," the Master dryly interrupted him. "Take a look around and see that everything's s.h.i.+pshape. Be sure the port and starboard watches are chosen.

Everything's been arranged, already, but in dealing with human beings there's bound to be a little confusion. They aren't automata--unfortunately. And, Major!"

"Yes, sir?" answered Bohannan, who despite his familiarity with the Master was now constrained to formality. Resentment sounded in his voice.

"Send Brodeur to relieve me, in about ten minutes."

"Yes, sir," repeated the Celt. For a moment, standing there in the gloom of the pilot-house, he eyed the dim, watchful figure at the wheel. Then he turned, slid the door, and disappeared.

As he walked aft, past the aluminum ladder that led to the upper galleries, he muttered with dudgeon:

"He rates us two for a nickel, that's plain enough--plain as paint!

Well, all right. I'll stand for it; but there may be others that--"

He left the words unfinished, and went to do the Master's bidding.

Alone, the Master smiled. Wine of victory pulsed in his blood and brain. Power lay under his hand, that closed with joy upon it. Power not only over this hardy Legion, but power in perspective over--

"G.o.d, if I can do it!" he whispered, and fell silent. His eyes rested on the instruments before him, their white dials glowing under the little penthouses of their metal s.h.i.+elds. Alt.i.tude now showed 2,437 feet, and still rising. Tachometers gave from 2,750 to 2,875 r.p.m.

for the various propellers. Speed had gone above 190 miles per hour.

No sign of man remained, save, very far below through a rift in the pale, moonlit waft of cloud, a tiny light against a coal-black plain of sea--the light of a slow, crawling steamer--a light which almost at once dropped far behind.

Vast empty s.p.a.ces on all hands, above, below, engulfed _Nissr_. The Master felt himself alone with air and sky, with power, with throbbing dreams and visions.

"If it can be done!" he repeated. "But--there's no 'if' to it, at all. It _can_ be! It _shall_! The biggest thing ever attempted in this world! A dream that's never been dreamed, before! And if it can't, well, a dream like that is far more than worth dying for. A dream that can come true--by G.o.d, that shall come true!"

His hands tightened on the wheel. You would have said he was trying to infuse some of his own overflowing strength into the mechanism that, whirling, zooning with power, needed no more. The gleam in his eyes, there in the dark pilot-house, seemed almost that of a fanatic. His jaw hardened, his nostrils expanded.

This strange man's face was now wholly other than it had been only a week before, drawn and lined by ennui. Now vast ambitions dominated and infused it with virile force.

As he held the speeding air-liner to her predetermined course through voids of night and mystery, he peered with burning eagerness at the beckoning stars along the world's far, eastern rim.

"Behold now, Allah!" he cried suddenly. "_Labbayk_![1] I come!"

[Footnote 1: _Labbayk_ (I am here) is the cry of all Mohammedan pilgrims as they approach the holy city of Mecca.]

CHAPTER X

"I AM THE MASTER'S!"

The arrival of Simonds, with the spare window-pane, and of Brodeur--one of the boldest flyers out of Saloniki in the last months of the war--broke in upon the Master's reveries. Only a few minutes were required to mend the window. During this time, the Master explained some unusual features of control to the Frenchman, then let him take charge of _Nissr_.

"She's wonderful," said he, as Brodeur settled himself at the wheel.

"With her almost unlimited power, her impeccable controls and her automatic stabilizers, I hardly see what could happen to her."