The Flying Legion Part 23

"Now I have totally disappeared from your eye or any other material eye. I cannot even see myself! No doubt dwellers on some other planet would perceive me by some means we cannot imagine. Yet I am materially here. You feel my touch, now, on your shoulder. See, now I put out the lights; now I draw aside this curtain, and admit the golden morning radiance. You see that radiance, but you do not see me.

"A miracle? _Pas du tout!_ Nothing but an application of perfectly natural laws. And so--well, now let us come back to the matter under discussion. You have come hither to arrest me, _monsieur_. What do you think of arresting me, now? I am going to leave that to your own judgment."

His voice approached the desk. The chair moved slightly, and gave under his weight. Something touched the b.u.t.ton on the desk. Something pressed the iridescent metal disk. The humming note sank, faded, died away.

Gradually a faint haze gathered in the chair. Dim, brownish fog congealed there. The chair became clouded with it; and behind that chair objects grew troubled, turbid, vague.

The ace felt inhibitions leaving him. His eyes began to blink; his half-opened mouth closed with a snap; a long, choking groan escaped his lips.

"_Nom de Dieu_" he gulped, and fell weakly to rubbing his arms and legs that still p.r.i.c.kled with a numb tingling. "_Mais, nom de Dieu!_"

The Master, now swiftly becoming visible, stood up again, smiled, advanced toward his guest--or prisoner, if you prefer.

A moment he stood there, till every detail had grown as clear as before this astounding demonstration of his powers. Then he stretched forth his hand.

"Leclair," said he, in a voice of deep feeling, "I know and appreciate you for a man of parts, of high courage and devotion to duty in the face of almost certain death. The manner in which you came ahead, even after all your companions had fallen--in which you boarded us, with the strong probability of death confronting you, proves you the kind of man who wins and keeps respect among fighting men.

"If you still desire my arrest and the delivery to you of this air-liner, I am at your complete disposal. You have only to sign the receipt I have already written. If--" and for a moment the Master paused, while his dark eyes sought and held the other's, "if, _monsieur_, you desire to become one of the Flying Legion, and to take part in the greatest adventure ever conceived by the mind of man, in the name of all the Legion I welcome you to comrades.h.i.+p!"

"_Dieu_!" choked the lieutenant, gripping the Master's hand. "You mean that I--I--"

"Yes, that you can be one of us."

"Can that be true?"

"It is!"

The Master's right hand closed firmly on Leclair's. The Master's other hand went out and gripped him by the shoulder.

To his feet sprang the Frenchman. Though still shaken and trembling, he drew himself erect. His right hand loosened itself from the Master's; it went to his aviator's helmet in a sharp salute.

"_J'y suis! J'y reste!_" cried he. "_Mon capitaine!_"

The day pa.s.sed uneventfully, at high alt.i.tudes, steadily rus.h.i.+ng into the eye of the East. In the stillness and solitude of the upper air-lanes, _Nissr_ roared onward, invincibly, with sun and sky above, with s.h.i.+ning clouds piled below in swiftly retreating ma.s.ses that spun away to westward.

Far below, sea-storm and rain battled over the Atlantic. Upborne on the wings of the eastward-setting wind, _Nissr_ felt nothing of such trivialities. Twice or thrice, gaps in the cloud-veil let dim ocean appear to the watchers in the gla.s.s observation pits; and once they spied a laboring speck on the waters--a great pa.s.senger-liner, worrying toward New York in heavy weather. The doings of such, and of the world below, seemed trivial to the Legionaries as follies of dazed insects.

No further attack was made on _Nissr_, nor was anything seen of any other air-squadron of International Police. The wireless picked up, however, a cross-fire of dazed, uncomprehending messages being hurled east and west, north and south--messages of consternation, doubt, anger.

The world, wholly at a loss to understand the thing that had come upon it, was listening to reports from the straggling Azores fleet as it staggered into various ports. Every continent already was buzzing with alarm and rage. In less than eighteen hours the calm and peaceful ways of civilization had received an epoch-making jar. All civilization was by the ears--it had become a hornet's nest prodded by a pole no one could understand or parry.

And the Master, sitting at his desk with reports and messages piling up before him, with all controls at his finger-tips, smiled very grimly to himself.

"If they show such hysteria at just the initial stages of the game,"

he murmured, "what will they show when--"

The Legion had already begun to fall into well-disciplined routine, each man at his post, each doing duty to the full, whether that duty lay in pilot-house or cooks' galley, in engine-room or pit, in sick-bay or chartroom. The gloom caused by the death and burial at sea of Travers, the New Zealander, soon pa.s.sed. This was a company of fighting men, inured to death in every form. And death they had reckoned as part of the payment to be made for their adventuring.

This, too, helped knit the fine ma.s.s-spirit already binding them together into a coherent, battling group.

A little after two in the afternoon, _Nissr_ pa.s.sed within far sight of the Azores, visible in cloud-rifts as little black spots sown on the waters like spa.r.s.e seeds on a burnished plate of metal. This habitation of man soon slipped away to westward, and once more nothing remained but the clear, cold severity of s.p.a.ce, with now and then a racing drift of rain below, and tumbling, stormy weather all along the sea horizons.

The Master and Bohannan spent some time together after the Azores had been dropped astern and off the starboard quarter. "Captain Alden"

remained in her cabin. She reported by phone, however, that the wound was really only superficial, through the fleshy upper part of the left arm. If this should heal by first intention, as it ought, no complications were to be expected.

Day drew on toward the shank of the afternoon. The sun, rayless, round, blue-white, lagged away toward the west, seeming to sway in high heaven as _Nissr_ took her long dips with the grace and swiftness of a flying falcon. Some time later the cloud-ma.s.ses thinned and broke away, leaving the world of waters spread below in terrible immensity.

As the African coast drew near, its arid influences banished vapor.

Now, clear to the up-curving edge of the world, nothing could be seen below save the steel-gray, s.h.i.+ning plains of water. Waves seemed not to exist. All looked smooth and polished as a mirror of bright metal.

At last, something like dim veils of whiteness began to draw and s.h.i.+mmer on the eastern skyline--the vague glare of the sun-crisped Sahara flinging its furnace ardor to the sky. To catch first sight of land, the Master and Bohannan climbed the ladder again, to the take-off, and thence made their way into the starboard observation gallery. There they brought gla.s.ses to bear. Though nothing definite could yet be seen through the shrouding dazzle that swaddled the world's rim, this fore-hint of land confirmed their reckonings of lat.i.tude and longitude.

"We can't be more than a hundred and fifty miles west of the Canaries," judged the major. "Sure, we can eat supper tonight in an oasis, if we're so minded--with Ouled Nals and houris to hand round the palm-wine and--"

"You forget, my dear fellow," the Master interrupted, "that the first man who goes carousing with wine or women, dies before a firing-squad.

That's not the kind of show we're running!"

"Ah, sure, I did forget!" admitted the Celt. "Well, well, a look at a camel and a palm tree could do no harm. And it won't be long, at this rate, before--"

A sudden, violent concussion, far aft, sent a quivering shudder through the whole fabric of the giant liner. Came a swift burst of flame; black, greasy smoke gushed from the stern, trailing on the high, cold air. Long fire-tongues, banners of incandescence, flailed away, roaring into s.p.a.ce.

Shouts burst, m.u.f.fled, from below. A bell jangled madly. The crackle of pistol-fire punched dully through the rus.h.i.+ng swiftness.

With a curse the major whirled. Frowning, the Master turned and peered. _Nissr_, staggering, tilted her beak sharply oceanward. At a sick angle, she slid, reeling, toward the burnished, watery floor that seemed surging up to meet her.

A hoa.r.s.e shout from the far end of the take-off drew the Master's eyes thither. With strange agility, almost apelike in its prehensile power, a human figure came clambering up over the outer works, clutching at stays, wires, struts.

Other shouts echoed thinly in the rarefied, high air. The climber laughed with savage mockery.

"I've done for _you_!" he howled exultantly. "Fuel-tanks afire--you'll all go to h.e.l.l blazing when they explode! But first--I'll get the boss pirate of the outfit--"

Swiftly the clutching figure scrabbled in over the rail, dropped to the metal plates of the take-off--now slanting steeply down and forward--and broke into a staggering run directly toward the gallery where stood Bohannan and the Master.

At the little ladder-housing sounded a warning shout. The head and shoulders of Captain Alden became visible there. In Alden's right hand glinted a service-revolver.

But already the attacker--the stowaway--had s.n.a.t.c.hed a pistol from his belt. And, as he plunged at full drive down the take-off platform, he thrust the pistol forward.

Almost at point-blank range, howling maledictions, he hurled a murderous fusillade at the Master of the now swiftly falling Eagle of the Sky.

CHAPTER XVIII

"CAPTAIN ALDEN" MAKES GOOD

The crash of shattered gla.s.s mingled with the volley flung by the murderously spitting automatic of the stowaway. From the forward companion, at the top of the ladder, "Captain Alden" fired--one shot only.