Part 18 (1/2)
Every one on board the _Ariel_ was astir the next morning as soon as the first rays of dawn were shooting across the vast plain that stretched away to the eastward, and by the time it was fairly daylight breakfast was over and all were anxiously speculating as to what they would find on the other side of the tremendous cliffs, on an eyrie in which they had found a resting-place for the night.
As soon as all was ready for a start, Arnold said to Natasha, who was standing alone with him on the after part of the deck--
”If you would like to steer the _Ariel_ into your new kingdom, I shall be delighted to give you the lesson in steering that I promised you yesterday.”
Natasha saw the inner meaning of the offer at a glance, and replied with a smile that made his blood tingle--
”That would be altogether too great a responsibility for a beginner.
I might run on to some of these fearful rocks. But if you will take the helm when the dangerous part comes, I will learn all I can by watching you.”
”As long as you are with me in the wheel-house for the next hour or so,” said Arnold, with almost boyish frankness, ”I shall be content.
I need scarcely tell you why I want to be alone with you when we first sight this new home of our future empire.”
”I have half a mind not to come after that very injudicious speech.
Still, if only for the sake of its delightful innocence, I will forgive you this time. You really must practise the worldly art of dissimulation a little, or I shall have to get the Princess to play chaperon.”
Natasha spoke these words in a bantering tone, and with a flush on her lovely cheeks, that forced Arnold to cut short the conversation for the moment, by giving an order to Andrew Smith, who at that instant put his head out of the wheel-house door to say--
”All ready, sir!”
”Very well,” replied Arnold. ”I will take the wheel, and do you tell every one to keep under cover.”
Smith saluted, and disappeared, and then Natasha and Arnold went into the wheel-house, while Colston and the Princess took their places in the deck-saloon, the two men off duty going into the conning tower forward.
”Why every one under cover, Captain Arnold?” asked Natasha, as soon as the two were ensconced in the wheel-house and the door shut.
”Because I am going to put the _Ariel_ through her paces, and enter Aeria in style,” replied he, signalling for the fan-wheels to revolve. ”The fact is that, so far as I can see, these mountains are too high for us to rise over them by means of the lifting-wheels, which are only calculated to carry the s.h.i.+p to a height of about five thousand feet. After that the air gets too rarefied for them to get a solid grip. Now, these mountains look to me more like seven thousand feet high.”
”Then how will you get over them?”
”I shall first take a cruise and see if I can find a negotiable gap, and then leap it.”
”What! Leap seven thousand feet?”
”No; you forget that we shall be over five thousand up when we take the jump, and I have no doubt that we shall find a place where a thousand feet or so more will take us over. That we shall rise easily with the planes and propellers, and you will see such a leap as man never made in the world before.”
While he was speaking the _Ariel_ had risen from the ground, and was hanging a few hundred feet above the little plateau. He gave the signal for the wheels to be lowered, and the propellers to set to work at half-speed. Then he pulled the lever which moved the air-planes, and the vessel sped away forwards and upwards at about sixty miles an hour.
Arnold headed her away from the mountains until he had got an offing of a couple of miles, and then he swung her round and skirted the cliffs, rising ever higher and higher, and keeping a sharp look-out for a depression among the ridges that still towered nearly three thousand feet above them.
When he had explored some twenty miles of the mountain wall, Arnold suddenly pointed towards it, and said--
”There is a place that I think will do. Look yonder, between those two high peaks away to the southward. That ridge is not more than six thousand feet from the earth, and the _Ariel_ can leap that as easily as an Irish hunter would take a five-barred gate.”
”It looks dreadfully high from here,” said Natasha, in spite of herself turning a shade paler at the idea of taking a six thousand foot ridge at a flying leap. She had splendid nerves, but this was her first aerial voyage, and it was also the first time that she had ever been brought so closely face to face with the awful grandeur of Nature in her own secret and solitary places.
She would have faced a levelled rifle without flinching, but as she looked at that frowning ma.s.s of rocks towering up into the sky, and then down into the fearful depths below, where huge trees looked like tiny shrubs, and vast forests like black patches of heather on the earth, her heart stood still in her breast when she thought of the frightful fate that would overwhelm the _Ariel_ and her crew should she fail to rise high enough to clear the ridge, or if anything went wrong with her machinery at the critical moment.
”Are you sure you can do it?” she asked almost involuntarily.