The Great Airship Part 18

"I've a head that feels as big as a football and heavier than lead," he told them, sitting down of a sudden and looking faint. "Carry on without me; I'll be better in a twinkling."

"Then we turn to d.i.c.k. The Navy commands here," smiled Colonel Steven, while the Major nodded. "Have the goodness, Mr. d.i.c.k, to issue your orders. Really, though, lad, you have the situation at your finger tips.

Do we stay here, or do we issue out again and seek some other residence?"

d.i.c.k removed his fez and scratched his head. It was not, perhaps, a very refined operation, but it seemed to help.

"You see," he began, "I'm thinking about the airship and how we are to rejoin her. Supposing we hide here and send up a flare to-night. Well, these johnnies may catch sight of the flame and rush us before we can board the lift. Awkward that, very."

"Then let us suppose that we change our quarters. Are we better off?"

asked the Colonel.

"Perhaps. If we can find a crib, sir, that's easier to hold, more ungetatable as one might say."

"For instance," interjected the Major. "You've some such crib in your mind's eye, d.i.c.k."

"Well, there's the mosque. It's empty, save for a sentry at the door.

There are four towers at least there, and I climbed up one of 'em this very morning. Now, a stairway could be held. There are no doors and windows in all sorts of directions. Besides, we'd be above the beggars who wanted to get us, and that'd be an advantage. We could hold out perhaps till the airship arrived to take us."

It was a likely enough suggestion, and the two soldiers thought well of it. But the Colonel soon put his finger on what appeared to be a weak spot.

"We're up in this tower, let's imagine," he said. "Then the ship comes.

We're bottled in perhaps. How do we emerge? How reach the line which this ship throws out to us?"

"Wait. You haven't seen the airship yet," cried Alec. "Wait, sir, and you'll have an eye-opener. She can pick us up easily wherever we are, even on the top of a chimney, for her lift can be manoeuvred with an ease and certainty that will astonish you. Oh yes, it don't matter where we happen to get to, Mr. Andrew and Joe can reach us."

There was pride in his voice. His words conveyed the impression that if anything in this world were a success it was the curious lift attached to the great airship, although, as a matter of course, that huge vessel was of even greater excellence. But it can be imagined that to one who had never seen the ship floating in the air, who had never even set foot upon her galleries, nor climbed to the height of her upper deck, it was hard to believe that what Alec described so glowingly could in fact be possible. Not that the gallant Colonel was a sceptic, or in the habit of decrying new inventions, or disbelieving in the possibility of things that he had never seen. On the contrary, he was very much awake and alive to the astonishing progress to be observed on every side, particularly progress appertaining to mechanics. For has not the latter end of the nineteenth century, and the beginning of the present seen an amazing advancement on every hand, an advancement beside which the progress of the so-called Victorian era pales almost to insignificance?

Think of the conquest which the internal-explosion motor has accomplished, of the rapid road and sea locomotion it has made possible, of the trackless pathways of the air which it has thrown open to human beings. For the beginning and the end of man's first successful journeys at speed through the air, upon machines heavier than the atmosphere which supports them, is attributable almost solely to the petrol motor, that internal-explosion engine which less than twenty years ago was but the crudest of inventions.

Colonel Steven had kept in close touch with the whole movement, and had, during the hours he lay in prison with the Major, listened to his description of the wonderful airship which Joe Gresson and his uncle had constructed. He was burning to board the vessel, to ferret out its secrets, to understand its construction; and he may be forgiven if he failed to comprehend quite how the ship could manage to remove himself and his friends even from the tower of a mosque, should the party happen to find themselves in such a position. However, the discussion as to their movements was cut short at the moment. Cries were heard from the street, and the Major soon made an important announcement.

"That fellow again!" he cried, in low tones. "He and his followers had run out of sight, and I was in hopes that we had thrown them off the scent. But they are coming back, yes, and numbers have joined them. All the ragtag and bobtail of this terrible city have joined in the search."

d.i.c.k dived towards the window there to join him, and stood peering out into the street. It was true enough that the man who led these searchers was returning, and true too that others had joined his following.

Indeed, some fifty ragged fellows were trailing after that young Turkish officer, whose head was swathed in bandages, and amongst them, immediately in rear of the officer, was no less a person than the sentry whom d.i.c.k had accosted at the door of the mosque, and whom he had duped so cleverly.

"Jingo!" he cried, turning with a somewhat scared expression upon the company. "They've got to the bottom of the whole business. The chap in advance is the beggar I collided with last night, and I suppose he's anxious to get back these clothes I was compelled to borrow. Then there's the man who was at the guard-house, and who helped to put the Major and the Colonel in prison. Jingo! They're entering the houses on either side and searching them."

There was a blank look upon the faces of the forlorn little party. Not that they were frightened, or were likely to submit themselves as prisoners without a struggle. But the outlook was black without a doubt.

This mob of Turkish soldiers, dressed in their ragged khaki uniforms, unkempt, undisciplined, capable of any violence now that the only authority over them was represented by a single youthful officer, were searching every corner, and when they came to the house in which d.i.c.k and his friends had sheltered they would find the party, would drag them out and then, perhaps, shoot them.

"Nasty place," admitted the Colonel. "Regular troops might be trusted to make prisoners of us, to treat us decently, and wait for their officers to investigate the matter. Now----" he shrugged his shoulders. "Well,"

he said, "we might find ourselves placed against a wall and shot down deliberately. Adrianople is in a condition of disorder, which one may imagine will get worse rather than better. Who is to prevent violence just now, when every soldier who can be controlled is in the firing line? That officer? No."

"Not he!" d.i.c.k cried. "He was furious last night. He'll be more angry this morning. Besides, all these fellows are wasters, men who ought to be in the forts but who have slunk to the rear. I ain't going to wait to be torn to pieces, or shot out of hand. They've rifles with them, sir."

"While we have revolvers," said the Major coolly. "Now, d.i.c.k, you're leader still. What happens? Do we wait for these gentlemen, or--what?"

"We pick the Commander up, carry him out at the back of the house, and slink off to the great mosque," came the instant answer. "It's not more than three hundred yards from us, and if we can only get within easy distance we can keep this mob off with our weapons. Shall I lead the way out of the back door, sir?"

"At once," came promptly from the Colonel. "See, I am a strong man, and as hard as nails. I will shoulder the Commander. Come, Jackson," he said, turning to the naval officer who had meanwhile struggled to get to his feet, and had sunk back almost fainting. "Now, up you go. That's the way. Cling with your arms round my neck. I've a good grip of your legs, and can manage to use my revolver. Ready, d.i.c.k."

"Then off we go," cried the Major. "First d.i.c.k, then the Colonel, then Alec. I bring up the rear, and Alec can help me if there's any bother.

Come, don't let us delay any longer; those ruffians are already getting far too close for our safety."

Silently opening the rickety back door of the house that had sheltered them, d.i.c.k peered out and issued into the open.

"Come," he called gently. "There's a garden here, and a door at the end.

It ought to take us into another street and so away from those beggars.

Listen to 'em. They're kicking up more row than those fellows away in the trenches."

To speak the truth, this mob of unattached individuals in search of our friends were by now infuriated at their want of success, for it began to look as if they had been completely hoodwinked. Some fifty of them were dashing into and out of the houses, breaking doors open with the stocks of their rifles without the smallest ceremony, and venting upon cupboards and beds and woodwork, where they imagined someone might be hiding, all the ferocity they might have been expected to display had they been directly engaged with the Bulgarians. Many had their bayonets fixed, and drove them deep into recesses, into dark corners, and through the very heart of the gigantic mattresses on some of the beds. They bellowed at one another. Some even slipped cartridges into the breeches of their rifles and fired into the cellars and through the windows of the houses. Altogether there was pandemonium in that part of the city, pandemonium made worse by the rattle of musketry in the distance, by those bursting sh.e.l.ls which still clattered amidst houses and streets, and by the shrill cries of terror, by the sobs and execrations of the civil population now subjected to this added trouble.

"Ah! See! We have found their last lair. Look!"

The sentry whom d.i.c.k had accosted at the mosque came rushing from the door of the tenement which our hero had but just vacated and waved an object aloft. It was a cap, the same which the Colonel had been wearing, and which the effort to lift the Commander to his back had dislodged from his head. In an instant the Turk had pounced upon it, and there he was now in the street, calling the officer and his ragged following towards him, gesticulating and shouting.

"See! I remember this cap. It was upon the head of one of our prisoners, one of the foreign spies sent in here by the Bulgarians."

"And the men themselves. You saw them also?" asked the officer, s.n.a.t.c.hing the cap from him.

"The house is empty. They are gone. That cap proves that they were there lately."

"Fool! Did you not look for them? Did you not attempt to discover whence they had gone?" was shouted at him, while the furious officer looked as if he were capable of shooting him down in his anger. "Into the house,"

he bellowed. "Empty! Nothing here to keep us. Then out at the back.

Look. The ground is soft after the melting of the snow. Here are fresh footmarks. Follow! Follow!"

Led by the officer the mob went tearing down the tiny garden of the humble tenement, and burst their way through the gate at the bottom.

Indeed, in their eagerness and fury at having been so duped, and in their knowledge that order was done with in Adrianople for the moment, they tore the gate from its hinges, trampled upon a couple of harmless civilians walking in the road to which the gate gave entrance, and then seized and beat them unmercifully.

"Release their throats so that they may speak!" commanded the brutal young officer who led this riotous following. "Now, we seek some foreigners who but lately escaped along this road. You saw them? What!

You shake your heads. Shoot them!"

It was a sample of the justice and treatment which d.i.c.k and his friends might encounter if they fell into the hands of these rascals. At such a time it seemed that friend and foe were alike to these men, skulkers for the most part. Furious at the thought that the two unfortunate people they had come upon could not help them they hurried them to the house opposite, and perhaps would even have gone to the length of shooting them had not one of the poor wretches shouted at the top of his voice:

"We can help you," he called. "Give us but the opportunity, and I swear by the Koran that we can speak. But you have beaten the breath from our bodies."

"Then release them. Speak!" commanded the officer. "We seek some foreigners."

"Five men pa.s.sed us but a few minutes ago, one of whom was injured and was borne by a comrade. They were hurrying towards the great mosque, and a Turkish officer led them."

"The same--the ones we seek! They went this way?" demanded the officer.

Hardly had the route been indicated when the whole mob was in motion again, racing off along the street in pursuit of our hero. Nor was it long before these wretches came in sight of the forlorn little party. A shriek of glee escaped them immediately. Men levelled their rifles as they ran and pulled their triggers, careless where the bullets went, while the ruffianly officer drew his revolver and sent shot after shot at d.i.c.k and his fellows.

"Keep straight on, d.i.c.k," the Major sang out. "Those fellows couldn't hit a haystack at the pace they're going, so we've only fluke shots to chance. That's the mosque, ain't it?"

"Yes, sir," d.i.c.k called out over his shoulder. "Two minutes'll do it.

Then we cross the floor of the hall, reach the foot of one of the towers, and then, by jingo, the business begins with a vengeance."