The Great Airship Part 33

"'Pon my word, I'm proud of him as a brother officer," cried the Commander cordially. "Tell us all about it, d.i.c.k."

The bashful midshipman recounted what had happened, and how he had overcome the many difficulties which had, one after another, faced him.

"It looked like being all up at one time, sir," he said. "The ship was turning on her nose, making it difficult to get about and reach the valves. I'm afraid we've done a heap of damage. You see, one hadn't time to waste, nor breathe either. And so I laid in at the heads of the valves with my hammer, careless, so long as I could get them to open."

"And rightly so," said Joe warmly. "As to damage, it will be trifling, and of no consequence; for we carry aboard spare valves and seatings, and they can be fitted in a few hours. That reminds me to speak of our movements. We are now on the Tibetan side of the Himalayas, resting a couple of hundred yards above the ground, and in a totally uninhabited part. It will be necessary to refit, to take in water, and to set our gas-producer plant going. Now, why not a trip to Lhasa in the meanwhile?

A trip to the forbidden city, there to call upon the Chinese Governor?

It would be interesting and instructive both to the Llama priests and to ourselves, and it will be something to have accomplished."

Such a journey was a mere nothing to the aeroplane carried upon the broad deck of the airship, and as Joe required only a few of his staff to effect repairs and restock the tanks, quite a large party left the ship on the following morning. Nor is there much of startling moment to record as to their doings. For the city of Lhasa to-day is inhabited by beings holding different views from those living there but a few years ago. Then the place was sacred, travellers were forbidden to enter, while the very effort of reaching the city was more than enough to dissuade the average person from making the attempt. Those upland plains about the city are, in fact, a wilderness of inhospitality in winter weather, while the milder months are all too short for an expedition which entails going afoot, and demands strenuous exertions from the very beginning. But a welcome now awaits the stranger. The Llamas seek for outside guidance, and are no longer content with an existence unbroken by the smallest distraction. The European who cares to undertake that journey may expect some kindness, while Tibet to-day has sent her sons to Europe, there to gather something of Western learning and customs. It followed, therefore, that d.i.c.k and Alec had a merry and entertaining visit to record, and enjoyed the aeroplane trip immensely. Then they rejoined the airship, now complete and ready, and that same evening the vessel once more crossed the Himalayas and steered a course for Burma.

"Where we take in oil for our engines," said Joe. "Later, we will follow the red route down the length of Burma till we reach the Malay Peninsula. Afterwards there is Borneo to be visited, and then New Guinea and Australasia."

The delights of such a course need no elaborate description, and without a doubt they were put in the shade by constant admiration for the ship's behaviour. For it was not always fair weather, and that gale of wind about the summit of the mountain they had so recently left was as nothing to a storm experienced off Sumatra. Then, indeed, the true working of Joe Gresson's design was experienced and appreciated.

"I could not have believed it," the Commander shouted in the Major's ear as they stood on the upper deck clutching the railings. "A Zeppelin now in a gale such as this is would be torn to pieces."

"Smashed; her sides driven in without a doubt. Then she could never face a storm of this fierceness. She would be driven miles out of her course, if she were not wrecked instantly."

"While we merely head up to the gale and lay to, hardly even rolling."

Thanks to the water ballast which she had again taken aboard, the airship was wonderfully steady, while her capacity to withstand a gale was proved to the utmost. Even when turned broadside on to the wind the ship maintained her position, the sweeping aerial currents being cut asunder by those lateral keels, and pa.s.sing harmlessly above and beneath her. But then she was possessed of those cross air-shafts in which powerful screws worked, a feature absent entirely from the Zeppelin.

It was a week later when the pa.s.sengers on the deck above sighted the huge island of New Guinea, that inhospitable region, a great part of which is still unknown to white men, where jungles and swamps are inhabited by the fiercest of cannibals. And here it was that d.i.c.k and his friends came in for another adventure.

CHAPTER XVIII

Off to New Guinea

A purple sea from which the sun's rays flashed upward with all the iridescent colours of the rainbow; a gorgeous blue sky without a single fleecy cloud; and a medley of brilliant islets marked the course of the great airship as she stemmed her way towards the wild, uncivilized island of New Guinea. Stepping the broad, long deck above, and enjoying to the full a climate as balmy as that of Old England in the heyday of summer, one could peep down upon golden dots rising here and there in the distance, dots which grew from a purple haze and became more yellow, till at length the deep green of luxuriant vegetation began to merge with the yellow, till single objects became distinguishable, and until one could trace long lengths of smooth sand upon which white breakers roared, wide-sweeping coral boundaries of silent lagoons that appeared by their wealth of colour to be of vast depth, and groves of waving palms that invited those aboard the ship to halt, to descend and rest awhile amidst surroundings the peace and beauty of which none had ever seen an equal. But sometimes the picture was spoiled, for dark objects dotted the sands. Men raced out from amidst the trees, and puny bows sent equally puny arrows soaring upward in a feeble attempt to reach the leviathan overhead.

"Plucky of 'em," remarked the Major. "No doubt those islanders take us for some supernatural object, and are really shaking in their shoes."

"Shoes!" interjected the Commander, with lifting eyebrows, lowering the gla.s.ses which he had held for some while glued to his eyes. "I don't see anything to convince me that the people we have seen make use of such civilized attachments. Indeed, their clothing is chiefly remarkable by its absence. My dear Major, we are pa.s.sing above islets seldom visited by white men, some hardly visited even by wandering Chinese or Dyaks.

Those are nature's children we see below, many of them without a doubt wild heathen cannibals."

"Ugh! Supposing we were to fall," laughed d.i.c.k.

"Then we should be promptly enshrined as G.o.ds," grinned the Major. "I don't say, d.i.c.ky, my lad, that we should be allowed to keep this mortal state. The chances are that we should be killed out of hand and skilfully stuffed. Pleasant ending, eh? First the worthy Mr. Carl Reitberg, sportsman and magnate, does his best to blow us to pieces; then Joe makes a vain attempt to asphyxiate us all, or to plunge us for ever in an atmosphere likely to act upon us as would a refrigerator.

Finally, there come these natives and a stuffing process."

"For them, sir, yes," laughed d.i.c.k. "If they're cannibals, and we're good eating, then there would be stuffing for them with a vengeance."

Sometimes fleets of canoes emerged from groves of palms or were launched from placid lagoons, while their crews paddled madly in the vain attempt to keep pace with the airship. And so as to encourage them, and because there was no danger of colliding with high ground, Joe set the ship at a lower alt.i.tude, till she was but a hundred feet above the water.

But such close acquaintance with this strange monster was too much for the nerves of the natives. It had been very well for them to discharge arrows at her when a thousand feet up. But now, when her vast proportions were more apparent, they took fright, and without a single exception bolted for cover, many of the pa.s.sengers in the dug-outs diving overboard and swimming beneath water.

"Not that it'd help 'em much," the Major remarked. "With a rifle one could pick every one of them off as he came to the surface to breathe.

Look! Did ever you see such clear water?"

It was positively fascinating to gaze downward and watch fish darting here and there, to follow the agonized movements of the natives who had taken to the water. For at that elevation the bed of the ocean was laid out like a map, a beautiful golden map, crossed by dull-red bands of coral often enough, marked by upheavals of rock in some places, and once, close to a rocky headland, showing on the sand at its foot the outline of a lost vessel.

"What a ship for treasure hunting!" cried the Commander. "No need to sound and dredge and send divers down in order to discover a wreck.

There it would lie, beneath one's eyes, and one could set to work immediately. Joe, tell us like a good fellow, how far can a man see into other waters?"

"A hundred feet, sometimes more. In the Yellow Sea not nearly as much.

But let us take the English Channel. I have carried out experiments there, and have detected the presence of a wreck in quite deep water. As to a submarine, from a ship such as this is one could drop a heavy mine over a submerged vessel without difficulty and without much danger to oneself."

"So that the use of submarines will become limited once such ships as this are built in numbers," ventured the Major.

"Exactly--or, rather, the risks to the crews of submarines will become even greater."

"Which leads one to ask where all this modern invention will end? As applied to engines of destruction, it has provided means whereby men may be ma.s.sacred by the hundred; for modern guns and modern sh.e.l.l are capable of terrible destruction at distances never dreamed of but fifty years ago. Ships may be caused to founder not only by the direct gunfire of an opponent, or by torpedoes launched at her, but by the aid of submarines, the presence of which may not have been suspected. Add the modern rifle, with its high-muzzle velocity and consequent flat trajectory, and its vastly increased range, whereby troops may be slain at a distance of two miles from the firing point. Then, with wireless apparatus to enable one general to co-ordinate his movements with another, aeroplanes to spy out the land and report the presence of unsuspected troops, and lastly, airships such as this one, capable of almost anything--why, sir, where are we coming to?"

"Were I to say to a stage where nations agreed to limit armaments, to clear up their disputes by means of arbitration, and merely to keep sufficient fighting forces to collectively police the world, I should be considered a madman," said Joe deliberately. "But that era is coming.

Not perhaps in our time, Major; but come it must, and not precisely for the reason that modern invention has made war more terrible than ever.

No, sir. It is because ships such as this one, ships which plough the sea also, and better means of intercommunication amongst the nations, are making friends of the working people. Wars are made too often in the Cabinets and Foreign Offices of the nations. Then men are dragged from their homes to fight men with whom they would otherwise willingly have been friendly. They are sacrificed for an idea perhaps, for a petty dispute which the people will in future leave with every confidence to such tribunals as I have mentioned. Then, sir, there will be no war, save against savages who stand in the way of civilization."

Such a time may come--who knows? and it would be well for the peoples of the world undoubtedly. It is said that without war, without the strenuous effort to keep in ready condition, a nation suffers in morale, deteriorates, in fact. And one cannot but admit the value of the ordered life, the discipline, and the method young men encounter when enlisted in either army or navy. Still efficiency for war is not the only means of taxing the efforts of a nation. Peace demands its strenuous times, and commerce, the arts and professions, a thousand ways of living call for vigour, for brain and muscle, for all that is good in men, and thus keep up the morale of a nation. However, Joe and his friends were not the ones to embark upon such a discussion when sailing above such a delightfully purple sea as that lying beneath them. They hung over the rail of the vessel, eyeing each tiny islet as they slipped past it, and finally gave a shout of delight as New Guinea hove into sight in the distance.

"We'll mount a little so as to obtain a finer view," said Joe. "Then we can select a landing-place. It's already evening, so that I fancy it will be dark before we arrive over the island."

The tropical night found the ship floating directly over the island, across a great breadth of which she had rushed during the latter part of the evening. Then, having crossed a range of mountains, some of the peaks of which were of great height, Joe switched on one of his huge lanterns. Instantly the land beneath was illuminated, and as the vessel descended it was seen that she was directly above a huge plateau, which ran upward to the south, there to join with the foot-hills of the range they had just crossed, while in the opposite direction it fell away of a sudden, descending abruptly into a wide valley in which ran a roaring torrent. For the rest there was jungle everywhere, impenetrable jungle, save in a few places, one of which seemed exactly to meet the needs of the voyagers. At ten o'clock precisely the great airship grounded, settled upon her powerful spring arms, and then became stationary.

"And here we shall be able to overlook the engines," declared Joe as they chatted after supper. "Not that the motors want any particular attention. Still, a rest will do them no harm, while every engineer loves to make sure that everything is running as it should do.

Therefore, to-morrow, gentlemen, the island is at your service, while I shall be seeing to the matters I have mentioned."

To say that the island of New Guinea was at the service of his pa.s.sengers was to put the matter amusingly. For New Guinea happens to be an enormous place, and without an airship the crossing of it is almost an impossibility. Still, the neighbouring jungle and that broiling torrent down below offered many attractions, so that, when the morning dawned, it found d.i.c.k and Alec already dressed for an expedition and armed with shot guns, while the Major, the Commander, and Andrew stepped from their cabins dressed in rough shooting clothes, the latter with a rod in his hand, while the others bore sporting rifles. Larkin shuffled close behind the Major, bearing a basket of provisions, while Hawkins and Hurst had donned their service gaiters, and each with a haversack over his shoulder intimated that he proposed to keep watch and ward over d.i.c.k and Alec.

Then all trudged from the gallery into the open, sought for a path through the jungle, and finding none, proceeded to force their way through the matted trees and trailing creepers as best they could.

"We've agreed to make for the edge of the plateau," said the Commander.

"Then Mr. Andrew can make his way down to the river, while we can follow or stay above--whichever appeals most to us. How nice it is to feel solid earth once more beneath one's feet."

"And smell the vegetation," chimed in the Major. "Not that jungles are always very savoury. Down below there, in the rainy season, I expect there's a miasma, and a European would quickly suffer from fever. Now, here we are at the edge. _Au revoir_, Mr. Andrew!"

They watched the white-haired but active Colonial descend the steep slope of the ridge, and saw him halt at the side of the tumbling stream to adjust his rod and prepare his line. Then the shooting party divided, Alec and d.i.c.k with the faithful Hurst and Hawkins striking off in one direction, while the Major and Commander, with the scowling Larkin, departed in another. And very soon rifle shots awoke the echoes, while our two young friends managed to bag half a dozen birds not at all unlike pheasants.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE QUARTET SET OUT FOR THE AIRSHIP

_Page 323_]

"Do for the pot, and will come as a welcome change after frozen stuff,"

laughed d.i.c.k. "Wonder whether there are any alligators down in the river. If so I'd like to take a shot at 'em. Only we'd have to return for our rifles."