The Great Airship Part 13

"Might be tall or short, broad or thin, dark or fair," said d.i.c.k. "It's a conundrum."

"Unless," began Alec.

"Unless what?" d.i.c.k snapped.

"Well, unless we were to investigate personally. For instance, this Charlie's an Englishman, eh?"

"Certainly!" cried Andrew.

"Then there aren't enough of our countrymen in the city to make it difficult to pick out our man. He's a soldier, that we know. It isn't so hard as a rule to tell when one looks at one of that profession. As for the Major, if he's alive, why, seeking might find him."

"But--but you forget. We're up here, a thousand feet in the air," cried Andrew testily.

"Quite so, sir," came the respectful answer. "But the Major descended.

We could do the same."

"Bravo! It's the only course open," cried the Commander. "Mr. Provost, our duty is clearly before us. We must follow the Major, seek him out, and discover his friend Charlie. Come, I volunteer. It would never do for you or your nephew to make the attempt, for you have this tour to make, and you must be successful. For me it is different. I am in the service of my country; this is a question of duty."

"Hear, hear, sir!" chimed in d.i.c.k. "I'd like to come in support. May I?"

"While I suggested the movement and claim a place also," said Alec, with an eagerness foreign to him. "Why not, Mr. Provost?"

Why not? What one man could do, others could also. Besides, how could the crew of this vessel honourably retreat from this beleaguered city and leave a comrade in the lurch, to say nothing of losing something of a secret nature which they had been a.s.sured was of vital importance to their country? No--they must stay. They must go to the Major since he could not return to them.

"I agree," said Andrew, after some few moments' consideration. "You three shall be lowered, and to-morrow night we will return and look for your signal. But let me beg of you all to use the utmost discretion. One misfortune is enough without inviting others."

It was perhaps an hour later when three figures m.u.f.fled in short, thick coats stepped upon the lift platform.

"Goodbye!" whispered Andrew and Joe. "A safe return!"

"_Au revoir!_" sang out d.i.c.k, in the seventh heaven of happiness. "Now, hold on, Alec! We don't want you to get tumbling over and so announcing our coming."

Hearty hand-grips were exchanged, and then the motor hummed its tune.

The Commander and d.i.c.k and Alec sank out of sight and were at once swallowed up in the darkness.

CHAPTER VIII

The Besieged City

"Steady! Now, lower very slowly, for we are close to the houses."

Commander Jackson pressed the b.u.t.ton of the electric indicator aboard the platform on which he and d.i.c.k Hamshaw and Alec Jardine were being lowered into the besieged city of Adrianople, and applied his lips to the loud-speaking telephone. He barely whispered into the receiver, but d.i.c.k and Alec knew well that his voice would be heard easily enough aloft.

"Stop! Move away to the right; we are directly above a very large building."

The platform of the lift jerked slightly as the motor above was arrested, and for the s.p.a.ce of a minute perhaps, it and its human freight rose and fell as the long steel wire stretched and then contracted. d.i.c.k craned his head over the edge, for he was kneeling, just as he had been on that earlier occasion when the Commander came down to his rescue. Below, barely visible in the all-pervading gloom, he made out the dim, hazy details of a building, which stretched on either hand for some considerable distance. Then he turned on his elbow and stared upward, to find that nothing was visible. There was not even the barest outline of the great airs.h.i.+p which he knew well enough was directly overhead, not a light, not a single sound, not even the gentle tune of that humming motor. But down below there were sounds. Hark! What was that?

"Men marching through the streets," whispered the Commander. "We shall have to be cautious, for it would never do to drop into the hands of the Turks. They would not understand our coming. We should be spies, as a matter of course. Hold on up there," his companions heard him whisper into the receiver of the telephone. "Hoist a little higher. Now, move ahead."

Somewhere in the distance a clock struck musically, the sound easily reaching the ears of the adventurous three descending to the city. One, two, three.

"Two hours more and we shall have the dawn," whispered the Commander.

"Listen! Troops are on the move. There must be thousands marching beneath us. No doubt reinforcements are being taken to some part where a new and fierce attack is antic.i.p.ated. Ah!"

d.i.c.k flushed as red as a beetroot in the darkness, and was thankful for the cloak it lent him. For who could help starting violently under the circ.u.mstances? A loud report had suddenly rung out away on their left, a detonation which set the air above the city reverberating. There was a flash in the distance, a streak of flame cutting into the darkness, and then, heard perhaps half a minute later, a hideous shriek, getting louder and more insistent.

"A messenger from the besiegers," said the Commander hoa.r.s.ely. "Ah! It plumped into the house away over there to the right. Lucky we weren't directly over it."

It was fortunate for all three without a doubt, for that messenger from the lines of the Bulgarians or from those of the Servians, who were now aiding their comrades in this siege, was certainly not of the peaceful variety. That shriek, in fact, was followed by a clatter, by the crash of a hard, heavy body striking against masonry. Then there was a thunderous roar, a huge spot of flame and smoke and debris, and finally darkness and silence, silence made more intense by the occasional low moaning of some poor injured person. A second later another gun spoke from the distance, while the streak of flame from the muzzle was followed by a third detonation from a different direction, and later by half a dozen more. Suspended in midair d.i.c.k and his friends listened to the roar of the sh.e.l.ls, to the clatter of tumbling masonry, and to the explosions that followed with feelings which can hardly be described as precisely comfortable.

"George! A near shave," whispered d.i.c.k. "Hear it, sir?"

"Hear it? Rather!" came gruffly from the Commander. "That sh.e.l.l went over our heads, and I reckon there cannot have been more than a dozen feet between it and us. Nasty, eh! if one were to hit the wire rope."

"Ugh! What's he want to talk like that for?" Alec grumbled beneath his breath. He peered over the edge of the platform and s.h.i.+vered. Not that he had not plenty of courage and spirit. But somehow the dangers of a bombardment seemed greater when suspended between earth and sky than when one has one's feet firmly planted upon Mother Earth. It seemed, too, that the jovial Commander felt the same also.

"It'd be nasty to get that rope cut, eh?" he asked again. "We'd fall heavily. Let's move on. Do either of you lads hear any more troops moving?"

A few minutes before there had been the m.u.f.fled sound of a mult.i.tude of rough boots treading upon uneven cobbles. Sometimes one heard the clink of a sabre against the stones, or of one man's rifle against that of a comrade. And now and then voices had reached the three suspended overhead--sharp voices, as if officers were there issuing commands.

"Hear 'em?" asked the Commander.

"Moved on, sir, I think," responded d.i.c.k. "Now's the time for us to do the same."

"Listen! They've gone away to our left. You can hear their steps still,"

said Alec. "Ah! That ends all sounds from them. I suppose this is a general bombardment, sir?"

"Sounds like it," admitted the Commander. "Guns are directing sh.e.l.ls upon the city now from every side. It's time, as you say, d.i.c.k, to get a move on. Ah! The s.h.i.+p has carried us away from that building. What's below us?"

They craned their necks over the edge of the platform and peered down into the darkness. "A garden, sir," suggested d.i.c.k.

"Clear ground in any case," came from Alec.

"Then lower away," the Commander whispered into the receiver. "Steady!

Ah, she's b.u.mped! Hop out, you fellows. All clear? Then hoist above there. We're safely in the city."

Did they hear a gentle hum from high up overhead? d.i.c.k fancied he could for one brief instant as the lift shot upward. But it may have been merely imagination. In any case there came quickly enough other sounds to drown any there may have been from the airs.h.i.+p; for a monstrous gun spoke in the distance. The air above this devoted city shook and vibrated, while the steel monster launched into s.p.a.ce howled and shrieked as it rushed to its destination.

"Down behind this wall," called the Commander, who had stood up to stare in the direction from which the shot had come. "Down, quick! That sh.e.l.l's coming straight for us."

Throwing themselves down upon the ground behind a low wall beside which the lift had dropped them, they waited breathlessly for the landing of that messenger. It shrieked a warning at them. It announced its coming in a manner there was no mistaking. Then suddenly it burst upon them.

The shriek grew positively deafening, rising to such a blood-curdling pitch that it would have shaken the pluck even of a veteran. But it was m.u.f.fled all in a second. There was a ponderous thud within a dozen yards of the adventurous trio, an uncanny silence, and then a detonation that threw them against the wall, and sent earth and stones and debris in every direction. And what a sight the wide-spreading flames of that explosion presented! d.i.c.k saw buildings all about him, buildings over which stones and clods of earth were hurtling. To his left, within two hundred yards perhaps, was an enormous erection, the actual size of which he could not hope to estimate. But the momentary flash of the explosion showed him towers and minarets, proof positive that here was a mosque, the mosque, no doubt, for which Major Harvey had aimed when descending into the city. That fleeting flash gave him in addition just one glimpse of a huge shape floating almost directly overhead, no doubt the gigantic outline of the airs.h.i.+p.

"Lor! Supposing she felt the shock?" he groaned. "Supposing the airs.h.i.+p has sustained some damage."