CHAPTER XIV. FROM THE SEA TO THE AIR.

TWENTY-FOUR hours after she had reached Mount Terror the Narwhal came into the inner basin of Christmas Harbour, running easily along the surface, with the red flag flying at her flagstaff. The news spread rapidly through the little settlement, the dwellers in which had been wondering greatly at her sudden disappearance, and there was quite a crowd on the jetty as she ran alongside. Max Ernstein was among it, and as the battleship came to a standstill he saw to his amazement Alan spring ashore and come towards him with outstretched hands.

“Why, what does this mean?” he said, as he grasped his hand. “I thought you told me you were never going to leave the Narwhal until”—

“Until we had done what we have done,” said Alan with a laugh, as he returned his hand-clasp with a grip that made the bones crack. “We have destroyed a good half of what remained of the Russian sea navy, and, what’s more, we’ve blown up the entrance to their submarine dockyard, and completely crippled them as far as building or equipping new vessels is concerned until they can find a new harbour.”

“Magnificent!” exclaimed Ernstein. “Glorious! You’ll be wearing the golden wings again in forty-eight hours.”

“If I am,” said Alan, flushing with pleasure at the thought, “the credit will be due to Alexis, and not to me. It was his[139] idea entirely. But never mind that now. We’ve suffered rather badly, and only just escaped with our lives. Five out of six of the Narwhal’s crew are disabled, and I want you to get them out and send them away to Aeria as soon as possible. Meanwhile Alexis and I will write our despatch to the Council.”

His instructions were obeyed at once, and the invalids were transferred to the Vega, the air-ship that was to convey them to Aeria, and in her luxurious state-rooms their hurts were attended to by the best skill on the island while the despatch was being drawn up.

It was brief, plain, almost formal in language, and confined entirely to statement of bare fact, and in little more than an hour after the arrival of the Narwhal at Christmas Harbour the Vega had risen into the air, and was speeding on her way towards Aeria.

Meanwhile the news of the daring venture and brilliant exploits of Alan and Alexis and their comrades spread like wildfire through the island, and everyone who was not engaged on duties that could not be left came to the settlement to see and congratulate the two heroes of the hour, whose strange and romantic fate, so well known to every Aerian, had thus suddenly been glorified by the triumph of the genius and daring which had proved capable of wresting victory from defeat and glory from misfortune.

Although some were more demonstrative, none were heartier or more sincere in their congratulations than Edward Forrest, the admiral of the station, and, unknown to Alan and Alexis, he and Ernstein had sent a joint despatch by the Vega, strongly urging both the justice and the policy of at once restoring to the full rights of citizenship the two men who had proved themselves possessed of such extraordinary ability.

If the battle for the empire of the world was to be fought over again, the command of the forces of Aeria could not be entrusted to any hands so able and so daring as those of the President’s son and his friend and companion in misfortune and victory. The triumphs at Kerguelen and Antarctica had really been due to them alone. They had given warning of[140] the attack on the station, and it was due to the skill and boldness of their strategy that it had been foiled with such disaster to the enemy.

This of itself was much, but it had not satisfied either their ambition or their devotion, for, after it had been accomplished, they had carried the war almost single-handed in the Russian stronghold, and there, under circumstances of unparalleled danger to themselves, they had struck a blow which could not fail to cripple the sea-power of the enemy, and so influence to an incalculable extent the ultimate issue of the war which, ere long, might be raging over the whole world.

That night, while the almost constant storms of the southern winter were sweeping over the barren surface of Desolation Land, a feast was held in the central hall of the headquarters at Christmas Harbour in honour of the double victory and the return of the two chief heroes of it from their long captivity. The next day was spent in a rigorous inspection of all the defences of the island and the machinery and ammunition of the air-ships and submarine vessels. At six o’clock in the evening, twenty-six hours after she had started, the Vega returned from Aeria, bringing the reply of the Council to the despatches which she had taken.

    The Council has heard with great satisfaction of the repulse of the attack on the station at Kerguelen and of the distinguished services rendered by Alan Arnold and Alexis Mazarov, both at Kerguelen and Mount Terror.

    In recognition of the great skill and devotion they have displayed, the Council invites them to assume the command of the air-ship Ithuriel, and to make use of that vessel to execute such plans and purposes as in their discretion will best serve the interests of the State of Aeria for a period of one year from the present date. They will be supplied with motive power and all stores and materials of war at any of the oceanic stations.

    The Council accepts the recommendation contained in the supplement to the first despatch, and has given orders for the immediate building of a hundred air-ships of the Ithuriel class and the same number of submarine battleships of the Narwhal type. These are expected to be ready for service at the end of the year, by which time the Council hopes to be able to call upon Alan Arnold and Alexis Mazarov to assume the duties of admiral and vice-admiral of the aerial navies, and at the same time to restore to them full privileges of citizenship in Aeria.

    The admiral and officers of Kerguelen will give all assistance in the carrying out of these directions, and will make and transmit all necessary reports in[141] connection with them. No further hostilities are to be undertaken for the present by the aerial or sea forces, but they will maintain a strict watch against all possible surprises on the part of the enemy, and be ready to repel any assault which may be made. This order does not apply to the air-ship Ithuriel.

    Given in the Council Hall of Aeria on the Eleventh day of May in the hundred and thirty-second year of the Deliverance.

    Alan Arnold, President.
    Francis Tremayne, Vice-President.

    To Edward Forrest,
    Admiral in Command at the Station of Kerguelen.

Such was the reply of the Council to the news of the daring foray made by the Narwhal upon the stronghold of Mount Terror, and the suggestions of Admiral Forrest and Captain Ernstein. Although it did not precisely adopt the latter, which, indeed, the Council was well justified in looking upon as inspired rather by enthusiasm than the judicial spirit proper to the occasion, it was even more satisfactory both to Alan and Alexis than an immediate recall would have been.

True, they had done great and brilliant service in the first few days of their return to freedom. They had virtually crippled the Russian sea-power by the blows which they had so skilfully, so swiftly, and so daringly struck, but neither of them felt that this was a sufficient achievement to warrant their full restoration to all that they had lost through the fatal error that they had made on board the old Ithuriel.

Both, indeed, longed ardently for just such further opportunity of devoting themselves to the service of their race and country as this order offered them. In command of the new Ithuriel, one of the swiftest and most formidable aerial warships in existence, there was no telling the damage that they might do to the enemy or what service they might render to their friends.

They knew that, as regarded the Russian force, the odds against them were about twenty-four to one, and they also knew that Olga and her lieutenants would lose no time in increasing their navy to the utmost extent in their power in preparation for the war of extermination that was now inevitable.

They had a year before them during which they would have[142] an absolutely free hand, and all the supplies that the resources of Aeria could give them. True, it was a year of exile and probation, but they gladly welcomed the test of fidelity and devotion which it offered, and which, worthily passed through, would mean restoration of all they had lost, and a return to their friends and kindred in their beloved valley of Aeria armed with powers and responsibilities which would make them practically the arbiters of the destinies of their people, and perhaps of the whole human race.

But the Vega had brought something more to the two friends and exiles than the reply of the Council to their despatches, for immediately he landed her captain handed to Alan a small sealed packet addressed to him in the handwriting of his sister Isma. When he opened it, as he did at the first opportunity that found him alone, he found that it contained two letters and two chromatic photographs.

The letters were from his parents and sister. His father’s was, as may well be imagined, very different from the cold and formal despatch that he had signed as President of the Council. It was full of tender and loving sympathy for him in the strange fate that had overtaken him, and, while it entirely absolved them of all moral blame for the loss of the flagship and the lives of his companions, it exhorted him earnestly to apply himself without useless regrets to the work of the year of probation which the Council had seen fit to impose upon him, and it ended with an assurance that the happiest day that had been known in Aeria within the memory of its citizens would be that on which the golden wings would be replaced on their foreheads in the Council Hall of the city.

To this letter was added another, written by Alan’s mother, and written as only a mother can write to her son. Strong and well tried as he was, there were tears in Alan’s eyes when he had finished reading these two letters, but they did not remain there long after he had begun the one from his sister.

Isma, proud beyond measure of the exploits of her brother and the man she still looked upon as her lover, and absolutely assured that when the time came both would return covered[143] with honour, wrote in the highest spirits. As it was an invariable rule of life among the Aerians to be perfectly frank with one another, and to take every precaution to avoid those misunderstandings which in a less perfect state of society had produced so much personal and social suffering, she told him in plain yet tender language exactly what had passed between her and Alma on the night that his first letter had been received.

Yet she said nothing that in any way committed either Alma or himself to a renewal of the troth which had been broken by the designs of Olga Romanoff, and though she sent her remembrances to Alexis, she sent them as though to a friend, tacitly giving both to understand that no words of love must pass between the two exiles and their former sweethearts until they met again upon equal terms.

But there was another message not contained in the letter, or written in any words, which said more than all that she had written, and this was conveyed by the photographs, which she sent without a word of allusion to them. As Alan looked upon them the six years of mental slavery and degrading servitude to the daughter of the enemies of his race passed away for the moment, and he saw himself standing with Alma in one of the groves of Aeria plighting his boyish troth on the night before he started on his fatal voyage in the Ithuriel.

The face that looked at him with such marvellous lifelikeness, with all its perfection of form and exquisite colouring, reproduced with the most absolute fidelity, was the same face that had been upturned to his to receive his kisses on that never-to-be-forgotten night. And yet, in another sense, it was not the same.

That had been the sunny, smiling face of a girl to whom sorrow and evil were as absolutely unknown as they would be to an angel in heaven, but this was the face of a woman who had lived and thought and suffered.

And when he remembered that whatever of sorrow or suffering she had known had been on his account, the last lingering traces of the vile spells of the evilly beautiful Syren of the[144] Skies, who had so fatally bewitched him, vanished from his soul, and the old love revived within him pure and strong, and intensified tenfold by the knowledge of the great reparation that he owed to the girl upon whose life he had brought the only shadow it had ever known.

He knew that their hands would never meet again until all that had been lost was regained, at whatever cost of labour or devotion that might be necessary on his part, but he also knew that in all these years no other man had been found worthy to fill the place that he had once occupied, and which he was resolved to win back or die in the attempt, and this knowledge made him look forward to the mighty struggle which lay before him with an eagerness that augured well for its issue.

He had gone into his own cabin on board the Ithuriel, which was being rapidly prepared for her roving commission, to read his letters in solitude. He put Alma’s photograph on the table, and sat before it with his eyes fixed upon it until every line of form and tint of colour was indelibly impressed anew upon his memory.

Then he kissed it as reverently as a devotee of old might have kissed a sacred relic, and then he attached the oval miniature to a chain of alternate links of azurine and gold, and hung it round his neck inside his tunic, registering a mental vow that if death came before he once more wore the golden wings, it should find it lying nearest his heart.

“This,” he said, speaking to himself, as he took Isma’s photograph up from the table, and looked fondly upon the radiantly lovely face that looked out from its frame, “is evidently not intended for me. Isma doesn’t say who it’s for, but I fancy that there is some one on board the Ithuriel who has a very much better right to it than I have. I wonder if Alexis is in his room?”

So saying, he left his cabin and found his friend still deep in the perusal of two lengthy letters from his father and mother.

“So you have had letters from home as well, old man? I[145] hope they’ve been as pleasant reading as mine have,” he said, going to the couch on which Alexis was sitting, and holding one hand behind his back.

“Yes, they’re from my father and mother, and so they can scarcely be anything else, so far as what they do say. It’s what they don’t say that gives me the only cause to find fault with them. But still that, I suppose, would be expecting too much under the circumstances.”

He ended with something very like a sigh, and Alan replied as gravely as he could—

“And what might that be, my knight of the rueful countenance? Don’t you think the Council have treated us splendidly, and given us a glorious opportunity of winning back all that the daughter of the Tsar has robbed us of?”

“Of course, I do,” replied Alexis, looking up at him with a flush on his cheeks. “But for all that there is one thing still, something that I am not ashamed to say I value above everything else that I have lost or can regain.”

“And that is—?”

“Well, to put it plainly,” replied Alexis, the flush deepening as he spoke, “these two letters don’t contain one single word about Isma. Now you know what I mean. Of course, I am ready to do everything that the Council may call upon us to do, and the moment that I know I have won back the right to wear the golden wings will be the proudest of my life, but it will be far from the happiest if I only go back to Aeria to find Isma another man’s wife, and what else can I think when they don’t so much as mention her name?”

“Be of good cheer, my friend,” replied Alan with a laugh, putting one hand on his shoulder, and taking the other from behind his back. “You will never find that, I can promise you. I am the bringer of good tidings. There, take those and feast your eyes and your heart on them in solitude as I have just been doing on something else.”

So saying he put Isma’s letter and photograph into Alexis’ hand, and without another word left him to gather courage and comfort from them as he had himself done.