CHAPTER XVII. AN UNHOLY ALLIANCE.

WITHIN a couple of hours after the destruction of the islet Sultan Khalid was back in his palace, and the Ithuriel and the Vindaya had departed with their prisoners of war for Kerguelen.

Alan, quite content with the advantage he had gained by obtaining the Sultan’s pledge of peace for a year, in comparison with which even the capture of one of the Russian air-ships was of trifling importance, had determined not to run the needless risk of an encounter with Olga’s fleet, for he had learnt the strength of it from Lossenski, and saw that it would be madness to attack it.

Added to this there was far more important work in hand for him to do, for it was absolutely imperative that a full report of what he had discovered with regard to the proposed alliance between Olga and the Sultan should be laid before the Council with as little delay as possible, for if it ever became an accomplished fact it could not fail to enormously complicate the coming struggle for the mastery of the world.

Therefore, as soon as he had placed a prize crew on board the Vindaya, under the command of Alexis, he gave orders for the two air-ships to proceed southward at full speed, having bidden the Sultan farewell on the terrace of his palace, and left him to draw what moral he could from the brief but startling experience that the midnight hours had brought him.

A few minutes before twelve on the following night the[175] inhabitants of Alexandria were thrown into a state of the most intense excitement by a marvellous appearance in the southern heavens. Long streams of light, which in power and brilliancy excelled even the great electric suns with which the city was lighted, shot down out of the skies, flashing hither and thither, and sweeping the earth below it in vast curves of radiance.

Now they streamed out in a huge fan of endless horizontal rays which seemed to reach to the horizon, and now they crossed each other in a network of beams, changing their positions with a rapidity which dazzled and bewildered the beholders. Then they were projected vertically to the zenith as though challenging the stars, and then they blazed straight down upon the earth, bringing into strong relief of light and shadow everything they fell upon.

Instantly the spacious streets were crowded with excited throngs of people, and millions of eyes were cast heavenwards watching the approach of the Syren and her aerial squadron.

The twenty air-ships swept up out of the south at a speed of about a hundred miles an hour in the form of a wide crescent, with the Revenge in the centre. They slowed down as they neared the city, and the concentrated blaze of their lights soon fell upon the Sultan’s palace, the magnificent proportions of which distinguished it conspicuously even from the thousands of splendid edifices which adorned the Moslem metropolis.

Then, still keeping their relative positions with perfect accuracy, the winged vessels sank downwards and wheeled round until they faced the eastern terrace on which stood the Sultan with his Grand Vizier and the chief officers of his household, awaiting the coming of his aerial visitors.

The flotilla stopped a hundred feet from the terrace. Its search-lights were extinguished, but the strange and beautiful shapes of the cruisers of the air stood out sharply defined against the bright background formed by the myriad lights of the city.

The Revenge, flying the long vanished Imperial Standard of Russia, with its crowned black eagle on a broad ground of gold, at the mizzen, the white flag of peace at the main, and the Star[176] and Crescent of the Moslem Empire at the fore, floated slowly forward till her shining ram projected over the parapet and her three keels rested lightly upon it.

Then one of the forward doors of the deck-chamber was drawn back by some invisible agency, and the Sultan saw standing in the opening such a vision of loveliness as he had never imagined even in his dreams of the houris of Paradise. Clothed, according to her invariable custom, in a plain clinging robe of royal purple, with no other ornament than a coronet, consisting of a plain broad band of gold from which rose above her temples two wings of silver filigree thickly encrusted with diamonds, Olga Romanoff stood upon the deck of her flagship the perfect incarnation of royal dignity and womanly beauty.

Khalid, who had advanced to the parapet as the squadron approached, saw instantly that this could be none other than the woman whom Alan Arnold had described as beautiful beyond description and evil beyond comprehension. Few men had seen so many beautiful women as he had, and there were scores of them waiting in his harem for the favouring glance that none could win from him; but no sooner did his upward glance rest upon the vision that was looking down upon him from the doorway of the deck-chamber of the Revenge than his eyes fell and his head bowed in the involuntary homage that the supreme beauty of such a woman has always claimed from such a man.

Evil she might be, but evil in such a shape might be something more than good in the eyes of some men, and of these Khalid the Magnificent was one. His hot Arab blood was aflame the instant that he looked upon her intoxicating loveliness, and half her errand was accomplished before a word had passed between them.

She returned his greeting with a gracious inclination of her wing-crowned head, and as she did so he said—

“The Tsarina is welcome! My house and all that is in it is hers if she will honour me by entering it, for she will make it more beautiful by her presence.”

“Your Majesty’s welcome is sweet in my ears,” she[177] answered, almost insensibly adopting his Oriental style of speech, “for I come as a friend and I hope to go as an ally.”

The gangway stairs dropped as she spoke, and as they did so the Sultan made a sign and a pair of attendants brought forward some steps covered with crimson velvet, which they placed so that she could descend from the parapet, to which the Sultan himself ascended to meet her as she came down. Taking her hand on the parapet, he led her down to the terrace with the grace of a king and the deference of a courtier. Then he bent low over her hand and kissed it, and as he did so the attendant officers of his empire bowed in silent and respectful salutation.

Olga was at once conducted to one of the state apartments of the palace in which the Sultan was wont to receive his most distinguished guests. She was treated with even more respect than would have been accorded to one of the crowned monarchs of the earth, for not only her wonderful beauty and royal carriage, but the marvellous manner of her coming and the tremendous power represented by the flotilla of air-ships inspired both the Sultan and his subjects with a deference that amounted almost to homage.

Then, too, the mystery and romance which invested her name and family and fortune distinguished her as a woman apart from all other women in the world. It might be, as Alan had told the Sultan, that she was really the enemy of the human race, that her true object was to destroy the peace of the world, and rekindle the fires of war on earth, but still the present romance was stronger than the future, and possibly problematical, reality, and so it would hardly be too much to say that Olga had succeeded in removing the impression left by Alan on Khalid’s mind before she had been an hour under his roof.

She naturally expected that one of the first to receive her would be the ambassador who had preceded her, but, after looking anxiously for him and not finding him either on the terrace or in the reception-room, she turned to Khalid and said—

[178]

“I do not see my ambassador here, and yet he must have arrived, since your Majesty tells me that you have been expecting me.”

The Sultan’s face darkened, and his brows slightly contracted, as he replied—

“Tsarina, I have been waiting for an opportunity to tell you what cannot but be unwelcome news. Your ambassador, Orloff Lossenski, is not here”—

“What!” cried Olga, half rising from her seat, “not here! Surely he has not presumed to leave before my arrival? I can hardly believe that of him.”

“He has gone, nevertheless,” said the Sultan, “though not by his will or mine, I can assure you. Scarcely had his vessel alighted on the terrace yonder, and he had disembarked, when an Aerian cruiser dropped down as silently as a shadow from the skies.

“Whence it came I know not, but it would seem that these Aerians see everything, and that their hands reach everywhere. In a moment she had dropped upon your ambassador’s vessel, splintering her masts, and yet so softly did she alight that the glass dome was not broken. Then her crew streamed out of the doors of the deck-chamber, and the next I knew was that your ambassador and I were covered by half a score of pistols and rifles and commanded to stand still on pain of death.

“Then Alan Arnold alighted, forced your envoy to surrender, struck one of my guards dead by some mysterious lightning that flashed from his sword, and, after carrying me away into the air over the sea and blasting a rock out of the waters to prove to me the power of his guns, brought me back honourably and in safety to await your coming. Truly these Aerians are more as gods than men!”

Furious as the unexpected tidings made her, Olga yet managed to restrain her anger sufficiently to reply with wonderful coolness—

“Your Majesty gives me sad and bitter news; but it is the fortune of war, and I must not complain. The air-ship that[179] is taken by surprise is lost, and Orloff Lossenski fell a victim to his own carelessness.”

Then her mood changed swiftly, and a soft and musical laugh came from her smiling lips as she went on—

“But it is a poor revenge, after all. That same Alan Arnold, the son of the great President of Aeria, was my would-be lover and slave for over five years. For my sake he turned traitor to his name and race, gave up the Revenge to me and told me all the jealously-guarded secrets of aerial navigation. He killed my brother in a quarrel, but he was useful, so I let him live—a prisoner of war, till I had done with him. Then I set him free, when, perhaps, I ought to have kept him safe, to go and tell his people what a fool I had made of him. I suppose he did not tell your Majesty that?”

“No,” laughed Khalid in reply, wondering what magic she had used to accomplish so marvellous a charm, “he did not. But such a miracle proves that you have been truly named the Syren of the Skies, as he said you are, for no other woman could have worked such a wonder and disputed the empire of the air with the masters of the world.”

“That is true,” replied Olga, lowering her voice to a tone of intense earnestness, “and the fact that I did it single-handed proves, I hope, that with good friends and true allies I can do more than dispute that empire with the Aerians, these despots of peace who have made the world a paradise of the commonplace, and fettered all strongest and most aspiring spirits so that they might be equal with the coward and the fool.

“But those are matters which I would discuss with your Majesty in private, and it is too late in the night to go into them now. You tell me that Alan Arnold has shown you what his air-ships can do. If your Majesty will honour the Revenge by being my guest for to-morrow I will show you that mine are in nowise inferior to them.

“Indeed, as I have told you, the Revenge is an Aerian ship, built in the enchanted land of Aeria, and if you will to-morrow she shall carry you over the whole of your dominions, and after[180] that over those other dominions that shall be yours if you approve the plans that I will lay before you.”

She paused and looked at Khalid with cheeks glowing and eyes shining with enthusiasm and passion. He returned her glance with one no less fiery and passionate as he replied—

“I will be your guest, as you say, but the honour and the favour will be to me, your Majesty—for Majesty you are, crowned by the hand of favouring Nature with that which makes all men your subjects. Your air-ships shall rest in the garden of my palace to-night, and an hour after sunrise you shall find me ready for another journey to the skies, for my first experience has given me a taste for more. Till then farewell. The memory of your eyes will make me dream of Paradise to-night!”

There was that in his tone which told Olga that his words meant more than a neatly turned Oriental compliment, and as he stooped and kissed her hand in leave-taking she said half in jest and half in earnest—

“And I shall dream of the nearer glories of the world-empire which your Majesty and I may in the not very distant future divide between us.”

“Or share together!” said Khalid in his soul, as he raised his head again and their eyes met.

At the appointed time the next morning the squadron rose into the air from the palace gardens. In order to produce as widespread an effect as possible, Olga had extended her invitation to the Grand Vizier and about a score of the Sultan’s highest officials, including the commanders of his armies and fleets who happened to be in Alexandria at the time. These were distributed among the twenty air-ships, but Olga took care to arrange matters so that only the Grand Vizier should accompany the Sultan on board the Revenge.

In order that the Vizier, who was a cool-headed, wary, far-seeing man of nearly seventy, and therefore beyond the power of her own personal spells, might not interfere with her designs upon his master, she lost no time in placing him under[181] the power of the drug which she had already used with such disastrous results to the world.

Although he had said nothing about it, she felt certain that Khalid must have been warned by Alan of the danger of taking anything to eat or drink from her hands, and therefore she had decided to make no attempt upon his liberty of will, unless it became absolutely necessary to do so; but the Vizier was easily taken unawares, and she had little difficulty in causing him to drink a cup of coffee while her chief engineer was explaining the working of the machinery to the Sultan in the engine-room.

The coffee, of course, contained a sufficient quantity of the drug to deprive the Vizier of all power of opposing her will or resisting her suggestions for many hours to come. So far as all independent advice was concerned, he was safely disposed of.

The air-ships rose to an elevation of some two thousand feet, and at a speed of two hundred miles an hour ran first along the valley of the Nile to the southward. At Khartoum they swerved to the eastward, crossed the mountains of the Red Sea littoral at a height of nine thousand feet, then sank again and skirted the Arabian coast until Mecca, the sacred city of Islam, came in sight.

The ancient temple of the Kaaba, containing the tomb of the Prophet, still stood, almost unchanged by the hand of time, amid the splendid buildings, verdant gardens, and long groves of palms with which the new Mecca of the twenty-first century was adorned. Pointing down towards it, Olga said to the Sultan, who was standing by her side on the deck, dazzled by the splendours of the swiftly-changing prospects of the scene below—

“There is the Holy City, which your Majesty may some day make the religious capital of the world. That would be an achievement worthy of the Commander of the Faithful and the descendant of the Prophet, would it not?”

Khalid looked down at the city, over which they were now speeding in the direction of Medinah, and was silent for a few moments; then he raised his eyes to hers and said—

[182]

“Even so; but have you counted the cost of achieving it to me and my people? Before the banner of the Crescent could float over a world-wide empire of Islam we should have to triumph in a war which would involve the whole human race, and this means that we should first have to destroy those who have been lords of the earth and of the air for more than a century.”

“The Aerians are but men,” said Olga, a trifle coldly. “Why should your Majesty fear them if you are armed with the same weapons that they wield? I suppose Alan Arnold has threatened you and your people with nothing less than annihilation should you conclude this alliance with me? But why should you fear? I have met the Aerians in battle, and you see I am not annihilated.”

“I do not fear them as personal enemies,” replied Khalid proudly, “but only as the possible destroyers of my people, who would be defenceless against them. Think of the destruction you could rain upon the sacred city down yonder, while it could strike no blow in return. That would be the fate of Alexandria and all the capitals of my empire, and while my armies were marching to the conquest of Christendom our homes would be laid in ruins and our wives and children slain without mercy.

“Show me,” he continued, speaking more earnestly and rapidly, “how they are to be protected against this, and our alliance may become possible.”

“It is purely a matter of relative strength,” replied Olga. “Do you know why this squadron of mine is allowed to pursue its way unmolested, although the Aerians know of its existence? It is because, although, as Alan Arnold truly told you, by superior skill and experience in handling their ships they have been able to destroy about half my fleet, I am still stronger in the air than they are, and they know that we have now gained the experience which we lacked.

“They have only three vessels, counting the one you saw captured, as swift and powerful as this, while I have twenty-six. None of their smaller vessels dare venture within reach of[183] my guns, for to do so would be to meet certain destruction. They are doubtless building others as strong and swift as these in preparation for the struggle which they know must come. But if we join hands against them we shall be stronger than they will be when the year of your truce is ended.

“My engineers shall teach yours how to build air-ships in all respects equal to these, and submarine cruisers, a dozen of which could destroy your present navies in a day. With all the resources of your empire at command, you could possess in a year from now an aerial navy of a thousand ships and a sea fleet of equal strength.

“Then you would be strong enough to sweep the seas from pole to pole, and to storm the mountain battlements of Aeria itself. You must not forget that what the Aerians could do to your cities you could do to Aeria and to all the capitals of Christendom. City for city, you could take your revenge, until”—

“Until the whole earth was laid waste and the habitations of men were desolate,” broke in Khalid, overwhelmed by the horror of the prospect. “It is too great a price to pay, even for the empire of the world and the supremacy of Islam, even if we survived the ruin that we should have brought upon the world.”

“Too great if there were any need to pay it,” said Olga quickly, seeing that her lust of conquest and revenge had carried her too far. “But matters will never come to such a pass as that.

“Our battlefields will be the countries that we shall invade and conquer, not our own, and enough air-ships can be devoted to the defence of your cities to repel any attack the Aerians may make upon them. Your Majesty must not forget, too, that they will not dare to send any very large force away from Aeria, for they well know that the final battle for the possession of the earth will have to be fought out round the summits of its mountains.”

“You are right and I was wrong, Tsarina,” said the Sultan in an altered tone, “and the Prophet has said of the infidel,[184] ‘Such as are stubborn and refuse the true faith ye shall slay without mercy. Kill them wherever ye find them’—but alas”—

He stopped suddenly and looked at her, and she could see a smile moving his lips under his black beard and moustache. She divined instantly what was passing in his mind, and saw the opportunity for a stroke of diplomacy which, base as it was, she made without a moment’s hesitation. Before he could continue, she turned and faced him, looking into his eyes with a glance that dazzled him, and said in a low, quick, earnest tone—

“I know what you would say, Sultan Khalid. You would say that I and my people are infidels in your eyes, and therefore worthy of destruction. I have thought of that—but the deck is too public a place for the discussion of such a matter. Call your Vizier and we will retire to my own saloon and talk of it there.”

Khalid obeyed, wondering what was coming next from the lips of the Syren whose fatal beauty of person and subtlety of mind were luring him on to plunge into an ocean of blood of which no human eyes could see the further shore—if it had one at all—and as soon as the three were seated in the room, which had once been Alan’s, Olga, addressing the Vizier first, rapidly but very clearly sketched out the project that had been suggested to her by Lossenski, and then, turning to the Sultan, she said—

“There seems now but one real bar to such an alliance, and that is the difference in our faiths, or, I should rather say, in our creeds. I have not ignored this; nay, I have pondered it deeply and earnestly. Creeds change with times, and Russia, like the rest of Europe, has now no real, living faith like yours. But you shall give it to them if you wish, and the day that I am proclaimed Empress of the Russias the Crescent shall shine on the towers of the Kremlin.”

“What do I hear?” cried Khalid, springing to his feet in amazement at her astounding words; “you and your people will accept the Koran and acknowledge the Prophet?”

[185]

“I will and they shall,” said Olga calmly and firmly, committing herself to the huge apostasy without a tremor in her voice. “Remember, too, that millions who should by right be my subjects in Asia are already good Moslems. If the Russians refuse to obey me in this they will be rebels, and you shall do with them as you will do with the other peoples of Christendom if they remain stubborn. Let your Majesty’s chief minister and favourite counsellor speak and say whether or not I have spoken fairly.”

“Speak, Musa al Ghazi!” said the Sultan, in a voice that betrayed intense emotion, “and weigh your words well, for many and great issues may depend upon them.”

“Commander of the Faithful!” said the old man, speaking slowly and with some hesitation, as though he were repeating a lesson hardly yet learnt, “I can speak but the words that my soul echoes from without. A strange power has seemed to take possession of me, and I speak as one to whom another has taught what he should say.

“Yet the words seem wise to me, and I will speak them, lest, not doing so, I should have to answer for my negligence. If it is written that you shall be the one chosen of Heaven to plant the Crescent where now falls the shadow of the Cross, and reign supreme, sole lord of a Moslem world, then have the means been sent to you by the hand of her who gives you the means of measuring strength with the masters of the nations, by whose pleasure we possess that which we have, and without whose countenance your Majesty would not much longer remain Commander of the Faithful.

“I would not willingly speak words of offence, but it is necessary to recognise that the Moslem practises his faith only by permission of those who, if they hold any, hold another.”

“By the Beard of the Prophet, thou hast said it, Musa! I am a King by permission, a High Priest of Islam by sufferance of the infidel!” exclaimed Khalid, as the hot blood rushed to his swarthy cheeks and the fire of fanaticism leapt into his eyes.

“But I will be so mean a thing no longer than the time of[186] the truce to which I have pledged my word. In the blood of the infidel I will wipe out this shame on Islam, yea, though the whole earth shall be drenched with the blood and tears that shall be licked up by the fires of war. It is my destiny, and I will do it, or my name shall perish from the earth for ever!

“Tsarina Olga, I have seen and heard enough. Let us return to my palace and arrange the terms of our alliance; and when you have sworn upon the Koran that you will take Allah for your God and Mohammed for your Prophet, I will sign them, and together we will conquer the world for Islam. It is kismet, and that which is written shall be done!”

Olga looked upon the splendid figure of the Sultan as he stood before her, his athletic form dilated and his face glorified by the passion of religious fervour that was burning within him, and as she did so a new light dawned upon her. She saw that this strong, fiery soul might some day conquer even hers, and fuse it into itself.

It would be an unholy union, a love bought with apostasy from her faith and sealed with treachery to her people and the trust that she had inherited from her forefathers; but what were apostasy and treachery to her now that the love she had stained her soul with blood and untold crime to win was lost to her for ever?

Earthly pomp and power, the pomp of imperial rule and the power of life and death, of happiness and misery, over millions of her fellow-creatures were well worth living for, and with them might come love again, or if not love, then passion, fierce and all-consuming, for this one king of earth who dared to be a king in fact as well as in name, and then—Before she could make any reply to the Sultan’s words, the slow, measured tones of the Vizier sounded again, saying—

“If I may speak again, Majesties”—

“Say on, good Musa!” said the Sultan, “for so far thou hast spoken the words of wisdom.”

“I would say,” continued the old man, “that even as the winged steed Alborak bore the Prophet from earth to the[187] Seventh Heaven, so may it be written that the winged ship of Tsarina Olga shall bear thee, my Master, into that Paradise of love which so far thou hast sought and not found.”

“What say you, well-named Syren of the Skies, to that?” said Khalid, taking a step towards the couch on which Olga was sitting, and making a half-appealing gesture with both his hands.

She rose to her feet and faced him. One look into his passion-lighted eyes told her that the victory was already won, and that strength could now give place to softness. She dropped her eyes before his burning gaze, and, crossing her hands upon her bosom with a pretty semblance of submission, said, in a low, sweet tone that he heard now for the first time—

“All things are possible, and if this be possible, then more than Cleopatra lost for Antony I will win for you, and you shall reign sole C?sar of a subject world. As for me, when that comes to pass, let it be to me as it shall seem good in the eyes of my lord the King!”

And so saying she bowed slightly before him and turned and passed out of the saloon, seeing the vision of him whom she had loved in vain through the mist of tears which rose in that instant to her eyes.