CHAPTER XXII. THE EVE OF BATTLE.

AN irregular procession was now formed, at the head of which walked the two returned exiles, each with his father by his side, and followed by the rest of the company. They passed out of the reception-room, down the wide entrance-hall, and out of the great arched portal which opened on to the square.

As they appeared at the top of the spacious flight of marble steps which led from it down to the pavement, a mighty cheer of welcome went up from a hundred thousand throats, the peals of bells in the four towers which rose from the angles of the Council Hall sent forth the signal to all the other belfries of the city, and, amidst the jubilant chorus that instantly burst forth, the scene of the reinvestiture was reached. Then the great bell in the dome tolled out one sonorous warning note, and instantly there was silence on the earth and in the air.

This was at the moment that the procession, after passing half round the square along the broad path left for it by the cheering throng, halted in front of the main entrance to the Temple of Aeria, which faced towards the south, in the middle of the magnificent fa?ade fronting a marble-paved avenue of double rows of palms and tree-ferns which ran in a straight line for three miles down to the shores of the lake.

The Aerians had progressed far beyond the stage of semi-barbaric pomp and display, and so the ceremony of restoring[244] to Alan and Alexis the rights of citizenship, of which the Golden Wings were the symbol, solemn as it was, was also simple in the extreme.

As the vast curtains which hung over the main doors of the Temple swung aside to admit them, they fell out of the procession and doffed their sable head-gear. The President and his fellow Councillors went on and took up their position in front of the three pillars under the centre of the dome.

Then a guard of honour, composed of a hundred of their shipmates and companions-in-arms from Kerguelen, marched up to the door and formed into two files, between which Alan and Alexis walked down the aisle through the space left by the orderly throng that filled the vast building from the floor to the topmost tier of the rows of seats which rose half-way up the lofty walls, and so came in front of the President and the Council.

Here their guard halted and formed a semicircle, leaving them in the open space within it. A breathless silence fell upon the assembled thousands as they dropped on one knee before the President. Then, in a voice whose every accent rang distinctly to the farthest corners of the huge building, he said—

“Alan Arnold and Alexis Masarov, the year of your probation ended with the rising of this morning’s sun. You have been tried and you have not been found wanting, and that of which the arch-enemy of our race robbed you for a time you have regained by manly valour and patient devotion.

“Therefore, by command of the Supreme Council, and with the consent of all the citizens of Aeria, I restore to you the symbols of those rights which you lost and have regained.

“In the presence of God and this assembly, and on the holy ground that is sanctified by the ashes of those mighty ancestors of ours who bequeathed to us the empire of the world, I replace the Golden Wings upon your brows, in the full belief that from the higher and happier sphere they now inhabit they are looking down with approval upon the act.

“Rise now, recrowned Princes of the Air, and in the near[245] approaching day of battle go forth with fearless hearts and stainless honour to do that which the voice of duty and the needs of humanity shall bid you do!”

As he ceased speaking he held out a hand to each of them, and so they rose to their feet again, once more wearing the Golden Wings, once more free and equal amidst their peers of the Royal race of Aeria. As they did so a burst of jubilant melody rolled out, apparently from all parts of the Temple at once.

It was the opening chorus of a triumphal march which the greatest living musician of Aeria, and therefore of the world, had composed in honour of the day and the event, and as its splendid harmonies rolled out from the hidden organ through the vast interior, and through the open portals into the square beyond, the great assembly filed out in four streams from the Temple, and all Aeria made ready to give itself up to feasting and merry-making for the rest of the day.

For three days Aeria kept high festival in honour of the home-coming of the son of the President and his companion in exile, but for all that there was sterner business in hand than merry-making for those in authority. Save in the almost impossible event of overtures of peace being received from the Sultan, war which, in the nature of the circumstances, could hardly fail to be universal, would actually begin at daybreak on the 16th of May, that is to say in five days after the return of Alan and Alexis.

The greater part, therefore, even of the days of rejoicing was really spent in hard work by those upon whom had devolved the tremendous responsibility of counteracting as far as was possible the designs of conquest and oppression to which Olga Romanoff, by means of her fatal beauty and subtle diplomacy, had succeeded in irrevocably committing Khalid the Magnificent.

Early on the morning of the day following the reinvestiture of Alan and Alexis with the symbols of Aerian citizenship a council of war was held in the President’s palace, which was attended by all the members of the ruling Council, the chief[246] engineers of the settlement, and the admirals in command of the aerial and sea navies and the squadrons posted at the various stations throughout the world.

Before this assembly Alan, who had already entered upon the active discharge of his duties as Commander-in-Chief of all the forces of Aeria and the Federation, laid the details of his plans of attack and defence, and invited criticism upon them.

The same day Alan transferred his flag and his crew from the Ithuriel to the Avenger, while Alexis took possession of a splendid vessel of the same type, to which the name Orion had been given, after that of the air-ship commanded by Alan Tremayne in the battle of Armageddon. Alexis, however, had very little difficulty in obtaining the consent of the Council to his substituting another name for this, with the consequence that the prize taken from the enemy resumed her Russian name, and remained in Aeria as a trophy of the skill of her captors.

Perhaps in his heart Alan would have dearly liked to have made a similar change in the name of the Avenger, but it was impossible for him to propose it, situated as he was with regard to Alma.

Alexis and Isma had taken the shortest, and therefore the wisest, course out of the terribly delicate and embarrassing position which had been created by the unholy passions and ruthless treachery of Olga Romanoff. They had tacitly agreed to ignore it in toto, and to begin again where they had left off nearly seven years before, and thus it came to pass that Isma’s own pretty hands spilled the christening wine over the shapely bows of her formidable namesake.

The first use that Alan made of his new ship was to test her immense capabilities to the utmost, so that he might know what demands he might safely make upon her in possible emergencies. He rushed her at full speed round the mountain bulwarks of Aeria, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles, and found that she completed the circuit in just twenty-five minutes, which gave a speed of six hundred miles an hour. Alexis followed, and covered the same distance in twenty-seven minutes and a half in the Isma.

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These trials proved that the new Aerian vessels were from fifty to seventy-five miles an hour faster than the models on which their enemies had been building their new fleets—a fact which, unless Olga and her ally had made a corresponding improvement in their battleships, might be expected to have a considerable effect on the issue of the coming war.

After the speed-trials the soaring powers of the two vessels were tried, and it was demonstrated that their machinery was sufficiently powerful to carry them to altitudes beyond which it was not possible for human beings to breathe. After this all the defences of Aeria were visited and examined in detail, and then on the second day after their arrival in the valley Alan and Alexis divided all the air-ships at their disposal into two squadrons, each numbering nearly four hundred vessels, one of which, commanded by Alan, guarded the valley, while the other, under Alexis, constituted an attacking force, the duty of which was to find out, if possible, any weak point in the defensive organisation.

From noon to midnight the mimic battle went on in strict accordance with the accepted rules of aerial warfare, but though Alexis and the captains of his fleet tried everything that skill or daring could suggest, the defence proved too strong for them, and during the whole twelve hours they were unable to bring a single vessel into such a position that she could send a shell into Aeria without previously exposing herself to a fire that must have annihilated her in an instant.

This aerial review was the concluding spectacle of the festivities, and it was watched by the occupants of thousands of pleasure-craft, whose interest in it was sharpened by the knowledge that before many days a conflict such as it portrayed might be raging in deadly earnest round the mountain bulwarks of their hitherto inviolate domain.

So consummate was the skill displayed by Alan in this defence that as soon as the Avenger touched ground after the review was over he was summoned to the Council Chamber in the President’s palace to receive the thanks of the Senate and cordial expression of the perfect confidence that the people of[248] Aeria would feel, whatever the magnitude of the war might prove to be, while the conduct of the campaign was in his hands and those of Alexis, whose tactics had also been so perfect that, without once putting a single ship in danger, he had made it impossible for Alan to do anything more than remain strictly on the defensive.

On the following day, the 14th, the motive power of all the vessels was renewed, ammunition laid in, and all the guns and engines minutely inspected, so that there might be no chance of failure when the moment of trial came. Then the final arrangements for the defence of Aeria itself were perfected, and when that was done, the Vale of Paradise, as its inhabitants fondly called their lovely land, was a vast fortress compared with which the strongholds of the present day would be as harmless and defenceless as molehills.

Four hundred aerial battleships of what were now called the first and second classes, ranging in speed from four to five hundred and fifty miles an hour and mounting from ten to twenty guns each, were to patrol the outer walls of the mountains, at distances of five and ten miles from them and at elevations varying from two to ten thousand feet. These were divided into two fleets of two hundred each which relieved each other every six hours, so that their supply of motive power might be constantly renewed.

In addition to these, two squadrons of twenty-five of the most powerful warships of the newest type alternately kept watch and ward against surprise in the upper regions of the air from fifteen to twenty thousand feet above the valley, while all round the great circuit of the mountains were planted in the most favourable positions nearly a thousand land batteries mounting three, five, and ten guns each, which, if necessary, would be able to surround Aeria with a zone of storm and flame which nothing living could pass and still live.

Batteries which would be able to surround Aeria with a zone of Storm and Flame. Page 248.

By day the range of vision from the decks of the sentinel ships would make surprise impossible, and at night the great electric suns on the summits of the mountains, aided by hundreds of search-lights flashing through the darkness in[249] every direction, made an attack under cover of the darkness almost equally hopeless.

The news of the alliance between Olga and the Sultan had acted like a trumpet-call to battle on the proud and martial spirit of the Aerians. Generation after generation their young men had been trained in the arts of war as well as in those of peace, for the wisdom of their ancestors had foreseen that, in the ordinary progress of science, it was impossible for many generations to pass without some independent solution of the problem of aerial navigation, which must, sooner or later, result in a challenge of their supremacy.

Consequently, all through the years of profound peace which the outside world had enjoyed under their rule, their vigilance had never slept for a moment, and their men and ships and materials of war were kept in the highest possible state of efficiency. Thus, though the Aerian nation numbered little more than a million souls, inhabiting a territory of some two hundred and fifty square miles, the amount of effective strength that it was able to put forth on an emergency was totally disproportionate to its size.

Living in a region of inexhaustible fertility and boundless mineral wealth, with no idle or mere consuming classes, no politics, and no laws that a child of ten could not understand, they led simple, natural, and busy lives, accumulating immense public and private riches, which were as constantly expended in increasing the splendour and power of the State, which, as a whole, was the expression of the wealth and patriotism of its citizens.

No sooner had the alliance of their enemies become an accomplished fact than they devoted the whole of their vast resources to increasing their offensive and defensive armaments to the utmost of their power. Reserves of material that had been stored up year after year had been drawn upon, the mighty natural forces that they had brought into subjection laboured night and day for them, and ships and machinery and guns came into existence as though at the bidding of some race of magicians.

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Magazines were filled with immense stores of ammunition, potential death and destruction such as had never been wielded by human hands before—and commanders and officers for all the battleships of the Federation had been sent out as each squadron of vessels was completed.

In a word, Aeria had donned her panoply of war, and stood armed at all points, ready to fight the world if necessary in defence of the priceless heritage which its citizens had received from their fathers, the giants who in the days of the Terror had taken despotism and oppression by the throat and flung them headlong out of the world.

The defences of Aeria were to be under the immediate command of the President. All the oceanic stations, save Kerguelen, Teneriffe, Bermuda, and Hawaii, had been abandoned so as to permit of greater concentration of forces, while fifty new ones had been established in different parts of Europe and the British Islands, for here the brunt of the attack was to be expected, and here the enemy must be met and crushed if Anglo-Saxon civilisation was to be saved from a new era of militarism and personal oppression.

Alan and Alexis were to take command of the Western and Eastern fleets into which the aerial forces were to be divided, Alan in the West with Britain as his chief base of operation, and Alexis in the East with the Balkan Peninsula as his base between the Russian and Moslem headquarters.

The naval fleets, in three divisions, the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Pacific squadrons, had already received their general instructions, and were waiting at their various rendezvous for the outbreak of hostilities. The Atlantic squadron blocked the Straits of Gibraltar, the Narrow Seas of Britain, and the approaches to the Baltic, the Mediterranean division patrolled the Inland Sea from Gibraltar to Cyprus, and the Pacific fleet were blockading the southern approach to the Red Sea, ready to operate against any junction of the Indian and African sea forces of the Sultan.

At midnight, on the 14th, Alan and Alexis were to set out for their respective fields of operation, and that evening there[251] was a farewell banquet given by the Council in the President’s palace in honour of them and the commanders of their ships. Many a hearty toast was given and drunk in the sparkling golden wine of Aeria, and many a hearty God-speed and loving farewell passed between those who remained at home and those who were going forth to do battle for them and for the peace of the world in distant skies, and to pass through the fiery storm of such warfare as had never been waged in the world before.

Just before twelve, when the fleets were ready to take the air, and the last farewells were being said, the Avenger and the Isma were lying on the roof of the President’s palace, and their commanders were standing by the gangway steps which hung down from the deck-chambers, the centres of two little groups of grave, silent men and sorrowing women, their nearest and dearest in a land where all were friends.

The last blessings of fathers and mothers had been given and taken, and then came the hardest farewells of all. Isma and Alexis parted as declared lovers will part as long as the Fates are cruel, but when Alan took Alma’s hands in his for the last time, and looked down upon the pale loveliness of her perfect face and into the clear calm depths of her eyes, the word that he had been longing to say ever since his return died upon his lips.

The contrast between her stainless purity and the darkness of the blot that Olga’s unholy passion had placed upon his life rose up in all its horror for the hundredth time before him, and once more the impassable gulf opened between them. All that he could say was—

“Good-bye, Alma! You, too, will wish me God-speed, won’t you?”

“With all my heart, yes, Alan,” she replied in low, sweet, steady tones. “God guard you in your good work and send you back in safety to us. You will come back rich in honours and followed by the blessings of the world you are going to rescue from the oppressors”—

“Or I shall never come! Good-bye, Alma, good-bye, all!”[252] he said, breaking upon her speech, for he could bear to hear no more, and as he spoke he stooped and kissed her forehead as he had kissed Isma’s a few moments before. Then he turned and ran up the steps just as Alexis took his last kiss and did the same.

As they gained the decks of their ships the great bell in the dome of the Temple boomed out the first stroke of twelve. At the sixth stroke the electric suns on the summits of the mountains blazed out simultaneously at a hundred points, a long, deep roar of thunder rolled round the bulwarks of Aeria, and with search-lights flashing out ahead and astern, the four hundred battleships of the two squadrons rose into the air and swept up towards the Ridge.

The four hundred Battleships of the two Squadrons rose into the Air. Page 252.

A thousand feet above it they stopped and hung for a moment motionless in mid-air. Then the roar of a thousand shells exploding far up in the quaking sky answered the salutes from the sentinel ships, and then, still signalling farewells with their search-lights, the squadrons swept out into the ocean of darkness that loomed round the light-girdled realm of Aeria.