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For some minutes previous to his excited words, Weldon Gardner's gaze had been riveted in awful fascination upon an immense balloon that was fast descending toward the high roofs that clustered on all sides about his comfortable rooms on St., New York. Something was wrong. He could readily detect this in the unsteady wavering of the gaily-striped air-ship.
This was accomplished from a great height with perfect safety. It seems highly probable that in the near future the parachute will form part of the equipment of every aeroplane and air-ship. The first Englishman to invent an air-ship was Mr. Stanley Spencer, head of the well-known firm of Spencer Brothers, whose works are at Highbury, North London.
He refused point blank, although one of the coast-defence ships, the Thunderer, has been disabled by shells from the air-ship, and all his other vessels have been terribly knocked about by the incessant cannonade from the fleet, which has now advanced to within two miles of the shore, having nothing more to fear from the land batteries.
The Ithuriel passed slowly over the heads of the wondering crowd, and came to a standstill alongside the steps on which Tremayne was standing. The crowd saw a man on her deck shake hands with Tremayne and give him a folded paper. Then the air-ship swept gracefully upward again in a spiral curve until she hung motionless over the dome of the Capitol.
Gazing upward, the boy saw, hovering between the deck of the galleon and the stars, a large black object. He instantly knew it for what it was. Luther Barr's air-ship! A galvanic shock passed through the boy at the discovery, and he silently crawled to where Harry and Ben lay and placing his hand over their mouths he in turn awoke them.
All round the great air-ship were the illimitable spaces of the sky, now of a dense dark violet hue with here and there a streak of dull red remaining of the glow of the vanished sun, below there was only blackness.
And you ask me to believe this, and to give up that priceless air-ship on such grounds as these a story that would hardly deceive a child? You captured nine of the Tsar's war-balloons this morning, had an interview with his Majesty, got this letter from him at Cüstrin more than five hundred miles away, and bring it here, and it is barely two in the afternoon!
The last syllables died away like faintly sung music and in a few more seconds the great air-ship was sailing steadily in a level line and at a swift pace onward, the last shining glimpse of the mysterious City vanished, and the "White Eagle" soared over a sable blackness of empty desert, through a dark space besprinkled with stars.
That roar was now as of a thousand heavily laden trains rumbling over hollow bridges, and the professor could only nod his approval when thus aroused from the dangerous fascination. Another minute, and the air-ship was floating towards the rear of the balloon-shaped cloud itself, each second granting the passengers a varying view of the wonder.
The air-ship once built and afloat under your command, the game of war would to a great extent be in your own hands. True, you would not survive treachery very long; but, on the other hand, if it became necessary to kill you, the air-ship would be useless, that is, if you took your secret of the motive power with you into the next world." "As I undoubtedly should," added Arnold quietly.
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