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Now those who had succeeded them, as allies, were, over a sole Marguery, discussing air-ships, armored automobiles, and mitrailleuses.
Over head an arc of fire spanned the zenith from which depended curtains of rainbows waving and fluttering, folding and floating out again with a rapid and incessant motion. I asked Wauna why they had not crossed in air-ships, and she said they had tried it often but had always failed.
It was not convenient. The air-ships were not convenient to you, so you abolished them. The folk, too, that you abolished with those things," pointing to the guns, "they were not convenient. If you hadn't done that they would have abolished you. There is no more to say." "What brutes," said Zaidie, turning away from him, her head thrown back and her lips curling in unutterable disgust.
The distance from where they were was a little under five hundred miles, and at their present rate of steaming they would reach Aberdeen about four o'clock on the following afternoon. The air-ships followed them at a height of four thousand feet during the rest of the day and until shortly before dawn on the following morning.
We have long labored to bring the men who arm these air-ships, and who manufacture this poison, into our organization, but so far without success. The Oligarchy knows their value, and pays them well.
Then a babble of question and comment began in all languages among the travellers from many lands, who, though most of them were fairly well accustomed to aeroplanes, air-ships and aerial navigation as having become part of modern civilisation, found themselves nonplussed by the absolute silence and lightning swiftness of this huge bird-shaped thing that had appeared with extraordinary suddenness in the deep rose glow of the Egyptian sunset sky.
But there was one very important distinction between the two air-ships. By a most ingenious contrivance the envelope was made so that, in the event of a large and serious escape of gas, the balloon would assume the form of a giant umbrella, and fall to earth after the manner of a parachute.
This of itself would have been enough to throw the United States into a panic; but, worse than all, the presence of the air-ships, holding at their mercy the arsenals and the richest cities in the Eastern States, proved that tremendous and all as it was, this was only a phase of some vast and mysterious cataclysm which might as easily involve the whole civilised world as it could overwhelm the United States of America.
Their ammunition-tenders, slow and unwieldy machines, adapted only for carrying large cargoes of shells, had been rammed and destroyed with ease by the air-ships during the running, or rather flying, fight of the previous afternoon.
Almost before he could have time to alter his elevating plane, and certainly long before he could reach open ground, he would be on the tree-tops. It is thought that in the near future air-craft will be fitted with two or more motors, so that when one fails the other will keep the machine on its course. This has been found necessary in Zeppelin air-ships.
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