CHAPTER IV

Above a tiny little writing-desk fixed to the wall of the conning-tower

there was a square mahogany board with six white buttons in pairs. On

one side of the board hung a telephone and on the other a speaking-tube.

To the right hand opposite where Zaidie stood were two nickel-plated

wheels and behind each of them a white disc, one marked off into 360

degrees, and the other into 100 with subdivisions of tens. Overhead hung

an ordinary tell-tale compass, and compactly placed on other parts of

the wall were barometers, thermometers, barographs, and, in fact,

practically every instrument that the most exacting of aeronauts or

Space-explorers could have asked for.

"You see, Zaidie, this is what one might call the cerebral chamber of

the _Astronef_, and, granted that my engines worked all right, I could

make her do anything I wanted without moving out of here, but as a rule,

of course, Murgatroyd is in the engine-room. If he wasn't the most

whole-souled Wesleyan that Yorkshire ever produced, I believe he'd

become an idolater and worship the _Astronef's_ engines."

"And who is Murgatroyd, please?"

"In the first place he is what I might call an hereditary retainer of

the House of Redgrave. His ancestors have served mine for the last seven

hundred years. When my ancestors were burglar-barons, his were

men-at-arms. When we went on the Crusades they went too; when we raised

a regiment for the King against the Parliament they were naturally the

first to enlist in it; and as we gradually settled down into peaceful

respectability they did the same. Lastly, when we went into trade as

ironmasters and engineers they went in too. This Murgatroyd, for

instance, was master-foreman of my works at Smeaton, and he was the only

man I dared trust with the secrets of the _Astronef_, and the only one I

would trust myself on board her with, and that's why we're a crew of

two. You see the command of a vessel like this is a fairly big business,

and if it got into the wrong sort of hands----"

"Yes, I see," said Zaidie with a little nod. "It would be just too awful

to think about. Why you might keep the world in terror with it; but I

know you wouldn't do that, because, for one thing, I wouldn't let you."

"Gently, gently, Ma'm'selle; permit me most humbly to remind you that

you are still my prisoner, and that I am still Commander of the

_Astronef_."

"Oh, very well then," said Zaidie, interrupting him with a pretty little

gesture of impatience, "and now suppose you let me see what the

_Astronef's_ commander can do with her."

"Certainly," replied Redgrave, "and with the greatest pleasure--but, by

the way, that reminds me you haven't paid your footing yet."

When due payment had been given and taken, or perhaps it would be more

correct to say taken and given, Redgrave put his finger on one of the

buttons.

Immediately Zaidie heard the swish of the air past the smooth wall of

the conning-tower grow fainter and fainter. Then there came a little

check which nearly upset her balance, and presently the clouds beneath

them began to take shape and great white continents of them with grey

oceans in between went sweeping silently and swiftly away behind them.

Redgrave turned the wheel in front of the 100-degree disc a little to

the left. The next instant the clouds rose up. For a moment Zaidie could

see nothing but white mist on all sides. Then the atmosphere cleared

again, and she saw far below her what looked like a vast expanse of

ocean that had been suddenly frozen solid.

There were the long Atlantic rollers tipped with snowy foam. Here and

there at wide intervals were little black dots, some of them with brown

trails behind them, others with little patches of white which showed up

distinctly against the dark grey-blue of the sea. Every moment they grew

bigger. Then the white-crested waves began to move, and the big ocean

steamers and full-rigged sailing ships looked less and less like toys.

Just under them there was a very big one with four funnels pouring out

dense volumes of black smoke. Redgrave took up a pair of glasses, looked

at her for a moment and said:

"That's the _Deutschland_, the new Hamburg-American record-breaker.

Suppose we go down and have a lark with her. I wonder if she's taking

news of the war. We're in with Germany, and they may know something

about it."

"That would be just too lovely!" said Zaidie. "Let's go and show them

how _we_ can break records. I suppose they've seen us by this time and

are just wondering with all their wits what we are. I guess they'll feel

pretty tired about poor Count Zeppelin's balloon when they see _us_."

Redgrave noted the "we" and the "us" with much secret satisfaction.

"All right," he said, "we'll go and give them a bit of a startler."

In front of the conning-tower there was a steel flagstaff about ten feet

high, with halliards rove through a sheer in the top. He took a little

roll of bunting out of a locker under the desk, opened a glass slide,

brought in the halliards and bent the flag on.

Meanwhile the long shape of the great liner was getting bigger and

bigger. Her decks were black, with people staring up at this strange

apparition which was dropping upon them from the clouds. Another minute

and the _Astronef_ had dropped to within five hundred feet of the water,

and about half a mile astern of the _Deutschland_. Redgrave turned the

wheel back two or three inches and touched a second button.

The _Astronef_ stopped her descent instantly, and then she shot forward.

The new greyhound was making her twenty-two and a half knots, hurling a

broad white torrent of foam away from under her counters. But in half a

minute the _Astronef_ was alongside her.

Redgrave ran the roll of bunting up to the top of the flagstaff, pulled

one of the halliards, and the White Ensign of England floated out.

Almost at the same moment the German flag went up to the staff at the

stern of the _Deutschland_, and they heard a roar of cheers, mingled

with cries of wonder, come up from her swarming decks.

Each flag was dipped thrice in due course. Redgrave took off his cap and

bowed to the Captain on the bridge. Zaidie nodded and fluttered her

handkerchief in reply to hundreds of others that were waving on the

decks. Mrs. Van Stuyler woke up in wonder and waved hers instinctively,

half longing to change crafts. In fact, if it hadn't been for her

absolute devotion to the proprieties she would have obeyed her first

impulse and asked Lord Redgrave to put her on board the steamer.

While the officers and crew and passengers of the _Deutschland_ were

staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the graceful glittering shape of

the _Astronef_, Redgrave touched the first button in the second row

once, moved the 100-degree wheel on a few degrees, and then gave the

other a quarter turn. Then he closed the window slide, and the next

moment Zaidie saw the great liner sink down beneath them in a curious

twisting sort of way. She seemed to stop still and then spin round on

her centre, getting smaller and smaller every moment.

"What's the matter, Lenox?" she said, with a little gasp. "What's the

_Deutschland_ doing? She seems to be spinning round on her own axis like

a top."

"That's only the point of view, dear. She's just plugging along straight

on her way to New York, and we've been making rings round her and going

up all the time. But of course you don't notice the motion here any more

than you would if you were in a balloon."

"But I thought you were going to speak them. Surely you don't mean to

say that you intended that just as a little bit of showing off?"

"That's about what it comes to, I suppose, but you must not think it was

altogether vanity. You see the German Government has bought Count

Zeppelin's air-ship or steerable balloon, as it ought to be called,

always supposing that they can steer it in a wind, and of course their

idea is to make a fighting machine of it. Now Germany is engaged to

stand by us in this trouble that's coming, and by way of cementing the

alliance I thought it was just as well to let the wily Teuton know that

there's something flying the British flag which could make very small

mincemeat of their gas-bags."

"And what about Old Glory?" said Miss Zaidie. "The _Astronef_ was built

with English money and English skill, but----"

"She is the creature of American genius. Of course she is. In fact she

is the first concrete symbol of the Anglo-American Alliance, and when

the daughter of her creator has gone into partnership with the man who

made her we'll have two flagstaff's, and the Jack and Old Glory will

float side by side."

"And meanwhile where are we going?" asked Zaidie, after a moment's

interval. "Ah, there we are through the clouds again. What makes us

rise? Is that the force that Pop told me he discovered?"

"I'll answer the last question first," said Redgrave. "That was the

greatest of your father's discoveries. He got at the secret of

gravitation, and was able to analyse it into two separate forces just as

Volta did with electricity--positive and negative, or, to put it better,

attractive and repulsive.

"Three out of the five sets of engines in the _Astronef_ develop the R.

Force, as I call it for short. This wheel with the hundred degrees

marked behind it regulates the development. The further I turn it this

way to the right, the more the R. Force overcomes the attractive force

of the earth or any other planet that we may visit. Turn it back, and

gravitation asserts itself. If I put this arrow-head on the wheel

opposite zero the weight of the _Astronef_ is about a hundred and fifty

tons, and of course she would go down like a stone, and a very big one

at that. At ten she weighs nothing; that is to say the R. Force exactly

counteracts gravitation. At eleven she begins to rise. At a hundred she

would be hurled away from the earth like a shell from a twelve-inch gun,

or even faster. Now, watch."

He took up the speaking-tube. "Is she all tight everywhere, Andrew?"

"Yes, my Lord," came gurgling through the tube.

Then Redgrave slowly turned the wheel till the indicator pointed to

twenty-five. Zaidie, all eyes and wonder, saw a vast sea of glittering

white spread out beneath them, an ocean of snow with grey-blue patches

here and there. It sank away from under them till the patches became

spots and the sunlit clouds a vast, luminous blur. The air about them

grew marvellously clear and limpid. The sun blazed down on them with a

tenfold intensity of light, but Zaidie was astonished to find that very

little heat penetrated the glass walls and roof of the conning-tower.

"What an awful height!" she exclaimed, looking round at him with

something like fear in her eyes. "How high are we, Lenox?"

"You'll find afterwards that the _Astronef_ doesn't take any account of

high or low or up or down," he replied, looking at the dial of an

aneroid barometer by the side of him. "Roughly speaking, we're rather

over 60,000 feet--say ten miles--from the surface of the Atlantic.

That's why I asked Andrew whether everything was tight. You see we

couldn't breathe the air there is outside there--too thin and cold--and

so the _Astronef_ makes her own atmosphere as we go along. But I won't

spoil what you're going to see by any more of this. So if you please,

we'll go down now and get along to Washington. Anyhow, I hope I've

convinced you so far that I've kept my promise."

"Yes, dear, you have, and splendidly! I've only one regret. If _he_ was

only here now, what a happy man he'd be! Still, I daresay he knows all

about it and is just as happy. In fact he must be. I feel certain he

must. The very soul of his intellect was in the dream of this ship, and

now that it's a reality he must be here still. Isn't it part of himself?

Isn't it his mind that's working in these wonderful engines of yours,

and isn't it his strength that lifts us up from the earth and takes us

down again just as you please to turn that wheel?"

"There's little doubt about that, Zaidie," said Redgrave quietly, but

earnestly. "You know we North-country folk all have our traditions and

our ghosts; and what more likely than that the spirit of a dead man or a

man gone to other worlds should watch over the realisation of his

greatest work on earth? Why shouldn't we believe that, we who are going

away from this world to other ones?"

"Why not?" interrupted Zaidie, "why, of course we will. And now suppose

we come down in more ways than one and go and give poor Mrs. Van Stuyler

something to eat and drink. The dear old girl must be frightened half

out of her wits by this time."

"Very well," replied Redgrave; "but we'll come down literally first, so

that we can get the propellers to work."

He turned the wheel back till the indicator pointed to five. The

cloud-sea came up with a rush. They passed through it, and stopped about

a thousand feet above the sea. Redgrave touched the first button twice,

and then the next one twice. The air began to hiss past the walls of the

conning-tower. The crest-crowned waves of the Atlantic seemed to sweep

in a hurrying torrent behind them, and then Redgrave, having made sure

that Murgatroyd was at the after-wheel, gave him the course for

Washington, and then went down to induct his bride-elect into the art

and mystery of cooking by electricity as it was done in the kitchen of

the _Astronef_.