In another minute she was climbing out of the window. For one second he saw her standing on the narrow ledge with black s.p.a.ce at her feet; the next, without even a cry, she sprang out into the darkness, and was gone.
Jimbo caught his breath and ran up to see. She dropped like a stone, turning over sideways in the air, and then at once her wings opened on both sides and she righted. The darkness swallowed her up for a moment so that he could not see clearly, and only heard the threshing of the huge feathers; but it was easy to tell from the sound that she was rising.
Then suddenly a black form cleared the wall and rose swiftly in a magnificent sweep into the sky, and he saw her outlined darkly against the stars above the high elm tree. She was safe. Now it was his turn.
"Act quickly! Don"t think!" rang in his ears. If only he could do it all as quickly as she had done it. But insidious fear had been working all the time below the surface, and his refusal to recognise it could not prevent it weakening his muscles and checking his power of decision.
Fortunately something of his Older Self came to the rescue. The emotions of fear, excitement, and intense antic.i.p.ation combined to call up the powers of his deeper being: the boy trembled horribly, but the old, experienced part of him sang with joy.
Cautiously he began to climb out on to the window-sill; first one foot and then the other hung over the edge. He sat there, staring down into black s.p.a.ce beneath.
For a minute he hesitated; despair rushed over him in a wave; he could never take that awful jump into emptiness and darkness. It was impossible. Better be a prisoner for ever than risk so fearful a plunge.
He felt cold, weak, frightened, and made a half-movement back into the room. The wings caught somehow between his legs and nearly flung him headlong into the yard.
"Jimbo! I"m waiting for you!" came at that moment in a faint cry from the stars, and the sound gave him just the impetus he needed before it was too late. He could not disappoint her--his faithful friend. Such a thing was impossible.
He stood upright on the ledge, his hands clutching the window-sash behind, balancing as best he could. He clenched his fists, drew a deep, long breath, and jumped upwards and forwards into the air.
Up rushed the darkness with a shriek; the air whistled in his ears; he dropped at fearful speed into nothingness.
At first everything was forgotten--wings, instructions, warnings, and all. He even forgot to open his wings at all, and in another second he would have been dashed upon the hard paving-stones of the courtyard where his great enemy lay waiting to seize him.
But just in the nick of time he remembered, and the long hours of practice bore fruit. Out flew the great red wings in a tremendous sweep on both sides of him, and he began to strike with every atom of strength he possessed. He had dropped to within six feet of the ground; but at once the strokes began to tell, and oh, magical sensation! he felt himself rising easily, lightly, swiftly.
A very slight effort of those big wings would have been sufficient to lift him out of danger, but in his terror and excitement he quite miscalculated their power, and in a single moment he was far out of reach of the dangerous yard and anything it contained. But the mad rush of it all made his head swim; he felt dizzy and confused, and, instead of clearing the wall, he landed on the top of it and clung to the crumbling coping with hands and feet, panting and breathless.
The dizziness was only momentary, however. In less than a minute he was on his feet and in the act of taking his second leap into s.p.a.ce. This time it came more easily. He dropped, and the field swung up to meet him. Soon the powerful strokes of his wings drove him at great speed upwards, and he bounded ever higher towards the stars.
Overhead, the governess hovered like an immense bird, and as he rose up he caught the sound of her wings beating the air, while far beneath him, he heard with a shudder a voice like the rushing of a great river. It made him increase his pace, and in another minute he found himself among the little whirlwinds that raced about from the beating of Miss Lake"s great wings.
"Well done!" cried the delighted governess. "Safe at last! Now we can fly to our heart"s content!"
Jimbo flew up alongside, and together they dashed forward into the night.
CHAPTER XI
THE FIRST FLIGHT
There was not much talking at first. The stress of conflicting emotions was so fierce that the words choked themselves in his throat, and the desire for utterance found its only vent in hard breathing.
The intoxication of rapid motion carried him away headlong in more senses than one. At first he felt as if he never would be able to keep up; then it seemed as if he never would get down again. For with wings it is almost easier to rise than to fall, and a first flight is, before anything else, a series of vivid and audacious surprises.
For a long time Jimbo was so dizzy with excitement and the novelty of the sensation that he forgot his deliverer altogether.
And what a flight it was! Instead of the steady race of the carrier pigeon, or of the rooks homeward bound at evening, it was the see-saw motion of the wren"s swinging journey across the lawn; only heavier, faster, and with more terrific impetus. Up and down, each time with a rise and fall of twenty feet, he careered, whistling through the summer night; at the drop of each curve, so low that the scents of dewy gra.s.s rose into his face; at the crest of it, so high that the trees and hedges often became mere blots upon the dark surface of the earth.
The fields rushed by beneath him; the white roads flashed past like streaks of snow. Sometimes he shot across sheets of water and felt the cooler air strike his cheeks; sometimes over sheltered meadows, where the sunshine had slept all day and the air was still soft and warm; on and on, as easily as rain dropping from the sky, or wind rushing earthwards from between the clouds. Everything flew past him at an astonishing rate--everything but the bright stars that gazed calmly down overhead; and when he looked up and saw their steadfastness it helped to keep within bounds the fine alarm of this first excursion into the great vault of the sky.
"Gently, child!" gasped Miss Lake behind him. "We shall never keep it up at this rate."
"Oh! but it"s so wonderful," he cried, drawing in the air loudly between his teeth, and shaking his wings rapidly like a hawk before it drops.
The pace slackened a little and the girl drew up alongside. For some time they flew forward together in silence.
They had been skirting the edge of a wood, when suddenly the trees fell away and Jimbo gave a scream and rose fifty feet into the air with a single bound. Straight in front of him loomed an immense, glaring disc that seemed to swim suddenly up into the sky above the trees. It hung there before his eyes and dazzled him.
"It"s only the moon," cried Miss Lake from below.
Jimbo dropped through the air to her side again with a gasp.
"I thought it was a big hole in the sky with fire rushing through," he explained breathlessly.
The boy stared, full of wonder and delight, at the huge flaming circle that seemed to fill half the heavens in front of him.
"Look out!" cried the governess, seizing his hand.
Whish! whew! whirr! A large bird whipped past them like some winged imp of darkness, vanishing among the trees far below. There would certainly have been a collision but for the girl"s energetic interference.
"You must be on the look-out for these night-birds," she said. "They fly so unexpectedly, and, of course, they don"t see us properly. Telegraph wires and church steeples are bad too, but then we shan"t fly over cities much. Keep a good height, it"s safer."
They altered their course a little, flying at a different angle, so that the moon no longer dazzled them. Steering came quite easily by turning the body, and Jimbo still led the way, the governess following heavily and with a mighty business of wings and flapping.
It was something to remember, the glory of that first journey through the air. Sixty miles an hour, and scarcely an effort! Skimming the long ridges of the hills and rushing through the pure air of mountain tops; threading the star-beams; bathing themselves from head to foot in an ocean of cool, clean wind; swimming on the waves of viewless currents--currents warmed only by the magic of the stars, and kissed by the burning lips of flying meteors.
Far below them the moonlight touched the fields with silver and the murmur of the world rose faintly to their ears, trembling, as it were, with the inarticulate dreams of millions. Everywhere about them thrilled and sang the unspeakable power of the night. The mystery of its great heart seemed laid bare before them.
It was like a wonder-journey in some Eastern fairy tale. Sometimes they pa.s.sed through zones of sweeter air, perfumed with the scents of hay and wild flowers; at others, the fresh, damp odour of ploughed fields rose up to them; or, again, they went spinning over leagues of forest where the tree-tops stretched beneath them like the surface of a wide, green sea, sleeping in the moonlight. And, when they crossed open water, the stars shone reflected in their faces; and all the while the wings, whirring and purring softly through the darkness, made pleasant music in their ears.
"I"m tired," declared Jimbo presently.
"Then we"ll go down and rest," said his breathless companion with obvious relief.
She showed him how to spread his wings, sloping them towards the ground at an angle that enabled him to shoot rapidly downwards, at the same time regulating his speed by the least upward tilt. It was a glorious motion, without effort or difficulty, though the pace made it hard to keep the eyes open, and breathing became almost impossible. They dropped to within ten feet of the ground and then shot forward again.
But, while the boy was watching his companion"s movements, and paying too little attention to his own, there rose suddenly before him out of the ground a huge, bulky form of something--and crash--he flew headlong into it.
Fortunately it was only a haystack; but the speed at which he was going lodged his head several inches under the thatch, whence he projected horizontally into s.p.a.ce, feet, arms, and wings gyrating furiously. The governess, however, soon released him with much laughter, and they dropped down into the fallen hay upon the ground with no worse result than a shaking.
"Oh, what a lark!" he cried, shaking the hay out of his feathers, and rubbing his head rather ruefully.
"Except that larks are hardly night-birds," she laughed, helping him.
They settled with folded wings in the shadow of the haystack; and the big moon, peeping over the edge at them, must have surely wondered to see such a funny couple, in such a place, and at such an hour.
"Mushrooms!" suddenly cried the governess, springing to her feet. "There must be lots in this field. I"ll go and pick some while you rest a bit."