"I couldn"t trust it to go so far. You see, here the workshop is at hand, and if anything goes wrong it can be easily repaired. It would be rather a poor lookout if the thing came to grief in the Bay of Biscay, say, and I came souse into the sea."
"It _would_ be rather rotten. Well, let"s have a spin now."
The two mounted the car, and spent an hour in wheeling about the enclosure. Tom ventured to set the motors at a higher speed than he had before tried, and put the aeroplane through a score of evolutions, which demonstrated that he had it perfectly under control. Oliphant in his enthusiasm returned again to the matter of the captured envoy.
"I say, is it quite out of the question, d"you think?"
"Afraid so. Perhaps in a few months--"
"That"s no good," interrupted his companion. "The occasion will be pa.s.sed. Ingleton will be either released or dead, and, in any case, there"ll be such a terrific agitation against the pater that he"ll be forced to resign. He wouldn"t mind personally; but there"s the Country, you see. Can"t you risk it?"
"I might if only myself were concerned; but there"s Mr. Greatorex to reckon with. The whole thing"s only experimental. I"m sure he wouldn"t hear of it."
"Politics is a rotten game! Wish we were back in the times before Whigs and Tories were invented."
"And unpopular ministers lost their heads!-Now I"m going to let her down. See how near she falls to the perpendicular."
He dropped a hammer out of the car, stopped the horizontal motion and started the vertical, adjusted the planes, and descended gently to the ground.
"That"s better," he cried, when he had measured the distance between the aeroplane and the hammer; "it"s only a dozen yards. We"re getting on.
Really, I wish I could try your suggestion."
"Shall I mention it to the pater?" said Oliphant eagerly.
"Not on any account," said Tom aghast. "Even if I could do it, he of all men must not know."
"I don"t see why."
"Supposing I tried it and came a cropper, there"d be a double outcry against him; the first for not rescuing Sir Mark Ingleton, the second for allowing a crack-brained engineer to make a fool of himself and a corpse in the bargain. No, give it up; I don"t see any help for it."
But when left to himself Tom could not keep his thoughts from Oliphant"s suggestion. The adventurous idea captivated his imagination; he began to consider it in earnest; he spent several hours of the afternoon in further experimenting with the aeroplane, and after dinner, when Mr.
Greatorex and he went out into the grounds for their customary stroll and cigarettes, he broached the subject, in a casual way, and in much the same terms as Oliphant had used.
"Pity we couldn"t take a trip to Morocco and get Ingleton away," he said cautiously.
"Eh! Pull Langside"s chestnuts out of the fire! He was a fool to send the man to Morocco. I wouldn"t if I could, and of _course_ it"s impossible."
"I"m not sure of that. And it isn"t a party matter, really."
"Not party! It"s _all_ party."
"Sir Mark Ingleton is an agent of the Crown, sir, and the Crown is above party. I think in these matters we might sink our differences."
"Yes, and sink our aeroplane, and _drown_ ourselves, and serve us _right_."
But opposition was only a stimulus to Tom. He began to argue the matter strenuously. Mr. Greatorex, to do him justice, was no bigot. His politics were at bottom a particularly intense form of patriotism; and when Tom showed him that there were at any rate possibilities in the suggestion, he gradually changed his view, forgot his reluctance to help a political opponent, and became indeed quite enthusiastic.
"By _George_, Tom!" he exclaimed; "what a grand send-off it would be to your invention if the first use of it were the rescue of this unfortunate diplomatist! And what a magnificent thing for the Country!
Come and let"s talk it out over a cup of coffee. Not a _word_ before Mrs. Greatorex, mind."
"Well, John, are you pleased with your toy?" said that good lady when they re-entered the house.
"Quite, my dear, _quite_."
"It will be quite a feature of our garden party. But I hope Tom will make sure that it is absolutely safe before he takes anybody up at half a crown a ride. I shall be glad of the half-crowns for my Nursing a.s.sociation, but I should never forgive you if any one was hurt."
"Why, my dear, the half-crowns would go to pay the _nurses_."
Mr. Greatorex and Tom had a long talk in the study that night. Up to the present the longest journey the aeroplane had taken without descending was, as Tom estimated, about forty miles. Then something had always occurred to make a descent necessary. The princ.i.p.al stumbling-block had been the overheating of the motors. But Tom suggested that if he were content with a speed of about twenty-five miles an hour, a greater distance might be covered without this risk.
The practical question was, could the machine be brought so near the place of the envoy"s captivity as to make a dash upon it practicable?
From the latest report, in the evening paper, it appeared that the prisoner was held in a mountain fastness some eighty miles from the Atlantic seaboard. Tom got out a map and pointed out the spot. It did not seem impossible to reach it by means of the airship from some convenient place on the coast.
"D"you know what occurs to me?" said Tom. "You were talking of a yachting cruise in the _Dandy Dinmont_ in September. Why not make it a little earlier? I could then go in the airship and you in the yacht; and we could make that a kind of floating base, taking in it all materials necessary for repairs."
"But you couldn"t repair the thing without letting it down on the deck."
"I could do that, I think. To-day I came down within a few feet of the spot I aimed at, and I could let the machine down on deck if the yacht were not rolling or pitching too much."
"But _hang_ it all, Tom, the deck _wasn"t made_ for such a purpose."
"No; but it wouldn"t take long to rig up a temporary wooden platform and framework over the after-part of the vessel to serve as a landing-stage."
"You appear to have thought it all out," said Mr. Greatorex. "D"you want to rush me off my _feet_?"
"Not a bit," replied Tom smiling. "You"ll be safe on deck."
"Well, how long will it take to get everything ready?"
"A week."
"Very well. I"ll write off to Bodgers to-night to trim the yacht. The rest I leave to you. And mind, not a _word_ to a soul."
"I think I shall have to tell Oliphant. In fact, it was he who put it into my head."
"That"s a nuisance! Well, we"ll have him to dinner to-morrow. I want to take stock of him. Not a _word_ till I have sized him up."
Oliphant came to dinner with his sister and was approved. Mrs. Greatorex afterwards p.r.o.nounced him to be "quite a nice boy." Mr. Greatorex used different terms.
"He"s no _fool_, and don"t _talk_ too much," he said.
The three had a very animated discussion as they walked in the cool of the evening. Mr. Greatorex was very emphatic on the point of secrecy.
"We don"t want any newspaper fellow to get wind of the airship until we"ve _proved_ it," he said. "A pretty fool I should look if they ga.s.sed about it for a column or two and then the whole thing went _pop_ like a paper balloon. And that Morocco fellow will have plenty of spies, of course; _I_ know their Eastern ways; and if he got a hint of what we"re up to, he"d be on his guard and then there"d be fizzle."
"How many pa.s.sengers will the machine carry?" asked Oliphant.
"Three or four light-weights, I should think," Tom replied.