"Comrades, you must go," said she. "It"s nearly half past five. By the time you"ve got everything in readiness, you"ll have no time to lose."
"Right, Catherine," answered Gabriel. "Come, comrades! Up and at it!"
Ten minutes later they all issued forth into the soft gloom. All were in aviator"s dress, and each carried a parcel by a handle held with stout straps. Had you seen them, you would have noticed they took particular pains not to jar or shake these parcels, or approach unduly near each other.
At the door of the refuge, Catherine said good-bye to each, and added some brave word of cheer. Her farewell to Gabriel was longer than to the others; and for a moment their hands met and clung.
"Go," she whispered, "go, and G.o.d bless you! Go even though it be to death! Their airmen will take toll of some of the attackers, Gabriel.
Not all the Comrades will return. Oh, may _you_--may _you_!"
"What is written on the Book of Fate, will be," he answered. "Our petty hopes and fears are nothing, Catherine. If death awaits me, it will be sweet; for it will come, tonight, in the supreme service of the human race! Good-bye!"
With a sudden motion, the girl took his face between her hands, and kissed his forehead. For all her courage and strength, he sensed her heart wildly beating and he felt her tears.
"Good-bye, Gabriel," she breathed. "Would I might go with you! Would that my duty did not hold me here! Good-bye!"
Then he was gone, gone with the others, into the thickening obscurity of the fog-shrouded evening. Now Catherine stood there alone, head bowed and wet face hidden in both hands.
As the little fighting band disappeared, back to the girl drifted a few words of song, soft-hummed through the dusk--the deathless chorus of the International:
"Now comes the hour supreme!
To arms, each in his place!
The new dawn"s International Shall be the human race!..."
CHAPTER x.x.xIV.
THE ATTACK.
"Halt! Who goes there?"
The challenge rang sharply on the night air, outside a small gate in the barricade of the Monck Aviation Grounds.
"Liberty!" answered Gabriel, pausing as he gave the pa.s.sword.
"All right, come on," said a vague figure at the gate. The little group approached. The gate opened. Silently they entered the enclosure.
Another man stepped from a hangar. In his hand he held an electric flash, which he threw upon the newcomers, one by one.
"Right!" he commented, and took Gabriel by the hand. "This way!"
Ten minutes later, all of them were in the air, save only Gabriel, who insisted on staying till his entire squad had made a clean getaway. Then he too rose; and now in a long, swift line, the fighting squadron straightened away to north-eastward, on the twenty-mile run to Niagara.
The night was foggy, chill and dark. All the aviators had instructions to fly not less than 2,500 feet high, to keep a careful lookout lest they collide, and to steer by the lights of the great Air Trust plant.
For, misty though the heavens were, still Gabriel could see the dim glow of the tremendous aerial search-lights dominating Goat Island--lights of 5,000,000 candle-power, maintained by current from the Falls, incessantly sweeping the sky on the lookout for just such perils as now, indeed, were drawing near.
Momently, as he flew, Gabriel perceived these huge lights growing brighter, through the mist, and apprehension won upon him.
"Incredibly strong!" he muttered to himself, as he glanced from his barometer to the shining fog ahead. "Even though the mist will be thicker over the Falls than anywhere else, there"s a good possibility they may pierce it and pick us up--and _then_, look out for their "planes and swift, fighting dirigibles!"
He rotated the rising-plane, and now soared to 2,800 feet. Below and on either side of him, nothing but tenuous fog. Ahead, the swiftly-approaching fan of radiance, white, dazzling, beautiful, that seemed to gush from earth so far below and to the eastward. Already the thunders of the Falls were audible.
"Where are the others?" Gabriel wondered, his thoughts seeming to hum and roar in his head, in harmony with the shuddering diapason of the m.u.f.fler-deadened exhaust. "No way of telling, now. Each man for himself--and each to do his best!"
And then his thoughts reverted to Catherine; and round his heart a sudden yearning seemed to strengthen his stern, indomitable resolve--"Victory or death!"
But now there was scant time for thought. The moment of action was already close at hand. Far below there, hidden by night and dark and mist, Gabriel knew a hundred thousand comrades, of the Fighting Sections, were lying hidden, waiting for the signal to advance.
"And it"s time, now!" he said aloud, thrilled by a wondrous sense of vast responsibility--a sense that on this moment hung the fate of the world. "It"s time for the signal. Now then, up and at them!"
Taking the rocket--a powerful affair, capable of casting an intense, calcium light--he touched the fuse to a bit of smouldering punk fastened in a metal cup at his right hand. Then, as it flared, he launched the rocket far into the void.
Below, came a quick spurt of radiance, in a long, vivid streak that shot away with incredible rapidity. Gabriel followed it a moment, with his gaze, then smiled.
"The Rubicon is crossed," said he. "The gates of the Temple of Ja.n.u.s are open wide--and now comes War!"
He rose again, skimming to a still higher alt.i.tude as the glare of the great Works drew closer and closer underneath. The wind roared in his ears, louder than the whirling propellers. The whole fabric of the aeroplane quivered as it climbed, up, up above the rushing, bellowing cataract.
"Where are the others?" thought he, and reached for a thanatos projectile, in the rack near the metal cup where the punk still glowered.
All at once, a glare of light burst upward through the white-glowing mist; and the "plane reeled with the air-wave, as now a thunderous concussion boomed across the empty s.p.a.ces of the sky.
At the same moment, a faint, ripping noise mounted to Gabriel--a sound for all the world like the tearing of stout canvas. Then followed a chattering racket, something like distant mowing-machines at work; and now all blent to a steady, determined uproar. Gabriel almost thought to hear, as he launched his own projectile, far sounds as of the shouts and cries of men; but of this he could not make sure.
"They"re at it, anyhow!" he exulted. "At it, at last! By the way our men have launched the attack, the first explosion must have breached a wall!
G.o.d! What wouldn"t I give to be down there, in the thick of it, rather than here! I--"
_Crash_!
Again a spouting geyser of light and uproar burst into mid-air.
"That was _my_ thanatos speaking!" cried Gabriel. "Now for another!"
Before he could drop it, as he circled round and round, directly over the great, flailing beams of the Air Trust search-lights, a third detonation shattered the heavens, nearly unseating him. Up sprang the roar, with wonderful intensity, reflected from the earth as from a giant sounding-board. And Gabriel noted, with keen satisfaction, that one of the huge light-beams had gone dark.
"Put out _one_ of them, anyway, so far!" thought he, and swung again to westward, and once more dropped a messenger of death to tyranny.
Now the bombardment became general. Trust aerial-gun projectiles began bursting all about. Every second or two, terrible concussions leaped toward the zenith; and the earth, hidden somewhere down there below the fog-blanket, seemed flaming upward like a huge volcano. One by one the search-lights, whipping the sky, went black; and now the glow of them was fast diminishing, only to be replaced by a ruddier and more intermittent glare.
"The plant"s burning, at last," thought Gabriel. "Heaven grant the fire may spread to the oxygen-tanks! If we can only get _those_--!"
Again he launched a projectile, and again he circled over the doomed plant.
A swift black shape swooped by him. He had just time to exchange a yell of warning, when it was gone. The near peril gripped his heart, but did not shake it.
"Close call!" said he.