"Konstantin Volnow, of the Imperial a.r.s.enal at Petersburg, brings the message from the Tsar in writing."
"His Majesty"s messenger is welcome. Come alongside."
The _Ariel_ ran ahead until her prow touched the rail of the hurricane deck, and the Professor advanced with the Tsar"s letter in his hand, and gave it to the Admiral, saying--
"You are acquainted with me, Admiral Prabylov. Though I bear it unwillingly, I can vouch for the letter being authentic. I saw his Majesty write it, and he gave it into my hands."
"Then how do you come to be an unwilling bearer of it?" asked the Admiral, scowling and gnawing his moustache as he read the unwelcome letter. "What are these terms, and with whom were they made?"
"Pardon me, Admiral," interrupted Mazanoff, "that is not the question. I presume you recognise his Majesty"s signature, and see that he desires the air-ship to be given up."
"His Majesty"s signature can be forged, just as Nihilists" pa.s.sports can be, Mr. Terrorist, for that"s what I presume you are, and"--
"Admiral, I solemnly a.s.sure you that that letter is genuine, and that it is really his Majesty"s wish that the air-ship should be given up," the Professor broke in before Mazanoff had time to reply. "It is to be given in exchange for nine war-balloons which these air-ships captured before daybreak this morning."
"How do you come to be the bearer of it, sir? Please answer me that first."
"I am a prisoner of war. I surrendered to save the a.r.s.enal and perhaps Petersburg from destruction under circ.u.mstances which I cannot now explain"--
"Thank you, sir, that is quite enough! A pretty story, truly! And you ask me to believe this, and to give up that priceless air-ship on such grounds as these--a story that would hardly deceive a child? You captured nine of the Tsar"s war-balloons this morning, had an interview with his Majesty, got this letter from him at Custrin--more than five hundred miles away, and bring it here, and it is barely two in the afternoon!
"No, gentlemen, I am too old a sailor to be taken in by a yarn like that. I believe this letter to be a forgery, and I will not give the air-ship up on its authority."
"That is your last word, is it?" asked Mazanoff, white with pa.s.sion, but still forcing himself to speak coolly.
"That is my last word, sir, save to tell you that if you do not haul that flag you are masquerading under down at once I will fire upon you," shouted the Admiral, tearing the Tsar"s letter into fragments as he spoke.
"If I haul that flag down it will be the signal for the air-ships up yonder to open fire upon you, so your blood be on your own heads!"
said Mazanoff, stamping thrice on the deck as he spoke. The propellers of the _Ariel_ whirled round in a reverse direction, and she sprang swiftly back from the battleship, at the same time rising rapidly in the air.
Before she had cleared a hundred yards, and before the flag of truce was hauled down, there was a sharp, grinding report from one of the tops of the man-of-war, and a hail of bullets from a machine gun swept across the deck. Mazanoff heard a splintering of wood and gla.s.s, and a deep groan beside him. He looked round and saw the Professor clasp his hand to a great red wound in his breast, and fall in a heap on the deck.
This was the event of an instant. The next he had trained one of the bow-guns downwards on the centre of the deck of the Russian flagship and sent the projectile to its mark. Then quick as thought he sprang over and discharged the other gun almost at random. He saw the dazzling green flash of the explosions, then came a shaking of the atmosphere, and a roar as of a hundred thunder-claps in his ears, and he dropped senseless to the deck beside the corpse of the Professor.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "There was a sharp, grinding report from one of the tops of the man-of-war."
_See page 232._]
CHAPTER x.x.xI.
A RUSSIAN RAID.
Mazanoff came to himself about ten minutes later, lying on one of the seats in the after saloon, and all that he saw when he first opened his eyes was the white anxious face of Radna bending over him.
"What is the matter? What has happened? Where am I?" he asked, as soon as his tongue obeyed his will. His voice, although broken and unsteady, was almost as strong as usual, and Radna"s face immediately brightened as she heard it. A smile soon chased away her anxious look, and she said cheerily--
"Ah, come! you"re not killed after all. You are still on board the _Ariel_, and what has happened is this as far as I can see. In your hurry to return the shot from the Russian flagship you fired your guns at too close range, and the shock of the explosion stunned you.
In fact, we thought for the moment you had blown the _Ariel_ up too, for she shook so that we all fell down; then her engines stopped, and she almost fell into the water before they could be started again."
"Is she all right now? Where"s the Russian fleet, and what happened to the flagship? I must get on deck," exclaimed Mazanoff, sitting up on the seat. As he did so he put his hand to his head and said: "I feel a bit shaky still. What"s that--brandy you"ve got there? Get me some champagne, and put the brandy into it. I shall be all right when I"ve had a good drink. Now I think of it, I wonder that explosion didn"t blow us to bits. You haven"t told me what became of the flagship," he continued, as Radna came back with a small bottle of champagne and uncorked it.
"Well, the flagship is at the bottom of the German Ocean. When Petroff told me that you had fallen dead, as he said, on deck, I ran up in defiance of your orders and saw the battleship just going down.
The sh.e.l.ls had blown the middle of her right out, and a cloud of steam and smoke and fire was rising out of a great ragged s.p.a.ce where the funnels had been. Before I got you down here she broke right in two and went down."
"That serves that blackguard Prabylov right for saying we forged the Tsar"s letter, and firing on a flag of truce. Poor Volnow"s dead, I suppose?"
"Oh yes," replied Radna sadly. "He was shot almost to pieces by the volley from the machine gun. The deck saloon is riddled with bullets, and the decks badly torn up, but fortunately the hull and propellers are almost uninjured. But come, drink this, then you can go up and see for yourself."
So saying she handed him a tumbler of champagne well dashed with brandy. He drank it down at a gulp, like the Russian that he was, and said as he put the gla.s.s down--
"That"s better. I feel a new man. Now give me a kiss, _batiushka_, and I"ll be off."
When he reached the deck he found the _Ariel_ ascending towards the _Ithuriel_, and about a mile astern of the Russian fleet, the vessels of which were blazing away into the air with their machine guns, in the hope of "bringing him down on the wing," as he afterwards put it.
He could hear the bullets singing along underneath him; but the _Ariel_ was rising so fast, and going at such a speed through the air, that the moment the Russians got the range they lost it again, and so merely wasted their ammunition.
Neither the _Ithuriel_ nor the _Orion_ seemed to have taken any part in the battle so far, or to have done anything to avenge the attack made upon the _Ariel_. Mazanoff wondered not a little at this, as both Arnold and Tremayne must have seen the fate of the Russian flagship. As soon as he got within speaking distance of the _Ithuriel_, he sang out to Arnold, who was on the deck--
"I got in rather a tight place down there. That scoundrel fired upon us with the flag of truce flying, and when I gave him a couple of sh.e.l.ls in return I thought the end of the world was come."
"You fired at too close range, my friend. Those sh.e.l.ls are sudden death to anything within a hundred yards of them. Are you all well on board? You"ve been knocked about a bit, I see."
"No; poor Volnow"s dead. He was killed standing close beside me, and I wasn"t touched, though the explosion of the sh.e.l.l knocked the senses out of me completely. However, the machinery"s all right, and I don"t think the hull is hurt to speak of. But what are you doing? I should have thought you"d have blown half the fleet out of the water by this time."
"No. We saw that you had amply avenged yourself, and the Master"s orders were not to do anything till you returned. You"d better come on board and consult with him."
Mazanoff did so, and when he had told his story to Natas, the latter mystified him not a little by replying--
"I am glad that none of you are injured, though, of course, I"m sorry that I sent Volnow to his death; but that is the fortune of war. If one of us fell into his master"s hands his fate would be worse than that. You avenged the outrage promptly and effectively.
"I have decided not to injure the Russian fleet more than I can help.
It has work to do which must not be interfered with. My only object is to recover the _Lucifer_, if possible, and so we shall follow the fleet for the present across the North Sea on our way to the rendezvous with the other vessels from Aeria which are to meet us on Rockall Island, and wait our opportunity. Should the opportunity not come before then, we must proceed to extremities, and destroy her and the cruiser that has her on board.
"And do you think we shall get such an opportunity?"
"I don"t know," replied Natas. "But it is possible. I don"t think it likely that the fleet will have coal enough for a long cruise in the Atlantic, and therefore it is possible that they will make a descent on Aberdeen, which they are quite strong enough to capture if they like, and coal up there. In that case it is extremely probable that they will make use of the air-ship to terrorise the town into surrender, and as soon as she takes the air we must make a dash for her, and either take her or blow her to pieces."
Arnold expressed his entire agreement with this idea, and, as the event proved, it was entirely correct. Instead of steering nor"-nor"-west, as they would have done had they intended to go round the Shetland Islands, or north-west, had they chosen the course between the Orkneys and the Shetlands, the Russian vessels kept a due westerly course during the rest of the day, and this course could only take them to the Scotch coast near Aberdeen.
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.
They then put on speed, took a wide sweep to the northward, and returned southward over Banffshire, and pa.s.sing Aberdeen to the west, found a secluded resting-place on the northern spur of the Kincardineshire Hills, about five miles to the southward of the Granite City.
Here the repairs which were needed by the _Ariel_ were at once taken in hand by her own crew and that of the _Ithuriel_, while the _Orion_ was sent out to sea again to keep a sharp look-out for the Russian fleet, which she would sight long before she herself became visible, and then to watch the movements of the Russians from as great a distance as possible until it was time to make the counter-attack.
As Aberdeen was then one of the coaling depots for the North Sea Squadron, it was defended by two battleships, the _Ascalon_ and the _Menelaus_, three powerful coast-defence vessels, the _Thunderer_, the _Cyclops_, and the _Pluto_, six cruisers, and twelve torpedo-boats. The sh.o.r.e defences consisted of a fort on the north bank at the mouth of the Dee, mounting ten heavy guns, and the Girdleness fort, mounting twenty-four 9-inch twenty-five ton guns, in connection with which was a station for working navigable torpedoes of the Brennan type, which had been considerably improved during the last ten years.