"Too late," said the old man.
"If we could stop them another hour!" cried the man in yellow.
"Nothing can stop them now," said the old man, "they have near a hundred aeroplanes in the first fleet."
"Another hour?" asked Graham.
"To be so near!" said the Ward Leader. "Now that we have found those guns. To be so near--. If once we could get them out upon the roof s.p.a.ces."
"How long would that take?" asked Graham suddenly.
"An hour--certainly."
"Too late," cried the Ward Leader, "too late."
"Is it too late?" said Graham. "Even now--. An hour!"
He had suddenly perceived a possibility. He tried to speak calmly, but his face was white. "There is one chance. You said there was an aeropile--?"
"On the Roehampton stage, Sire."
"Smashed?"
"No. It is lying crossways to the carrier. It might be got upon the guides--easily. But there is no aeronaut--."
Graham glanced at the two men and then at Helen. He spoke after a long pause. "We have no aeronauts?"
"None."
"The aeroplanes are clumsy," he said thoughtfully, "compared with the aeropiles."
He turned suddenly to Helen. His decision was made. "I must do it."
"Do what?"
"Go to this flying stage--to this aeropile."
"What do you mean?"
"I am an aeronaut. After all--. Those days for which you reproached me were not wasted."
He turned to the old man in yellow. "Put the aeropile upon the guides."
The man in yellow hesitated.
"What do you mean to do?" cried Helen.
"This aeropile--it is a chance--."
"You don"t mean--?"
"To fight--yes. To fight in the air. I have thought before--. An aeroplane is a clumsy thing. A resolute man--!"
"But--never since flying began--" cried the man in yellow.
"There has been no need. But now the time has come. Tell them now--send them my message--to put it upon the guides."
The old man dumbly interrogated the man in yellow, nodded, and hurried out.
Helen made a step towards Graham. Her face was white. "But--How can one fight? You will be killed."
"Perhaps. Yet, not to do it--or to let someone else attempt it--."
He stopped, he could speak no more, he swept the alternative aside by a gesture, and they stood looking at one another.
"You are right," she said at last in a low tone. "You are right. If it can be done... must go."
Those days for not altogether
He moved a step towards her, and she stepped back, her white face struggled against him and resisted him. "No," she gasped. "I cannot bear--. Go now."
He extended his hands stupidly. She clenched her fists. "Go now," she cried. "Go now."
He hesitated and understood. He threw his hands up in a queer half-theatrical gesture. He had no word to say. He turned from her.
The man in yellow moved towards the door with clumsy belated tact. But Graham stepped past him. He went striding through the room where the Ward Leader bawled at a telephone directing that the aeropile should be put upon the guides.
The man in yellow glanced at Helen"s still figure, hesitated and hurried after him. Graham did not once look back, he did not speak until the curtain of the ante-chamber of the great hall fell behind him. Then he turned his head with curt swift directions upon his bloodless lips.
CHAPTER XXIV. THE COMING OF THE AEROPLANES
Two men in pale blue were lying in the irregular line that stretched along the edge of the captured Roehampton stage from end to end, grasping their carbines and peering into the shadows of the stage called Wimbledon Park. Now and then they spoke to one another. They spoke the mutilated English of their cla.s.s and period. The fire of the Ostrogites had dwindled and ceased, and few of the enemy had been seen for some time. But the echoes of the fight that was going on now far below in the lower galleries of that stage, came every now and then between the staccato of shots from the popular side. One of these men was describing to the other how he had seen a man down below there dodge behind a girder, and had aimed at a guess and hit him cleanly as he dodged too far "He"s down there still," said the marksman. "See that little patch.
Yes. Between those bars." A few yards behind them lay a dead stranger, face upward to the sky, with the blue canvas of his jacket smoldering in a circle about the neat bullet hole on his chest. Close beside him a wounded man, with a leg swathed about, sat with an expressionless face and watched the progress of that burning. Gigantic behind them, athwart the carrier lay the captured aeropile.
"I can"t see him now," said the second man in a ton of provocation.
The marksman became foul-mouthed and high-voiced in his earnest endeavour to make things plain And suddenly, interrupting him, came a noisy shouting from the substage.
"What"s going on now," he said, and raised himself on one arm to stare at the stairheads in the central groove of the stage. A number of blue figures were coming up these, and swarming across the stage to the aeropile.
"We don"t want all these fools," said his friend. "They only crowd up and spoil shots. What are they after?"
"Ssh!--they"re shouting something."
The two men listened. The swarming new-comers had crowded densely about the aeropile. Three Ward Leaders, conspicuous by their black mantles and badges, clambered into the body and appeared above it. The rank and file flung themselves upon the vans, gripping hold of the edges, until the entire outline of the thing was manned, in some places three deep. One of the marksmen knelt up. "They"re putting it on the carrier--that"s what they"re after."