A Trip to Mars

CHAPTER XXVII

A DESPERATE VENTURE

Malto and Malandris disappeared down a stairway; and Alondra and the two chums strolled on to the outside gallery to watch their foes.

The wind was now very high, and the darkening sky grew blacker every minute. The swirling gusts whistled and shrieked amongst the outer metal framework, and moaned dismally through the windows and doors.

On each floor of the pavilion there was one of these galleries which ran the whole way round on the outside, being partitioned off from the interior by glass windows only. Hence there was almost as good a view from the inside as from without; except that one could not look over and see what was going on immediately beneath.

'The storm seems likely to be a bit of luck for us,' Jack observed, as he watched the preparations which were going on below. 'They don't seem to find it to their liking.'

So boisterous had the weather become that they found wings almost unmanageable. The two men were trying their best to manipulate some contrivances of the kind, but with scant success. Every time an attempt was made at a start, a blast would come along, swishing and buffeting the outspread wings, and dashing one or other of them to the ground ere the aeronaut could rise high enough to use them properly.

'Why, it doesn't seem much use to think of attacking us in that way in such a wind!' exclaimed Gerald. 'If they even succeed in making a start, they will only run a risk of being either dashed against the building or carried past it out of sight. And they couldn't hope to fly back in face of this wind, could they?'

'No, you are quite right,' Alondra returned. 'I must say those two fellows must be either unusually clever or uncommonly foolish, to think they can attack us under such circumstances. Nevertheless, we must be on our guard. One of them might, by some chance, get blown against the framework here, and cling to it. Then, with his trident, he would make short work of us if he caught us within reach.'

'And if we were idle meantime,' put in Jack, between his teeth. 'There, look at that!'

One of the daring aeronauts had taken advantage, as he thought, of a slight lull, and had sprung up into the air. But a sudden gust caught one of the wings and dashed it violently to the ground again, causing him to fall heavily.

'If that's all they can do, we haven't much to fear from them!' cried Gerald, rubbing his hands.

But his rejoicing came too soon, for even as he spoke there came another lull; and the other aeronaut rose into the air and came straight towards them.

Alondra laid a hand upon both of his companions and dragged them promptly back through the door, and closed it. Jack, who had been about to fire at the assailant, looked not a little surprised.

'Another moment – before you could use your weapon – he would have had the three of us!' exclaimed the young prince. 'We had better watch him from behind the glass, where we are safe, and wait to see what happens next.'

The two chums could but recognise the wisdom of this advice. They had not at first realised that the man had risen high enough to bring them within range. They had been in imminent danger, therefore – supposing their foe had been able to use his trident – of being assailed and rendered helpless before their bullets could take effect. Inside the glass they were safe, for the fateful flash could not penetrate it.

The attacker seemed to be coming on gaily, or, at least, without any great trouble, when another blast caught him and spun him round like a great top. Then, ere he could reach the gallery, it carried him downwards with a sudden swoop, and left him helpless, but unhurt, at the foot of the building.

He picked himself up, and a crowd of his friends seized upon him and half-carried, half-dragged him back to a distance which they considered necessary for another attempt.

'We had a narrow escape,' Alondra declared. 'He is a plucky fellow; and he was as cool and unflustered just then as if there had been no roaring wind playing around. I saw it in his eye. It was lucky I did see it, and rushed you two into shelter in time.'

'We have to thank you for being so prompt, then,' Jack answered. 'We must be more careful next time. He 'll have another try, I suppose?'

'I don't know. I almost doubt if he will risk it, plucky as he evidently is. You can hear how the wind is increasing.'

He opened the door a little way as he spoke, and such a gust came in as almost forced it out of his hand.

'It's a regular tempest!' cried Gerald. 'The building itself seems to rock about with it and almost feels as if it might blow over.'

'Yes, it will certainly stop any further attempts of that kind,' Alondra decided. 'No man who is not a fool or a madman would trust himself on wings in such a storm. His life would not be worth a minute's purchase. He would be likely to be blown against the first thing that came in his way, and have his brains dashed out. No airship, even – unless it were the great Ivenia– could make headway against such a wind.'

'What you say is true enough, Prince; yet I am afraid we shall have to show ourselves mad enough to risk it,' said Malto, who had re-entered the apartment unperceived. 'If the chance were offered you of trying to escape on wings, now, at this moment, or waiting to be pounced upon by Agrando's people later on, which would you choose?'

'What is the use of asking such a question?' Alondra queried in return, somewhat impatiently. 'Surely we have something more urgent to think of just now than' —

'Not at all,' answered Malto coolly. 'It happens to be the most urgent question of the moment. To cut the matter short, Prince, we have met with a great find. We have discovered, besides the tridents and things I had hoped for, several complete flying-outfits. They are motor-wings, and if you have the courage to try your luck with them in this storm, there is no reason why we should not bid Agrando's people a cheery "Good-bye," and flit off before his airships come buzzing about our ears in real earnest.'

The friends stared at one another in blank astonishment. Here was an unexpected turn indeed! Truly, it was a most momentous decision which they were called upon to make – to do that which Alondra but a minute before had pronounced none but a fool or madman would dare to risk, or stay and take their chance of being rescued.

'Honestly, it seems to me our only plan,' Malto declared. 'Malandris and I have been discussing it downstairs, and we came to the conclusion that your friends would have been here before this if they were coming at all. I am sorry to say I fear they must have got the worst of it; and Agrando is only waiting till the wind drops to come and seize us. He thinks he is sure of us; and need not, therefore, risk one of his airships in such a storm.'

'I fear you must be right, my friend,' said Alondra sadly. 'In that case, your plan, wild as it would otherwise be, is the only one open to us. For my part, I will risk it.'

'And I!' exclaimed Gerald and Jack together.

'Then the sooner we act upon that decision the better,' said Malto. 'At any moment the wind may drop, and our chance will have gone. Everything is ready. From the top outside gallery we can get a better send-off than those chaps down there had. We can slip out upon the farther side, and be off and away before they have time to understand what's afoot. Then we must trust to the very force of the wind to carry us well beyond their reach. There is one suggestion I have to make. It is that we shall be all five roped together with double ropes, so that we shall keep together; in that way, if one is in trouble, the others may be able to help him. Otherwise, we shall probably be blown about like flies, and lose touch with one another in the first ten minutes.'

No time was lost in further discussion. They all set to work with a will, dragging the necessary equipage up to the top floor. There they speedily completed their arrangements, went out on to the outside gallery, and, after some preliminary manoeuvring, Malto gave the signal.

Being on the lee side, sheltered for the moment from the gale, they managed to make a fairly good start. They threw themselves fearlessly from the gallery, and a great shout of rage and astonishment which came to their ears from below told them that their foes had just caught sight of them.

A moment more and the howling tempest had caught them and was whirling them madly forward. Upwards they sailed with poised wings, like immense birds, while their bewildered enemies below gazed after them with staring eyes and open mouths.

There was another flash of lightning, followed on the instant by a crash that seemed to shake the very rocks around; and then there were cries and shrieks from the crowd as stones and pieces of metal-work came flying through the air.

The lightning had struck the pavilion and wrecked it!

CHAPTER XXVIII

SAILING ON THE STORM-WIND

The five adventurous fliers were borne along by the wind in a fashion which can be better imagined than described.

To Gerald and Jack, at least, it was an absolutely novel experience, whatever it may have been to the others. Every time they glanced down it almost made them giddy to see the rate at which the various features of the landscape were racing, as it were, past them.

Of the wrecking of the pavilion by lightning they knew nothing. They had been dazzled by the awful flash, and almost deafened by the terrible crash which followed; but they were then already two or three hundred yards from the scene. A minute or two later, and they were a mile or more away; and the place itself would have been out of sight even if they could have looked round.

But they had no time to look round. They scarcely seemed to have time to look ahead. No sooner did they catch sight of something – a large building, a group of trees, or what not – in the distance, than, lo! it seemed to make a mad rush towards them. One moment it was half a mile away; the next it had vanished behind them.

But it was very difficult to distinguish any individual object.

The whole landscape beneath them was one vast blur. Cities, villages, trees, fields, woods, streams, lakes, hills, valleys – all seemed to be merged into a vague mass, and there was no time to single out details before they had slipped past.

Curiously enough – and contrary to all expectations of the two visitors from Earth – their progress, wild and mad as it seemed when they looked down, was serene, easy, almost quiet, when they looked up. So long as they made no effort to stop or turn they scarcely felt any wind at all; and so long as they could keep clear of possible obstacles in their course by sailing over them there appeared to be no immediate danger. Below them all was a wild, mad race amid a continuous, low, booming roar; above, everything looked quiet, almost stationary, for the black clouds travelled noiselessly and kept exact pace with them.

Whether they would be able to continue to travel thus so long as the storm should last was another matter – as also was the question of where they were being carried. They had no control over their course, no idea of what their ultimate destination was likely to be, no possible means of arresting their wild career. To have ventured on a lower course, nearer the ground, in the hope of stopping, would have meant certain death.

Nor could they so much as speak to one another. They were all roped together, it is true, and this proved a very wise precaution, for without it they would undoubtedly have quickly become separated and hopelessly lost to one another. Malto had left plenty of rope between each, and this was now extended to its utmost, leaving too great an interval to permit even of shouting. They all looked to Malto – who was in the centre – for guidance; and he conveyed his directions and advice by signs.

Of other fliers, or of airships of any kind, they saw none. It was the custom to send warnings ahead in such case, and for all air-craft to seek shelter until the storm had passed.

The wings they had found and appropriated were a sort of combination – that is to say, they were supplied with electric motors, but could also be used as ordinary wings when the supply of electricity stored in the batteries ran out, just as one can work a motor-cycle with one's feet. At present the travellers were husbanding their power carefully, using only just enough to keep them at what seemed to be a safe height.

It had been Malto's hope, when they had started, that the storm would not continue in such fury for any length of time. But this expectation proved to be delusive. Hour after hour passed, and still they were carried along at a pace which would have rendered any attempt at stopping sheer madness. Cities and towns had long disappeared; villages, even, now seemed to be no more. The ground became hilly, and less and less cultivated till they came upon a region which was little more than a rocky desert. Here the hills were growing into mountains; and some of these towered up to such a height that possible collision with their rocky peaks became a very ugly possibility.

Malto grew alarmed, and signalled to his companions to ascend yet higher. Upwards they mounted accordingly, and passed into the midst of the swirling clouds. Here they were in a thick mist, but presently, to Malto's relief, they struck into an upper current free from cloud, and there they entered a region of perfect calm.

They could now even talk, and look round, and take rest of a sort. The sun was shining, and everything was bright and cheerful. Beneath their feet they could see nothing save great masses of sombre, heavy-looking clouds scurrying furiously onwards.

'Whew!' Jack uttered a long whistle of relief. 'This is a change indeed! I began to wonder where on Earth – h'm, I mean where on Mars – we were rushing to! Where do you suppose we 've got to? I mean, supposing we dropped straight down, what part of your world should we be in?' He asked the question in a general sort of way, and Malto answered him as vaguely, by admitting frankly that he had not the least idea.

'I confess I 've lost count of all landmarks,' he declared. 'I am very much afraid we are now near what is known as the Great Desert. It is a more or less waterless tract which is uninhabited, save by some roaming tribes of wanderers who do not bear the best of characters.'

'Ha! You have deserts, then, as we have?' said Gerald.

Malto looked at him in surprise.

'Why, of course; I thought everybody knew that! Fully one-third of our globe is waterless desert, and, what is worse, the tract is gradually extending. Our scientific men prophesy that the proportion will grow larger and larger until the whole planet becomes a dried-up waste. That is the cheerful sort of doom they predict for future generations!'

'Curious, isn't it?' murmured Jack, glancing at Gerald. 'That is exactly what our earthly scientists have prophesied as likely to happen to Mars in the future!'

'And to our own planet also, some day, I suppose,' Gerald rejoined. 'Only, here, I suppose, the process has gone farther than it has with us.'

'Well, desert or no desert, it will be better than Agrando's dungeons,' said Jack. 'We shall have to go down into it, I suppose, when the storm subsides? We can't stop up here indefinitely. What are we to do meanwhile? Can't we try to work back in this upper current?'

Malto shook his head.

'It would probably be of very little use, and would certainly be unwise,' he counselled. 'We have come hundreds of miles – much farther than our whole store of electric force would carry us. If we expend it all in trying to work back we shall be in bad case if, when we come to the end of our store, we still find ourselves where we do not want to be. Now, to support ourselves up here quietly will take but very little of our reserve force, and we shall have a good stock left for emergencies. That is my advice; in fact, that is practically all we can do. We must wait here till the storm below has blown itself out. Then we will go down and try to find out what country we have got into.'

'I think you are right,' Alondra agreed.

'It is already well on in the afternoon – judging by the sun – and we have had nothing to eat. I 'm getting hungry!' Jack grumbled. 'Don't you have aerial inns up in the clouds here, where storm-tossed travellers can get a meal?'

Needless to say, they were all hungry, but there was nothing to be done but wait. So, to pass the time, they began to compare notes, and Alondra related his adventure of the early morning in the pool in the glass-house. Malto and Malandris nodded their heads significantly as they listened.

'Ah, there are strange tales afloat about that glass-house and the deadly plant it shelters,' the elder man declared. 'I have never seen it myself, but I have heard quite enough concerning it.'

The talk went on, and an hour or two slipped by; and then, just as the sun drew near the horizon, Malto, looking down, suddenly ventured an opinion that the wind below had subsided.

To test the point, they swept downwards, passed through several strata of dense cloud, and found, sure enough, that the guess had been correct. Below the cloud all was now almost as calm as above. There was scarcely breeze enough to carry them along.

They finally descended, just before sunset, in a gloomy, forbidding valley of rocks, where there were no signs of Martian inhabitants to be seen in any direction. They found, however, a small stream – a fact which surprised Malto – and this enabled them to quench their thirst. But how to obtain the wherewithal to satisfy their hunger was another and more hopeless matter.

CHAPTER XXIX

ATTACKED IN THE DARK

Presently Malto uttered an exclamation of surprise. He walked a short distance up the little watercourse and examined carefully some bushes growing on its banks. They seemed to excite both interest and pleasure.

'I know those plants,' he explained to his companions. 'They will provide us with a very fair and toothsome supper, and they also tell me a story. You wished to know where we had drifted to, and I can now tell you almost exactly.

'This is not the Great Desert – fortunately, we have not travelled far enough to reach that – but a tract lying upon its borders. We are in a region situated between the desert and the country of Iraynia, which,' he added slowly, and with some sadness in his tone, 'is my native land.'

'Oh!' said Alondra; 'so you are a native of Iraynia! I have heard a good deal about that country, though I have never been there. Was there not some great fuss or trouble there some years ago, before my father' —

'Before King Ivanta allowed the tyrant Agrando to annex it, would you say? Yes, Prince, there was. And thereby hangs a tale. I will not tell it to you now, however – it will keep for another time; but I may say that it is a tale of terrible, almost incredible wrong, and treachery, and wickedness. It is that great wrong which I wished to induce King Ivanta to inquire into, in order that the memory of a good man's name may be cleared from dishonour. That man was my father, Prince; and that was the reward I was hoping to win from King Ivanta. Now you will understand why I said I could not share my reward, if I obtained what I hoped for, with any one else!'

There were notes of deep feeling and sadness in the young fellow's voice as he spoke in low, incisive tones, turning his face away the while as though afraid he might break down.

There was a pause; then Alondra said gently and sympathetically, 'I am sorry, indeed, that you have such a heavy trouble to bear. Later on you shall give me fuller particulars, and I will myself lay them before my father. He is just and fearless in punishing where wrong has been done, and if he finds, on investigation, that your story is true, I am certain he will right you, and the memory of your father, and punish the wrongdoers.'

'He will have to fight to maintain his own position ere that can come about, I fear!' rejoined Malto gravely. 'But I thank you, Prince, all the same, for your sympathy and your promise. Another day I will, as you say, give you the details – when the time comes. Let me now explain how we are situated here. We are in a desolate territory known as Kubandia. It is nothing but a maze of arid rocks and mountains, and wild, gloomy gorges and valleys, almost waterless, but not so bad, in that respect, as the Great Desert which lies beyond. For the reasons I have mentioned the tract has a bad name, and also for another – that there are bands of reckless outlaws who have made it their fastness. They are, I believe, for the most part remnants or descendants of men who were originally honest patriots – men who were driven into exile by Agrando's heavy hand when he took over the government of the country. Now, I fear, they are, most of them, no better than brigands and unscrupulous adventurers. It is said that there are many bands, under different heads, but all directed by one leader – a clever, daring chief, of whom wild tales are told. His name is Fumenta; and it is a name held in terror by Agrando's followers. But for this man's wonderful genius and bravery, it is believed these brigands would all have been exterminated before this. He has, somehow, managed to evade capture for many years, and carry on a guerilla warfare, holding his own in these wild valleys and gorges in spite of all the forces Agrando has sent against him. Such, at least, is what we hear. I myself can say nothing as to this part from my own knowledge, because I have been brought up in Agrando's city and forced to be one of his servitors.'