He waited until darkness had settled upon the scene, then once more made his way into the house. This time he did not eat, but fortified himself with a long drink out of an earthenware bottle.

Drawing his knife, he carefully oiled the blade and replaced it in its sheath. Then, having selected a marline-spike from a tool box, he slung the implement from his neck by means of a lanyard, hiding it under his coloured shirt.

These preparations completed, he walked slowly and unconcernedly to the Old Mole.

By this time the water-front was almost deserted. A patrol marched stolidly down the street; Enrico stepped into the shelter of a narrow courtyard until the khaki-clad party had disappeared; but before he could resume he had to await the pa.s.sing of a gaitered and belted naval picquet.

The coast cleared, he reached the Mole. A tramp steamer and a few feluccas were moored alongside. Farther out a tug was engaged in shepherding a couple of large lighters alongside an East-bound liner, while changing red, white, and green lights betokened the presence of swift-moving steamboats in the bay. Standing out against the faint starlight he could discern the "Golden Hind." Even as he looked a gleam of light shot through the windows of one of the compartments, and then another, both being almost instantly screened.

"Two thousand five hundred pesetas," whispered Jaures to himself. "A good price for a little swim."

Without troubling to remove any of his clothes, although he kicked off his canvas shoes, Enrico cautiously descended a flight of steps until his feet touched the water. Listening to a.s.sure himself that no one was about, he glided in as noiselessly as an eel, and swam with slow, steady strokes under the counter of the tramp and close to her wall sides until he gained her bows.

Taking his bearings of the airship's mooring-buoy, he resumed his easy progress cautiously lest feathers of phosph.o.r.escent spray should betray his presence.

A quarter of an hour's swim brought him up to the mooring-buoy. With considerable difficulty, for the large barrel-shaped buoy was coated with barnacles and slippery with seaweed, Enrico contrived to draw himself clear of the water.

Again he waited, listening to the sounds emanating from the airship a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet overhead. The wire hawser, acting as a conductor, enabled him to hear with great distinctness, and possessing a good knowledge of English he was able to pick up sc.r.a.ps of conversation between the crew. That helped him but little, for they were talking of matters as remote from the topic of the great race as the Poles.

Enrico Jaures next devoted his attention to the shackle that secured the thimble spliced in the end of the cable to the big ring bolt of the buoy.

He grunted with satisfaction when he discovered that the shackle was threaded and not secured by a forelock, but at the same time he found by the sense of touch that whoever had been responsible for the job had done his work well by securing the pin by means of a piece of flexible wire.

This latter Jaures managed to cast loose, then, with the aid of his marline-spike, he began to unfasten the shackle-pin, pausing occasionally as the strain on the wire rope increased.

At last the deed was accomplished. The shackle-pin clattered upon the rounded surface of the buoy and rebounded into the water; but almost simultaneously Enrico Jaures found himself being whisked aloft. A snap-hook at the end of a wire had caught in his belt, and there he was, suspended ignominiously like a horse being slung on board a ship, already a hundred feet or more above the surface of the sea.

His first impulse was to cut loose his belt and drop, but a downward glance at the dark unfathomable void made him abruptly change his mind.

His sole thought was now that of self-preservation. Fearful lest his leather belt should break and send him hurtling through s.p.a.ce he clung desperately to the wire.

Fax below him the lights of Gibraltar seemed to be gliding past as the freed airship drifted towards the strait separating Europe from the African sh.o.r.e.

It was bitterly cold aloft. The keenness of the rarefied air was intensified by the fact that his clothes were saturated with salt water.

A numbing pain crept down both arms. His muscles seemed to be cracking under the strain, while his fingers closed round the wire until the nails sunk deep into his palms.

He shouted for help--his voice sounding more like the yelp of a jackal than that of a human being. But no response came from the airship a hundred feet above him.

"Dios!" he exclaimed in agony. "This is indeed the end."

CHAPTER IX--THE ESCAPADE OF ENRICO JAURES

"What are those blighters doing?" soliloquised Kenyon for the twentieth time. "Are they buying the place, or are they poodle-faking? They ought to have been back hours ago."

It was well after sunset. The "Golden Hind" had taken in stores and provisions, and had replenished her fuel and oil tanks. An anchor watch had been set, and having "gone the rounds" in order to satisfy himself that everything was in order Kenneth Kenyon had gone to his cabin to write letters that would be sent ash.o.r.e when the picket-boat brought off the skipper and Bramsdean.

A shrill blast of the voice-tube whistle made Kenyon hasten across the long narrow cabin. There was something insistent about the summons. It was not the discreet apologetic trill that the look-out man gave when he wished to report some trivial incident to the officer of the watch.

"h.e.l.lo!" replied Kenyon.

"We're adrift, sir," announced the man, excitedly.

Telling the look-out to call the duty-watch, Kenyon replaced the whistle in the mouth of the voice-tube, struggled into his leather, fur-lined coat, and hurried to the navigation-room. As he pa.s.sed the various motor-rooms he noticed that the air-mechanics of the duty-watch were already at their posts awaiting the order to get the engines running.

Throwing open one of the windows, Kenyon looked out into the night.

There was no staggering, biting wind. Drifting with the breeze, the airship was apparently motionless save for a gently-undulating movement, but the merest glance served to corroborate the look-out man's words.

Already the "Golden Hind," having risen to 6000 feet and still climbing, was well to the south'ard of Europa Point. He could see the lighthouse on the south-western point of the peninsula of Gibraltar steadily receding as the airship approached the African coast.

Kenyon was on the point of telegraphing for half-speed ahead when he bethought him of the cable. More than likely, he decided, the wire rope had parted half-way between the nose of the fuselage and the buoy.

There was danger in the comparatively light, springy wire getting foul of the for'ard propellers. Stranded wire is apt to play hanky-panky tricks.

"Get the cable inboard," he ordered. "Don't use the winch or you won't get the wire to lie evenly on the reel. Haul it in by hand."

Two of the crew descended to the bow compartment, which, besides forming a living-room for the men, contained the cable winch.

"'Get it in by 'and,' 'e said," remarked one of the men to his companion. "Blimey! There ain't 'arf a strain on the blessed thing.

Bear a 'and, chum."

Presently one of the men returned to the navigation-room.

"Pardon, sir," he said, saluting, "but we can't haul the wire in. It's foul of something. Shall we bring it to the winch, sir?"

"Foul of something, eh?" echoed Kenyon. "Does that mean we've hiked up the blessed mooring-buoy? Switch on the bow searchlight, Jackson."

The order was promptly obeyed, and the rays of the 10,000 candle-power lamp were directed vertically downwards.

Leaning well out of the open window, Kenyon peered along the glistening length of tautened cable until parting from the converging rays of the searchlight it vanished into s.p.a.ce.

"Two degrees left," ordered Kenneth. "Good--at that. By Jove! What's that? A man!"

Filled with a haunting suspicion that the suspended body might be that of his chum Peter, Kenyon felt his heart jump into his throat; but a second glance, as the motionless figure slowly revolved at the end of the cable, relieved Kenneth's mind on that, score. Still, it was a human being in dire peril.

"Heave away handsomely," continued Kenyon. "Stand by to avast heaving,"

he added.

The orders were communicated to the hands at the cable-winch. Steadily the winch-motor clanked away until the word was pa.s.sed to "'vast heaving." The luckless individual at the end of the wire was now dangling thirty feet below the bows of the fuselage.

It would have been useless to have hauled him up to the hawse-pipe, because there would be no means of getting him on board. The only practical way to reach him was by lowering a rope from a trap-door on the underside of the cha.s.sis midway between the two hawse-pipes in the bows.

Meanwhile Kenyon was deftly making "bowlines on the bight" at the extremities of two three-inch manilla ropes.

"Jackson," he said, addressing the leading hand of the duty-watch, "I'm going after that chap. Tell off a couple of men to attend to each of the ropes. If I make a mess of things and don't get back, keep the ship head to wind till daylight, and then make for our former mooring.

There'll be plenty of help available."

Adjusting one of the loops under his arms and another round his legs above his knees, Kenneth slipped through the narrow trap-hatch, taking the second rope with him. It was a weird sensation dangling in s.p.a.ce with about 8000 feet of empty air between him and land or sea, for by this time the "Golden Hind" was probably over the African coast. But soon the eerie feeling pa.s.sed and Kenneth, courageous, cool-headed and accustomed to dizzy heights, had no thought but for the work in hand.