Cool as if in his own easy-chair in the observatory, the Master sat there, hand on wheel. Then all at once he reached for the rising-plane control, drew it over, and into the telephone spoke sharply:

"Full speed ahead, now! Give her all she's got!"

A shout, was it? Many shouts, cries, execrations! But where? Over the roar of the propellers, confused sounds won to the men in the pilot-house. And all at once, by the dim aura of diffused light reflected from the huge beam, the major saw dim figures running, off there to the left, among the buildings of the stockade.

"For the Lord's sake!" he cried, amazed, with drooping jaw.

"Men--after us! Look there--_look_!"

The Master remained utterly impa.s.sive, eyes keen on the in-rushing track, now close to its abrupt ending over the vacancy of s.p.a.ce.

Captain Alden's pupils narrowed, through the mask-holes, but he said nothing. Bohannan gripped the captain's shoulder painfully, then reached for the pistol in his own holster.

"They're on to us!" he vociferated. "Somebody's got wise--they're--"

Little red spurts of fire began to jet, among the buildings; the crackling of shots started popping, like corn-kernels exploding. Dark figures were racing for the Palisade gate--the gate where, if any slightest thing went wrong with track or giant plane, the whole vast fabric might crash down, a tangled ma.s.s of wreckage.

Then it was, that for the first time in all his knowledge of the Master, Bohannan heard the strange man laugh.

Joyously he laughed, and with keen pleasure. His eyes were blazing, as he thrust the rising-plane lever sharply up.

More shouts volleyed. From somewhere back there in the body of the ship, a cry of pain resounded.

Bohannan flung the window-pane to one side, and blazed away like mad at the attackers.

A shatter of broken gla.s.s burst into the pilot-house. Alden, catching his breath, quivered. He uttered no outcry, but his right hand went across and clutched his wounded left arm.

"Got you?" cried the major, still pumping lead. He paused, jerked Alden's automatic from its holster and thrust it into the captain's hand, now red.

Alden, a bit pale but quite impa.s.sive, opened fire through the jagged hole in the double pane. Accurately the captain fired at dark figures.

One fell. Another staggered; but as the machine swept on, they lost sight of it.

Men rose up before the rushing airship. One of the great gates began to swing shut, far at the end of the track. The Master laughed again, with the wind whipping at his hair. "Full speed ahead!" he shouted into the telephone.

The _Nissr_ leaped into a swifter course. Then all at once she skidded clear of the track, slanted upward, breasted the air. Her searchlight blazed. All along her flanks, fire-jets spangled the night. Cries echoed from her, from the great stockade.

The Master gave her all the lift the farthest wrench of the levers would thrust on her. The gate was almost shut now--would she clear it?

Below, track, earth, everything was spinning in and in. Ahead, above, yawned vastnesses. The Master could no longer see the gate. A second of taut thrill--

_Crash_!

The _Nissr_ quivered, staggered, yawed away. The forward starboard float had struck. A faint yell rose as someone, hurled backward by the shattered _debris_ of the gate, plunged down the cliff.

For half a second, the giant plane reeled over the abyss. Her rush and fury for that half-second threatened to plunge her, a mangled, flaming wreck, hundreds of feet down on the black, waiting rocks below the Palisades.

But engine-power and broad wings, skill of the hand at the levers, and the good fortune that watches over bold men, buoyed her again.

Suddenly she lifted. Up at a dizzy angle she sped.

A thing of life, quivering, sentient, unleashed, the gigantic Eagle of the Sky--now in heroic flight toward the greatest venturing ever conceived by the brain of man--steadied herself, lifted on the wings of darkness, and, freed from her last bonds, leaped quivering and triumphant into the night.

CHAPTER IX

EASTWARD HO!

Not all the stern discipline that had been enforced by the Master--discipline already like a second nature to this band of adventurous men--could quite prevent a little confusion on board the Eagle of the Sky.

As the huge machine crashed, plunged, staggered, then righted herself and soared aloft, shouts echoed down the corridors, shots crackled from the lower gallery and from a few open ports.

At sound of them, and of faint, far cries from the Palisades, with a futile spatter of pistol-and rifle-fire, the Master frowned. This intrusion of disorder lay quite outside his plans. He had hoped for a swift and quiet getaway. Complications had been introduced. Under his breath he muttered something as he manipulated the controls.

The major, laughing a bit wildly, leaned from the shattered window and let drive a few last pot-shots into the dark, at the faint flicker of lights along the crest of the black cliff. In the gloom of the pilot-house, his shoulders bulked huge as he fired. Captain Alden, staggering back, sat down heavily on one of the sofa-lockers.

One or two faint shots still popped, along the cliff, with little pin-p.r.i.c.ks of fire in the dark. Then all sounds of opposition vanished. The _Nissr_, upborne at her wonderful climbing-angle toward the clouds painted by her searchlight--clouds like a rippled, moonlit veil through which peeped faint stars--spiraled above the Hudson and in a vast arc turned her beak into the south.

Disorder died. Silence fell, save for the whistling of the sudden wind of the airship's own motion, and for the steadily mounting drone of the huge propellers.

"Made it all right, by G.o.d!" exclaimed Bohannan, excitedly. "No damage, either. If the floats had smashed when they hit the gate, there'd have been a devil of an explosion--vacuum collapsing, you know. Close call, but we made it! Now, if--"

"That will do!" the Master curtly interrupted, with steadfast eyes peering out through the conning windows. Now that the first _elan_ of excitement had spent itself, this strange man had once more resumed his mantle of calm. Upborne on the wings of wondrous power, wings all aquiver with their first stupendous leap into the night-sky, the Master--impa.s.sive, watchful, cool--seemed as if seated in his easy-chair at _Niss'rosh_.

"That will do, Major!" he repeated. "None of your extravagance, sir!

No time now for rodomontade!" He glanced swiftly round, saw Captain Alden by the dim aura of light reflected from the instrument-board.

Blood reddened the captain's left sleeve.

"Wounded, Captain?"

"Only a scratch!"

"Report to Dr. Lombardo. And have Simonds, in charge of the stores, replace this broken pane."

"Yes, sir!"

Alden saluted with a blood-stained hand, slipped his gun back into its holster and got up. He swayed a little, with the swinging slide of the air-liner and with the weakness that nerve-shock of a wound brings.

But coolly enough he slid open the door leading into the main corridor, and pa.s.sed through, closing the door after him. Where his hand touched the metal, red stains showed. Neither man of the pair now left in the pilot-house made any comments. This was all in the day's work--this and whatever else might befall.

Spiraling vastly, up, up climbed the giant plane. A colder air nipped through the broken window. Cloud-wisps began to blur the gla.s.s; the stars began to burn more whitely in a blacker sky.

The Master touched a b.u.t.ton at the left side of the steering-post.

Below his feet, as they rested in their metal stirrups, an aluminum plate silently slid back. An oblong of dim light blurred up through the heavy plate-gla.s.s sheet it had masked.

Glancing down, the Master saw far, far below him a slowly rotating vagueness of waters black and burnished, of faintly twinkling lights.

Lights and water drew backward, as the rotary motion gave way to a southern course. The Master slowed the helicopters. A glance at the altimeter showed him 1,965 feet. The compa.s.s in its binnacle gave him direction.

"Pit number one!" he sharply exclaimed into the phone connecting therewith.