No second shot was needed. For the attacker, grunting, lunged forward, fell p.r.o.ne, sprawled on the down-slanting plates of the take-off platform. His pistol skidded away, clattering, over the buffed metal.

"As neat a shot as the other's was bad," calmly remarked the Master, brushing from his sleeve some glittering splinters of gla.s.s. A lurch of _Nissr_ threw him against the rail. He had to steady himself there, a moment. Down his cheek, a trickle of blood serpented. "Yes, rather neat," he approved.

He felt something warm on his face, put up his hand and inspected red fingers.

"Hm! A sliver from that broken shield must have cut me," said he, and dismissed it wholly from his mind.

Major Bohannan, with chromatic profanity, ran from the gallery.

"Captain Alden" drew herself up the top rounds of the ladder, emerged wholly from the companion and likewise started for the wounded interloper. Both, as they ran aft toward the fallen man, zigzagged with the pitch and yaw of the stricken airship, slipped on the plates, staggered up the incline.

And others, from the aft companion, now came running with cries, their bodies backgrounded by the leaping flames and smoke that formed a wake behind the wounded Eagle of the Sky.

Before the major and Alden could reach the stowaway, he rallied. Up to hands and knees he struggled. He dragged himself away to starboard.

Trailing blood, he scrambled to the rail.

The major s.n.a.t.c.hed his revolver from its holster. Up came the "Captain's" gun, once more.

"No, no!" the Master shouted, stung into sudden activity. "Not that!

Alive--take him alive!"

The stowaway's answer was a laugh of wild derision; a hideous, shrill, tremulous laugh that rose in a kind of devilish, mockery on the air of that high level. For just a second the man hung there, swaying, at the rail. Beyond him, up the tilt of the falling _Nissr_, brighter flames whipped back. Came a burst of smoke, another concussion, a shuddering impact that trembled through the whole vast air-liner. White-hot fire ribboned back and away, shredded into little, whirling gusts of incandescence that dissolved in black smoke.

"Take me alive, eh?" the stowaway shouted, madly. "Ha-ha! I see you!

You're all dead men, anyhow! I'll go first--show you I'm not afraid!"

With astonishing agility he leaped. Hands on rail, with a last supreme burst of the energy that innervated his dying body, he vaulted clear.

Out and away he hurled himself. Emptiness of s.p.a.ce gathered him to its dizzy, vacant horror.

The Master, quite unmindful of the quickening bloodstream down his face and neck, looked sharply--as if impersonally interested in some problem of ballistics--at the spinning, gyrating figure that with grotesque contortions plummeted the depths.

Over and over, whirling with outflung arms and legs, dropped the stowaway. Down though _Nissr_ herself was plunging, he fell faster.

Swiftly his body dwindled, shrinking to a dwarf, an antlike thing, a black dot. Far below on the steely sea-plain, a tiny bubble of white leaped out, then faded. That pinpoint of foam was the stowaway's grave.

"Very good," approved the Master, unmoved. He lurched against the rail, as a sudden maneuver of the pilot somewhat flattened out the air-liner's fall. The helicopters began to turn, to buzz, to roar into furious activity, seeking to check the plunge. The major came staggering back. But quicker than he, "Captain Alden" was at the Master's side.

"He shot you?" the woman cried, pointing.

"Bah! A splinter of gla.s.s!" And the Master shook off the blood with a twitch of his head. "That was a neat bull's-eye you made on him, Captain. It saves you from punishment for forgetting you were under arrest; for climbing the ladder and coming above-decks. Yes--I've got to rescind my order. You're at liberty. And--"

"And I stay with the expedition, sir?" demanded Alden, her hand going out in an involuntary gesture of appeal. For the first time, she was showing eagerness of a feminine sort. But she suppressed it, instantly, and stood at attention. "If I have done you any service, sir, reward me by letting me stay!"

"I will see. There may be no expedition to stay with. Now--"

"Life-belts, sir? And take to the small planes?" came a voice from the companion-way. The face of Manderson--of him who had found the stowaway--appeared there. Manderson looked anxious, a trifle pale.

Aft, more figures were appearing. In spite of the iron discipline of the Legion, signs of disorder were becoming evident. "We're hard hit, sir," Manderson reported. "Every man for himself, now? Orders, sir?"

"My orders are, every man back to his post!" cried the Master, his voice a trumpet-call of resolution. "There'll be no _sauve qui peut_, here!" He laid a hand on the b.u.t.t of his pistol. "Back, every man of you!"

Came another dull, jarring explosion. _Nissr_ reeled to port. The Legionaries trickled down the companion-ladders. From somewhere below a cry rose: "The aft starboard float--it's gone! And the stabilizer--"

Confused sounds echoed. _Nissr_ sagged drunkenly, lost headway and slewed off her course, turning slowly in the thin, cold air. Her propellers had been shut off; all the power of her remaining engines had now been clutched into the helicopter-drive.

The Master, indifferently smearing off the blood from his neck, made his way toward the forward companion. He had to hold the rail with one hand, for now the metal plates of the observation gallery were sharply canted. _Nissr_ had got wholly out of control, so far as steerage-way was concerned; but the rate of her fall seemed to have been a trifle checked.

Alden and the major followed their chief to the companion. All three descended the ladder, which hung inward and away from them at a sharp angle. They reached the strangely inclined floor of the main corridor, and, bracing themselves against the port wall, worked their way aft.

Not all the admirable discipline of the Legion could prevent some confusion. Such of the men as were on duty in pilot-house, pits, wireless, or engine-room were all sticking; but a number of off-duty Legionaries were crowding into the main corridor. Among them the Master saw Leclair and Rrisa. No one showed fear. The white feather was not visible; but a grim tension had developed. Death, imminent, sobers the boldest.

From the engine-room, shouts, orders, were echoing. The engine-room door flung open. Smoke vomited--thick, choking, gray. Auchincloss reeled out, clutching at his throat.

"What chance?" the Master cried, staggering toward him.

"If--the fire spreads to the forward petrol-tanks, none!" gasped the chief engineer. "Aft pit's flooded with blazing oil. Gorlitz--my G.o.d!"

"What about Gorlitz?"

"Burned alive--to a crisp! I've got four extinguishers at work. Two engines out of commission. Another only limping! And--"

He crumpled, suddenly, dropping to the metals. The Master saw through the clinging smoke, by the dimmed light of the frosted disks, that the skin of the engineer's face and hands was cooked to a char.

"If he's breathed flame--" began the major. Alden knelt beside him, peered closely, made a significant, eloquent gesture.

"Volunteers!" shouted the Master, plunging forward.

Into the fumes and smother, half a dozen men fought their way. From the bulkheads they s.n.a.t.c.hed down the little fire-grenades. The Master went first. Bohannan was second, with Rrisa a close third. Leclair in his forward rush almost stumbled over Alden. The "Captain," masked and still unrecognized as a woman by any save the Master, was thrust back from the door by the Celt, as she too tried to enter.

"No, not you!" he shouted. "You, with only one arm--faith, it's worse than useless! Back, you!" Then he and many plunged into the blazing engine-room.

Thus they closed with the fire-devil now licking ravenous tongues about the vitals of _Nissr_.

CHAPTER XIX

HOSTILE COASTS

An hour from that time, the air-liner was drifting sideways at low alt.i.tudes, hardly five hundred feet above the waves. A sad spectacle she made, her wreckage gilded by the infinite splendors of the sun now lowering toward the horizon. Her helicopters were droning with all the force that could be flung into them from the crippled power-plant. Her propellers--some charred to mere stumps on their shafts--stood starkly motionless.

Oddly awry she hung, driven slowly eastward by the wind. Her rudder was burned clean off; her stern, warped, reeking with white fumes that drifted on the late afternoon air told of the fury that had blazed about her. Flames no longer roared away; but the teeth of their consuming rage had bitten deep. Where the aft observation pit had been, now only a twisted net of metal-work remained, with all the plate-gla.s.s melted and cracked away. The body of Gorlitz, trapped there, had mercifully fallen into the sea. That ghastly thing, at any rate, no longer remained.

Four Legionaries were in the pilot-house: the Master, Bohannan, Leclair, and "Captain Alden." For the most part, they held silence.

There was little for them to say. At length the major spoke.

"Still sagging down, eh?" he commented, his eyes on the needle of the altimeter. "Some situation! Two men dead and others injured. Engines crippled, propellers the same, and two floats so damaged we couldn't stay on the surface if we came down. Well, by G.o.d!"

Leclair looked very grim.