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CHAPTER XVI
Record High Flying

It required quite an amount of explanation and apology to mollify the hot-headed and indignant Dicky Hamshaw and his friend Alec when they learned how all their energy, all their suspense and anxiety for the great airship and the safety of their friends had been unnecessary and thrown away.

"And – and you mean to tell us that the bombs are empty?" demanded the former, with some curtness, as soon as the fainting form of the rascal, Carl Reitberg, had been borne to his cabin. "I – this is no laughing matter."

"Precisely," answered the Major, with a little smile. "And, Dick, I'm not surprised at your anger. You see, we knew that those bombs had been rendered harmless."

"Then, sir, why not tell Alec and myself?"

The midshipman was almost boiling. But still, he had never been anything else but a good officer, and discipline was discipline. "Beg pardon, sir," he said. "But it makes a chap rather ratty. Here have I been hanging on to this chair, trying to keep cool and look it, when every instant I expected to be blown to atoms. I thought you must all be mad to go on so coolly with your dinners."

"While I'm in a horrible perspiration," confessed Alec, mopping his brow. Then he seemed to see some fun in the matter, and grinned at his comrade.

"All the same it was a good lesson for Mr. Reitberg," he cried. "Odious toad that he is. He didn't know that the bombs were empty, now, did he? He didn't look like it. That's why he funked. That's why he went under."

Mr. Andrew rose from his chair, and took each of the lads in turn by the hand.

"We owe you many apologies," he said earnestly. "I can't forgive myself for what has happened. But there are excuses. I did not know, Joe was kept in ignorance, even the Major and the Commander knew nothing of this matter till the very beginning of dinner. Then Sergeant Evans told us. We owe our safety to him, to his watchfulness – though I know you also have watched – to his cleverness, and to the experience he had in South Africa. There! I am sorry. But it was fine to see the manner in which you two behaved."

"Magnificent!" declared the Major.

"I shall report it," cried the Commander, gripping Dick's hand. "A fine example of the spirit which all naval men should show. Alec, shake hands."

"Now, tell us the whole tale, Sergeant Evans," demanded Joe, while Dick and Alec, now completely mollified, took their places at the table. Indeed, dinner proceeded much as usual, but for the fact that the Sergeant, while attending upon the diners, told them his tale crisply and shortly.

"I knew him, this Mr. Carl Reitberg," he began in the politest tones. In fact, you would not have imagined that he had any other but the highest opinion of the individual to whom he referred. Certainly his tones showed no trace of satire, of disgust, or even of anger.

"His name was different out in the Transvaal," he proceeded. "He was a suspected person, and as such came under the notice of the police, that is, the civil police. He was supposed to be an I.D.B., otherwise an illicit diamond buyer. But he was more. We military police suspected him of dealings with the Boers. We watched him, and he escaped, and left the country. It was natural, then, that I should suspect him when I found him here under another name. I watched him, gentlemen, watched him through a peephole cut in the wall of his cabin, which is next the pantry. He had a box with him, a suspicious box, filled with valuables as he said. I investigated the contents of that box."

"But, pardon for the interruption, Sergeant. That box was sealed," remarked Mr. Andrew, with a lift of his white eyebrows.

"Yes, sir – sealed. Red sealing wax, impressed with a seal hanging to the man's watch chain. I borrowed that seal one day. I opened the box, investigated the contents, removed the explosives, leaving everything else as it was, sealed the box again and returned it to its old position. No one was the wiser. Even Mr. Reitberg was unsuspicious when he opened the box this evening. He imagined he still had dangerous bombs, whereas I knew that they had already served their purpose."

"Served their purpose? How?" demanded Joe quickly.

"You remember the Pathans, sir? Well, Mr. Reitberg's bombs stopped their rush, and came in very handy."

The tale proved, if it had proved nothing else, that in Sergeant Evans the airship possessed a trusty and astute man. But it also proved to the hilt the rascality of Carl Reitberg.

"Of course," said Mr. Andrew, when the warm thanks of the gathering had been given to the Sergeant, "of course, we take no action. The ruffian is not worth powder and shot; his meanness will bring about its own punishment. When he recovers we will let him go, thankful that we are well quit of him."

It followed that late that night, he having then recovered consciousness, a gharri conveyed the disconsolate Carl to the railway station, where he took train for Bombay. But it must not be imagined that the man took with him any feelings of gratitude to those who had so handsomely dealt with him. No. They had made a fool of him. He realized now that the bombs before which he had been forced to sit, and which he had expected to shatter him to fragments in a few seconds, he realized that they had been rendered harmless. All his fears and terrors, all his squirming, the terrible exhibition he had made of himself were to no purpose. He had been fooled. The very people he had imagined to be so stupidly wanting in astuteness, who had failed to suspect him, had defeated his dastardly attempt with surprising ease. It made the magnate boil with rage and mortification. He fanned his heated brow as the train sped onward, set his crooked teeth and swore beneath his breath.

"Ah!" he grunted. "Made a fool of me. Know now that I am not the sportsman they imagined. Fancy themselves safe, and are sure of winning that wager. We'll see. There is still time. There is still Adolf Fruhmann."

Yes, there was still that unmitigated rascal, ready to attempt anything if sufficiently well paid. He was the man to come now to Carl's rescue. He was the one who must now attempt the wrecking of the airship. But how?

"I'll wire to him to meet me at Suez," Carl decided before he reached Bombay. "He'll be able to propose a scheme. Yes, there's time still. If I have failed, Adolf will manage to succeed. We'll show the folks aboard the airship who's best man in this matter."

Burning with anger at his defeat, and his vindictiveness increased almost in proportion to the distance he was steadily placing between himself and the great airship, Carl Reitberg boarded the steamer at Bombay in no enviable frame of mind. Indeed, what with the heat and his own stoutness he narrowly escaped an attack of apoplexy, and lay for some days in his cabin, his head swathed in bandages wrung out of iced water, a huge wind shute pouring the little fresh air there was into the compartment, while an electric fan shot eddies at his perspiring person. Indeed, to the average individual it was an uncomfortable season during which to visit the neighbourhood of Bombay. To Carl Reitberg, the pompous, fat, and rascally magnate swelling with indignation, hate, and all uncharitableness, it was a positive nightmare.

In this uncomfortable condition, then, we can leave him to his own devices, with the knowledge that, though he had failed once in his dastardly effort to wreck Joe Gresson's invention, he had by no means given up all hope of achieving success. For Joe and his friends, we can say that they gave scarcely another thought to their late guest, who had abused their kindness so disgracefully.

"It's a black page in the history of our trip," said Andrew, the morning following. "We will turn it over and seal it down. Ugly things are better as a rule when shut out of view. And now, Mr. Skipper?"

"Now, Joe?" cried the Commander. "We await orders. Do we remain here cooking in the neighbourhood of Delhi? Or do we seek a more balmy clime, where a man may sleep peacefully in his cabin, and must not necessarily spend the baking night restlessly pacing the open deck above dressed only in his pyjamas?"

"Yes – what next?" demanded Dick, his mouth still busy with the breakfast he was devouring. But what recked Dicky of heat? Mr. Midshipman Hamshaw carried an appetite wherever he went, and his breakfast this morning showed that heat hardly affected him. He was not even limp, whereas the Major, hardened soldier that he was, and accustomed to India, was as flabby as a wet rag.

"Which comes of modern invention," he laughed. "Send me to India in the cold weather, and leave me in the plains when the heat comes. I'll not turn a hair, for I've had time to become acclimatized. But set out from London as we have done on this new-fangled machine – apologies, Joe and Mr. Andrew – set out, I say, on this airship and plunge me suddenly from the heights, where one needs a fur coat, to the plains about Delhi in the hot weather, and I admit I become a limp, nerveless individual."

"While I for another shall be glad to move on," Joe admitted. "Well, now; we take in stores here – they are coming aboard already – then, following the plan agreed upon, we sail along over the all-red route. Naturally, this trip is not a true tour of the world, for then we should take a straight line, the shortest route possible. We are purposely lengthening our journey, and should we successfully complete it, we shall have flown many more miles than the twenty-five odd thousand which circumvent the globe. So our course lies east, parallel almost to the Himalaya mountains."

"Ah! A test of elevation, perhaps," suggested the Commander. "You could cross the Himalayas."

"Why not?"

"At their highest point?"

"I have reason to believe so," said Joe, with the quiet assurance of the inventor who has the utmost faith in the powers of the machine he has constructed. "Why not?"

"Because – well, because Mount Everest happens to be the highest peak," replied the Commander dryly. "Let's see; what is its exact altitude? Here, Dick, one of you youngsters, let us have the figure."

"Sorry, sir; can't. Forgotten – so long since I left school," answered the imperturbable Dick. "Ask Alec, he's the latest kid to leave."

He accompanied his remarks with a grin in his friend's direction, which became the broader as Alec shook his fist at him.

"Well, Alec? Dick's a dunce; he's like most middies," said the Commander.

And for a wonder Alec was able to supply the information.

"Twenty-nine thousand and two feet high, sir," he told them. "Highest mountain in the world. Cold as Christmas up at the top. Haven't been there myself, you know, but I'm guessing."

"In fact, rather more uncomfortable there than down here," laughed the Major. "Well, Joe, it's a stumper?"

"I cannot say. To cross above the highest peak we must ascend some five miles. That is a tremendous height; it will need special preparation."

But one could see that Joe was bitten with the idea of accomplishing that which no other person or machine had ever achieved before. He went to the engine-room forthwith, and for the next two hours closely inspected the gasometer and carburettor which supplied his engines. Then he took the temperature of the crude paraffin which, unlike other internal-combustion motors, not only formed the explosive charge, and conveyed power through those long, sinuous, cold-drawn steel pipes to the distant hydraulic motors, but also surrounded the cylinders, acting as an effective cooling agent. If one had watched him one would have seen the thoughtful Joe working out some pleasant little calculations, calculations which would have given Dicky Hamshaw quite a headache. But the result seemed to satisfy him, for he once more inspected his engines, made a small adjustment, and then went off to the saloon.

"Gentlemen," he said solemnly, "we have loaded our stores. If all are ready we will make for Mount Everest and there test the powers of this vessel."

It was one of the many advantages of being aboard an airship. There was no packing to be done, no cabs to call, no trains to be entered. Joe had merely to return to the engine-room and start his motors, so that within ten minutes the ship was off, followed by the cheers and shrill native cries of thousands. For a while she hovered over the city of Delhi, mounting and mounting steadily, till she was but a speck in the sky, a speck almost invisible because of the material of which she was constructed. It was an object lesson to many thousands also. For where in all India, in all the world, was there a gun capable of reaching her, of destroying the airship, of preventing her crew, had they so wished, from dropping bombs upon the citizens of Delhi?

"In war, an invincible arm," declared the Major with conviction. "A terrible arm, indeed, for here is a ship as secure, as handy, as manageable as any steamer. Let us hope that the report we shall take to War Office and Admiralty will not fall upon deaf ears. Or rather, let us pray that the authorities will test the truth of our statements by sending men aboard who are really qualified to form an opinion. Not amateurs, more or less filled with a sense of their own importance, and forgetful of that of others."

To those stepping the upper deck of the airship the view beneath was one of the greatest magnificence, for the brilliance of the sun brought objects beneath into unusual prominence. Then, too, owing to the elevation at which the vessel now floated, the heat of the day was no longer felt.

"Just like an English summer," Andrew murmured. "And the height, Joe?"

"Seven thousand feet or thereabouts; not a quarter the height to which we shall have to climb before crossing Mount Everest. For the moment I am satisfied. Now we will descend a little, for it will be cold when we begin to travel through the air. To-morrow, at about this hour, we shall have failed miserably or have added another honour to those already won by this ship. Don't think me boastful. I speak of things as they are, precisely as you have found them. I ask for nothing better than honest tests. Here is one. I shall strive to win in this encounter."

"But one moment," said the Major. "Excuse my ignorance. Mount Everest is twenty-nine thousand and two feet in height. Let us say that we must ascend to the enormous height of thirty thousand feet. Will that, then, prove a record? Is there a person who has before this date attained to such an altitude?"

"Certainly," came the prompt answer. "In the past many balloons have climbed to great heights, and I can instance a few such attempts. Coxwell is said to have reached the enormous altitude of seven miles in the year 1862. He lost the use of his hands, but contrived to open the valve with the aid of his teeth. His companion, Mr. James Glaisher, was then insensible. Then Dr. Berson and Dr. Suring ascended from Berlin in 1901 to the height of thirty-four thousand feet, contriving to maintain their senses by inhaling oxygen. And lastly, there is the recorded ascent of the Albatross, which, in 1909, set out from Turin, and reached the stupendous height of thirty-eight thousand seven hundred and fifteen feet.

"And what is the record of dirigibles?" asked the Commander eagerly. "We must recollect that they are a different sort of craft, and do not ascend by heaving ballast overboard – that is, as a general rule. This ship, we know, is influenced by her vertical screws."

"And will contrive to climb with them almost unaided," answered Joe. "But it may be that we shall attempt a record, in which case there is ample ballast to be thrown overboard. As to the height to which dirigibles have climbed, of that I am uncertain. But it is said that six thousand feet is the record for a Zeppelin, and we will allow that the Zeppelin is the last word in dirigibles."

"Was," Andrew corrected him quickly. "Was, Joe. The coming of this vessel annihilates the Zeppelin."

There was an air of suppressed excitement about the crew on the following afternoon, for the news of their coming attempt had leaked out. Moreover, the airship had driven her way steadily onward during the night, and all through the morning she had been steering a course parallel to the gaunt Himalayas, within easy distance of the snow glistening on the numerous peaks of this giant range, and within sight already of Mount Everest. The lofty peak raised its white head some fifty miles to their left, its snow slopes shimmering in the sun's rays. Its broad base also could be detected, merging imperceptibly with the mass of the range. But the centre portion was invisible, clad in a garment of white cloud, which seemed to warn all and sundry to leave that peak alone, and make no rash attempt upon it. But Joe Gresson was totally unaffected. He turned the ship's head directly for the mountain and waited at the tiller till those fifty miles were accomplished, till the airship was within a short mile of the mountain, looking a mere dot when compared with the mighty mass of rock thrusting upward.

"At this moment we begin our attempt," he told his friends. "Kindly observe our height. We are resting precisely seven thousand feet above sea-level. Now, I will start the elevating motors. When we are twenty-nine thousand feet up we will steer for the top of the peak. After that, if all are agreeable, we will ascend once more. I have a mind to accomplish a world's record. But we must take precautions. Let us don all the clothing we can find, and shut all windows and openings. Sergeant Evans has already taken out of store our cylinders of oxygen. You will find a mouthpiece attached to each one, and my advice is that you don them when we have reached a height of twenty thousand feet."

For a while there were bustling feet to be heard along the galleries of the airship. Men hastened to and fro carrying oxygen cylinders, while others made a round of the vessel to close all apertures. Then Joe set the aerial screws in motion, and, watching closely, Dick was able to detect the fact that the ship was rising swiftly. Indeed, before many minutes had passed they had plunged into the cold, white cloud surrounding the central part of the mountain. He strode off to the engine-room, to find Joe watching the barometer.

"Nineteen thousand feet," he read off. "Ah, we are mounting quickly! Twenty thousand feet. Now we throw our cooling fan out of gear, and make ready to cover over a portion of our radiator. In that way we shall be able to keep up the temperature of our motor and of its fuel supply. Now for the oxygen."

They were still mounting, mounting quickly too. Dick felt a queer sensation overcoming him. He was gasping, endeavouring to imbibe more air, eager for a greater supply of oxygen.

"Put on your mouthpiece and turn on the tap of the cylinder," Joe ordered. "You're grunting, positively grunting. And look at yourself in that mirror."

There was a tiny square which the engineer had secured to the side of the engine-room, and looking in it, Dick was positively startled to discover that his usually vivid and fresh complexion had gone. He was a pale, dirty-blue colour.

"Ugh! Hideous!" he grinned. "Now, let's try oxygen."

It had an almost immediate effect, as was to be expected, for within ten minutes he had regained his normal colour. Meanwhile, the cold had become extreme. Even there, in the heated engine-room, one felt it, while Joe anxiously placed his hand on the cylinder tops.

"Throwing the cooling fan out of gear will do it," he said, in tones of satisfaction. "I've still something in hand. Covering the radiator and so protecting it from cold will do the trick nicely."

"Twenty-seven thousand feet. Twenty-eight," he read out. "Are all feeling strong and well?"

They were gathered about the engine-room, some crowding in that chamber itself, some at the top of the ladder leading from it, grouped in the gallery of the airship. And a queer collection they were, muffled to the eyes, more than one already shivering with cold, for it must be recollected that this feat of clambering upward demanded no personal efforts from crew or passengers. Had they been on the snow-clad slopes of Mount Everest, amidst its glaciers and its crevasses, the path upward would have been one continual struggle, a struggle made all the more difficult by the increasing thinness of the air. Indeed this thinness of the air is one of the chief difficulties to be encountered by those who would ascend to huge heights above sea-level. Mountain sickness, the giddiness and nausea which attack people at great elevations, must also be overcome, though here, aboard the giant airship, not one of the members aboard felt so much as lightness of the head. It was the cold which troubled them. Why, Private Larkin's nose was positively blue! It peeped out from above a huge muffler which he had wound round his neck.

"I never!" Hurst remarked, grinning at him, and then taking another breath of oxygen. "You ain't handsome, not 'arf."

"'Ere," grunted Larkin, "none of yer lip! I'm 'avin' – "

But at that moment the need for more oxygen assailed him, and he buried his mouth in the apparatus affixed to each cylinder. Indeed, but for those cylinders this ascent would have been practically impossible. As it was, the ship climbed steadily, remorselessly upward. They were above the thick bank of wet cloud now. Of a sudden the cold became intense, while Dick found himself shielding his eyes from the glare. For the sun's rays were reflected from the virgin snow slopes with a brilliance he had never before experienced.

"Twenty-nine thousand feet. The summit of Mount Everest," called Joe, fingering the tops of his cylinders and the cooling surface of his radiator somewhat anxiously. "We will attempt a landing, and then we will ascend once more."

The big engine purred a little louder. Had an expert been there he would not have been able to detect a single alarming sound from the mechanism of the airship. For there was, in fact, little to go wrong.

"Freezing up does not trouble me," Joe had explained as they were ascending, "for my radiator is cooled by paraffin, and you may expose that liquid to extremes of cold with little effect. Even if there were danger of its freezing, the explosions of the engine cause heat, which is absorbed by the paraffin, and I have taken steps, by throwing out of gear the cooling fan, to retain that heat. As for the rest, the same fluid passing through those lines of steel tubes to the motors overhead is constantly in action. The pressure applied to it tends to add to its temperature, so that there again we can defy the cold."

The hum of the propeller told that the ship was in motion, for hitherto she had merely been ascending. Now the elevator screws were hardly rotating, while Dick and his friends could tell that they were advancing by the fact that the slopes of the mountain grew steadily nearer and nearer. The ship circled about the highest peak. She seemed to be looking for a landing-place. She even rested for a moment directly above the topmost pinnacle. And then Joe dropped her gently upon a smooth, level slope just beneath the summit.

"All explorers plant flags to show what they have done," he cried, laughing at those gathered about him. "We will do the same. Come, half a dozen of us will be sufficient."

They tore the door of the gallery open, for it was frozen fast, and struggled into the open, Joe and the Commander, with the Major, and Dick, and Alec, in close attendance. Bearing their oxygen cylinders strapped to their shoulders they trudged across the hard frozen snow, and within a few minutes had gained the summit. There they secured the staff of their Union Jack, pegged and roped it down, and promptly retraced their steps.

"And now for a record," cried Joe. "I advise all of you to don gloves if you have them and to keep moving about. I mean to rush the rest of the distance."

He covered more than half of his radiator, set the elevating motors buzzing, and then glanced anxiously at his barometer. They were rising, but very slowly. It seemed to take an endless age to get away from the peak they had just visited. The tiny Union Jack, looking forlorn amid the snow slopes, appeared as if it would keep them company for ever.

"Turn that lever there," Joe commanded, pointing to one close to Dick's hand, for the midshipman was again in the engine-room. "If the outlet of my tank is frozen we shall have to halt for a while and apply heat. Ah, that's fortunate! Listen."

Above the gentle hum of the engine Dick could hear a gurgling, splashing sound, and looking downward discovered that a spray of water was falling from the airship, a spray which was caught by the breeze, whirled to one side, and transformed instantly into thin flakes of ice which went swimming through space to find a resting-place on the slopes of the mountain.

"Throwing out ballast," Joe explained. "Now we're moving."

The ship was clambering upward at a rapid pace, thanks to the weight rapidly streaming from her tanks. Joe watched his barometer now with smiling eyes.

"Thirty thousand feet," he stated solemnly. "Thirty-five thousand feet, gentlemen. Almost a world's record. But five more feet and I shall be satisfied."

Had it not been for the mouthpieces which all were now compelled to keep constantly in use the crew would have cheered him. As it was they tramped the gallery, swinging their arms, beating their fingers, and muffling their faces in the first article of clothing upon which they could come. The cold was too intense for words, in spite of the heating arrangements aboard the ship. Indeed, but for active movement many of the crew would not have been able to bear it. And steadily, relentlessly, the ship ascended, while Dick, at Joe's bidding, emptied first one and then the remaining tanks aboard the vessel. It was with a shout of triumph that Joe announced that they had ascended to forty thousand feet.

"Kindly observe the barometer," he called. "Kindly bear evidence to the fact that we have gained this record."

Then began the descent. Joe arrested the elevating motors, and at once the ship began to fall. Not rapidly, as one might have expected, but slowly, imperceptibly, so smoothly that but for the barometer none would have known that she was moving. And now, as they reached the level of thirty thousand feet, and that tiny Union Jack came into view once more, but a stone's throw to their right, the mercury ceased to move. In spite of accelerating his motors Joe could no longer force the ship to descend.

"Dropped all the weight out of her," he said cheerfully. "Must now let gas escape. That's merely a question of operating the escape valves. See, they're all linked up to this lever."

He leaned over the engine, gripped a long handle and pulled upon it. It refused to move. It was firmly jammed, or rather, the linked mechanism beyond it was firmly frozen.

"Annoying," he exclaimed, though Dick could have sworn that an anxious expression crossed his face. "Try again."

He made several more attempts, but without success. Dick helped him without avail. Even the lusty Hawkins and Hurst together could produce no effect, while the screws now thrashing the thin air in an endeavour to force the ship downward made not the smallest difference to the height of the mercury. And meanwhile the cold was even more intense. In spite of the oxygen cylinders men were gasping. Indeed, all of a sudden, when at the summit of their success the crew of the airship found themselves face to face with disaster. They had climbed to this great height. They could not descend. Death from cold and exhaustion threatened them. Yes, death. For already Larkin lay inert in the gallery, blue from intense cold, his mouthpiece strapped to his face. Mr. Andrew clutched at the doorpost, looking as if on the verge of unconsciousness, while both the Major and the Commander had the appearance of men more than half frozen. It looked indeed as if here, at this enormous altitude, within stone's throw of the summit of Mount Everest, the voyage of the huge airship would be ended, and with it the lives of all aboard.