The Phantom Airman

"But helium will not burn!" returned the captain smartly. "That was beyond your powers."

A mocking, sardonic laugh came from the robber chief as the Englishman uttered these words.

"Would you like to see it burn?" he almost hissed.

The captain faltered in his reply; he was not quite so decisive as he had been. Evidently there was some sense of humour, if not much, about this irreconcilable German.

"Here, Carl!" cried the bandit. "Detach one of those nineteen ballonettes from the airship."

"Yes, sir," replied the subordinate, stepping up to the king and saluting smartly.

"Take it away to leeward there, and show this dull Englishman how he may learn chemistry and science even from inhabitants of the Hamadian Desert. Here, take this, you will need it," and the chief handed to his assistant a small cylindrical tube with which to carry out his orders.

Turning next to the Englishman, he observed, "Know, you dullard, that a small admixture of a secret gas, which is known only to three living men, will make your renowned helium flare like hydrogen. You shall see it in a short space of time."

"Recall your man, I will take your word for it, Sultan!" exclaimed the captain, who now felt that it must be so, for he was already bewildered by the strange things which he had witnessed that day, and he had no desire to see this experiment carried out.

"You believe me, then," returned the air-king, who seemed particularly to relish this interview with the Englishman, especially with this group of celebrities within earshot, for they had listened eagerly to every word which he had spoken. And the German knew that though his days might be numbered, as indeed he felt they were, yet his fame would be greatly enhanced by the episodes of this day, for vanity was not the least among his failings.

Once more he glanced at his watch; for the allotted space of time had nearly run.

"How now, Englishman!" he exclaimed in a harsher tone. "The bill of lading, where is it?"

The chief purser, receiving the captain's nod, at once advanced towards the regal horseman, handed him a bundle of papers and said: "Here, sir, is the document you desire."

CHAPTER XII

THE MAHARAJAH'S CHOICE

A dramatic episode followed the examination of the airship's bill of lading by the pseudomonarch and his so-called chancellor of the exchequer, Carl, who aided his master in the task.

"Item one. What does that consist of?" asked the brigand.

"Mails. His Britannic Majesty's mails," replied the chancellor.

"Where from?"

"From India for Egypt and London," replied Carl, maintaining a grave and solemn deportment.

"H'm! They may pass when the usual tribute is paid," remarked the bandit in serious tones, as though he had delivered himself of some weighty pronouncement.

The judge looked at the colonel with raised eyebrows when he heard this strange decision, but the captain, forgetting his position for a moment, blurted out:–

"Tribute indeed? When did the King of England pay tribute for his mails to be carried across the Hamadian desert?"

The air-king eyed the speaker with apparent amazement, mingled with a touch of scorn and pity, then quietly observed:–

"That is the very point, Captain. There has been far too much laxity in this respect in the past. The liberties of the small nations to make their own laws, and possess their own lands in peace, have been greatly endangered of late. It is mere brigandage for a great power to over-ride the native interests of small communities. But from to-day this brigandage must cease, at any rate over the territories where I rule."

The captain could find no reply to this sally of the desert king's, and, while a smile played about the corners of his mouth, he looked beyond this robber chief, in his gaudy trappings, to where the Scorpion lay squatting like an ugly toad upon the sands.

At length the monarch resumed his cross-examination with these words: "Come, Captain, will you pay tribute for the transit of mails across my territory, or will you not?"

"I will not!" replied the skipper.

With a flash of fire in his tones the brigand ordered: "Take the first ten sacks of mails out into the desert and burn them at once."

"It shall be done, O chief," replied Max, who immediately detailed some of the natives to carry the order into effect, when the captain, urged to it by the judge, asked:–

"What is the amount of the tribute?"

"Ten thousand pounds in English gold," came the immediate reply.

"I cannot pay it," returned the captain. "It is mere plunder," though the judge pointed out to the commander quietly that it would probably be more profitable to pay it and to get away with the mails in a damaged airship, than to leave the mails behind to be lost or destroyed in the desert.

"He will take the gold anyhow, when he comes to it on the bill of lading," added the colonel, "though devil a penny I'd pay him."

"It isn't my money," argued the captain, "so there's an end of it."

"How now, Englishmen! We are wasting time. Will you pay the sum demanded?"

"No, I will not!"

"Very good. Get out the rest of the mails and burn them at once!" ordered the monarch, and a couple of minutes afterwards the first bags of mails, sprayed with some inflammatory liquid, were blazing furiously.

"Item two!" called the desert king.

"Gold. Nineteen boxes of bullion for the Bank of England," called out the chancellor.

"Gold?" echoed the air-fiend, as though he were utterly unconscious of the presence of such a commodity, in face of the captain's refusal to pay over a trifling ten thousand pounds to secure right of way for his mails.

"Yes, sir. Nearly one hundred thousand pounds in specie."

"I thought we had prohibited the importation of gold into these regions, chancellor, because of its evil effects upon the minds of the people."

"Yes, sir," returned the chancellor. "We decided to abolish its importation altogether on that account, save only as tribute money for the royal chest."

"Exactly," replied the bandit, in a tone of assumed moral injury. Then, turning to the Englishman, he said: "You must know, Captain, that most wars are caused by gold, and by the unbrotherly strife which it foments. You must know also that all wars are sustained by it."

"Yes, I agree with you for once," returned the prisoner, boldly, wondering at the ease with which this confirmed brigand could turn moralist.

"Then what must be done with the gold, sir?" asked the chancellor.

"Every ounce of gold on the airship must be confiscated," exclaimed the king of robbers as he uplifted his hands in pious horror. "Let it be removed at once."

"Very well, sir," and this second operation, which was more pleasing still to the waiting Arabs, was immediately put into effect.

"Item three!" called out the chief.