The Air Pirate

It seemed that when he had arrived at Zerran, the idea of a cave, either natural or enlarged by pretended mining operations, was already in his mind. As soon as I had left the inn on my expedition, Danjuro and Thumbwood had taken one of Trewhella's boats and set out eastwards along the coast. The Japanese had already taken his bearings, and knew that Tregeraint House would be a little to the left of the jagged peak of Carne Zerran. They cruised along into the moonlight until they picked up their mark, and not two hundred yards further on struck the entrance to the S-shaped cove. Then Danjuro had no longer any doubts. No boat could live in that cauldron of the waves, but it seemed a man could, for our rescuers proved it!

He stripped and went in – I learnt afterwards that he was as much at home in the water as a seal, and, of course, like so many of his countrymen, he was simply a mass of steel muscles. In twenty minutes the secret was a secret no longer.

Danjuro's next move was to row back to Zerran Cove at top speed, and hasten up the cliff path to the inn. Here he disinterred the coastguard from the pigsty and roused him to immediate action.

Ropes and crowbars were procured, the fenced-off "dangerous" area on the cliff-top invaded, and Danjuro, with Charles, descended in the nick of time. But there was more than this. The coastguard had his orders. Directly the two men disappeared over the brink he was instructed to make all haste to the watch-house, some two miles away in the direction of St. Ives. From there the Chief Boatswain was to telephone all along the coast to the various stations, and also to the police at St. Ives, Camborne and Penzance.

"In three or four hours, perhaps sooner," Danjuro concluded, "an armed force should be concentrating on the moors upon the house above. The pirates will be desperate, and will put up a fight – at least, I think so, but the end is certain."

"And meantime, all we can do is to wait here until something happens?"

"That is as you please, Sir John," he answered, looking at me curiously.

For a minute I did not see what he meant, but then a great idea dawned upon me.

"The Pirate Ship!" I burst out.

"I have always heard that Sir John Custance is a skilled pilot," he said with a bow.

I saw it all clearly. There was a gorgeous, dramatic end to it all well within my grasp! It would be something to make the whole world gasp! The Pirate Ship was, I knew, already loaded with the proceeds of the pirates' robberies. It was not only full of loot, but prepared in every way for a long cruise. Helzephron and his ruffians had planned an almost immediate escape from the cave to some new refuge of which I had heard them speak. Doubtless, if things had gone right with them, they would have been off by now, with my mangled body tossed in the whirlpools below and Constance still a prisoner. Helzephron would have mounted to a great height, and trusted to his immense superiority in speed over all the airships in existence for escape. I have little doubt that, had things fallen out as he planned, he would have been able to carry out his scheme. But God disposes…

There was nothing, so I thought at the moment, to prevent me from piloting the airship out of its lair. Once in the sky I could make a bee-line for Plymouth, and get there in a little more than half an hour – if it was indeed true that the mysterious ship could do her two hundred and forty M.P.H. To swoop down to Plymouth sea-drome with Constance, the Pirate Ship and the recovered treasure! That would, indeed, be a triumph such as is given to few men to experience. I have a fairly vivid imagination, and I saw it all in one radiant picture.

"Let's go and have a look at the ship at once," I said, and almost ran back into the cavern, where she towered up and threw black velvet shadows in the fierce blue light that streamed down from the suspended arcs. Danjuro followed.

As I swung myself over the side and descended a short ladder, I found myself in a roomy main cabin. A switch to my hand illuminated it, and even then I saw that the ship had been designed by a master hand. Below the port-holes, filled with toughened glass and provided with shutters of a design that was new to me, ran a continuous seat of woven camels' hair cord, easily convertible into sleeping bunks for half a dozen people. There was an electric stove of polished aluminium for cooking, and an electric radiator for warming the cabin, clustering round a central supporting column. I saw also that there was a very complete telephone installation connecting this main cabin with the pilot's room forward.

Under the seats was a collection of wooden cases and a box of japanned steel, which I judged, and rightly, contained the treasure taken from the Albatros and the Atlantis. A sliding door aft led into a store-room, which seemed to contain everything necessary for a cruise of several days. I noticed boxes of expensive cigars, bottles of whisky and liqueurs, tinned oysters, larks, asparagus, such as wealthy yachtsmen provide themselves with. The dogs did themselves well!

Leading out of this was a final cabin fitted with tools of every sort, a rack of automatic rifles and pistols, and several thousand rounds of small-arms ammunition. Here also, with a padded door, was a little compartment for the wireless operator, and I pictured one of the black-hearted scoundrels sitting there and picking up the messages from airships of the trade routes with a grin upon his face.

Danjuro came with me and looked about him quickly, but with no change of expression. "So far, so good," I said to him; "but all this is unimportant, really, though it is very complete. What really matters is the pilot's cabin, the engines, controlling gear, petrol supply, and so on. Let's go forward. Do you understand anything about airships?"

"A very little, Sir John," he replied, and – so petty are we all at times – I felt a perceptible thrill of pleasure at hearing there was at least something of which this paragon was ignorant.

"Never had occasion to study them?" I asked, as we passed again through the main cabin.

"I have watched the pilot in Honourable Van Adams' yacht the May Flower, but that is all…"

I hardly heard him, for I was in the pilot's room at last.

I saw at a glance that here were a number of things absolutely new to me, and so to all the aviators of the world. I am not going to be technical. This narrative is written for the general reader, and my expert conclusions have been published elsewhere. I can but indicate some of the wonders of mechanical skill with which I was confronted.

For instance, the designer of the ship was the first man to solve the problem of easy control. Up to the present all pilots had controlled their ships – the movements of planes and rudders, etc. – with a certain amount of manual labour. It is true that recent inventions had minimized this; ball-bearings, the rack and pinion, had made the main control levers and wheels much easier to move than they were in the old days of the Great War – when flying first began to come into its own. But there was still a great deal of physical strain, which greatly lessened efficiency upon a long cruise. Moreover, the instant decision necessary to be taken by an aviator – when a fraction of a second may spell safety or ruin – had been always hampered by the comparative mechanical slowness of control.

In the Pirate Ship this disability did not exist. Just as the largest ocean-going liner – sea-ship, not airship, I mean – can be steered by a wheel not more than two feet in diameter by the invention of the steam steering gear, so the Pirate Ship was controlled by a series of little wheels and levers, covered with leather, that looked like toys.

Electricity had been brought into play, and a touch of the pilot's hand was magnified into power that in an instant would deflect a mighty lifting plane or vast rudder.

The fuel capacity of the ship was immense. She carried as much petrol, in the huge and ingeniously contrived tanks below the fuselage, as one of the great air-liners, though she was not a fifth of the size. I saw at once that she could keep the air for days.

Examining the cockpit, in which two quick-firing guns were placed, I found them both of the very latest pattern, and mounted with a swivel device that was far in advance of anything attempted hitherto. Only the great battle-planes of the world's air navies could mount guns of such power, and she could circle round them with ease while in full flight.

But it was when I mounted to the little deck above, and began to examine the two huge six-cylinder engines, that my admiration and interest grew beyond all bounds. The chief triumph of all, the silencing mechanism that reduced the ordinary roar of air engines to no more than the hum of a dynamo, did not at once become clear. It would have been necessary to take the machines to pieces to have discovered everything; but an examination of the exhausts put me on the track, and I marvelled at the creation of a master-mind.

I was looking at the twin propellers, which had a curve that was new to me, and even material that I could not immediately define, when Danjuro hailed me from the pilot's room.

I tumbled down to find the little man bending over the various controls ranged in front of the pilot's seat.

"It seems to me, Sir John," he said, "pray correct me if I am wrong, that there is something wanting here. I know little about airships, but something of electricity, and can quite understand this system. But it seems to me that a key-part of the mechanism has been removed."

He pulled over a lever a few inches long. Its movement should have been registered upon a dial above, but the needle never moved.

"Do that again!" I cried, and, mounting a step, put my head into the little dome of glass in the cabin roof which commanded the whole length of the ship. One of the tilting planes by the rudder should have moved when the lever was pulled over.

It remained motionless.

"One of the honourable gentlemen upstairs has got a small but very essential piece of linking apparatus in his pocket," said Danjuro.

It was only too true. A moment's reflection satisfied me of that, and I stared blankly at my companion.

My gorgeous, if somewhat vainglorious, plan was knocked on the head.

CHAPTER XVII

THE MOMENT OF TRIUMPH

I descended from the airship in silence. Danjuro followed me. Thumbwood was still on guard. The bundle that was Mr. Vargus lay upon the ground, and a face like a white wedge of venom stared up at us. There was no sign of the enemy, but I felt that we should not be left in peace much longer, and my disappointment at the discovery on board the pirate was keen.

"There is still a chance," Danjuro whispered in my ear. "And with your permission, Sir John, I am going to try it."

I nodded, and he stepped up to Vargus and pulled him up into a sitting posture, propping him against the barrier.

"There is a part of the control mechanism of the airship missing," Danjuro said, with silky politeness.

Vargus grinned suddenly, a momentary rictus that came and went, utterly horrible.

"And we want that piece of the machine," the Japanese went on.

Vargus spoke, in his peculiar oily voice. "Then you may go on wanting, you putty-faced little spawn of a monkey."

I cannot hope to describe the depth of poisonous hate the man put into the words. His accent was cultured and refined; the great dome of the blood-stained forehead spoke loudly of intellect, yet the voice somehow reeked of the pit. I know that it struck me cold, and I saw the rifle in Thumbwood's hands was shaking. Although this was the man who had devised an abominable death for me, I can honestly say that I felt no personal resentment. I can't account for it, but it was so.

I should have welcomed that, rather than the inward loathing, like a shudder of the soul, at something inhuman and unclean.

What Danjuro felt I don't know, but he didn't turn a hair.

"I think you will assist us," he said.