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He had suddenly perceived a possibility. He tried to speak calmly,

but his face was white. "There is one chance. You said there was an

aeropile--?"

"On the Roehampton stage, Sire."

"Smashed?"

"No. It is lying crossways to the carrier. It might be got upon the

guides--easily. But there is no aeronaut--."

Graham glanced at the two men and then at Helen. He spoke after a long

pause. "We have no aeronauts?"

"None."

"The aeroplanes are clumsy," he said thoughtfully, "compared with the

aeropiles."

He turned suddenly to Helen. His decision was made. "I must do it."

"Do what?"

"Go to this flying stage--to this aeropile."

"What do you mean?"

"I am an aeronaut. After all--. Those days for which you reproached me

were not wasted."

He turned to the old man in yellow. "Put the aeropile upon the guides."

The man in yellow hesitated.

"What do you mean to do?" cried Helen.

"This aeropile--it is a chance--."

"You don't mean--?"

"To fight--yes. To fight in the air. I have thought before--. An

aeroplane is a clumsy thing. A resolute man--!"

"But--never since flying began--" cried the man in yellow.

"There has been no need. But now the time has come. Tell them now--send

them my message--to put it upon the guides."

The old man dumbly interrogated the man in yellow, nodded, and hurried

out.

Helen made a step towards Graham. Her face was white. "But--How can one

fight? You will be killed."

"Perhaps. Yet, not to do it--or to let someone else attempt it--."

He stopped, he could speak no more, he swept the alternative aside by a

gesture, and they stood looking at one another.

"You are right," she said at last in a low tone. "You are right. If it

can be done... must go."

Those days for not altogether

He moved a step towards her, and she stepped back, her white face

struggled against him and resisted him. "No," she gasped. "I cannot

bear--. Go now."

He extended his hands stupidly. She clenched her fists. "Go now," she

cried. "Go now."

He hesitated and understood. He threw his hands up in a queer

half-theatrical gesture. He had no word to say. He turned from her.

The man in yellow moved towards the door with clumsy belated tact. But

Graham stepped past him. He went striding through the room where the

Ward Leader bawled at a telephone directing that the aeropile should be

put upon the guides.

The man in yellow glanced at Helen's still figure, hesitated and hurried

after him. Graham did not once look back, he did not speak until the

curtain of the ante-chamber of the great hall fell behind him. Then he

turned his head with curt swift directions upon his bloodless lips.

CHAPTER XXIV. THE COMING OF THE AEROPLANES

Two men in pale blue were lying in the irregular line that stretched

along the edge of the captured Roehampton stage from end to end,

grasping their carbines and peering into the shadows of the stage called

Wimbledon Park. Now and then they spoke to one another. They spoke the

mutilated English of their class and period. The fire of the Ostrogites

had dwindled and ceased, and few of the enemy had been seen for some

time. But the echoes of the fight that was going on now far below in

the lower galleries of that stage, came every now and then between the

staccato of shots from the popular side. One of these men was describing

to the other how he had seen a man down below there dodge behind a

girder, and had aimed at a guess and hit him cleanly as he dodged too

far "He's down there still," said the marksman. "See that little patch.

Yes. Between those bars." A few yards behind them lay a dead stranger,

face upward to the sky, with the blue canvas of his jacket smoldering

in a circle about the neat bullet hole on his chest. Close beside him a

wounded man, with a leg swathed about, sat with an expressionless face

and watched the progress of that burning. Gigantic behind them, athwart

the carrier lay the captured aeropile.

"I can't see him now," said the second man in a ton of provocation.

The marksman became foul-mouthed and high-voiced in his earnest

endeavour to make things plain And suddenly, interrupting him, came a

noisy shouting from the substage.

"What's going on now," he said, and raised himself on one arm to stare

at the stairheads in the central groove of the stage. A number of blue

figures were coming up these, and swarming across the stage to the

aeropile.

"We don't want all these fools," said his friend. "They only crowd up

and spoil shots. What are they after?"

"Ssh!--they're shouting something."

The two men listened. The swarming new-comers had crowded densely about

the aeropile. Three Ward Leaders, conspicuous by their black mantles and

badges, clambered into the body and appeared above it. The rank and file

flung themselves upon the vans, gripping hold of the edges, until the

entire outline of the thing was manned, in some places three deep. One

of the marksmen knelt up. "They're putting it on the carrier--that's

what they're after."

He rose to his feet, his friend rose also. "What's the good?" said his

friend. "We've got no aeronauts."

"That's what they're doing anyhow." He looked at his rifle, looked at

the struggling crowd, and suddenly turning to the wounded man. "Mind

these, mate," he said, handing his carbine and cartridge belt; and in a

moment he was running towards the aeropile. For a quarter of an hour he

was a perspiring Titan, lugging, thrusting, shouting and heeding shouts,

and then the thing was done, and he stood with a multitude of others

cheering their own achievement. By this time he knew, what indeed

everyone in the city knew, that the Master, raw learner though he

was, intended to fly this machine himself, was coming even now to take

control of it, would let no other man attempt it. "He who takes the

greatest danger, he who bears the heaviest burden, that man is King,"

so the Master was reported to have spoken. And even as this man cheered,

and while the beads of sweat still chased one another from the disorder

of his hair, he heard the thunder of a greater tumult, and in fitful

snatches the beat and impulse of the revolutionary song. He saw through

a gap in the people that a thick stream of heads still poured up

the stairway. "The Master is coming," shouted voices, "the Master is

coming," and the crowd about him grew denser and denser. He began to

thrust himself towards the central groove. "The Master is coming!" "The

Sleeper, the Master!" "God and the Master!" roared the Voices.

And suddenly quite close to him were the black uniforms of the

revolutionary guard, and for the first and last time in his life he saw

Graham, saw him quite nearly. A tall, dark man in a flowing black robe,

with a white, resolute face and eyes fixed steadfastly before him; a man

who for all the little things about him held neither ears nor eyes

nor thoughts.... For all his days that man remembered the passing of

Graham's bloodless face. In a moment it had gone and he was fighting

in the swaying crowd. A lad weeping with terror thrust against him,

pressing towards the stairways, yelling "Clear for the aeropile!" The

bell that clears the flying stage became a loud unmelodious clanging.

With that clanging in his ears Graham drew near the aeropile, marched

into the shadow of its tilting wing. He became aware that a number of

people about him were offering to accompany him, and waved their offers

aside. He wanted to think how one started the engine. The bell clanged

faster and faster, and the feet of the retreating people roared faster

and louder. The man in yellow was assisting him to mount through the

ribs of the body. He clambered into the aeronaut's place, fixing himself

very carefully and deliberately. What was it? The man in yellow was

pointing to two aeropiles driving upward in the southern sky. No doubt

they were looking for the coming aeroplanes. That--presently--the thing

to do now was to start. Things were being shouted at him, questions,

warnings. They bothered him. He wanted to think about the aeropile, to

recall every item of his previous experience. He waved the people from

him, saw the man in yellow dropping off through the ribs, saw the crowd

cleft down the line of the girders by his gesture.

For a moment he was motionless, staring at the levers, the wheel by

which the engine shifted, and all the delicate appliances of which he

knew so little. His eye caught a spirit level with the bubble towards

him, and he remembered something, spent a dozen seconds in swinging the

engine forward until the bubble floated in the centre of the tube.

He noted that the people were not shouting, knew they watched his

deliberation. A bullet smashed on the bar above his head. Who fired? Was

the line clear of people? He stood up to see and sat down again.

In another second the propeller was spinning, and he was rushing down

the guides. He gripped the wheel and swung the engine back to lift the

stem. Then it was the people shouted. In a moment he was throbbing with

the quiver of the engine, and the shouts dwindled swiftly behind, rushed

down to silence. The wind whistled over the edges of the screen, and the

world sank away from him very swiftly.

Throb, throb, throb--throb, throb, throb; up he drove. He fancied

himself free of all excitement, felt cool and deliberate. He lifted the

stem still more, opened one valve on his left wing and swept round and

up. He looked down with a steady head, and up. One of the Ostrogite

aeropiles was driving across his course, so that he drove obliquely

towards it and would pass below it at a steep angle. Its little

aeronauts were peering down at him. What did they mean to do? His mind

became active. One, he saw held a weapon pointing, seemed prepared to

fire. What did they think he meant to do? In a moment he understood

their tactics, and his resolution was taken. His momentary lethargy was

past. He opened two more valves to his left, swung round, end on to this

hostile machine, closed his valves, and shot straight at it, stem and

wind-screen shielding him from the shot. They tilted a little as if to

clear him. He flung up his stem.

Throb, throb, throb--pause--throb, throb--he set his teeth, his face

into an involuntary grimace, and crash! He struck it! He struck upward

beneath the nearer wing.

Very slowly the wing of his antagonist seemed to broaden as the impetus

of his blow turned it up. He saw the full breadth of it and then it slid

downward out of his sight.

He felt his stem going down, his hands tightened on the levers, whirled

and rammed the engine back. He felt the jerk of a clearance, the nose

of the machine jerked upward steeply, and for a moment he seemed to be

lying on his back. The machine was reeling and staggering, it seemed to

be dancing on its screw. He made a huge effort, hung for a moment on the

levers, and slowly the engine came forward again. He was driving upward

but no longer so steeply. He gasped for a moment and flung himself at

the levers again. The wind whistled about him. One further effort and

he was almost level. He could breathe. He turned his head for the first

time to see what had become of his antagonists. Turned back to the

levers for a moment and looked again. For a moment he could have

believed they were annihilated. And then he saw between the two stages

to the east was a chasm, and down this something, a slender edge, fell

swiftly and vanished, as a sixpence falls down a crack.

At first he did not understand, and then a wild joy possessed him. He

shouted at the top of his voice, an inarticulate shout, and drove higher

and higher up the sky. Throb, throb, throb, pause, throb, throb, throb.

"Where was the other aeropile?" he thought. "They too--." As he looked

round the empty heavens he had a momentary fear that this machine had

risen above him, and then he saw it alighting on the Norwood stage. They

had meant shooting. To risk being rammed headlong two thousand feet in

the air was beyond their latter-day courage. The combat was declined.

For a little while he circled, then swooped in a steep descent towards

the westward stage. Throb throb throb, throb throb throb. The twilight

was creeping on apace, the smoke from the Streatham stage that had been

so dense and dark, was now a pillar of fire, and all the laced curves

of the moving ways and the translucent roofs and domes and the chasms

between the buildings were glowing softly now, lit by the tempered

radiance of the electric light that the glare of the way overpowered.

The three efficient stages that the Ostrogites held--for Wimbledon Park

was useless because of the fire from Roehampton, and Streatham was a

furnace--were glowing with guide lights for the coming aeroplanes. As

he swept over the Roehampton stage he saw the dark masses of the people

thereon. He heard a clap of frantic cheering, heard a bullet from the

Wimbledon Park stage tweet through the air, and went beating up above

the Surrey wastes. He felt a breath of wind from the south-west, and

lifted his westward wing as he had learnt to do, and so drove upward

heeling into the rare swift upper air. Throb throb throb--throb throb

throb.

Up he drove and up, to that pulsating rhythm, until the country beneath

was blue and indistinct, and London spread like a little map traced in

light, like the mere model of a city near the brim of the horizon. The

south-west was a sky of sapphire over the shadowy rim of the world, and

ever as he drove upward the multitude of stars increased.

And behold! In the southward, low down and glittering swiftly nearer,

were two little patches of nebulous light. And then two more, and then a