The Air Pirate

"You'll lose your life quickly enough if you stay," I said to the yelping fool, though, Heaven knows, the poor soul had gone through enough to turn her mind entirely. Her mouth grew like a round O, and I was preparing for another shriek when I suddenly thought of something.

"Miss Connie will be quite safe with me," I said quickly, "and I shall put you in charge of Charles Thumbwood. You remember him? He'll look after you all right, Wilson."

It acted like a charm. I had remembered Charles's attention to the pretty maid in the train.

"Ow!" said Wilson. "Is Mr. Thumbwood here, then, Sir John?"

"Very much so. You will be his especial charge, and the journey won't take more than three-quarters of an hour."

The girl picked up the dressing-bag, which she had dropped upon the floor. "Then that will be all right," she said with a flush, and I wondered if she thought Charles was going to pilot the ship himself. How true it is that Faith can move mountains! No doubt Constance felt just the same about me as Mary Wilson did about Charles.

… We had come out into the cave, and had walked a few yards towards the looming bulk of the ship, when the telephone bell on the cave-side ahead of us rang furiously. It kept on like an alarm-clock, and telling the girls to remain still for a moment, I ran up and unhooked the receiver.

A voice was bawling at the other end, so loud that the words rang and buzzed one into the other, and I could only distinguish one or two. I heard enough to know what had happened, though.

"Chief … coastguard police … rifles … all round the house on the moor were coming down … two of us stay … hold till last moment…"

So that was it! Billy Pengelly, the coastguard, had made good. The wires had been at work while we had been about our mole-like warfare underground. The avengers were among the gorse and heather, and the remainder of the pirates were doomed…

"Come on," I shouted to Connie, realizing that there was literally not a moment to lose, and, alarmed by the excitement in my voice, they started to run.

When they had come up to me, and I started to run with them towards the ship, there was a sudden thunderous report. Looking to the right, I saw that Thumbwood had taken cover, and was lying on his stomach behind the barrier. The open door was but a dim oblong of yellow light at that distance, and I could not see a yard down the passage in the rocks.

Thumbwood fired again, and the echoing roar had not died away when something went by my ear with a vicious zipp, and I heard the splash of a bullet upon the granite.

The pirates were coming down in force, and, finding themselves between Scylla and Charybdis, had turned at bay.

I knew Thumbwood would keep them where they were for a minute or two, and I raced to the ship with Connie at my side. Wilson had fainted, and we had to drag her between us.

Half-way up the light, steep accommodation ladder Danjuro was waiting, perfectly calm and unconcerned. We handed up the unconscious maid, and he disappeared with her in a second. Then Connie was helped up the ladder, while the whole cavern began to thunder with a fusillade of rapid firing.

"The police and coastguards are surrounding the house," I shouted, "and the rest of the crew have come down, and are trying to fight their way into the cave."

"It is what I thought, Sir John. Those gentlemen must be considerably surprised at their reception! We can shoot them all down before they get out of the passage. Perhaps, now that rescue is at hand, we had better wait and do so?"

His eyes were glistening; I saw the light of slaughter in them. For an instant I hesitated. What he said was sane enough. The risk was comparatively small; it would only be postponing the triumphal flight.

Then I took a decision – it rested with me, and I was alone responsible. "We mustn't shoot them all down," I shouted through the din, for bullets were streaming into the cave behind as though they were pumped from a hose. "Some of them must be brought to justice. We had better be off and leave the coastguards and police to deal with them."

Thus I spoke. I said what I honestly thought was best at the moment, though perhaps my mind was a little influenced by the natural and terrible anxiety to get my girl away from further horrors.

At any rate, I decided, and all my life long I shall never cease to regret it.

"Very good," said Danjuro. "Up into the pilot's cabin, quick, Sir John. You are indispensable there. Prepare for an instant start. I will run and fetch Thumbwood. We shall have to fire thirty or forty rounds quickly into the passage to keep them back. Of course, they are firing automatic pistols round the bend now, and not exposing themselves any more. After we have fired we shall run for the ship. You will hear me shout and then start like lightning!"

He slipped past me, and, crouching almost to the ground, ran back towards Thumbwood like some great cat.

I flung myself aboard. Constance was attending to Wilson in the main cabin. Gascoigne was lying bound where he had been thrown, but his eyes were blazing with excitement.

I put a stop to that at once. "The remainder of your friends are being shot down," I said curtly. "Lucky for you to be here."

All the animation died out of his face. And, as I didn't want to leave him alone with Connie – it seemed a desecration that he should be in the same place with her even for a moment – I whipped out my knife, cut the bonds at his feet, and pushed him into the pilot's cabin, making him lie upon the floor at my side as I got into the swivel chair. I could shoot him dead in an instant if he moved.

Then I sat rigid, with my hand upon the switch which started the engines.

In reality, I know now that the time of waiting was very short, but it seemed an eternity to me. For the first time my nerves felt upon the point of giving way. My hand trembled. I began to think of the narrow S-shaped passage between high walls of rock to the sea, and realized the appalling nature of the task before me. A mere touch of the planes upon those iron barriers, and all the long struggle would prove unavailing, the triumph turn to a defeat in which my girl and I, the superman Danjuro, and faithful Thumbwood would lose our hard-won lives.

One touch and the ship would crumple up like paper and fall like a stone into the cruel cauldron of jagged rock and furious waves far below.

There came a voice from the floor. Had the prisoner divined something of my thoughts?

"… Look here, Sir John, you're up against a nasty job. It's the very devil getting out of here if you don't know the way and haven't practised it."

Something in the young fellow's voice told me that this was not mockery. He was, moreover, the second pilot of the Pirate Ship, trained by Helzephron himself.

"I did not ask you to speak," I answered.

"No, but really it's no end of a stunt. The controls are ten times as sensitive as in an ordinary machine. If you were the best pilot living, you'd find it hard to manage in a ship that's quite new to you, and has all sorts of habits and tricks that no other has."

He spoke truly enough, and I knew it, but it was none the less unpleasant to hear.

"I suppose you're afraid for your damned skin," I sneered.

"Oh, come, draw it mild," he replied. "I only spoke to try and help you. I know when I'm beaten, and I don't bear any malice."

"If I do take you safely out, it will only mean the gallows."

"Oh, no, it won't!" he said. "I shall turn King's evidence. There are lots of things I know that no one else except Vargus knows now. I shall get let off with fifteen years. Bet you a fiver, if you like. It's to my interest to help you out."

I can generally tell when a man is sincere, and I realized that this young scoundrel was, despite – and perhaps because of – the baseness of his motive.

"Help me?"

"Yes, out of the passage. Once you get in clear air you'll fly her easily enough – and you'll be astonished, by Jove! But you'd better let me pilot you. It's the lift and the sharp right bank that are so difficult…"

"Get up," I said.

He scrambled to his feet.

"Stand there!" He leaned against the wall at my side, his hands tied behind him and his arms tightly bound.

He was about to speak, when suddenly we both started. Something had happened. For a moment I did not realize what it was. Then I knew. The continuous thunder of rifle fire had stopped. Everything was dead silent. I'd hardly become conscious of the fact when there was a loud shout.

"Let her go, Sir John! Let her go!"

Danjuro stumbled into the cabin, panting like a whippet.

I pulled over the switch and then the lever of the starting mechanism.