The Phantom Airman

Fixing him with his keen, malicious eyes, the pirate said: "Are you the captain of this vessel?"

"I am," replied the skipper in surly tones.

"Show me your bill of lading."

"Bill of lading?" echoed the captive. "You must hunt for it if you want it."

The self-styled king of the desert frowned. He knew that he was up against an English skipper, and that he must adopt other measures to gain his end. Without lifting his gaze from the commander of the air-liner, or flinching a muscle, he replied firmly, "One word from me, Captain, and your life would be forfeit. You would swing from that tree by one of your own cables."

"I know that, brigand," replied the prisoner. "Get a cable and carry out your threat; the rope that will hang you is not so very far away, either."

"Very well," exclaimed the German. "Then, I need only give the order to these, my faithful subjects, and the whole of your valuable cargo will be strewn on the sands, and your airship will be alight. I do not propose to adopt those measures unless you compel me. I will give you five minutes to decide." As the pirate uttered these words in a cool, nonchalant manner, he glanced at the European emblem on his wrist, a gold, gem-studded wristlet watch with luminous dial.

"I deny your right to interfere with a peaceful trader," blurted out the captain, when he saw the full force of the two alternatives which had been offered to him. He was wondering, moreover, how much the brigand knew about the presence of the specie on the vessel.

"You deny my right, do you?" returned the other.

"Yes. Who are you?"

"I am Sultan von Selim, Air-King of the Hamadian Desert. I told you that once before when I first challenged you in the air."

"Who made you king?" snorted the captain.

There was silence for the space of ten seconds, during which time the brigand consulted his watch again, then replied:–

"The Allies made me king, particularly you verdammt English when you drove me from my Fatherland with those impossible peace terms. King I am, and king I will remain, of all the aerial regions where I choose to abide, until there comes a better man who can beat me in the air. And you, Captain, of all men, must know from what you have already seen that my powers in that realm are considerable."

The captain, having cooled somewhat after this outburst, had to admit to this German irreconcilable that there was certainly some truth in his statement about being king of the air. Certain things were beginning to dawn upon this English captain, and he was now wondering how far it would be wise to humour the brigand. He added, however, to his admission, the following words, "You are only king by might!"

"Ha! ha!" laughed the outlaw, "but that also is some admission. My position is precisely that of the British in India or Egypt. Withdraw your soldiers from these two countries and what becomes of your government there? So am I King of the Hamadian Desert till a stronger man comes. When that time comes one of us must die. There is no room for two kings, even in the desert. Till then I am supreme. But come, captain, four minutes have passed already. Your bill of lading, quickly now, for we are but wasting time, and these my subjects"–and here the brigand waved his hand towards the restive Arabs–"or rather I should say my customs' officials, are waiting to examine your cargo, and to levy the king's tribute."

The captain looked around first upon his own followers and then upon the impatient Bedouins–the vultures around the carcase.

"I could have brought your ship down in flames, but I preferred a milder method," continued the outlaw, as he watched the seconds of the last minute being ticked away on his jewelled watch.

"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.

"Ten boxes of valuables, including the personal property and belongings of one of the passengers," came the reply.

"What, do they belong to one person?"

"Yes, sir."

"What is his name?"

"The Maharajah of Bangapore, sir," returned the wise man of the exchequer, whose task promised to be an easy one in the future, judging by the vast amount of spoil which had already fallen into his lap.

"The Maharajah of Bangapore?" repeated the monarch, raising his hand to his forehead for an instant, as though he would recall some long forgotten episode. "Is he amongst the company present?"

"I believe so."

"Ask him to stand forth."

And the Indian prince, hearing his name called in English, stepped forth and confronted his old enemy of the Mesopotamian campaign. When their eyes met a flash of fire, more eloquent than words, revealed what was in each man's mind. The prince expected to be tortured to death and was prepared for it, for, like all his people, he was brave as well as fierce. At last the robber spoke.

"Prince Jaipur, you are an enemy of mine," he said.

"I know it!"

"Do you expect mercy after the way your tribesmen massacred my men at Kerbela?"

The maharajah shrugged his shoulders, but disdained to reply to this upstart robber chief who styled himself a king.

"Do you know that your life is in my hands?" exclaimed the bandit fiercely.

"I am not afraid of anything you can do, brigand!" hissed the prince, and his voice sounded not unlike the angry, venomous snake in the jungle. Another man might have quailed before those glaring eyes and those hissing tones. But the German quavered not.

"I will give you a kingly choice," he said, "as you are the scion of half a hundred kings in your illustrious line."

"I ask no favours of a common Bedouin robber," snarled the other.

"Listen. I will give you the choice of drinking this deadly poison, or of being dropped ten thousand feet from my aeroplane. Which will you take?"

The prince shuddered slightly, and glanced up into the cloudless blue, as though anticipating what such a death might mean, then looked at the small phial which the brigand held forth in his hand.

"Yes, ten thousand feet!" continued the German, as he noted the anxious look which overcast the Hindoo's face for an instant, as he gazed up into the sky. "Then I will loop the machine, and, with your hands pinioned, you will be thrown out and drop, drop– Which will you choose?"

"I will drink the poison," replied the prince, who had now regained his usual composure.

"Very well. Let him be securely tied to that tree to await our pleasure," and the maharajah was instantly seized by three or four powerful Arabs, and secured to a tree some twenty paces away.

"What about his valuables, sir?" asked Carl.

"Have you examined them?"

"Yes, sir."

"And what do they consist of?" asked the king.

"His jewels, his gold and silver plate, studded with rare gems of priceless value. They are worth five times the value of the specie," whispered Carl.

"And what else? You said there were ten boxes."

"Part of his regalia and numerous ceremonial robes."

"They are all confiscated!" announced the monarch. "The sun will set in another two hours, and at sunset the Indian must die."

"There is nothing else, sir, of much value. All the gold and this personal property has been secured. Here is the list of passengers, for there are scarcely any passports held by the strangers," and here Carl, who had paid a visit to the aerial, whispered something to his chief.

"Good! Then, in your opinion, chancellor, sufficient tribute has now been obtained from these strangers who have crossed our territory without permission," said the bandit aloud for all to hear.

"Yes, sir."

"Then let them board the airship at once. She will be cast adrift in ten minutes."

At this there was a scramble for the gondolas, and very quickly all, save the captain and the navigating officer, were aboard. The judge and the colonel, however, prevailed upon by the maharajah's men, descended again to intercede for the life of the Indian.

"You have taken the man's jewels," said the colonel. "At least you might spare his life."

"You may have his body," remarked the airman, "but he must first drink the phial," and a stern look appeared once more in the robber-bandit's eyes. On this point he was unbending, and remained like adamant.

"The airship is ready now, sir," said the captain, making a final appeal for the life of the maharajah. "I should like to report, at any rate, when I do complete my journey, that all my passengers are safe, though I expect to be two days late with only two engines and this beam wind. Once more, will you release the Indian?"

"Bring him before me!" commanded the monarch at last, with a bored expression, and the Indian, still bound hand and foot, was brought before the pseudo king.

"Unloose his hands," came the order.

"They ask me to spare your life, Indian dog!" continued the robber, addressing the prince in contemptuous tones. "If you sue for it yourself, you may have it, otherwise…" and, instead of completing his sentence, the speaker shook the little phial in the face of the prisoner.

"I will not ask my life of you, serpent!" hissed the captive. "From you I will accept no favours. Robbed of my family heirlooms, my jewels and my household gods, I prefer to die. Give me the poison, and I will show you how a real prince of the royal line of Indus can die!"

For one awful instant, the desert chief glared at his enemy, who had dared to refuse his generous offer. Then, in angry tones, he cried:–

"Indian dog! I offered you mercy, but you spurn the gift of Allah and ask for death. Then take this and drink it!" and he tossed him the phial.

"Stay!" cried half a dozen voices from amongst the group of passengers.

But their expostulations were in vain, for, with an eagerness to hide his disgrace in death, which only a proud oriental can show, the prisoner caught the phial, withdrew the small cork, and drained the contents before his horrified friends could interfere.

The next moment, the body of the maharajah lay prostrate upon the sands of the Hamadian desert.

CHAPTER XIII

THE MISSING AIRSHIP

Horrified and aghast at the foul deed which had been done, the passengers and crew of the air-liner, who had left the gondolas at the cry of consternation which went up, now crowded around the fallen prince. Even those fierce sons of the desert who witnessed the dire act could not restrain an involuntary shudder, but they merely shrugged their shoulders, or remarked: "Kismet! It is the will of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful," and after some such invocation, their piety appeared to be satisfied, for they immediately returned to their treasure.

The captain and his friends were loud in their protestations and imprecations after their first and futile attempts to rouse the prostrate man, for they believed him to be already dead. They glared at the pseudo caliph, who appeared to be entirely unmoved by the heart-rending spectacle. And if, at that moment, any weapon of offence had remained in their possession, it would certainly have been turned upon the offender, whom they now regarded as a murderer.

But every weapon had been carefully removed from the air-liner and her complement; even the unmounted machine-gun and the one box of ammunition placed aboard on her first voyage, were now in possession of the bandits.

The captain in particular was furious, and he turned upon the German fiercely, shook his fist at him and cried, "One day you will pay for this, sirrah! The arm of Britain is long enough to reach you!"

A mocking laugh was the only reply which the German gave. Then, looking once more at his jewelled watch, he signified that the time for the airship's departure had almost arrived.

"Three minutes more and I shall cut her adrift," he said.

"But the maharajah?" asked the captain. "What can we do with him; we cannot leave his body to the vultures."

"Bah! Take him away with you. He will live again in seven hours; it was only morphine!"

Bewildered, but yet relieved by these words, they quickly ascertained that the prostrate man was not actually dead, and they hurriedly placed him aboard the airship and administered emetics.

"Let us get him away at once," urged the Indian judge; "perhaps the higher altitudes will quickly dissipate the effects of the morphine."

"Are you ready there?" shouted the caliph, who had ridden with his escort up to the central gondola.

"Yes," came the response.

"Then remember, the next time that you invade my dominions without my permission you will not escape so easily. As you know to your cost, the King of the Hamadian desert is able to defend himself and his people, even from the insults of a great power."

The captain made a slight bow, half ironical, in response to this kingly assertion, and asked,

"Is there any communication which your majesty would like to have delivered to my Government?"

"Yes," replied the monarch, drawing from under his loose robe a sealed packet, which he appeared to have had in readiness for the occasion. It was addressed as follows:–

"To Colonel John Tempest, D.S.O., M.C..

Chief Commissioner of the British Aerial

Police, Scotland Yard, London,"

and across the top left-hand corner it was marked "Confidential," and also "To be delivered personally by the Captain of the Air-Liner, Empress of Britain."

The skipper, apparently bewildered for a moment by this strange request, for it seemed to him like a letter from a condemned man to his executioner, looked the packet over for a few seconds. Noting the great red seal on the back, he read the imprint embossed on the huge wafer. It read as follows, and was circular in form:–

"From Sultan von Selim, Air-King of the Hamadian desert," and the crest was a scorpion, with the solitary word in Latin, "Scorpio."

The caliph waited patiently until the captain had examined the exterior of the packet, and recovered from his amazement, and then said, "Before you depart, Captain, you must promise me that you will deliver that packet in person to Colonel Tempest, who is not unknown to me."

The captain did not answer for a few seconds, for he was wondering what new conspiracy was this. He was wondering also whether the conveyance of this packet was not after all the real reason for the forced descent of the airship.

"Do you promise, Captain?" asked his interrogator, looking at him fixedly.

"Yes, I promise."

"On your honour?"

"On my word of honour, I promise to deliver it."

"Then good-bye. I will 'wireless' the patrols to look out for you."

"Thank you," replied the skipper acidly.

And the next moment, seeing that only his own accomplices and reputed subjects were left on the ground, the Sultan gave the order, "Let go!"

So the huge cable was slipped, and the leviathan left her moorings at once. The north-west wind carried her clear of the trees, and, as she had left nearly two tons of her most precious cargo behind, she rose rapidly, then started falteringly on her long journey to Cairo as her two remaining Sunbeam-Maori engines burst into life.

The sun, which had shone with pitiless might upon the Arabian desert that day, was sinking like a huge red ball beneath the horizon when the great air-liner, drifting considerably from her course, but still making progress in her journey towards Cairo, disappeared from the watchers' view.

With strange impartiality, inexplicable in such a robber-bandit, the spoil had been divided amongst the Bedouins, who, to their bewilderment and surprise, were now rich, each one of them, beyond the dreams of avarice. Their gratitude to Allah, the Giver of all Good, and to the great white sheik was unbounded. Never before had their greedy eyes beheld such treasure; never before had they gained a prize so easily; and some of them even wondered whether, after all, Mohammed had not appeared to the Faithful once more in the person of the great white sheik.

Long before midnight, however, the last man, with heavily-laden beast of burden, had disappeared, swallowed up, as it were, by the very sands of the desert, so that, when the full round moon approached the meridian and changed the gold of the desert to silver, not a vestige of man or beast remained. And of the camp, only a few ashes marked the spot where once a fire had burned. The Scorpion, too, had taken its departure for an unknown destination, carrying its mysterious crew far, far away from these burning sands, for the indomitable commander knew only too well that the captain spoke truthfully when he said that the arm of Britain was very long, and could even reach to this wild desert land.

Before his departure, however, Heinrich von Spitzer had sent off his promised message in laconic terms to the Cairo patrols. It ran as follows:–

"Air-liner Empress with damaged engines crossing desert towards Cairo. Lat. 29-50 N., Long. 40-25 E. drifting W.S.W. Wireless deranged. SCORPIO."

"Piece of bad luck, sir!" remarked the commissioner's assistant at Cairo when he received the message.

"H'm! She carries the Indian mail, too," replied his chief.

"Yes, and a good deal more, sir."

"What else does she carry this trip besides passengers and mails?" asked the alert commissioner.

"That big loading of specie, sir, for the Bank of England. Nearly a ton of gold, I believe."

"Phew! And isn't the maharajah of somewhere or other coming on a state visit to the King also?"

"Yes, by Jove, so he is! We had a message this morning saying that he would travel by the Empress."

"Heaven help us if she comes down in the desert with that cargo. The Bedouins would soon make short work of it. The authorities rely too much upon the patrols for these long journeys," said the commissioner.