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 d.a.m.ned 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 pa.s.sage. 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.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE GOLDEN DREAM

The strangely-shaped propellers bit the air at once, the walls of the cavern, flooded with spectral light, slid backwards, and as the ship swerved round the curve towards the entrance, the day leapt at us.

Wow! but it was touch and go during the next ten seconds. If it had not been for Gascoigne I am sure that I should never have gone through. The great ship shot out of its lair like a dart; a touch upon the little steering-wheel and she was banking in the terrible right-hand turn; the granite walls seemed rushing to meet and crush her, and only the quick, steady words of command from the prisoner, which like an automaton I obeyed, got her finally into the straight....

And then--oh, then--I opened out the marvellous engines; she seemed to shake herself for an instant like a bird poised for a long flight, and, humming like a wasp, she shot up and out to sea....

The needle upon the speed indicator quivered round its dial, moving ever upwards. Eighty, a hundred, a hundred and fifty--and thirty more--we were doing nearly two hundred miles an hour, straight out over the Atlantic before I had a thought of our destination, or of anything but the supreme glory of that rush up the dawn wind.

The whole morning world was blue and gold, new-built and beautiful. Far below, the Mother of Oceans lay in an unwrinkled sheet of sapphire, "as it were a sea of gla.s.s mingled with fire." A tiny purple cloud upon the horizon was the Isles of Scilly, sleeping under the sun.

Connie stole in and stood by my side, her hand upon my shoulder, and I knew that her heart also was full to overflowing, as memory flared up and down in us like the flame of a lamp in a draught. It was a moment so exquisite, so full of grat.i.tude to G.o.d, that no words of mine can do more than hint at it. For we had escaped from h.e.l.l and the snare of devils, and knew it in one lightning flash of grat.i.tude and joy.

As she stared out at the sea and sky, which glowed like the pavements of the New Jerusalem, Connie quoted some words from Milton--the song of the released spirit in his epilogue of "Comus":

"To the Ocean now I fly, And those happy climes which lie Where Day never shuts his eye Up in the broad fields of the sky."

And then, as I glanced at the compa.s.s card and made a great sweep round, so that we faced the jagged coasts of Cornwall once again, she whispered, with a proud note in her voice:

"For still the Lord is Lord of Might In deeds, in deeds, he takes delight."

Then, with a tiny pressure of my arm, she went back to the other cabin.

I had not noticed Danjuro for the last few minutes. He had led Gascoigne behind me as soon as we had made the pa.s.sage. Now he reappeared.

"Danjuro!" I cried, "this ship is wonderful beyond all imagining! There isn"t her equal in the whole world. She"ll revolutionize flying. It"s a perfect joy to pilot her!"

Danjuro nodded calmly; he was not given to enthusiasms, this man with a panther in his soul. "I have been speaking with the prisoner," he said.

"With Vargus?"

"No, though I have been to look at him, and he is quite safe. With Gascoigne, and he has suggested something that has not occurred to either of us, Sir John."

"His help will all tell in his favour when it comes to the trial. What is it now?"

"Something eminently sensible and pressing! As you see, this ship is quite unmistakable. Any pilot would recognize her from the descriptions which have been circulated. We are now approaching the coast again and about to fly to Plymouth. The air must be full of armed patrol ships, and, whatever our speed, if we escape being shot down _en route_, we should certainly be blown to pieces on approaching the sea-drome!"

I flushed up. I had been an incredible a.s.s never to have thought of that before. It was only too true. n.o.body could possibly know that we had captured the Pirate Ship....

I reduced our speed to half of what it had been. "What are we to do?" I said.

"There is a complete wireless installation on board the ship. Can you operate it, Sir John?"

"No. Even if I could leave the controls, that would be impossible. I know nothing about it, unfortunately."

"Nor I, Sir John. It is a gap in my knowledge that I propose to remedy shortly. But this Gascoigne is an operator, and offers to send any message."