50+ Space Action Adventure Classics. Жюль Верн

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СКАЧАТЬ the ubiquitous monorail lines, and the towering ship-like hulls about him, reminded him a little of impressions he had got as a boy on a visit to Woolwich Dockyard. The whole camp reflected the colossal power of modern science that had created it. A peculiar strangeness was produced by the lowness of the electric light, which lay upon the ground, casting all shadows upwards and making a grotesque shadow figure of himself and his bearers on the airship sides, fusing all three of them into a monstrous animal with attenuated legs and an immense fanlike humped body. The lights were on the ground because as far as possible all poles and standards had been dispensed with to prevent complications when the airships rose.

      It was deep twilight now, a tranquil blue-skyed evening; everything rose out from the splashes of light upon the ground into dim translucent tall masses; within the cavities of the airships small inspecting lamps glowed like cloud-veiled stars, and made them seem marvellously unsubstantial. Each airship had its name in black letters on white on either flank, and forward the Imperial eagle sprawled, an overwhelming bird in the dimness.

      Bugles sounded, monorail cars of quiet soldiers slithered burbling by. The cabins under the heads of the airships were being lit up; doors opened in them, and revealed padded passages.

      Now and then a voice gave directions to workers indistinctly seen.

      There was a matter of sentinels, gangways and a long narrow passage, a scramble over a disorder of baggage, and then Bert found himself lowered to the ground and standing in the doorway of a spacious cabin — it was perhaps ten feet square and eight high, furnished with crimson padding and aluminium. A tall, birdlike young man with a small head, a long nose, and very pale hair, with his hands full of things like shaving-strops, boot-trees, hairbrushes, and toilet tidies, was saying things about Gott and thunder and Dummer Booteraidge as Bert entered. He was apparently an evicted occupant. Then he vanished, and Bert was lying back on a couch in the corner with a pillow under his head and the door of the cabin shut upon him. He was alone. Everybody had hurried out again astonishingly.

      “Gollys!” said Bert. “What next?”

      He stared about him at the room.

      “Butteridge! Shall I try to keep it up, or shan’t I?”

      The room he was in puzzled him. “‘Tisn’t a prison and ‘tisn’t a norfis?” Then the old trouble came uppermost. “I wish to ‘eaven I adn’t these silly sandals on,” he cried querulously to the universe. “They give the whole blessed show away.”

      3

      His door was flung open, and a compact young man in uniform appeared, carrying Mr. Butteridge’s portfolio, rucksac, and shaving-glass.

      “I say!” he said in faultless English as he entered. He had a beaming face, and a sort of pinkish blond hair. “Fancy you being Butteridge. He slapped Bert’s meagre luggage down.

      “We’d have started,” he said, “in another half-hour! You didn’t give yourself much time!”

      He surveyed Bert curiously. His gaze rested for a fraction of a moment on the sandals. “You ought to have come on your flying-machine, Mr. Butteridge.”

      He didn’t wait for an answer. “The Prince says I’ve got to look after you. Naturally he can’t see you now, but he thinks your coming’s providential. Last grace of Heaven. Like a sign. Hullo!”

      He stood still and listened.

      Outside there was a going to and fro of feet, a sound of distant bugles suddenly taken up and echoed close at hand, men called out in loud tones short, sharp, seemingly vital things, and were answered distantly. A bell jangled, and feet went down the corridor. Then came a stillness more distracting than sound, and then a great gurgling and rushing and splashing of water. The young man’s eyebrows lifted. He hesitated, and dashed out of the room. Presently came a stupendous bang to vary the noises without, then a distant cheering. The young man reappeared.

      “They’re running the water out of the ballonette already.”

      “What water?” asked Bert.

      “The water that anchored us. Artful dodge. Eh?”

      Bert tried to take it in.

      “Of course!” said the compact young man. “You don’t understand.”

      A gentle quivering crept upon Bert’s senses. “That’s the engine,” said the compact young man approvingly. “Now we shan’t be long.”

      Another long listening interval.

      The cabin swayed. “By Jove! we’re starting already;” he cried. “We’re starting!”

      “Starting!” cried Bert, sitting up. “Where?”

      But the young man was out of the room again. There were noises of German in the passage, and other nerve-shaking sounds.

      The swaying increased. The young man reappeared. “We’re off, right enough!”

      “I say!”, said Bert, “where are we starting? I wish you’d explain. What’s this place? I don’t understand.”

      “What!” cried the young man, “you don’t understand?”

      “No. I’m ‘all dazed-like from that crack on the nob I got. Where ARE we? Where are we starting?”

      “Don’t you know where you are — what this is?”

      “Not a bit of it! What’s all the swaying and the row?”

      “What a lark!” cried the young man. “I say! What a thundering lark! Don’t you know? We’re off to America, and you haven’t realised. You’ve just caught us by a neck. You’re on the blessed old flagship with the Prince. You won’t miss anything. Whatever’s on, you bet the Vaterland will be there.”

      “Us! — off to America?”

      “Ra — ther!

      “In an airship?”

      “What do YOU think?”

      “Me! going to America on an airship! After that balloon! ‘Ere! I say — I don’t want to go! I want to walk about on my legs. Let me get out! I didn’t understand.”

      He made a dive for the door.

      The young man arrested Bert with a gesture, took hold of a strap, lifted up a panel in the padded wall, and a window appeared. “Look!” he said. Side by side they looked out.

      “Gaw!” said Bert. “We’re going up!”

      “We are!” said the young man, cheerfully; “fast!”

      They were rising in the air smoothly and quietly, and moving slowly to the throb of the engine athwart the aeronautic park. Down below it stretched, dimly geometrical in the darkness, picked out at regular intervals by glowworm spangles of light. One black gap in the long line of grey, round-backed airships marked the position from which the Vaterland had come. Beside it a second monster now rose softly, released from its bonds and cables into the air. Then, taking a beautifully СКАЧАТЬ