The War in the Air

He had lived all his life in narrow streets, and between mean houses he could not look over, and in a narrow circle of ideas from which there was no escape. He thought the whole duty of

self lifted out of his marvellous modern world for a time, out of all the rush and confused appeals of it, and floating like a thing dead and disembodied between sea and sky. It was as if Heaven was experimenting with him, had picked him out as a sample from

alm without a single irrelevant murmur. It is to see the sky. No sound reaches one of all the roar and jar of humanity, the air is clear and sweet beyond the thought of defilement. No bird, no insect comes so high. No wind blows ever in a balloon, no breeze rustles, for it moves with the wind and is itself a part of the atmosphere. Once started, it does not rock nor sway; you cannot feel whether it rises or falls. Bert

of sunlit cloud slashed by enormous

nless little black knob, sticking out from the car first of all for a long tim

hus rushed up the sky with him it might presently rush down again, but this consideration did not trouble hi

eling a need for talking; "it

all

e telegraphing ab

et interior, and out of which descended two fine cords of unknown import, one white, one crimson, to pockets below the ring. The netting about the balloon-ended in cords attached to the ring, a big steel-bound hoop to which the car w

tom of the car were an empty champagne bottle and a glass. "Refreshments," said Bert meditatively, tilting the empty bottle. Then he had a brilliant idea. The two padded bed-like seats, each with blankets and mattress, he perceived, were boxes, and within he found Mr. Butteridge's conception of an adequate equipment for a balloon ascent: a hamper which included a game pie, a Roman pie, a cold fowl, tomatoes, lettuce

Far below were the shining clouds. They had thickened so that the whole world was hidden. Southward they were piled in great snowy ma

g a balloon kee

d the monster drift with the air about it. "No

ted the s

Monty,"

ld happen if you

"I ain't going t

the throat. Nothing happened. But for that little hitch the ripping-cord would have torn the balloon open as though it had been slashed by a sw

st part followed it into space. Bert, however, got about a tumblerful. "Atmospheric pressure," said Bert, finding a use at las

wherewith to set light to the gas above him. Or else he would have dropped in a flare, a splendid but transitory pyrotechnic displa

of France or the Channel; but they were all British ordnance maps of English counties. That set him thinking about languages and trying to recall his seventh-standard French. "Je suis Anglais. C'est une meprise. Je suis arrive

ated sheet proper to a Desert Dervish; then the coat and waistcoat and big fur-trimmed overcoat of Mr. Butteridge; then a lady's large fur cloak, and round his knees a blanket. Over his head was a tow wig, surmounted by a large cap of Mr. Butteridge's with the flaps down over his ears. And some fur sleeping-boots of Mr. Butteridge's wa

might reasonably have expected to be of a more degenerate and contemptible quality altogether. His impression was that he was bound to come down somewhere, and that then

annique, s'il vous plait," he would say, for he was by no means ignorant of French. I

and among others several love-letters of a devouring sort in a large feminine han

!" in an awestricken tone, and then, after

or

ed for

r of press cuttings of interviews and also several letters in German, then

st degree. "We can understand entirely the difficulties of your position, and that you shall possibly be watched at the present juncture.--But, sir, we do not believe that any serious obstacles will be put in your way if you wished to endeavour t

id Bert, an

through the o

ey don't seem hurting themselves to get 'im. Or els

al. "It's more like some firm's paper. All this printed stuff at the top.

ecret abroad. That's all right. No Greek

olours engineers adopt. And, in, addition there were some rather under-exposed photographs, obviously done by an amateur, at close quarters, of the actual machine's mutterings ha

otographs. They puzzled him. Half of them seemed to be missing. He tried to

I'd been brought up to the enginee

Monte Rosas, sunlit below. His attention was arrested by a strange black spot that moved over them. It alarmed him. It was a black spot moving slo

id. It was the shadow of the balloon. But

to the plans

s to understand them and fits of meditation. H

machine. Comprenez? Vendre pour l'argent tout suite, l'argent en main. Comprenez? C'est le machine a jouer dans l'air. Comprenez? C'est le machine a faire l'oiseau

view of grammar," said Bert, "but they

arst me to explain

to the plans. "I don't believ

he should do with this wonderful find of his. At any moment, so fa

ance of my l

Directly I come down they'll telegraph--put it in the pap

the triangular nose, the searching bellow and the glare. His afternoon's dream of a marvellous seizure and s

olden light upon the balloon above him, and of a new warmth in the blue dome of the sky. He stood up and beheld the sun, a great ball of blinding gold, setting upon a tumbled sea of gold-edged crim

ses follow one another in the water. They were very fish-like indeed--with tails. It was an unconvincing impression in that light. H

ing," he said, and then: "T

sank, and then suddenly daylight and the expansive warmth of daylight had

oing to 'appe

ft and eddy in their substance. For a moment, when he was nearly among their twilight masses, his descent was checked. Then abruptly the sky was hidden, the last vestiges of daylight gone, and he was falling rapidly in an evening twilight through a whirl o

h unexampled and increasing fury UPWARD; then h

s. The great silence of the world was a

over the side, co

w him. Far away was a pilot boat with a big sail bearing dim black letters, and a little pinkish-yellow light, and it was rolling and pitching, roll

convulsive

ot wait for the effect of that, but sent another after it. He looked over in time to see a minu

the immense satisfaction of soaring up out of the damp and chill into the clear, cold

e blue, and in the east there

some sandwiches, and he also opened rather successfully a half-bottle of champagne. That warmed and restored him, he grumbled at Grubb about the matches, wrapped himself up warmly on the locker, and dozed for a time. He got up once or twice to make sure that he was still securely high above the sea. The first time the moonlit clouds were white and dense, and

upon hedgeless, well-cultivated fields intersected by roads, each lined with cable-bearing red poles. He had just passed over a compact, whitewashed, village with a straight church tower and steep

people. "I wonder how

I OUGHT

mono-rail line, and hastily flung out two

! Wish I knew the French for take hold o

Or Lorraine 's far as _I_ know. Wonder what those big affairs o

ntry's appearance awakened an

bit ship-shape

ot on his head), and so forth. He threw out a bag of ballast, and was

the ballast trick.... Wonder when I shall ge

mprovident impulse made him cast the latter object overboa

care. He pierced the bottom with the key provided in the holes indicated, and forthwith the can grew from cold to hotter and hotter, until at last he could scarcely touch it, and then he opened the can at the other end,

night. He took off the waistcoat and examined it. "Old Butteridge won't like me unpicking this." He hesitated, and finally proceeded t

this sent the balloon higher, and so into a position still more convenient for observation by our imaginary angel who would next have seen Mr. Smallways tear open his own jacket and waistcoat, remove his collar, open his shirt, thrust his hand into his bosom, and tear his heart out--or at least, if not his heart, some large bright scarlet object. If the observer, overcoming a thrill of celestial horror, had scrutinised this scarlet object more narro

lp of Mr. Butteridge's small shaving mirror and his folding canvas basin he readjusted his costume with the gravity of a man who has taken an irrevocable step in life, buttoned up his jacket, ca

it was not so strange and magnificent as the sunlit cloudland of

inctive and interesting church beside its wireless telegraph steeple; here and there were large chateaux and parks and white roads, and paths lined with red and white cable posts were extremely conspicuous in the landscape. There were walled enclosures like gardens and rickyards and great roofs of barns and many electric dairy centres. The uplands were mottled with cattle. At places he would see the track of one of the old railroads (converted now to mono-rails)

white cords. Afterwards he made a sort of inventory of the provisions. Life in the high air was giving him an appalling appetite, and

oan of trains and cars, sounds of cattle, bugles and kettle drums, and presently even men's voices. And at last his guide-rope was trailing again, and he found it possible to attempt a landing. Once or twice as the rope dragged over cables he found his h

ersified with trees, walled, and with a fine, large gateway opening out upon a tree-lined high road. All the wires and cables of the countryside converged upon it like guests to entertainment. It had a most home-like and comfortable quality, and it was made gayer by abundant flags. Along the road a quantity of peasant folk, in big pair-wheeled carts and afoot, were coming and going, beside

th the sign language and chance linguisti

pter of adverse

uely, splashed into a pail of milk upon a stall, and slapped its milky tail athwart a motor-car load of factory girls halted outside the town gates. They screamed loudly. People looked up and saw Bert making what he meant to be genial salutations, but what they considered, in view of the feminine outcry, to be insulting gestures. Then the car hit the roof of the gatehouse smartly,

rustics

hing down, with a sort of flippancy, and in another moment Bert was over a street crowded with pea

an afterthought shouted, "TETES ther

nauseatingly, and the car pitched. But the grapnel had not held. It emerged at once bearing on one fluke, with a ridiculous air of fastidious selection, a small child's chair, and pursued by a maddened shopman. It lifted its cat

lue suit and a straw hat, smacked away a trestle from under a stall of haberdashery, made a cyclist soldier in knickerbockers leap like a chamois, and secured itself uncertainly among the hind-legs of a sheep--which made convulsive, ungenerous efforts to free itself, and was d

him. No one seemed interested or amused by his arrival. A disproportionate amount of the outcry had the flavour of imprecation--had, indeed a strong flavour of riot. Several greatly uniformed officials in cocked hats struggled in vain to control the crowd. Fists and stick

would make something of a hero of hi

disengaged that also. A hoarse shout of disgust greeted the descent of the grapnel-rope and the swift leap of the balloon, and something--he fancied afterwards it was a turnip--whizzed by his head. The trail-rope followed its fellow. The crowd se

e he remained crouching, and when at last he looked out again the little town was very small and travelling, with the rest of lower Germany, in a circular orbit round and

ed wending his way across Franconia in a north-easterly direction, and at a height of about eleven thousand feet above the sea and still spindling slowly. His head was craned over the side of the car, and he surveyed the country below with an expression of profound perple

extremely impatient with the course he was taking.--But indeed it was not he who took that course, but his masters, the winds of heaven. Mysterious voices spoke to him in his ear, jerking the words up to him by means of megaphones, in a weird and startling manner, in a g

ll," said Be

ith a sound so persuasively like the tearing of silk that he had resigned himself to the prospect of a headlong fall. But e

ng some hot coffee and pie in an untidy inadvertent manner, with an eye fluttering nervously over the side of the car. At first he had ascribed the growing interest in his caree

he had blundered into the hot focus of Welt-Politik, he was drifting helplessly towards the great Imperial secret, the immense aeronautic park that had been established at a headlong pace in Franconia to de

. Everywhere was the white, black and yellow of Imperial Germany, everywhere the black eagles spread their wings. Even without these indications, the large vigorous neatness of everything would have marked it German. Vast multitudes of men went to and fro, many in white and drab fatigue uniforms busy about the balloons, others drilling in sensible drab. Here and there a full uniform glittered. The airships chiefly engaged his attention, and he knew at once it was three of these

bs and so forth, could also be compensated by admitting air to sections of the general gas-bag. Ultimately that made a highly explosive mixture; but in all these matters risks must be taken and guarded against. There was a steel axis to the whole affair, a central backbone which terminated in the engine and propeller, and the men and magazines were forward in a series of cabins under the expanded headlike forepart. The engine, which was of the extraordinarily powerful Pforzheim type, that supreme triumph of German invention, was worked by wires from this forepart, which was indeed the only really habitable part of the ship. If any

power of from seventy to two hundred tons. How many Germany possessed history does not record, but Bert counted nearly eighty great bulks receding in perspective during his brief inspection. Such were the instruments on which she chiefly relied t

ishment before they shot him down very neatly. The bullet tore past him and made a sort of pop as it pierced his balloon--a pop that was followed by a rustling sigh and a steady do