"So you've made the young lady's acquaintance on the river?" remarked the Judge, looking amusedly at his nephew. "Yes," said Linton, "and the President's, ... in the garden."
"'Youth, youth, how buoyant are thy hopes,'" quoted Sir Robert, chuckling.
"And," added the young man, with a slightly heightened colour, which the gathering dusk failed to conceal, "they've promised me a trip in their air-boat!"
Sir Robert groaned. "Air-boats! Wish they'd never been invented." He flicked away the ash of his cigar and gazed at the first stars faintly twinkling in the evening sky. They were sitting on the terrace, and the September air was as balmy as the breath of June.
"Look!" exclaimed Herrick, springing to his feet, "don't you see one over yonder?"
His uncle gazed and nodded. "And just imagine," he said, "what it will mean when the present law expires and all restrictions are removed. Everyone will want to be at liberty to 'aviate'; and as a consequence, we shall want an enormous staff of air-police to control the upper traffic and check outrage and robbery. I tell you, sir, the world's going too fast. The thing won't work!"
[Pg 14]
"Everything will settle into shape in time," argued Linton, soothingly, his eyes still following the evolutions of the air-boat with its twinkling lights.
"Well, you're young, and may live to see it, but it won't be in my day," sighed Sir Robert, "and I don't want it to be. Who wants an air-ship calling for his parlour-maid at the attic window? Who wants thieves sailing up to his balcony? And as to collapses and collisions overhead—we've had some of 'em already—and it don't add to the gaiety of nations or the comfort and security of the peaceful citizen down below."
"It'll all come right, sir," said Herrick cheerfully.
"Perhaps it will and perhaps it won't," was his uncle's comment. "It's not so much a question of individuals as of nations. How are we going to regulate international commerce? The fiscal question, like the Eastern question, will assume a wholly different character. You may sail a ship, but you can't build custom houses in the air. What about imports and exports? What about a hundred things that have been governed hitherto by the broad fact that man and merchandise have only been able to move about either on sea or land?"
"She's coming this way," exclaimed the inattentive Herrick.
The little ship, wonderfully swift and graceful in her motions, was crossing high above the river, then circled gradually lower and lower, nearing them, like a bat, at every sweep.
"There's a lady in her," said the Judge, "perhaps it's Miss Jardine."
The two men, with the electric lights from the dining-room throwing their figures into relief, must have been clearly outlined to the people in the boat.
"Yes," declared Linton. "I'll hail her. Boat ahoy! is that the Bladud?"
"Aye, aye," answered a man's voice, and then they thought they heard a low laugh from the lady in the stern. The boat circled lower and lower.
[Pg 15]
"Gently," said the Judge under his breath, "it's the President, it's Jardine himself, with his daughter."
"Would anyone like a sail?" came the question from above.
"Yes, of all things," was Linton's eager reply.
"She's not built for more than three, or we would offer to take you too, Sir Robert."
The Judge had risen to his feet. "Heaven forbid! Much obliged to you all the same, Mr. President."
The fans were at work now, assisting in the delicate process of letting down the boat by slow degrees in the centre of the lawn. She reached the ground gently and lightly, and Linton and the Judge went forward and greeted her occupants. Then Linton Herrick stepped aboard, and his uncle moved clear of the wings.
The Bladud rose to a height of about 200 feet. Then the elevating apparatus was switched off, and the boat having circled in a few ever-widening sweeps, sped away in the direction of London. Until now the President, who was in charge of the machinery in the fore part of the boat, had scarcely spoken. Linton sat in the stern beside Zenobia Jardine, who, so far, also was silent, her attention being required for the steering gear, with which, however, she seemed perfectly familiar.
Jardine now explained that the Bladud needed only one-third of her power for keeping afloat, and two-thirds for propelling her. After that he became unreservedly communicative. Whether it was due to the fact of being in the air, instead of upon earth, or to a ready fancy for the young Canadian, the President showed himself in a character which seemed to cause his daughter pleased surprise. There was nothing pompous or self-important in his manner. He talked like a man who is delighted to get upon his favourite hobby in company with a sympathetic listener.
[Pg 16]
"It's the birds we had to study, the birds in the air," he said. "When I was about your age I was an engineer, and I used to study birds, because they gave us the best pattern for an air-ship; it's nature's own pattern, and you can't beat nature. There's the breast bone, for instance, provided with a sort of keel to serve as a point of attachment for the muscles that set the wings in motion. There's the small head, with a pointed beak, like a ship's bow. Then you've got the light expanding wings that press like a fan on the elastic air waves. Those are nature's aeroplanes, Mr. Herrick, and that's the model we've had to follow. Then there's the tail, tapering off—that's nature's rudder."
"We get everything except the feathers," ventured Linton.
"Feathers are not essential," was the answer. "There are wings of other sorts. The bat has no feathers. It is fitted with a sort of umbrella frame from top to toe, so to say, that can be expended when required for flying. But for an air-ship we get the best model in the frigate-bird or the albatross—that's what we've aimed at in our newest aeroplanes."
"And the best motive power?" queried Linton.
"The air itself, compressed as we've got it here," said Mr. Jardine, with decision. "Air can do everything. Nearly a century ago, 'Puffing Billy,' the primitive locomotive, proved that the adhesion of the wheels to the rails was sufficient to give drawing power. Everybody had doubted it. Then everybody doubted whether anything heavier than air could be sustained and move in air. That's why they wasted money and lives in ballooning. The fallacy was disproved. We are disproving it at this very moment. Then came another problem—what was the right sort of motor? They tried everything. There were endless difficulties as regards the steam engine. The internal combustion motor was[Pg 17] a remarkable source of power. They used it largely in submarines. It gave the necessary electrical energy when the vessel was propelled under the sea. But petrol was not the last word in locomotion. The first and last power, when you know how to harness it, is the air itself. That's what we've come to after many false starts and failures. You see, you get extreme lightness combined with great power. The bursting pressure and the reduced pressure are all calculated to a nicety per lb. to the square inch. You can have power that will serve for a toy-ship—say three-quarters of a minute, for a flight of 200 yards; or you can build upon the same basis for any size, weight, or distance that can be required."
"Isn't it wonderful!" exclaimed his daughter with enthusiasm; and Linton nodded. "Wonderful, indeed, yet here it is!"
Her father went on stolidly: "It was proved many years ago that a flying machine weighing nearly 8,000 lbs., carrying its own engine, fuel, and passengers, can lift itself into the air. An aeroplane will always lift a great deal more than a balloon of the same weight."
"I know," agreed Linton, "and it can travel at a high rate of velocity with less expenditure of power."
"Exactly; a well-made screw propeller obtains sufficient grip on the air to propel an air-boat at almost any speed; the greater the speed the greater the efficiency of the screw. We are going slowly at this moment, but I could put her along at 70 miles an hour, if one wanted to."
Suiting the action to the word, he did increase the speed very considerably for a short distance, and conversation had to be suspended. It was the quickest travelling Linton had yet experienced in the upper air, and he turned with some anxiety to Zenobia Jardine, thinking the pace might tax her nerves. She was perfectly calm, however, and her[Pg 18] father set all fears at rest by saying, as he slackened pace again:
"The steering with the new gyroscope is almost automatic, just as if she were a torpedo. Even in a stiff wind she reverts to a horizontal keel. It is simply like the balancing of a bird."
"The Bladud is splendid!" cried Linton with conviction.
"She's hard to beat," was the President's comment. "But, after all, she's only the natural outcome of the air-gun, which has been known for generations. An air-gun is shaped like a rifle, with a hollow boiler or reservoir of power. You force into the reservoir by means of a condensing syringe as much air-power as it will hold. By opening a valve a portion of the air escapes into the barrel of the gun. That's what takes place when you pull the trigger. The released air presses against the ball just as gunpowder would. Off goes your bullet without a sound or sign to show that it has been discharged. Air condensed to 1-46th of its bulk gives about half the velocity of gunpowder. It's precisely the same principle that's firing us through the air at the present moment."
"It's a wonderful discovery!" was Linton's comment.
"Yes," mused Mr. Jardine, "and yet the thing was always there to be discovered."
"Just as the air waves were always ready for wireless telegraphy, but unused till Marconi came along at the beginning of the present century."
The President looked around him at the star-spangled heavens and drew in a deep breath:
"Yes," he said, slowly, "and there are more secrets waiting to be revealed."
"There's a professor of chemistry in one of the American universities who thinks we shall be able to live on air some day," laughed the young man.
The President did not laugh. "Why not?" he[Pg 19] asked. "We know well enough we can't live without it. It's quite conceivable that the atmosphere contains undetected sources of nourishment. They may be generated by vaporisation or by electricity and chemical action within the air itself. No one knew anything about ozone a hundred and fifty years ago, and he would be a rash man who said that ozone is the last word in atmospheric discovery."
"It may end in air cakes," suggested Linton, rather flippantly.
"Or begin with air-cakes and end in air-tabloids," said Zenobia. "What a glorious idea! Only think how it would simplify housekeeping. Meat, vegetables, fish, and all the rest, might be superseded, and the butcher's bill would cease to be a terror."
"And dyspepsia would be abolished with the weekly bills."
"Nature, the only universal provider; complete independence of foreign imports. No starvation and no over-feeding. We should no longer go in for a big square meal, but for a small round tabloid."
"Cooks, with all their greasy pots and pans, would not be wanted. You could carry your meals in your waistcoat pocket and eat them when you pleased."
"Yes," agreed Miss Jardine with mock seriousness, "instead of sitting down to a food function—soup, fish, joint, entrée, pastry and dessert, as if it were a sort of religious ceremony! The possibilities are endless."
"And the prospect glorious!" chimed in the Canadian—then the two young people, having kept the ball of frivolity rolling to their own satisfaction, laughed merrily, and even the grim, dark face of the President relaxed into something like a smile.
"But there would be rather a sameness in the diet," added Zenobia, thoughtfully.
"We could vary it occasionally by harking back to the old fleshpots. Besides, discovery would lead[Pg 20] to discovery. The constituents of the atmosphere defy the microscope at present, but by and by they may be seized upon and served up in different forms and combinations for the nourishment of man."
"And woman."
"The greater includes the less. They—oh! I beg your pardon! I was forgetting. The old order is changed. We live in the Reign of Woman."
Rather to Linton's surprise, instead of hearing a quick retort, he thought he heard a low and rather plaintive sigh.
"Ozone, at any rate, has a special flavour," remarked Mr. Jardine. "It resembles lobster, and, like lobster, you can have too much of it. But the plants have always lived on air. Man consumes the flesh of beasts, but the beasts have built up their flesh by eating grass or plants. Thus, indirectly, we ourselves live on air already, and draw our vitality from the atmosphere. Presently we may get it by a shorter cut, that's all. So your air-cakes and tabloids may really come to pass," and Mr. Jardine nodded.
This time there was no laughter, partly because the idea did not seem so wild, and partly because they were now close to London, and the wonder of the lighted capital spreading down below was a strange and solemn thing to look upon.