The forest was now a pandemonium.Great boughs,split from their parent trunks,fell crashing to the ground in all directions.The scream of the wind roused echoes which repeated themselves,here,there and everywhere.No rain had fallen yet,but the sight of the clouds skurrying pell-mell through the glare thrown up from the shed,created such havoc in the already overstrained minds of the three onlookers,that they hardly heeded,when with a c1atter and crash which at another time would have startled them into flight,the swaying oval before them was whirled from its hinges and thrown back against the trees already bending under the onslaught of the tempest.Destruction seemed the natural accompaniment of the moment,and the only prayer which sprang to Oswald's lips was that the motor whose throb yet lingered in their blood though no longer taken in by the ear,would either refuse to work or prove insufficient to lift the heavy car into this seething tumult of warring forces.
His brother's life hung in the balance against his fame,and he could not but choose life for him.Yet,as the multitudinous sounds about him yielded for a moment to that brother's shout,and he knew that the moment had come,which would soon settle all,he found himself staring at the elliptical edge of the hangar,with an anticipation which held in it as much terror as joy,for the end of a great hope or the beginning of a great triumph was compressed into this trembling instant and if -Great God!he sees it!They all see it!Plainly against that portion of the disc which still lifted itself above the further wall,a curious moving mass appears,lengthens,takes on shape,then shoots suddenly aloft,clearing the encircling tops of the bending,twisting and tormented trees,straight into the heart of the gale,where for one breathless moment it whirls madly about like a thing distraught,then in slow but triumphant obedience to the master hand that guides it,steadies and mounts majestically upward till it is lost to their view in the depths of impenetrable darkness.
Orlando Brotherson has accomplished his task.He has invented a mechanism which can send an air-car straight up from its mooring place.As the three watchers realise this,Oswald utters a cry of triumph,and Doris throws herself into Mr.Challoner's arms.
Then they all stand transfixed again,waiting for a descent which may never come.
But hark!a new sound,mingling its clatter with all the others.
It is the rain.Quick,maddening,drenching,it comes;enveloping them in wet in a moment.Can they hold their faces up against it?
And the wind!Surely it must toss that aerial messenger before it and fling it back to earth,a broken and despised toy.
"Orlando?"went up in a shriek."Orlando?"Oh,for a ray of light in those far-off heavens For a lull in the tremendous sounds shivering the heavens and shaking the earth!But the tempest rages on,and they can only wait,five minutes,ten minutes,looking,hoping,fearing,without thought of self and almost without thought of each other,till suddenly as it had come,the rain ceases and the wind,with one final wail of rage and defeat,rushes away into the west,leaving behind it a sudden silence which,to their terrified hearts,seems almost more dreadful to bear than the accumulated noises of the moment just gone.
Orlando was in that shout of natural forces,but he is not in this stillness.They look aloft,but the heavens are void.Emptiness is where life was.Oswald begins to sway,and Doris,remembering him now and him only,has thrown her strong young arm about him,when -What is this sound they hear high up,high up,in the rapidly clearing vault of the heavens!A throb -a steady pant,-drawing near and yet nearer,-entering the circlet of great branches over their heads -descending,slowly descending,-till they catch another glimpse of those hazy outlines which had no sooner taken shape than the car disappeared from their sight within the elliptical wall open to receive it.
It had survived the gale!It has re-entered its haven,and that,too,without colliding with aught around or any shock to those within,just as Orlando had promised;and the world was henceforth his!Hail to Orlando Brotherson!
Oswald could hardly restrain his mad joy and enthusiasm.Bounding to the door separating him from this conqueror of almost invincible forces,he pounded it with impatient fist.
"Let me in!"he cried."You've done the trick,Orlando,you've done the trick.""Yes,I have satisfied myself,"came back in studied self-control from the other side of the door;and with a quick turning of the lock,Orlando stood before them.
They never forgot him as he looked at that moment.He was drenched,battered,palpitating with excitement;but the majesty of success was in his eye and in the bearing of his incomparable figure.
As Oswald bounded towards him,he reached out his hand,but his glance was for Doris.
Yes,"he went on,in tones of suppressed elation,"there's no flaw in my triumph.I have done all that I set out to do.Now -"Why did he stop and look hurriedly back into the hangar?He had remembered Sweetwater.Sweetwater,who at that moment was stepping carefully from his seat in some remote portion of the car.The triumph was not complete.He had meant -But there his thought stopped.Nothing of evil,nothing even of regret should mar his great hour.He was a conqueror,and it was for him now to reap the joy of conquest.
XXXVIII
NIGHT
Three days had passed,and Orlando Brotherson sat in his room at the hotel before a table laden with telegrams,letters and marked newspapers.The news of his achievement had gone abroad,and Derby was,for the moment,the centre of interest for two continents.
