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THE OUTLAWS OF THE AIR BY GEORGE GRIFFITH AUTHOR OF "THE ANGEL OF THE REVOLUTION'S "OLGA ROMANOFF; OR, THE SYREN OF THE SKIES" ETC. ETC. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY E. S. HOPE

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PROLOGUE.

IN THE CAMP OF ISHMAEL.

A FEW minutes before one A.M. on Sunday, the 1st of July 1894, a man was walking with quick if somewhat irregular strides, as some men do walk when deeply absorbed in thought, up the Caledonian Road from King's Cross Station. By his dress he might either have belonged to the aristocracy of the craftsman class, or he might have been one of the poorer members of that class which is popularly considered to be above it.

But, whatever doubt there might have been as to his station in life, there could have been none as to the character of the face on which his slightly back-tilted black felt hat allowed the light of the gas-lamps to fall, as he walked with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, and his head thrown back just a shade from the perpendicular. It was a dark, clear-cut, clean-shaven face, with bright blue eyes, contrasting strongly with the black straight brows above them; a slightly aquiline nose, with thin, sensitive nostrils; short upper lip, firm, resolute mouth, square chin, and strong though not heavy lower jaw.

A single glance would have been enough to show that it was the face of a man in whom strong convictions were united with the will and the courage to translate them into action, no matter what difficulties or dangers might lie in the path marked out for him by what he considered to be his duty.

In stature, he was over the average, and but for a slight stoop of the shoulders which gave a suggestion of the student, borne out by the broad, square forehead and two little perpendicular lines between the eyes, he would have stood very nearly six feet in the low-heeled walking shoes which he wore.

To the casual glance of the passer-by, there was nothing to differentiate him from any other young fellow of his apparent age and station; and, therefore, it was quite out of the question that the policeman who was beginning his night's work by flashing his bull's-eye into the doorways, and trying door handles and shop shutters, should bestow more than a passing glance, quite devoid of interest, upon him as he strode by. He was sober and respectable, and seemingly making his way quietly home after a decently spent Saturday evening.

There was nothing to tell the guardian of the peace that the most dangerous man in Europe was passing within a few feet of him, or that if only he could have arrested him on some valid pretext that would have enabled him to lock him up for the rest of the night, and then handed him over to the Criminal Investigation Department at New Scotland Yard, - the officers of which had been hunting for just such a man as he for the last twelve months, he would have prevented the commission of a crime which, within twenty-four hours, was to plunge a whole nation into panic and mourning, and send a thrill of horror through Europe.

But he would have done far more than this, for by laying Max Renault, electrician and anarchist, by the heels just that moment, he would have ensured the discovery of documentary evidence which would have procured his extradition to France, and subsequent proceedings which would have saved the world from a reign of terror and an epoch of carnage and destruction in comparison with which the worst that society had so far learned to fear from anarchy would prove to be the merest trifle.

But how was that most unimaginative and matter-of-fact of mortals, a British policeman, to know that in his waistcoat pocket he carried a foreign telegram, which, properly interpreted, conveyed the intelligence that Caserio Santo was on his way to Lyons, to await there the order, in obedience to which he would with one stroke of his knife send a shudder through the civilised world; or how was he to divine that in the brain behind that open, honest-looking brow there were thoughts working which ere long might set the world in a blaze?

In St. Petersburg, or even in Paris, such a man would have been shadowed, his every movement would have been watched, all his comings and goings noticed, and at any moment - such a one as this, for instance - he might have been pounced upon and searched as a suspicious person; and assuredly, if he had been, the toils of the law would have closed about him in such fashion that little but a miracle could have set him free again.

But here in London, the asylum of anarchy, and the focus of the most dangerous forces in the world, he went on his way unquestioned and unsuspected, for, although the police were morally certain that such a man existed, they had no idea as to his personality, no notion that this smart, good-looking young fellow, whose name had never been heard in connection even with such anarchist clubs as were known to have their quarters in London, and much less, therefore, with any of the crimes that had been laid to the charge of anarchy, was in reality even a greater criminal than Vaillant or Henry, or even the infamous Ravachol himself

These were only the blind if willing tools, the instruments of political murder, the visible hands that obeyed the unseen brain, those who did the work and paid the penalty. But Max Renault was the brain itself, the intellect which conceived the plans for the execution of which the meaner and cheaper disciples of the sanguinary brotherhood of the knife and the bomb died on the scaffold, or wore out their lives in penal prisons or the mines of Siberia.

In a word, he was the moving spirit and directing intellect of what was soon to become the most dreaded body of men and women in the world, but which was now only known to the initiated as "Autonomie Group Number 7."

But the stroke which, if his true character bad been known, would have cut short his career, whether by rope or axe, would have done more than paralyse the brain which had plotted half the crimes that had been committed in the name of anarchy during the previous five years, and others in which the red hand had never been seen. It would have stopped his career at the most important moment of his life, and prevented him acting as the connecting link between two sets of circumstances which, though naturally of the utmost antagonism to each other, would, when united in such a personality as his, produce an explosion which might shake the world.

A few hundred yards past the top of the hill, Max turned sharply to the left, walked along a side street, turned to the right at the end of this, and went into another. Three minutes' quick walking brought him to the side door of a house which had a small timber yard on one side of it, and on the other a deserted beer-house, which had lost its licence, and remained unoccupied because the premises were fit for no other kind of business.

The house itself had a low shop front, with the lower half of its windows painted a dull green, and on the upper part was an arc of white letters making the legend: "Social Club and Eclectic Institute." A lamp over the shop door bore the same inscription in white letters on blue glass, but the lamp was out now, for it was one of the rules of the club that all members should leave the premises not later than twelve o'clock at night on week-days and half-past eleven on Sundays.

This rule, however, seemed only to apply to a certain section of the members. After Max had opened the side door with his latch-key, and ascended the stairs at the end of the passage, with a familiarity that enabled him to dispense with a light in the absolute darkness, he knocked at the door of an upstairs room which he found without the slightest hesitation. It was opened, and he found himself in the presence of four men and three women sitting round a table on which were the remains of what had evidently been a substantial and even luxurious supper.

Renault's action on entering the room was one which more than bore out what has been said of his character and the desperate work that he was engaged in. He acknowledged with a brief, curt nod the salutations of the company, then, putting his back against the door, he pulled his right hand out of his trouser pocket, and said, in a quiet, almost well-bred voice, which had just the faintest trace of foreign accent-

"Victor Berthauld, sit still!

There was a small slender-barrelled, six-chambered Colt in his hand, and the muzzle was pointed at a little lean, wiry, black-muzzled, close-cropped Frenchman, who had begun to wriggle uneasily in his seat the moment Max had made his appearance. His black eyes rolling in their deep sockets took one frightened glance from face to face, and then he said, in a voice to which he in vain tried to impart a tone of bravado-

"Well, Comrade Renault, what do you want with me, and what is that revolver drawn for?"

"Don't `comrade' me, you little rat," said Max, with a short, savage laugh. "Tell me who tried to warn the Paris police that Carnot's life was in danger. Tell me who would have had Santo arrested at Marseilles if his telegram had only got into the hands it was intended for.

"Tell me who means to repeat the message to-morrow morning to Paris and Lyons, and who means to have this place raided by the English police at an inconvenient hour within the next week, on the ground of unlawful gambling being permitted here. Tell me that, you dirty hound, and then I'll tell you, if you don't know, what we usually do with traitors."

Berthauld sat for a moment speechless with fear. Then, with an imprecation on his lips, he leapt to his feet. Not a hand was moved to restrain him, but as he rose to his full height, Renault's arm straightened out, there was a crack and a flash, and a little puff of plaster reduced to dust leapt out of the angle of the wall behind him; but before the bullet struck the wall, it had passed through his forehead and out at the back of his head, his body shrank together and collapsed in a huddled heap in his chair, and Max, putting his pistol back into his pocket, said, just as quietly as before-

"It's a curious thing that even among eight of us we must have a traitor. I hope there aren't any more about. Take that thing down to the cellar, and then let us get to business; I've something important to tell you."

So saying, he walked round the table to a vacant armchair that stood at the end opposite the door, threw himself back in it, took out a cigar and lit it, and, with the same unshaken hand that a moment before had taken a fellow-creature's life, poured out a tumblerful of champagne from a bottle that stood half empty beside him.

Meanwhile, two of the men had risen from their seats. One of them tied a red handkerchief tightly round the dead man's skull, to stop what little bleeding there was from the two clean-cut wounds, and then the two picked him up, and, without a word, carried him out of the room.

"I hope I haven't shocked you by such a rough-and-ready administration of justice," said Max, half turning in his chair and addressing a girl who sat next to him on his right hand.

"No," said the girl. "It was obviously necessary. If half you charged him with is true, he ought to have been crucified, let alone shot. I can't think what such vermin are made for."

And as she spoke, she flicked the ash off a cigarette that she held between her fingers, put it between as dainty a pair of lips as ever were made for kissing, and sent a delicate little blue wreathing cloud up to mingle with the haze that filled the upper part of the room.

"And now, What is this interesting something that you have got to tell us, Monsieur Max?"

"All in good time, Ma'm'selle. I must ask you to wait until Casano and Rolland have come back; but meanwhile I will whet your curiosity by telling you I am thinking seriously of exiling myself for a couple of years or so."

As he said this he looked keenly from under his half lowered eyelashes into the girl's eyes, as if expecting, or, perhaps, only half hoping for, some sign of emotion.

Two dark-fringed lids lifted suddenly for an instant, and then dropped again, and in that instant two liquid deep grey eyes, which before now he had seen grow almost black with passion, looked at him inquiringly. And that was all.

"That is news indeed," she said. "It must be something very important that takes Monsieur Max away from the scene of action at such a critical time as this."

"Yes," said Renault coldly, and with an almost imperceptible contraction of the brows, "it is important; so important, in fact, that I don't think I am exaggerating when I say that if I had not come back to-night, instead of to-morrow, and had given that fellow twelve hours more grace, the fate of the whole world would have been changed."

"What! the fate of the world?" said she half incredulously, while the others ceased their conversation and turned to listen to this strange passage of words.

"Yes," said Max, slightly raising his tone till it had a note of triumph in it, and at the same time bringing his hand down on hers, which was resting on the arm of her chair. The quick blood came to her cheeks and a flash of anger to her eyes, and she made an effort to withdraw it, but he held it fast, and, before she could speak, went on-

"Yes, Lea, if the venture that I am going to undertake turns out a success, I shall hold the fate of human society in my hand, just as I hold this pretty little hand of yours, only in a somewhat rougher grip, and then-"

"And then, Monsieur Max," interrupted the girl, snatching her hand away as the pressure of his relaxed for a moment. "I suppose you will have what you have not got now, the right to take what you want by the universal law of might."

"Yes," he said, with another laugh, a somewhat more pleasant one this time. "And as I have the power; so will I use it, whether in love or war. Are you agreed?"

Lea looked at him steadily for a moment, and then, with a swift flush overspreading as fair a face as ever man's eyes rested upon with love and longing, said in a low voice that had just a perceptible tremor in it-

"Yes, I suppose might is right after all, in love as well as war and nineteenth century society. He who can take can have; but, if you please, we will wait until you can take."

"Agreed!" he said. "That's a bargain. And now we'll get to business. Have you found Comrade Berthauld a quiet resting-place?" he continued, addressing the two men, who had just returned to the room.

"Yes," said Casano in his pleasant Italian tenor. "Ve haf gifen him a bath. I don't sink zere vill be very mooch left of him or his clothes by ze morning."

"Very well," said Max, taking some papers out of the breast pocket of his jacket. "Now, sit down and listen."

They obeyed in silence, Casano first bolting the door.

"First," said Max, looking up from his papers and giving a quick glance at the expectant faces round the table, "Comrade Caserio Santo of the Cette Group has been chosen by lot to execute the sentence passed by this group on the 6th of February on Sadi Carnot in return for the lives which he refused to spare. Santo will be at Lyons soon after daybreak. If that rat Berthauld had got out of this room alive, Santo would have been arrested, and Carnot would have escaped. I have the proofs of his treachery here, if you wish to see them. As it is, is it agreed that I shall direct him to offer our congratulations to M. le President on his visit to Lyons?"

He stopped and looked round the table again. The others nodded in silence, but Lea looked up with something like softness in her eyes, and said-

"What a pity! Poor Carnot is an excellent fellow in his bourgeois way, isn't he? Quite a model husband and father, incorruptible in politics, and all that sort of thing. Wouldn't some one else do as well, say, Casimir-Perier or Dupuy? Incorruptible politicians are not so plentiful in France just now."

"The better the man the better the effect," said Max drily. "It is just as easy to strike high as a little lower. There are plenty of politicians in France, but only one President."

"Ja! dass is so," said a bright-faced, square-headed little German sitting opposite to Lea. "Strike high and hit hart. Dat is de vay to make dese sheepsheads open deir moufs and stare ven dey reads de papers on Monday. Let Carnot go first, and den - veil, den someone else. Dere are plenty of dem to spare."

A laugh followed this speech of Franz Hartog, who may as well be introduced here as elsewhere as the cleverest engineer in Europe, and an anarchist heart and soul-if he had a soul, which some of his nearest acquaintances were very much inclined to doubt.

"Very well," said Lea; "I withdraw my objection, if, indeed, I ever had one."

The veto of one member, by the rules of the Group, would have been fatal to the execution of the proposal. As Lea withdrew hers, she flicked some more ash off the end of her cigarette, and with it virtually fell the man whose death all Europe would be mourning within forty-eight hours.

"Then that is settled," said Max. " I will wire to Lyons the first thing in the morning. Now, Hartog, have you anything to tell us about this gunboat of yours?"

"Ja, dot is all arranged. Her keel vill be laid on de slips next mont. I have designed de engines mineself, and de speed contracted for by de firm mit de Russian Government vill be thirty-five knots, and you can bet dat my engines vill make her do it. She vill make her private trial, mit all her coal and arms and ammunition on board according to de contract, mitin eighteen monzs from now, and you can depend upon me to be on board her at de time, mit a suitable majority of de firemens and crew to do vat ve vants snit her.

"You can be sure, too, dat de oders vill have got someting inside dem dat vill not make dem mooch good if ve have to have a small scrimmage after all to get possession of de boat. Den ve vill rendezvous at de proper place, and den dere vill be some vild time on de Atlantic and de Cape routes ver dey bring de specie and de diamonds.

"Ja, you believe me, Monsieur Max and comrades, Franz Hartog vill make you de masters ov de sea, and you shall laugh at all de fleets of Europe ven dey try to catch you. Dat vill be anarchy vot vill be worth calling somdings. Ja, it is a great scheme, and ve shall do it, you believe me."

The little German stopped and looked round the table, rubbing his hands, and amidst the murmurs of approval that followed his speech, Max nodded laughingly to him and said-

"Yes, my friend, you are quite right. That, is a great scheme, and if you can capture that little greyhound for us when she is built and armed, you will have done more for anarchy, and driven a bigger nail into the coffin of the tyranny of commercialism, than ever any man did yet. And now I am going to tell you of a greater scheme than that."

"Greater as dot!" exclaimed the German, his steely blue eyes glittering through his spectacles with excitement. "How can any scheme be greater as dot?"

"Listen and you shall hear," said Max, "and I won't take very many words to tell you."

"Some years ago now, when I was little more than a lad, and before I came to believe that there is no remedy for the present state of affairs except force and terrorism, I joined a society of amiable idiots who meet at each other's houses in different parts of London, and who call themselves the Brotherhood of the Better Life.

"I have kept up my membership, partly because it amused and interested me, and partly because I had a sort of idea that some day something might come of it. For a long time they have had a scheme on foot to emigrate to some out-of-the-way part of the world, and start one of those social colonies which of course always come to grief in some way or another, as the Freeland one has just done; but, up to a few weeks ago, they never had a chance of making a start, for lack of money.

"Then, about a month ago, we had a regular romance, and something occurred that I would never have credited if it hadn't happened under my own eyes. Nearly six months ago, one of our members who pretended to be a craftsman - but who was really nothing of the sort, for he was what they call a gentleman from head to foot-disappeared.

"For five months we heard nothing of him, and then, one night, after a lecture by a sort of latter-day prophet of ours, a very clever but misguided fellow called Edward Adams, a stranger came out from the audience and asked to be allowed to say a few words.

"Of course, we allowed him to, and then he started out and told us that he was the father of the young fellow who disappeared from amongst us, that his son was dead, and that on his death-bed he had converted his father to his own social views; and not only this, but he had made him promise to give what would have been his inheritance to the society to carry out the scheme of the social colony. Then he told us that he had come to fulfil this promise, and, if we would allow him, to take part in the venture himself.

"Well, we consented, on condition that he accepted the Constitution which we had been, as I always thought, playing at drawing up, and this he agreed to do, and then staggered us by saying how much he was prepared to devote to the carrying out of the scheme. We expected a few hundreds at most, perhaps just enough to give us a start with what we could get together of ourselves, so you can imagine what we felt like - and I in particular - when the figure came out at over a hundred thousand pounds."

"Ein hundert tousand pound!" cried Hartog, unable to restrain his enthusiasm. "Vy, I could build nearly tree ships of tirty-five knots mit so mooch! Can you get hold of it, Monsieur Max?"

"I'm not going to get hold of that, friend Franz, but of something a good deal more important than money. It turned out that our fairy godfather was no other than Frederick Austen, the head of the big engineering firm of Austen and Son, of Queen Victoria Street and Woolwich. The death of his son has made it impossible for an Austen to succeed him in the business, and that, combined with his change of social views, has decided him to give up the business altogether.

"Of course, I needn't tell you that we accepted him and his money with thanks. But there was something stranger to come yet. Last night, at a meeting of the committee, of which I have the honour to be a member, he confided to us a secret which, as he said, would enable the colony not only to hold its own against any who might wish to interfere with it in case it prospered, but which will enable the colonists to enforce an object-lesson in peace, goodwill on earth, and all that sort of thing, on the first nations that go to war with each other, after they are in a position to wield the power that it will give them.

"Then" - and here Max Renault leant forward on the table and instinctively lowered his voice while the others leant forward also to catch what was coming- "he told us that just before his last illness his son had completed a series of experiments which enabled him to say with truth that the problem of aerial navigation had at last been solved, and that he had solved it.

"He told the secret to his father, and he at once placed all the resources of his business at his disposal, and, comrades, believe me or believe me not, as you like, but I tell you that less than twenty-four hours ago I saw in action a working model of a flying ship which Frederick Austen is going to build with my assistance in the Brotherhood's New Utopia."

A murmur half of amazement and half of incredulity ran from lip to lip as Renault uttered these momentous words, and Lea suddenly straightened herself up in her chair, stretched her shapely arms upward, and then, folding her hands behind her head, looked at Max with undisguised admiration in her eyes, and said, with a ring of exultation in her voice-

"Ah, now I understand you, after wondering all this time what your parable was going to lead up to. Excellent, Monsieur Max, excellent! You have not been playing the anarchist wolf in the socialist sheepskin for nothing. You will emigrate with these good folks to their New Utopia, wherever they may find it, absorb such ideas as may be useful, appoint yourself aerial engineer to that excellent converted capitalist, and then-"

"Yes, and then," said Max, with a significant movement of his hand towards the pocket that contained his revolver, "when the Cruiser of the Air is built and equipped, and I have satisfied myself of her working power, she will be found missing some fine morning, and so shall I.

"I'm not going to exile myself with a lot of people like that for nothing, I can tell you. If I'm the man I take myself for, within three years from now that air-ship shall carry the red flag through the clouds, and terrorise the whole earth from east to west and pole to pole.

"And now," he continued, rising to his feet, under the stimulus of his own words, "if you've any more champagne, fill up. I've a toast for you. For another year or two you must carry on the work without me, or stop it altogether, as seems best to you; and meanwhile you, Hartog, shall get your thirty-five knot sea-devil afloat and to business till you've levied ocean tolls enough to give us funds to build an aerial fleet on the model of the ship that I'll bring you, and then we'll have no more hole-and-corner assassinations and no more pettifogging bomb-throwing. We'll declare war - war to the knife - on the world that we hate, and that hates and fears us, and then-"

"Here's your glass, my Lord of the Air that is to be," said Lea, rising and handing him a full tumbler of champagne with a gesture of deference that was not altogether assumed. "And so let us have your toast."

"You shall have it, short and sweet," said Max, taking the glass and lifting it above his head. "Here's life to those we love, and death to those we hate - Vive L'Anarchie and the Outlaws of the Air!"

"Mein Gott, but dat is a great scheme! He vill set de vorld on fire if he only comes properly to bass," said Franz Hartog, as he drained his glass at a gulp, and then stood gazing at Max Renault with a look that was almost one of worship in his little twinkling eyes.

To Contents

CHAPTER 1.

UTOPIA IN THE SOUTH.

ON the 21st of November 1898, the Calypso, a team yacht, rigged as a three-masted schooner, and measuring between four and five hundred tons, met with a rather serious accident to her engines in one of those brief but deadly hurricanes which are known to navigators of the South Seas as " southerly busters."

They are the white squalls of the South, and woe betide the unhappy ship that they strike unawares. Over the smooth, sunlit waters there drifts with paralysing rapidity a mass of hissing, seething billows, churned into foam and then beaten down again by the terrific force of the wind that is roaring above then. Often there is not a breath or a puff of air felt by the ship until the squall strikes her, and then the blow falls like the united stroke of a hundred battering-rams.

If the ship is stripped and ready for the blow, she heels over till the water spurts in through the lee scupper holes and half the deck is awash. If there is a rag of sail on stay or yard, there is a bang like the report of a duck-gun, and, if yon have quick eyes, you may see it flying away to leeward like a bit of tissue paper before the gale, and if it has not yielded with sufficient readiness to the shock of the storm, a sprung topmast or a snapped yard will pay the penalty of resistance.

Meanwhile, what was a few minutes ago a smoothly-shining sea, scarcely ruffled by a ripple, is now a white, boiling mass of swiftly rising billows, amidst which the straining, struggling vessel fights for her life like some stricken animal.

It had been thus with the Calypso. A stout new forestaysail that had been hoisted in the hope of getting her head before the squall had been struck square, and had resisted just a moment too long, at the cost of a sprung foretopmast. Then, an effort to bring her round with the screw had resulted in the disaster that practically crippled her.

A big sea came rolling up astern, her nose went down and her stern went up, her propeller whirling in the air, and, before the engine could be stopped, there came a grinding, thrashing noise in the engine-room, and, a moment later, the yacht was drifting helplessly away before the storm with a broken crankshaft.

When this happened, the Calypso was on a voyage from New Zealand to the Marquesas Islands, between four and five hundred miles to the north-east of Auckland. The screw had been hoisted out of the water and a spare foretopmast fitted; but only five days after this had been done she was caught in a heavy gale from the south-westward, and got so badly knocked about that when every spare spar on board had been used in refitting her, she could only carry sail enough to take her at four or five knots an hour before a good topsail breeze.

The result of this double misfortune was, that a month later she was still on the southern verge of the tropics, beating about in light, baffling winds, unable to make her way into the region of the south-east trades.

The Calypso was owned and sailed by Sir Harry Milton, Of Seaton Abbey, Northumberland, landowner and ironmaster, who rather less than three years before had come of age and entered upon his inheritance of broad acres, mines, and ironworks, which yielded him an income not far short of thirty thousand a year, and in addition to these a comfortable nest-egg of nearly half a million in hard cash and good securities.

For the last year and a half, he had been seeing the world in the pleasantest of all fashions - cruising about from port to port, and ocean to ocean, in his yacht, in company with his sister Violet, a pretty, healthy, high-bred brunette between eighteen and nineteen.

Sir Harry himself was a good specimen of the typical English gentleman, standing about five feet ten in his deck shoes, well built, broad-shouldered, ruddy-skinned, and clear-eyed, with features that were frank and pleasing in their open manliness, rather than strictly handsome, and yet saved from mediocrity by that undefinable, yet unmistakable, stamp of good breeding which distinguishes, as was once wittily if somewhat cynically said, the man who has a grandfather from the man who only had progenitors.

Apart from the officers and crew of the Calypso, there was only one member of the yacht's company who needs introduction in special terms. This was Herbert Wyndham, second lieutenant of Her Majesty's gunboat Sandfly, an old schoolfellow and bosom friend of Sir Harry's, and just now on a year's invalid leave in consequence of a nasty bullet wound received in storming a stronghold of a West African slaver chieftain, at the head of his blue-jackets. Sir Harry had picked him up at Cape Town, when he was beginning to get about again after the fever that had followed on his wound, and, with his sister's assistance, he succeeded without much difficulty in persuading him to spend the rest of his leave on a cruise to the South Seas in the Calypso.

In person, Lieutenant Wyndham was a well set-up, clean-limbed young fellow of twenty-six, with a good-humoured face and bright hazel eyes, which looked alertly out from under a square, strong forehead that matched the firm chin, which, according to the modern fashion of naval officers, was clothed with a close-clipped, neatly-trimmed beard a shade or so lighter than the close, curly chestnut hair that formed not the least of his personal attractions.

k As week after week passed, and neither land nor sail appeared in sight from the decks of the half-crippled yacht, Sir Harry began to feel a little natural anxiety for the ultimate safety of his beautiful craft and of those near and dear to him on board her. Another such a squall or a gale as she had already suffered from would almost infallibly wreck her in her present state, and both he and his sailing-master would have been glad to reach even the shelter of a coral lagoon, within which she could take refuge until she could be thoroughly overhauled in a fashion that was not possible out in the open sea.

But most things have an end,- even calms in the South Pacific,- and by Christmas Eve the Calypso had at last crept out of the zone of calms and had begun to feel the first fitful puffs of the trade winds. Then, about an hour before sunrise on Christmas morning, the unexpected, but none the less welcome, cry of "Land, ho!" brought everyone, from Sir Harry himself to his sister's maid, or the "Lady-in-Waiting," as Lieutenant Wyndham was wont to call her, tumbling out of their berths and up on deck.

No one who has not seen the sun rise over an island in the South Pacific can form any adequate idea of the scene that greeted the eyes of the crew of the Calypso, as the light broadened and brightened to the eastward in front of them. The island paradises of the South Sea are like no other part of the earth. Their beauty is entirely their own. No word-painting can ever do full justice to it, and the reader must therefore fain be content with the purely geographical description, which will follow in its proper place, of the island that was seen rising out of the smooth sapphire sea to the poop-deck of the Calypso on Christmas morning, 1898

In less than half an hour after the welcome hail had run along the deck, Sir Harry and the sailing-master were eagerly scanning the land, now about ten miles distant, through their glasses.

"What do you make it, Mr. Topline?" asked Sir Harry, after a good long stare at the mysterious land, taking his binoculars from his eyes and looking at the old salt with a puzzled expression.

"I can't say, Sir Harry. I've never seen the island before, and I don't believe it's down in the chart. You see, we've got clean out of the track of the trading vessels and mail steamers, and this part of the South Sea is even now very little known. I'd no idea there was land within three hundred miles of us," replied the sailing-master.

"No, it's not on the chart, for I was following Mr. Martin yesterday when he was pricking off the course, and there was nothing near us. Confound the wind! There it goes to a dead calm again. Hullo, what the deuce is that?"

As he spoke, Sir Harry jumped, glass in hand, on to the rail that ran round the flush deck of the yacht, climbed half a dozen rounds into the main shrouds, and again levelled his glasses in the direction of the island. A moment later he sang out to the sailing-master-

"Topline, what do you say to a steam launch coming off from your unknown island?"

"A steam launch! Well, I'll be kicked if it isn't!" said the other, mounting the opposite rail and focusing the approaching craft. It must be the steam tender of some man-o'-war surveying the island or getting fruit and water, only she's got no funnel, and I don't- Why, she's going twenty knots an hour through the water if she's going a yard! She's no man-o'-war tender, not she!"

All eyes on board the Calypso were now turned on the strange craft, which, by this time, had cleared the reef and was coming speeding towards them over the smooth, windless sea, at a pace which proved that, whatever her motive power was, it lacked nothing on the score of efficiency. In less than half an hour, she was describing a wide curve round the stern of the yacht, preparatory to running up alongside.

It was at once evident that the sailing-master had been quite wrong in his first guess that she was the steam tender of a man-of-war. She was a ten or twelve tonner, long, narrow, and low-lying, white painted, with a bright gold stripe from stem to stern, and covered, fore and aft, with a snowy-white curtained awning, bordered with a fringe of brilliant colours. In fact, as far as appearances went, she might have been spirited from the Upper Thames on a Henley Regatta day to the distant and lonely region of the South Sea, out of which were now rising the high bluffs and green slopes of the unknown island whence she had come.

As she came up alongside the Calypso, a youth of about eighteen, who was standing at the wheel amidships, hailed the yacht in English, and wished the new-comers "A Merry Christmas!" in a tone which left not the slightest doubt as to his nationality. Sir Harry returned the greeting as heartily as it was given, wondering not a little, like the rest of his shipmates, not only at the presence of such a dainty little craft in such out-of-the-way waters, but also at the strange contrast between the manner and language of the youth who had hailed him, and his entirely uncivilised appearance - uncivilised, that is to say, from the standpoint of modern fashion.

His bearing and speech were those of a well-educated and cultured young gentleman at the latter end of the nineteenth century, but his dress was more like that of a Phoenician mariner of a thousand years ago. His long brown hair fell in curls on his broad shoulders and clustered thickly about his smooth forehead, held back from his bronzed, handsome face by a narrow fillet of metal that looked like polished aluminium.

His dress consisted of a long over-tunic of soft grey woollen cloth, bordered with cunningly-worked embroidery blue silk, open at the neck, where it showed a white linen close-fitting under vest, and confined at the waist by a red silk sash, wound two or three times round, and hanging in heavily fringed ends over his left hip. A pair of soft yellow leather moccasins, beautifully worked in many-coloured beads and bead embroidery, covered his feet, and came half way up the calves of his bare, muscular legs.

"What craft is that, and where do you hail from?" asked Sir Harry, some dim notion of pirates associating itself in his mind with the somewhat fantastic attire of the youth at the helm.

"This is the electric launch Mermaid, and yonder island is Utopia," he replied. "We came out to see if we could be of any assistance to you. You seem to have had rather a bad time of it somewhere, by the look of your spars."

On hearing this queer, though kindly expressed reply, Sir Harry began to think that the Calypso must have drifted out of the realms of reality and into the regions of romance, for the only Utopia he had ever heard of had been Sir Thomas More's Nowhere. But good manners forbade any expression of surprise or incredulity, and so he answered laughingly-

"I had no idea that a Utopia existed on earth in these degenerate days, but I am delighted to learn that I am wrong, and I'm also much obliged to you for coming out to us. We've disabled our engines and got our spars badly knocked about. But won't you come on board and let us introduce ourselves?"

"Thank you, if you'll throw me a rope, I will. Never mind the gangway ladder. Here, Tom, take the wheel, and don't let those girls run away with you."

"That's just what he'd like us to do," came in the laughing tones of a girl's voice from under the forward awning as the young fellow caught the rope and swung himself lightly over the Calypso's rail.

"I didn't know you bad ladies on board," said Sir Harry, meeting him at the gangway and holding out his hand; "if I had known, I would not have hailed you so unceremoniously."

"There are no ladies in Utopia, and the Utopians dislike ceremony very much, so it's just as well you didn't," replied the youth, with a laugh, as he took Sir Harry's hand.

"But surely that was a young lady's voice I heard just now, and a very sweet one too, if I heard aright."

"Well, it was a girl's voice, certainly. There are three of them on board the Mermaid, but they wouldn't like to be called young ladies. There are only women and girls in Utopia. We left the ladies behind in England."

He checked himself rather abruptly as his eyes met Violet's gazing in frankly undisguised astonishment at him. Then, with a slight flush on his cheeks, he went on-

" But pardon me, I had better introduce myself instead of talking about our manners and customs, which I daresay you will learn before long. I am Frank Markham, skipper of the Mermaid, and her crew is at present composed of Tom Harris, Ralf Smith, Lucy Summers, Annie Hilton, and Dora Merton, the girl who made a very true remark about Master Tom as I came on board."

As young Markham said this, he went to the side and sang out-

"Come now, Mermaids, show yourselves! I want to introduce you to our visitors. By the way, you have not told me your names yet," he continued, turning to Sir Harry.

"My name is Harry Milton; I am owner and skipper of the Calypso. This is my sister Violet, this is Lieutenant Wyndham, of Her Majesty's ship Sandfly, and this is Mr. Topline, my sailing-master."

As Sir Harry made the introductions in turn, the curtains which ran round the fore-deck of the launch were drawn aside, disclosing three pretty long-haired girls, picturesquely, if somewhat lightly, attired in gay tunics and cloaks and long moccasins, profusely ornamented with many-coloured silken embroidery, fringes, and curiously worked clasps and armlets of lustrous white and yellow metal. Instinctively every man who was looking over the bulwarks of the Calypso raised his hat or his cap as the three girls, half gravely, half shyly, returned the salutes from the deck of the yacht.

"And now, what can we do for you?" asked Markham when this little ceremony was over. "I suppose you want to get into port and refit as soon as possible?"

"That's just what I do want to do very badly," replied Sir Harry. "But where am I to find a port and a dockyard in this part of the Pacific?"

"Both are within less than half a dozen miles of us, and the Mermaid shall tow you in in an hour if you will first oblige me with five minutes' conversation in private."

"Certainly; come into my cabin," said Sir Harry, leading the way to the companion.

In less than ten minutes they returned, Sir Harry looking just a trifle mystified, and without loss of time a light hawser was got out and made fast to the Mermaid, and the two vessels began to move smoothly towards the white reef in the distance, fringing the hitherto unknown island of Utopia.

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CHAPTER II.

GOING INTO PORT.

IT took a little over an hour for the Mermaid to tow the Calypso from where she had lain becalmed, into the lagoon of Utopia. As the yacht approached the island, it rapidly became manifest that, whether chance or design had guided the Utopians in the selection of their far-away home, they had had the good fortune to choose a spot that well deserved to be called beautiful, even in that part of the world where land and sea and sky seem to conspire to wear their brightest and most beautiful aspects.

They were approaching it from the west, and before they reached it, the sun had risen above the horizon, and against the flood of light that blazed along the eastern horizon they saw, standing out clear and sharp, the truncated cone of an extinct volcano, which raised itself in lonely grandeur between four and five thousand feet above the sea. From the middle slopes to north and south two curving ranges of hills, sparsely timbered at their summits, but with their sides clothed with ever denser and more luxuriant vegetation, ran out to the south-east and north-west, gradually decreasing in height until they terminated abruptly in cliff's of naked rock which rose eight or nine hundred feet sheer up from the water.

Between these two headlands lay a wide, irregular bay, fronted by the broad expanse of brilliant emerald-green water and backed by verdant slopes which, clothed with all the wonderful vegetation of the southern tropics, rose and fell, valley behind valley and hill behind hill, until they merged in the distance with the heights of the volcano and its attendant chains.

"That is Mount Plato," said Markham, who at Sir Harry's invitation had remained on board the yacht to act as cicerone to the visitors to Utopia. "We call it that because under its shadow we hope to found our New Republic."

"But isn't the Republic founded yet?" asked Violet. "If you'll allow me to say so, I should have thought it was not only founded, but had reached a considerable height of prosperity."

"Yes," chimed in Wyndham, with a movement of his hand towards the Mermaid. "If twenty-knot electric launches are not a sign of a fairly prosperous civilisation, I can hardly see what would be."

"Twenty knots!" laughed Markham. "Why, the Mermaid can run thirty when we're in a hurry, and we've got a three-thousand tonner on the slips now in the dockyard that we are building on a new principle, and which we expect to make forty."

"Whew!" whistled Wyndham, lifting his eyebrows in undisguised astonishment. "Forty knots? If you can build vessels like that, you Utopians ought to be millionaires to a man. Why, there isn't a European Government that wouldn't willingly give you half a million apiece for as many of them as you could turn out.

"Our own Admiralty is perhaps the most thick-headed institution of its kind under the sun; but I believe even it would give me a good deal for the secret of a ship like that, if you would let me take it home with me."

Instead of replying directly, Markham looked at Sir Harry, who at once took the hint, and said, with a shake of his head-

"No, Wyndham, I'm afraid there's no chance of that, or anything of the kind. In fact," he said, "I may as well tell you, and you gentlemen also," he continued, with a glance at the sailing-master and his chief mate, "that I have accepted the invitation to put into Utopia on the sole condition on which it was given, and I have pledged my word of honour for myself and everyone on board the yacht that no attempt will be made to learn anything that is not freely told to us, and even that if we learn anything by accident, we will behave both here and at home as though we had never known it.

"You see, we have not the slightest right to pry into the secrets or discoveries of our hosts, and I'm sure you will agree with me that in giving such a pledge I was making the least return I could for the kindness and assistance that I'm sure we shall receive on shore."

"Oh, quite so, quite so!" said the lieutenant. "Of course I was only joking. A man would deserve to be shot who did a caddish thing like that. Still, just now, you know, a forty-knot ship properly armed would be simply invaluable, not only to an individual nation like ourselves, but to the civilised world at large. You know what I mean."

"Ah, yes!" replied Sir Harry, his face becoming grave in an instant. "You mean, to chase that brute with the red flag and hunt him down to wherever his lair is. Yes, a ship that could do that would be cheap at a couple of millions, and I believe Europe would subscribe the money to buy it in a week, even if the Governments couldn't find it. I'd give ten thousand myself with pleasure."

"Pardon me," said Markham, turning round from the rail where he had been standing, pointing out the different features of the island to Violet, while Sir Harry was speaking. "But that sounds almost like a modern edition of one of the old pirate stories. Surely you don't mean to say that there are any pirates nowadays, either with black or red flags?"

"I am sorry to say that there is at least one," said Sir Harry; "and he can do more damage an a month than all the old pirates put together could have done in a year."

"What a villainous shame!" said Markham, looking for the moment graver and sterner than they would have thought possible. "That will be news for them ashore if you care to tell them the story. In fact, I'm afraid we shall put a considerable tax on your generosity in that way, for we haven't had any news from the outer world for quite twelve months now.

"But here we are at the entrance to the lagoon. What do you think of it? Don't you think our Utopia is a lovely land?"

"Lovely, indeed!" said Violet, who, during the conversation, had been looking about her with all her eyes, as though she could never get enough of the beauty of the scene. "I've heard and read all sorts of stories about the Pacific Islands, but I couldn't have believed that anything earthly could have been so beautiful as this."

And truly the scene that was visible from the bridge of the Calypso on which they were now standing was worthy of the enthusiasm of her words. Every colour that nature uses in painting her incomparable landscapes was here, either blended or contrasted to produce the most exquisite effects.

On land were mingled a hundred tints of green and gold, from the sombre hues of the banyan leaves to the golden ears of the patches of corn that were ripening on the upper hill slopes; trees and shrubs of every shape and height succeeded each other, from the lowly bananas to the towering palms and the splendid pines that crowned the higher summits of the mountain ranges; and, high above all, the bare, blue-grey cone of the volcano rose to crown a picture which no words could adequately describe.

But when, to the medley of hill and vale, mountain rock and ravine, presented by the island itself, were added the snowy white of the billows breaking on the long reef - which, save for one narrow opening, stretched from point to point across the bay - the emerald-green of the lagoon inside it, and, outside, the deep blue of the open ocean reflecting the sapphire of the cloudless sky, the picture became almost unearthly in its strange and varied loveliness.

The roar of the tumbling billows upon the reef sounded louder and louder in the ears of the Calypso's company as the Mermaid and her charge ran in towards the opening.

"I think I had better take your wheel now," said Markham to Sir Harry when they were within about five hundred yards of the reef. "This is rather a ticklish piece of steering for anyone who doesn't know the currents."

"I should think so," said Wyndham, looking ahead, as Markham went and took the wheel from the sailor who was steering. "I know I wouldn't care about the job of bringing a torpedo-boat in here in the dark. Why, there doesn't seem to be much more than sixty feet of clear water to get through. If this place were properly defended, it could be held against all the navies of Europe as long as they chose to stop here."

"Yes," laughed Sir Harry; "especially with one or two forty-knot cruisers dodging about outside and making a judicious distribution of torpedoes. What do you think, Topline?"

"I think, Sir Harry," growled the old salt, "that I'll believe in forty-knot cruisers when I sees 'em. If a speed like that's possible, why can't all the Governments of Europe, with all their money, build a cruiser that'll catch that craft, whatever she is, that's been playing up old Scratch among the Atlantic liners, according to the news we got at Sydney?"

"Because they don't know how," said Markham, without turning his head, "and because there are some secrets that money won't buy."

As he spoke, he gave the yacht's wheel a turn and swung her about four points to port, in imitation of a similar manoeuvre of the Mermaid, which was apparently running dead on to the reef. Within fifty yards of the white water the Mermaid shot across into the seething foam, doubled sharply, and ran to starboard at right angles to the yacht. This brought a strain upon the hawser, and as it came up dripping out of the water and tightened, Wyndham could not repress an exclamation of surprise.

"That's queer towing; what on earth is she doing that for?"

"You'll see in a moment," said Markham, giving a spin to the wheel and swinging the yacht round after the launch. By the tenseness of the rope, it was evident that the Mermaid was pulling very hard upon it. The Calypso came round, and then her stern swung with a rush into the swirling white water that was boiling about the narrow entrance.

Then, while the party on the bridge watched with barely concealed anxiety the breakers which every moment brought nearer, until they were roaring only a stone's throw away, the line slackened slightly, and just as the sailing-master, unable to contain himself any longer, sang out, "She'll be on the reef in a minute! Tell the launch to tow harder, man; can't you see she's going?" the foaming, tossing mass of breakers suddenly seemed to slide away ahead, and a minute later the Calypso had drifted through the opening stern first, and was floating motionless on the smooth, glittering water of the lagoon, with the Mermaid lying a few yards ahead of her.

"There's a twelve-knot current coming round the corner of that reef," said Markham, leaving the wheel and turning to the sailing-master. "You could no more tow a disabled ship through there than you could tow her over the reef itself. The only way to get the yacht in was to let her drift in - with a proper check on her, of course."

"I beg your pardon, young gentlemen," said Topline, 1ooking just a bit crestfallen. "I was wrong, and you were right. You know the place, and I don't; and I'll be hanged if I could have got her in myself."

The Mermaid now got under way again, and began to tow the Calypso across the lagoon towards the high bluffs at the southern arm of the bay. The bright, smooth water of the bay was already dotted by dozens of pretty little craft, canoes with outriggers, some double-hulled catamarans with great white sails that swept them along at a famous pace, others, canoes of the shape seen on the Canadian lakes and rivers, and others again just such craft as you may see any summer's day on the Thames between Putney and Richmond, large, roomy row-boats, slim outriggers, and broad, flat centre-boards, with their wide spread of snowy canvas.

All came racing away with the land breeze from the head of the bay, where half a dozen jetties ran out into the water, and where, behind the snowy coral beach, the verdant shore was dotted with white houses, peeping out from shady groves of lime and orange trees and spreading tree-ferns, above which the stately palms lifted their gently-waving crests a hundred feet into the air.

The Calypso was soon surrounded by the light-heeled craft, and many a greeting of welcome was waved to the newcomers by their gaily-dressed crews, and, thus escorted, the yacht was towed to the bluffs. It looked as though the Mermaid was going to run her nose up against the huge frowning wall of rock that rose hundreds of feet above her, but within a couple of hundred yards of their base Markham went to the wheel again.

The launch swerved to port, and as he sent the Calypso after her, those on her bridge saw the wall of rock open into a vast arch, the apex of which was over two hundred feet from the water. They glided through this for a distance of about fifty yards, and then the half light of the tunnel gave place to the bright sunlight again, and they found themselves floating in a perfectly land-locked oval basin about a mile long by about three-quarters of a mile broad, and closed in on all sides by perpendicular cliffs rising sheer from the water to heights varying from eighty to a hundred and fifty feet.

"Here we are at last!" said Markham. "This is the dockyard of Utopia, and in a couple of hours your yacht shall be on the slips in the dry dock. Meanwhile, if you will come on board the Mermaid with me, we will go ashore."

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CHAPTER III.

OLD FRIENDS AND NEW.

AS the Mermaid came alongside in obedience to a hail from Markham, the gangway steps were lowered, and Violet, Sir Harry, Lieutenant Wyndham, and the young Utopian went on board the launch, leaving the sailing-master to see the Calypso into dock.

Under the forward awning the introductions were repeated in more formal fashion, and as Violet shook hands with the Utopian girls, which she did with mingled feelings of slightly strained propriety and irrepressible admiration, she said, with a laugh-

"I see that in Utopia, at any rate, the vexed question of rational dress has been satisfactorily settled."

She spoke almost in an undertone, but her brother caught her words, and exclaimed, with more enthusiasm than discretion--

"Settled? I should think so! It's a perfect triumph of art and convenience over Mrs. Grundy and conventionalism. I hope you will take some patterns home with you, Violet."

His sister stole a sidelong glance, not at him, it must be confessed, but at Lieutenant Wyndham, and said, with just the faintest possible flush on her pretty cheeks-

"Oh, of course, it would be delightful, but- I am afraid you are forgetting the difference in climate. Miss Dora, here, for instance, looks entirely irresistible in Utopia at Christmas, but for her own sake, I should be very sorry to see her shivering in the Park in the severity of the British June."

"I should think so," said Dora also, with the faintest suspicion of a blush and a smile, that made Sir Harry wonder why he had never seen as pretty a girl as this in England. "Why, quite apart from the shivers, which would be uncomfortable enough, the people would think that I was one of the girls out of 'Utopia Limited,' trying a new sort of advertisement, and then, I suppose, some one would call a policeman, and give me in charge for outraging public decency."

"Very probably," chimed in Wyndham drily; "and the first to do it would be one of the women who go to a dance or a theatre, well--"

"Thanks, Lieutenant Wyndham," almost snapped Violet, this time blushing in real earnest. "You seem to forget the last time that you and Harry took me to the theatre. Suppose we change the subject. 1 ought to have known better than raise such a purely feminine question in the presence of unregenerate males. No, don't apologise; I deserve what I got. If you say another word, I won't speak to you for the rest of the day."

Anywhere else a certain amount of awkwardness might have followed this little scene, but Dora promptly came to the rescue by saying very demurely--

"Well, it's only about three years since we left England, and I have not forgotten the weather yet. I don't think there can be any more comparison between your dress and ours than between the British climate and this one. At any rate, I can promise that when you have succeeded in reforming your climate, we girls of Utopia will form a mission and go and try and reform your dress."

By the time the laugh that followed this sally had died away, the Mermaid had run alongside a jetty which ran out from a platform of rock at the head of the basin, and was made fast.

"Why, bless my soul! surely that can't be Mr. Austen-- and yet I'll be hanged if it isn't either him or his double! How do you do, sir? Who on earth would have dreamed of finding you in Utopia?"

By the time he had uttered the last words of his somewhat disjointed exclamation, Sir Harry had cleared the gangway between the Mermaid and the jetty with a couple of strides, and was shaking hands with a man of spare figure and medium height, with a keen, intellectual, clean-shaven face and close-cropped grey hair, who was standing on the jetty, forming a somewhat commonplace contrast in his easy, fitting brown holland Norfolk jacket and trousers and grey solar topee to the picturesquely-clad little group about him.

"And equally who in Utopia would have dreamed of having the pleasure of wishing a merry Christmas in the Southern tropics to Sir Harry Milton and his charming sister?" said the old gentleman, returning the Baronet's grip with equal heartiness, and then letting go his hand to hold his own out to Violet, whom Lieutenant Wyndham had just handed ashore.

"For such pleasure as there is in that, Mr. Austen, you must thank a combination of good and bad fortune, which has brought us out of the matter-of-fact world that we sailed from into-- well, into some realm of romance which really doesn't seem as though it were on the surface of the same planet," said Violet in response to his greeting.

"This has really been a morning of wonders for us, and, finding you here after your mysterious disappearance from London, is certainly the greatest wonder of all. I can tell you I feel even more than the usual feminine curiosity to know how it has all come about. For my own part, I feel something like Alice in Wonderland, only the Wonderland is a very much nicer one."

"And all the wonders shall be explained in due course as far as I can explain them, I can assure you," said Mr. Austen; "but our first duty is to make you feel a little bit at home in Wonderland, so you must come and be introduced to some of its inhabitants. Me you know already, and you seem to have made friends with the Mermaids too. This is Edward Adams, who would be first President of Utopia if we had any Government or politics, which I thank Heaven we have not. He is the man who conceived the ideal of which Utopia is the realisation."

As he said this, he presented her, with a gesture which included her brother in the introduction, to a tall, well-built, grave-faced man of about thirty-five, with crisp, curling brown hair and a blond close-clipped beard and drooping moustache, which was not quite thick enough to conceal the gravely pleasant smile with which he bade them welcome to Utopia.

"And this is Max Renault, our chief engineer and electrician, to whose genius the existence of the Mermaid is due," continued Mr. Austen, presenting the man whose acquaintance the reader has already made under such different circumstances. Like Adams, he was dressed in the Utopian costume; but distinguished and even handsome as he looked in it, Violet somehow found herself unable to return his readily offered hand-clasp as heartily as she had returned those of Adams and Mr. Austen. The man seemed to her to have a reserved or rather a concealed power about him, which, to her woman's swift intuition, seemed to strike her with a vague sense of deceit. When Lieutenant Wyndham was presented to him, after being introduced to Mr. Austen, he looked at him keenly for a moment, and then said--

"I'm afraid I can't claim the pleasure of your previous acquaintance, Mr. Renault, but somehow your face seems familiar to me."

"It is quite possible that it is sufficiently commonplace for you to mistake me for some one else," replied Renault, with a smiling politeness that contrasted but ill with the vision of recollection that flitted before his mind's eye as he shook Wyndham's hand.

"And now," said Mr. Austen, when the introductions had been completed, "if you like, we'll have a turn round the dockyard while they are getting your yacht on the slips, and then we can go on board the Mermaid again and run round to the settlement, and get some lunch and find you quarters."

During the inspection of the dockyard, which occupied the next hour or two, both Sir Harry and Lieutenant Wyndham were amazed to see how much had been done in the three years that they were told the Utopians had spent upon the island.

There were three basins, partly natural and partly artificial, which had been fitted with sluice-gates moved by hydraulic power, the largest of which, the one the Calypso was being put into, would have taken a vessel twice her size, while the other two would amply have accommodated a craft of three hundred tons.

On the opposite side of the main basin, on a rocky plateau about thirty feet above the water, there were two blast furnaces of the newest design in full operation, and water-power engines, actuated by penstocks and turbines under a five hundred-foot head of water, were running a plant of machinery capable of performing all the processes of steel ship-building, and were also operating a powerful installation for the extraction of aluminium from earths and clay by what seemed to be a highly improved and very economical process of electrolysis.

From the interior of a large oblong wooden shed, that stood on a plain of rock sloping at an angle of about fifteen degrees down to the water's edge, came the sound of hammering, drilling, and rolling, which told the lieutenant's practised ear that some vessel, probably the three thousand ton forty-knot cruiser of which Markham had spoken, was being constructed within it.

He would dearly have liked to have been admitted within the enclosure, to see what manner of naval marvel it concealed, but good manners and his recollection of the pledge Sir Harry had given compelled him to possess his soul with patience and hope for a future invitation. None was given, however; for Mr. Austen, on passing the shed, merely nodded towards it, and said--

"We are trying an experiment in ship-building in there. Perhaps Markham may have told you of it, but as it isn't in a fit state for criticism yet, and as we're not quite sure about its ultimate success, I'm afraid I can't ask you to go and look at it."

After that, of course, nothing could be said on the subject by any of the visitors. By the time they had seen what they were shown at the dockyard, the Calypso was safely shored up in the dry dock, and the hydraulic pumps were throwing the water in tons into the outer basin; and then, after Sir Harry had told the sailing-master not to allow any of the crew to leave her until he received word from him, the party went on board the Mermaid again, and were soon speeding across the green waters of the lagoon to the settlement.

Then more introductions were gone through, everyone according a simply-worded and yet hearty welcome to the voyagers, and then Mr. Austen, insisting on the privilege on the ground of old acquaintance, carried off Violet, Sir Harry, and Lieutenant Wyndham to his house to lunch. Adams and Renault excused themselves from joining the party, saying that they would have plenty to talk about at first without them, but promised to come and smoke a pipe on the verandah after lunch, and hear all the news from the outer world.

During the meal, the host did nearly all the talking in satisfying the curiosity of his guests as to the origin of Utopia, and the reason for his own presence in the colony. He told them, in a simple, circumstantial narrative, how the death of his son had led him to become a member of the "Brotherhood of the Better Life," and of the change in his social views, together with his determination to retire from the business that had brought him into commercial relations which ended in friendship with Sir Harry's father, and devote the whole of his fortune, amounting to over half a million, to the practical development of the scheme which he had heard Edward Adams propound at one of the meetings; how they had bought a steamer, loaded her with everything that could be of use in the new colony, from a spade to the elaborate machinery they had seen working at the dockyard, and had brought out the first party of five hundred colonists to this island, which had been discovered twenty years before by one of the members of the Brotherhood, named Ambrose Miller, an old salt who had been captain of a South Sea whaler.

Then he went on to tell how the colonists prospered exceedingly during their first year in their island paradise, how they had escaped the fate of all similar ventures by rigorously excluding everything that savoured of politics and political economy from the primitive and purely domestic system which alone existed on the island, and how at the end of a year they had sent the steamer back to England with invitations to the best of their friends and kindred to come and join them, at any rate for a year's visit on trial; and, lastly, how, at the end of that year, every man, woman, and child of the six hundred souls who had accepted the invitation elected to renounce for ever the world that they had left, and become citizens of Utopia.

"So far," said Mr. Austen, bringing his story to an end, "the experiment has been a distinct and undeniable success, and that, I think, is chiefly due to the fact that we have only tried to make ourselves comfortable, and have not played the fool with constitutions or theories of government. We are simply a collection of about two hundred families, each perfectly independent of all the others, and only acting with them where common interest prompts them. As a matter of fact, we get on very well together, and the one law that we have all solemnly agreed to effectually prevents any unpleasantness arising from personal ill-nature."

"For pity's sake, tell us what it is - we want a law like that so badly in London!" broke in Violet, in a tone of eloquent mock entreaty.

"With pleasure," smiled Mr. Austen in reply, "though I'm afraid English society is too hopelessly complicated to allow of its application. It is simply this: If any Utopian of responsible years meddles with the personal or domestic concerns of any other in word or deed, he or she is to be at once turned out of the colony, and banished for a year to a small islet about four miles off the eastern coast. A second offence would mean being set adrift in a boat with a month's provisions outside the reef, and being forbidden to return on pain of death."

"Capital!" exclaimed Sir Harry. "What havoc a law like that would make with some of our most cherished institutions. Has it ever been put in force?"

"No," said Mr. Austen, smiling, and slowly shaking his bead; "and I don't think it ever will be. We are too busy in Utopia to be busybodies. But here are Adams and Renault, and you must get your news ready."

"And especially the news of this mysterious nineteenth-century pirate with no name and a red flag that Markham has been telling us about," said Renault, stepping in from the verandah as he spoke.

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CHAPTER IV.

THE STORY OF THE RED PIRATE.

LIEUTENANT WYNDHAM is the freshest of the party as far as news is concerned," said Sir Harry, when they had settled themselves in their easy lean-back chairs on the verandah, and had lighted their pipes, charged with fragrant Utopian-grown tobacco; "and, added to that, there's just a chance he may let some naval state secret out in the course of his yarn, and that will make it all the more interesting."

"I don't know any naval state secrets," laughed Wyndham, in reply, "and therefore I can't tell any. The British Admiralty doesn't communicate its official secrets to lieutenants of British gun-boats. Of course, if you happen to be an officer in the German Navy with a handle to your name, and the favour of the Kaiser behind you, it is a very different matter. However, that's not the story.

"The story itself," he continued, settling himself in his chair and blowing a long contemplative whiff of smoke up towards the verandah roof, with all the air of a man who knows how not to spoil an interesting story by an undue plunge in medias res, "is something so strange and unheard-of, that when the news was first published from some unknown source of information in the Pall Malt Gazette, it was received with about as much incredulity as you'll remember the Pall Mall's story about the retirement of Mr. Gladstone was, but I'm sorry to say it proved every bit as true as the other.

"To begin at the beginning. You remember that about five years ago the British Admiralty, in some queer freak of common sense and patriotism, gave orders for the construction of a flotilla of forty-two torpedo-boat destroyers, and bargained for a speed of twenty-seven knots.

"The first of these boats was the Havock, and the second was the Hornet, both built by Yarrow. The Havock did a trifle over twenty-seven knots, and the Hornet a bit over twenty-eight. This put the Russian Government on their mettle, and, as it is considered good business and correct commercial patriotism for loyal British firms to sell the deadliest possible weapons to our likeliest enemy, there was no objection to the builders of the Havock and the Hornet undertaking to build a twenty-nine knot boat for the Tsar.

"Then, no sooner had the order been given, than Thornycroft of Chiswick, who, by the way, has said that if the money was forthcoming, he could build a boat that would do forty knots, went one better, and, in June '94, turned out the Daring, which astounded everybody by doing twenty-nine and a quarter knots over the measured mile at Maplin. This, of course, woke Yarrow's people up like a shot, and they turned out the Tsar's boat, and rushed her over the measured mile three times running in a shade under two minutes, and that of course meant a speed of nearly thirty-one knots an hour.

"We all thought the limit had been reached, at any rate for some time, but six months later, that is to say, towards the middle of '90, Thornycroft turned out the still celebrated Ariel, which knocked all the other records into a cocked hat by running the mile twice each way in less than a minute and fifty seconds. The average speed worked out at thirty-three knots an hour, and common consent seemed to take this as the maximum.

"The Ariel remained unbeaten until the Pall Mall Gazette startled the world in the beginning of April last by publishing the news that Schichau, the crack torpedo-boat builder of the Continent, had built a destroyer for the Tsar, with a guaranteed speed of thirty-six knots an hour, engined on quite a new principle by a German engineering genius called Franz Hartog, and that she had gone out for a trial run on the Baltic, and had just vanished into space, taking Hartog among others with her.

"All sorts of speculations of course began to fly about as soon as it became impossible to keep the affair secret, and the Pall Mall's story was confirmed by the German press. Some people said that she must have run full tilt into a rock or a sandbank, and gone down with all hands; some said that they had tried to over-drive her and had blown her up, and this certainly seemed the most feasible explanation. Some again said that she must have been stolen by the Nihilists, but this was laughed at as impossible.

"For all that, however, it turned out to be very much nearer the truth than any of the other guesses. Four nights after she disappeared, the lieutenant in command of a Danish torpedo-boat coming through the Sound from Copenhagen to Kronborg went ashore as soon as he got into port, and stated that a grey-painted boat about the size of the missing destroyer, that's to say, about two hundred feet long, had passed him during the night at a tremendous speed, with no flame or sparks coming from her funnels.

"He said that his own boat was travelling over twenty knots at the time, and yet the unknown vessel ran away from it as though he had been standing still. This, combined with the fact that she showed no lights, certainly made it look as though she had really been the runaway. The lieutenant's story leaked out, and of course the papers jumped at it, and then they seemed to plunge into a contest of invention to see which could get the wildest and most ridiculous answer to the problem: What had become of the lost destroyer?

"I don't know whether any of you remember it, but there was a highly imaginative book published, I think, in the early part of '94, the author of which put a most curious combination of buccaneer and sentimentalist on board an equally curious cruiser worked by gas engines, which stopped at the most critical moment for want of oil, and brought her piratical raidings on the Atlantic to a timely but ignominious end.

"Well, the general belief was that those who had stolen the lost destroyer had done so with the intention of emulating this gentleman's exploits in a really practical fashion, for I ought to have told you that the boat, with that excess of technical detail which the Germans sometimes indulge in, had been sent to sea for her trial fully equipped in fuel, stores, arms, and ammunition, just exactly as though she'd been going straight into a fight.

"Affairs were rather strained just then between Russia and England, in consequence of the old row about Korea, and there was a rumour that the Russian Government had requested this to be done in case of emergencies.

"A little over a month passed, and nothing more was heard of her. The rumours were beginning to die away and give place to fresh sensations, when, like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, came the news that the Alberta, one of the new fast Canadian line from Halifax to Liverpool had been stopped in mid-Atlantic by a long, wicked-looking grey-painted vessel, with a turtle-back deck for'ard, three funnels and one mast, and flying a plain blood-red flag from a flagstaff astern, and plundered of every ounce of specie, and all the portable valuables that she carried. The Alberta brought the news herself, and so there was no doubt about its truth. Not a bad morning's work, I must confess, even for a quite up-to-date pirate," added Wyndham, noticing with some curiosity a faint flush that deepened the bronze of Renault's cheek as he spoke.

"I suppose an outrage like that produced a tremendous excitement as soon as the news was known?" said Adams, who had been following the story with the most intense interest.

"Sensation? I should think it did," said Wyndham, with a short laugh. "The newspapers raised a howl that you might have heard almost here. Politics and divorce were discounted to nothing in the way of interest, while broadsides of questions were fired into the First Lord of the Admiralty. Standing Orders were suspended to discuss the pirate, and even the Admiralty itself began to wake up and rub its eyes, and wonder what the deuce it was all about, when, five days later, a much more terrible story was brought to Plymouth.

"The American liner New York had been stopped in mid-Atlantic, just as the Alberta had been, and while the usual looting was going on, an American gun-boat, the Albany, appeared on the scene, and the New York signalled for assistance. The pirates that had boarded her opened fire with their magazine carbines, and cleared the decks; then they got into their launch as fast as the Lord would let them, and ran for the Destroyer, which, by the way, really turned out to be the proper name of the pirate.

"They were no sooner on board than they opened fire with half a dozen quick-firing guns and a lot of machine guns, and riddled the New York like a sieve; then they sent a torpedo into her, and blew her up just as the gun-boat came within range. She opened fire right away, but she might just as well have shot at an express train a couple of miles away, for the pirate spun round on his heel, clapped on full speed, and went away, as one of the officers of the Albany put it, like a locomotive on the loose.

"The gunboat saved about half of the New York's people, and brought them into Plymouth. Then the row began in good earnest. The pirate had outraged the British lion, and, as it were, fired point-blank in the face of the American Eagle. In less than a week British and American cruisers, gun-boats, and torpedo-destroyers were swarming on the Atlantic looking for him.

"Of course, the Ariel was foremost in the hunt, and as luck would have it, she, in company with the cruiser Medea and the Firefly, the best of the Yarrow boats, was the first to sight him. This was about 150 miles north-west of the Azores, and, would you believe it, there was a North German liner, the Lahn, just on the point of sinking less than a mile away from him.

"He was only about five miles ahead of our boats, and so the Ariel and the Firefly cracked on all steam and went at him like a couple of greyhounds just slipped from the leash. The brute actually bad the cheek to wait for them until they were almost in range.

"Just as the Ariel fired the first shot with her forward quick-firing twelve-pounder, he slewed round, slipped like a streak of greased lightning through the water for about five hundred yards, stopped, and returned the shot. The Ariel's shell dropped about six hundred yards astern of him, and his burst squarely between her and the Firefly. Then he rushed away again on a wide curve trending round to the old Medea, who might as well have been motionless as doing the sixteen knots that was all they could grind out of her.

"My cousin, Charlie Curzon, who was on board the Ariel, and who told me the story, said the excitement for the next half hour or so was something indescribable. The two boats dashed at him to head him off, the Ariel doing all her thirty-three knots and the Firefly a good thirty-two, but they were just too late.

"The fellow tore through the water - incredible as you may think it - at a speed that must have been very nearly forty knots an hour. In fact, Charlie told me they could see nothing but a cloud of spray, with the boat's nose in front of it and her red flag showing through the after part of it. Do what they could, they couldn't stop him getting the Medea between them and him.

"This forced them to separate. As they did so, the Medea opened fire and blazed away like a floating volcano, but it wasn't a bit of good, they no sooner got the range than they lost it again, the brute was moving at such a frightful speed. He ran up to within a mile of her, stopped dead, spun round on his heel, fired his two stern torpedoes at her, and away he went again, sending the spray flying thirty feet into the air on each side of him.

"One torpedo missed, but I'm sorry to say the other took the old Medea under the quarter, and literally blew her stern off. The Firefly stood by to give what assistance she could, and the Ariel took up the chase again, with every ounce of steam her boilers would stand. From what Charlie said, she might just as well have tried to chase the Flying Dutchman.

"She stuck to it the whole afternoon, and in six hours travelled over two hundred miles to the north-west - but all that her crew ever saw was that cloud of foam away ahead of them, always getting smaller and smaller; and at last night and a fog came on together, and it faded away into the darkness and the mist, and they lost sight of it.

"That," said the lieutenant, knocking the ashes out of his second pipe, "is the last that I heard at first hand of the pirate with the red flag, for the day after Charlie told me the story, I was ordered out to the West Coast. That was nearly nine months ago, and, from the accounts we saw in the Australian papers, which you will be able to read at your leisure, he is still at large, looting a liner every now and then, as the fancy takes him, and laughing at every attempt to catch him."

"Then, if no one else can catch him, we will!" said Mr. Austen, almost passionately, rising from his chair with a flush of anger on his thin cheeks. "It is an outrage on humanity and civilisation that such things should be! I'm afraid we must give him three months' more licence, but, after that, we'll hunt him down and sink him, if we have to chase him round the world to do it! Renault, we must have the Nautilus afloat in three weeks!"

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CHAPTER V.

ANARCHY AFTER DINNER.

A BRIEF and somewhat uncomfortable silence followed Mr. Austen's outburst of righteous indignation. Adams looked at him with an expression of surprise not unmingled with regret, and a dark flush and a most unmistakable scowl passed over Renault's swarthy features. Only for an instant, however, did he suffer his feelings to betray themselves. Even before Mr, Austen had time to notice it, the scowl had passed, and he turned to him and said in a tone that seemed intended to convey more meaning than the words he used-

"Three weeks? I'm afraid it will hardly be possible to have the Nautilus ready for sea by that time, and, of course, you can't refer to anything but her."

"Oh, no, of course not," replied Mr. Austen hastily, and, as Wyndham thought, rather confusedly. "Of course I referred to her, and," he continued, turning to Adams, as if for corroboration of what he said, "I certainly should have thought that she was sufficiently far advanced for us to have had her ready for sea within a month from now, and then, allowing two months for the voyage and the search for this miscreant, we surely ought to be able to run him down within three months."

"I really don't see why we shouldn't, Renault," said Adams in reply to this. "And I don't see why I shouldn't tell you gentlemen," he went on, turning to Sir Harry and Wyndham, "now that Mr. Austen has partly let the cat out of the bag, that the naval experiment which was mentioned down at the dockyard is a new type of sea-going warship which we are constructing, not, I can assure you, for offensive purposes, but purely for defence, should it ever be necessary, and for swift transit in the meantime.

"She is a sort of combined submarine ram and torpedo-boat, designed and engined on a new principle by our friend Max here. She is not submarine in the sense that she will be able to plunge entirely under the water, but if she turns out a success, and ever goes into action, there will be nothing of her to be seen but a small oval platform carrying her machine guns and the conning-tower.

" Everything else will be from ten to twenty feet under water, and therefore beyond the reach of shot, and even if the platform got knocked to pieces, she could still get away, for the engineers and crew will not be dependent on ventilation for fresh air, and she can be steered by compass, though, of course, not by sight, from the interior of the hull ten feet below the surface of the water. But when I say that we expect her speed to be quite forty knots an hour, you will see that there will not be very much chance of her getting knocked about."

"Forty knots an hour?" exclaimed Wyndham, sitting bolt upright in his chair and bringing his hand down on his knee with a sounding slap. "Why, if I only had command of any boat that really would do forty knots an hour, I'd stake my life on running the Destroyer and her red flag off the sea within ten days of the time I got fairly on to the Atlantic; and, with a cruiser such as you have just described, I'd fight the fleets of the world, and sink them ship by ship, if there was any necessity for me to do so. Thank Heaven, she doesn't belong to any of the possible enemies of England!"

"There's no telling," said Max, laughing, but not, it struck Wyndham, in a very pleasant fashion. "You know, although we have not published any declaration of independence or any theatricals of that sort, we Utopians owe no allegiance to any of the Governments of the world, and I suppose we should resent interference from the British Foreign Office just as readily and as forcibly as if it came from any other quarter."

"Very possible," retorted Wyndham, a trifle nettled, more at the tone than the words; "but that, if you will pardon my saying so, is hardly the question at present. Of course, I have not the slightest right even to suggest, much less to dictate in any way, to you gentlemen who have given us hospitality and are helping us out of a very considerable hole. But if you will allow me to express my candid opinion, as a man whose business it is to know something about such things as these, I should like to say that, granted that this wonderful cruiser of yours does what you expect her to do, you alone of all the people of the earth will have in your hands the means of tackling this enemy of Society - part of whose story I have been able to tell you - on equal terms, or even at some advantage; and if that is so, surely it will be your duty to Society"-

"Stop there for a moment, please," interrupted Adams a trifle warmly. "To Humanity perhaps - to Society, as you call it, no. We owe no duty to Society, and we will pay none. Society made use of us and our labour as it suited its convenience, caring less for us personally than it did for its horses, and when it had no further use for us, would have left us to starve in the gutter or the garret as the Fates Might have willed it.

"That is why we are here; that is why Utopia exists. If the Brotherhood of Man which is preached about in your churches and prattled about in your parliaments were a fact instead of the mockery that it is, we should never have come out here to the ends of the world to seek the possibility of living a healthy human life without the necessity of being somebody's slave or somebody's tyrant."

"Look here," said Sir Harry, "we've something a lot better to do than fire syllogisms at each other while we've got Utopia to explore and the Calypso to look after. Wouldn't it be more to the purpose if, instead of talking here, you were to place your professional skill and experience at the service of these gentlemen in getting the Nautilus ready for sea?"

"Of course it would, if they'll only accept them," replied the lieutenant, getting up with an air of relief, as though he had had quite enough of polemics. "I'm theirs to command if they think I can be of any use."

"Of course you will," said Adams, rising with the rest of the party. "Frankly, we didn't intend to tell you anything about the existence of the Nautilus, for fear our intentions might have been misunderstood; but what you have told us about this pirate and his doings makes it quite a different matter. We shall be glad of all the help we can get. Will you come down to the dockyard now and have a look at the Nautilus?"

Both the lieutenant and Sir Harry jumped at the invitation to see the mysterious craft from which such great things were hoped, but on the way down to the jetty, where the launch was waiting for them, Violet was captured by Dora Merton and another "Mermaid," and carried off, by no means unwillingly, to afternoon tea and to chat on more congenial subjects than ship-building and machinery.

When the male portion of the party once more landed at the dockyard, and had gained admission to the shed, which before had been closed to them, they found themselves alongside the hull of a vessel which Wyndham's practised eye saw at a glance formed a very considerable advance on the ideas in vogue in the naval arsenals of Europe and America. A long, narrow hull, shaped as nearly as possible on the model of a mackerel's body, carried, supported by a sharply oval structure on the back, a larger and still more elongated oval platform, with a low, heavily armoured conning-tower situated at the forward end.

Three four-bladed propellers projected from the stern and quarters, one in the line of the keel, and the others from the quarters, diverging slightly outwards from the middle line.

"Now," said Renault, after the two visitors bad taken a bird's-eye view of the whole exterior, "if you'll allow me, I'll act as showman and explain her points to you. This hull is 250 feet long, 30 feet deep, and 25 feet wide in its largest dimensions, which you see are not amidships, but rather towards the head.

"It is made of mild steel throughout, with the exception of the ram, which is faced with Harveyised nickel steel hard enough to pierce or tear ordinary iron or steel plates as if they were no tougher than brown paper. When you get inside, you'll see that, in addition to her twenty-four water-tight compartments, she's very much strengthened towards the bow, so as to give her the greatest possible resisting power when she is striking her blow.

"These slides that you see cover the apertures for the underwater torpedo tubes. There are eight of them, two forward, two aft, and two in each broadside. The gun deck there is the only part of her that will be visible when she's in deep water fighting trim. It stands ten feet above the hull, so that when the bull is entirely submerged - as it will be - there will only be a freeboard of about seven feet; and as the deck itself is only forty feet long by fifteen in its greatest breadth, there won't be much to shoot at."

"No," said Wyndham; "she'll be a very ugly customer in anything like smooth water; but I don't see how you are going to fight your guns in anything like a sea, for the deck would be swept fore and aft by almost every wave."

"So it would," said Renault, "and we should let it be. The guns will all be mounted on disappearing carriages, and, as you will see when you get on deck, - where we may as well go right away now, - can be brought completely under cover, so that in heavy weather the craft would simply be a torpedo ram, with nothing to shoot at but the bare platform and the conning-tower."

So saying, he led the way up a ladder on to the deck, which Wyndham found already fitted ready for the reception of what when mounted would be a formidable armament of quick-firing cannon and machine guns, all of which, when in position, would, as Renault explained, be capable of being lowered out of sight and under shelter by means of the disappearing carriages working through sections of the deck, covered with steel slides.

"We haven't got our guns yet," said Adams, in reply to a query from Sir Harry. "They, and the torpedo armament, are being made at Elswick, but we expect them to be ready by the time we get the Nautilus home to receive them."

"Oh, then you are going to take her home?" said Wyndham.

"Yes," replied Adams, "I think so. We were intending to have them brought out in the steamer that you see lying on the opposite side of the basin," he continued, pointing to a trim-looking craft of about two thousand tons; "but in view of the urgency of this business, and the high speed that we hope the Nautilus will show, I think there will be a great saving, especially in time, if we take the ship to her guns, instead of bringing them out here to her. Don't you think so, Mr. Austen?"

"Oh, by all means! It'll mean a saving of quite two months, if not more, and we haven't a day to lose while that scoundrel is at large. As soon as ever we can get her into the water and put her through her paces, we must start for England, and get her to work as soon as possible."

"Bravo!" said Wyndham; "and when she goes, may I go with her, if I only go as cabin-boy or stoker's mate."

"You certainly won't go as the latter," said Renault, "simply because our engines don't want stoking."

"What!" exclaimed the lieutenant. "Then they are not steam engines? No, of course. What a fool I am! I ought to have seen that you have no funnels. What are they - gas, electric or what?"

"Neither," said Renault, moving towards an open slide, from which a companion-way led down into the interior of the vessel. "But come along, you shall see them for yourself."

To Contents

CHAPTER VI.

A VISION IN THE SKY.

THE engine-room of the Nautilus was situated in the after-section of the hull, about halfway between the stern and the midships line of the vessel. It was a long, narrow compartment, forty feet long by fifteen broad, and divided into three longitudinal sections, each of which contained what looked to Wyndham like a vertical engine of the quadruple-expansion type. A second glance, however, convinced him that they must be something essentially different, for there were no steampipes and no indications of the presence of either boilers or furnaces. As far as could be seen, steam was not the motive power at all. To set this question at rest, the lieutenant turned to Max and said-

"This is certainly no steam-engine. But where do you generate your motive power?"

"The day of steam is already past for the engineer who stands at the high-water mark of his craft," replied Max, with just a suspicion of superiority in his tone. "This is a gas-motor, not worked by ignition of inflammable gas as in the old-fashioned engines, but by the deflagration of a solid salt by means of the electric spark.

"You see this steel box at the side of the high-pressure cylinder. That is the explosion chamber. From there the products of the explosion pass through the cylinders in turn, doing their maximum of work in each, and in that chamber at the end they are collected and condensed, and then, with the addition of other chemicals, they can be used to manufacture new supplies of what I may call our motor-fuel."

"Why, that's precious like the old idea of perpetual motion!" exclaimed Wyndham, looking almost incredulously at the engineer. "You get your energy from your chemical at one end of the engine, and at the other you collect it again and use it over and over almost indefinitely, I suppose."

"Not quite indefinitely," chimed in Mr. Austen. "You see, we can't use all the products of combustion for recombination, and we have to add new materials each time. Still, I think we effect a net saving of about fifty per cent.; that is, we can use our fuel one and a half times over, and as our engines give ninety-five per cent. of the explosive energy in actual work, you will understand that we shall be able to travel enormous distances with a very small expenditure of fuel- that is, of course, in comparison with a steamer's expenditure of coal or petroleum."

"Oh, quite so," said the lieutenant; "it will make a perfect revolution in marine engineering if it ever gets known, as I suppose it must do some day."

"Unless Max and I die with the secret of the explosive in our possession," replied Mr. Austen, with a meaning smile, which warned Wyndham not to ask the question that was on his lips. So, instead of doing that, he said-

"Of course, I have neither the right nor the desire to pry into secrets that don't concern me, and so I will just say that this motor-fuel of yours would be worth a good many pounds a ton for driving torpedo-boats and high-speed cruisers; but I suppose there is no harm in my asking the amount of horse-power you expect to get out of these three engines?"

"None at all," said Renault. "You see they are of rather peculiar construction, and the cylinders are a good deal stronger than the ordinary steam-cylinder. That is because they have to bear a very much greater pressure. Each of the engines is calculated to work up to a maximum efficiency of fifteen thousand horse-power."

"Fifteen thousand each!" exclaimed Wyndham. "Forty-five thousand gross! Why, it seems incredible that such a tremendous power should be locked up in such a small space as this."

"Nevertheless it is true," replied Renault. "You see that is the difference between waste and economy. I needn't tell you how much power you would get from the modern steam-engine if you could only make ninety-five per cent. of the thermo-dynamic energy of the coal effective."

"This is a very marvellous craft. of yours," said Sir Harry to the three Utopians generally; "but what I find more marvellous even than the vessel itself, is the fact of finding her here in Utopia, where one would naturally expect to find nothing but the arts of peace in vogue."

He spoke in a half joking tone, but Adams, who answered him, did so much more seriously.

"Yes," he said, "that is so; but it is just because we believe in the arts of peace, and mean them to flourish here, that we are creating the means of protecting ourselves."

"But, my dear sir," exclaimed Wyndham, looking at him with an incredulous smile, "what on earth have you got to protect yourselves against? Really, I can't see that you stand in much danger of being attacked by anyone in an out-of-the-way part of the world like this."

"In the first place," replied Adams, "Utopia is beautiful, and will some day be very rich. You know, as well as I do, the fatal attraction that beauty and wealth have for those Powers which indulge in a mission for protecting just such out-of-the-way parts of the world as this. Then, again, now that the Panama Canal is at last completed, a few months will see the establishment of the Southampton and Panama route from England to New Zealand and Australia.

"Utopia is not known now, except to us and you, but then it will be almost in the track of the Panama and Auckland steamers, and will practically command the route. Now, when you have seen a little more of this island, you will agree with me that, with a very little trouble and expense, it could be converted into a perfect ocean fortress, absolutely impregnable to any assault from the sea, and, at the same time, containing accommodation enough to shelter, and even to refit, a very considerable fleet. In short, it might easily be made the Malta of the South Seas."

"So it might, of course, and a magnificent position it would be, too!" exclaimed Wyndham. "Why, it would command all the east to west routes to Australasia, and a strong squadron stationed here in time of war would practically command the South Pacific."

"Just so," replied Adams; "and that is just what we don't want. We were here first, and we propose to stop here. We have no more desire to be protected than we have to be annexed. As Mr. Austen has told you this afternoon, we have no politics at home and no policy abroad, and we don't want any.

"Hence, if a French or German, yes, or even a British warship were to turn up here some fine morning, and send a boat ashore to discover the island, and hoist the Tricolour, the black, white, and red, or the Union Jack, on the bluffs yonder, we should say 'no,' and we want to have the power of saying 'no' in such a way as would overcome any objections that might be raised to the refusal."

"But you are Englishmen yourselves," said Wyndham, his patriotism a trifle nettled by the dry, uncompromising tone in which the last few sentences were spoken. "Surely you don't mean to say that, if a British cruiser on the Pacific station were to put in here, and the captain came ashore to hoist the Union Jack in the name of the Queen, you would offer forcible resistance?"

"Most decidedly we should," replied Adams, almost sternly. "We should entertain him hospitably, supply him with anything that he wanted and we could give him, and then we should politely ask him to go about his business, and leave us to ours. This is no part of the British or any other Empire, and it isn't going to be, if we can help it."

"But suppose," objected Sir Harry, "that he did what would be his plain duty to do, under the circumstances, and took possession of the island by force? You could hardly expect him to recognise you as an independent State. I haven't the slightest desire to speak offensively, you know, and I'm simply asking for information. He would be infringing no national rights, and if the possession of the island were necessary to the protection of a line of British connections with the British colonies, it would be his duty to take it, if only to prevent it falling into hostile hands."

"He might not be infringing national rights," said Adams warmly, " but he would be infringing personal rights, and that we should not allow him to do. Of course, I am aware it may sound to you rather like idle boasting, but I can assure you that if he didn't take the twenty-four hours' notice to quit, that we should give him, neither he nor his cruiser would ever be heard of again."

"Possibly so," said Wyndham, "if that terrible Nautilus of yours does what you expect her to do, and had all her armament on board; because I am quite aware that she could sink any warship that floats inside half an hour. But how if the cruiser turned up before she is ready for work, or while she was absent, how then?"

"It would still be done," said Adams, in a tone that warned Wyndham that the controversy had gone as far as his courtesy could permit it to go under the circumstances. "But you must pardon me if I beg you not to ask how we should do it."

This, of course, brought the conversation to a sudden stop, so far as that topic was concerned; and, as it happened, just at that moment the Mermaid ran in alongside the jetty, and Violet- her trim, conventional European costume looking quaintly conspicuous in the midst of a little group of picturesquely clad Utopian damsels- came down to welcome them ashore.

"Harry," she said, as her brother and Wyndham stepped on to the jetty, "this is quite a fairyland, and I think I shall stop here. 'Dora here has promised to take me for a sister, and-"

"I wish to goodness she would!" blurted out Sir Harry, with an unexpected abruptness that brought a sudden startled look into Miss Dora's soft brown eyes, and a bright flush to her pretty cheeks; "because, in that case, you know- "

"Oh, don't talk nonsense, you silly fellow!" interrupted Violet, in time to save him from further and possibly fatal indiscretion. "Of course I didn't mean that. Surely, you can't be presumptuous enough to think that one of the princesses of this enchanted realm is going to look with favour upon such a commonplace person as yourself. I always thought you were a modest sort of creature, but I suppose the air of this paradise has intoxicated you."

"As it apparently has you, my dear Violet," retorted Sir Harry, "or else you wouldn't talk such arrant nonsense."

"We came to tell you that dinner is ready," said Dora, in such a primly demure tone that the conversation ended in a general laugh, and after that they set out for the settlement, abjuring dangerous topics for the rest of the way.

A good deal later on in the evening, about half-past ten or eleven, Sir Harry and the lieutenant, after a long chat with Adams and Mr. Austen, who had seen them home to the door of the bungalow which had been placed at their service, started out for a stroll up towards the hills, instead of going to bed, so that they might indulge in a quiet smoke together and an uninterrupted chat over the strange adventures that had befallen them, and the still stranger things which they had seen and learned since sunrise.

The night was so deliciously cool, the landscape was softened down to such an alluring dimness by the dusk of the tropic night, and the scent of the fruits and flowers had such an inviting charm, that they wandered on, smoking and chatting, without any thought of how time was passing, until the path which they had been following opened out on a clearing that formed the summit of a low spur of the foothills branching out from the chain running from Mount Plato to the northern bluffs.

There they stopped, and threw themselves down on the short, soft turf, to admire in leisurely fashion the beauties of the dimly starlit picture of sea and land, mountain, vale, and plain that lay spread out before them.

"Yes, truly," said Wyndham, "it is a lovely land, and much to be desired, even if it is somewhat of a land of mystery. I can't say that I blame friend Adams for wanting to keep it out of the hands of empire-makers and land-grabbers with patriotic designs, even if they happen to be British. Hullo, what's that? Look, Milton, look!- over yonder, above that line of hills!"

The last words were uttered in a half-whispered tone of intense astonishment and almost of awe, and, as he spoke them, Wyndham grasped Sir Harry by the arm, and pointed to where the ridge of the opposite line of hills, about two miles away, was sharply defined against the starlit sky. Sir Harry's eyes followed the direction of his finger, and soon saw a sight that made him catch his breath and hold it in dumb amazement.

Something was moving swiftly along the ridge of hills, about five hundred feet from its summit. The night was too dark and the distance was too, great for them to make it out very distinctly, but, as it swept along, apparently at an almost incredible speed, they could see the stars behind it blotted out and reappear.

With straining eyes, and without a word spoken between them, they watched the strange, swiftly-moving thing. Suddenly it doubled on its track. It had been moving towards the sea, and now it turned in a wide, graceful sweep. It followed the curve of the mountain, crossed the valley, as it seemed, in a single majestic leap, and then turned again and swept down out of the dusky distance, so close to where they were lying that they could hear a soft whirring, whistling sound as it clove the air. It passed within three hundred yards of them, turned again, and then, making a magnificent upward curve, soared over the ridge of hills, and vanished into space beyond them.

"Great heavens!" almost gasped Wyndham. "I was right in calling this a land of mystery, and Adams was right when he said that they could hold the island against all comers. Good God! they might terrorise the whole world, if they liked. That was an air-ship. The great problem is solved at last!

"Look here, Milton, if they find out that we've seen that thing, they'll never let us out of this island alive, good fellows and all as they seem, so we'd better keep our mouths shut until we can see what's to be done. Poor old England! She won't be mistress of the seas much longer, if a colony of irresponsible Socialists can raise a fleet of ships like that thing."

"I'm afraid not," said Sir Harry in a tone of unwonted seriousness. "I wonder how the deuce they got hold of a secret that all the world has been hunting after for centuries. Let's go home and sleep on it, for, as the Russians say, the morning is wiser than the evening."

But, as may well be imagined, there was very little sleep that night for either Sir Harry or the lieutenant. They were abroad again before sunrise the next morning, and at once fell to discussing the startling and terrible discovery which, as it were, had been forced upon them during their stroll the previous evening.

After a long and earnest conversation, in which the question was viewed in all its aspects, Wyndham ended up by saying-

11 I'll tell you, Sir Harry, what I'm going to do, with your permission. I'm going to stop here until the Nautilus is ready for sea, and keep my eyes open in the meanwhile on things in general, and Mr. Max Renault in particular. I've seen that fellow somewhere before, and not under very creditable circumstances, but for the life of me I can't tell where it was. It was some time before I had that touch of fever in Africa, and I suppose that's wiped it out. However, that doesn't matter now. If the Calypso sails before the Nautilus, and you go straight home to England, as I suppose you will, you shall take a letter from me to the Admiralty, containing my resignation of my commission."

"What!" exclaimed Sir Harry; "surely you don't mean that?"

"Yes, I do," said Wyndham ; "my mind is quite made up on that point. I must have a free hand in what I am going to do. I am going to join the Utopians, if they'll have me, and accept the berth they offered me on board the Nautilus. I couldn't do that if I remained in the navy. There's no reason why I shouldn't be, at any rate, navigating lieutenant of her, then I'll take her borne, get her armament on board, and hunt these piratical Anarchists off the face of the sea to begin with.

"By that time, I shall hope to be sufficiently deserving of the confidence of my fellow Utopians to be let into the secret of the air-ship, and then"-

"Hush!" whispered Sir Harry; "you are talking too loud. I believe I heard something move behind those bushes."

"Good morning, gentlemen! You are early abroad. I hope it isn't because you have slept badly. I presume you haven't breakfasted yet."

It was Renault who spoke. Turning round the corner of a clump of acacias, about twenty yards in. front of them, he sauntered towards them, his hands in his pockets and a cigar between his teeth. Whether he had heard Wyndham's words or not it was impossible to guess; so far as any outward sign went, he had not. His manner was as frank and cordial as possible, and his greeting betrayed not the slightest sign of suspicion.

"I was just going down to the lagoon for a swim," he continued, "and I daresay you are looking for the same thing, so if you like to come with me, I'll show you where the male Utopians take their morning dip. This way; the girls' bathing-place is on the other side of that bluff."

So saying, he led the way round an abrupt turn in the pathway down towards the shore, followed by Sir Harry and Wyndham, who accepted his invitation as the best and readiest thing to do under the circumstances.

To Contents

CHAPTER VII.

A PICNIC ON MOUNT PLATO.

A WEEK had passed since the conversation just narrated, and during that time the repairing and refitting of the Calypso had made good progress, and the work on the Nautilus had been prosecuted with such enthusiastic vigour- relays of those who were destined to be her crew literally working day and night at their tasks- that there was every prospect of its being possible to launch her within another fortnight.

In addition to this, the visitors to Utopia had been made so completely at home by the members of the colony, and had so rapidly and so insensibly got on terms of the closest friendship with them, that they already began to look forward with undisguised regret to the time when circumstances would make it necessary for them to say good-bye. Guests and hosts mingled in the most unreserved intercourse, and the more the former saw of the latter and their delightfully simple and natural institutions and mode of life, the more firmly they became convinced that they had by no means done an unwise thing in forsaking the complications and multifarious worries of what is, more in courtesy than in truth, called civilisation, for a life which seemed to give all the good that the world had to offer, with none of the discount of over or under-living taken oft.

Nothing more had been seen of the mysterious air-ship, and, of course, Sir Harry and the lieutenant had kept their own counsel strictly. Night after night they had taken their stroll from their bungalow, which lay nearly a mile from the centre of the settlement up towards the foot-hills, but their expectations, if they had any, were disappointed. Wherever the wonderful cruiser of the air was, she was carefully hidden from sight, and as not the slightest restraint was put upon their movements about the island, they were forced to conclude that those who were in the secret had every confidence in the security of the hiding-place.

Day after day came and went all too swiftly for the liking of the visitors, in a round of busy work and healthy, innocent enjoyment. By the time the week had passed, such good progress had been made with the work, that, in accordance with the custom of Utopia, it was decided to spend New Year's Day, 1899, as a general holiday.

The dockyard was closed for twenty-four hours; Markham and half a dozen of his friends undertook to provide for the entertainment of the crew of the yacht, under the ordering eye of Mr. Topline; and Adams and Mr. Austen, acting on a suggestion which originated with Dora, who appeared to have, in one sense, quite carried out her promise of making Violet a sister for the period of her visit, organised a picnic of exploration to the slopes of Mount Plato.

There were about a score of sturdy Shetland ponies and as many sleek, well-fed donkeys on the island, which were both useful and properly-respected members of the community, and half a dozen of each of them were pressed into the service of the expedition to carry the eatables and drinkables, and to be ready, if necessary, for the use of any of the ladies- as Wyndham and Sir Harry felt bound to persist in calling them, in defiance of Utopian custom- in case, as was not very likely, they were overtaken by fatigue on the way.

A start was made just as the cone of Mount Plato was beginning to glow in the first beams of the rising sun, and the spot selected for the camping-ground- a lovely, wooded plateau 2,000 feet above the sea and some seven miles from the settlement- was reached in less than a couple of hours. Here they sat down to a second breakfast, in which some choice champagne from the stores of the Calypso played a pleasantly conspicuous part, and then the party split up automatically into groups in accordance with individual choices and varying projects.

Sir Harry and the lieutenant had come out with the intention of climbing the cone of Mount Plato as the principal object of the day's excursion, and as this would take nearly the whole day, allowing for dinner and the necessary siesta after it, a separate party was formed for the expedition, consisting of the visitors, Dora Merton, Lucy Summers, and Adams, who had volunteered to act as guide and general cicerone. A panniered donkey carried the wherewithal for dinner in the crater, and a pony was laden with a small tent and the necessary fittings to provide shelter in case the mountain was visited by one of the sudden storms which sometimes swept across its upper heights.

It was not very long before the party, small as it was, split up into three divisions, which made their way in somewhat extended order along the steep, narrow hill-paths which led to the summits. Adams and Lucy, for reasons best known to themselves, formed the first of these, and Sir Harry and Dora the last.

It may also be recorded that there was an interval of nearly a hundred yards between each division, an arrangement which seemed perfectly satisfactory to everybody, though, if the truth must be told, Adams would fain have changed places with Sir Harry, for, in the depths of his serious, practical soul, there lurked a not very well-based hope that some day this brown-eyed beauty, who so far had contented herself with setting hearts aflame with the carelessness of a delightful unconsciousness, might accept the homage of the man whom everyone tacitly accepted as the moving spirit and virtual leader of the Utopians.

Interesting as the conversation en route undoubtedly was to the young baronet, it would have been even more so had it been possible for him to have asked Dora point-blank, as he would dearly have liked to have done, whether or not she knew of the existence of the air-ship, and, if yes, how much she knew or would tell about it.

He could hardly bring himself to believe that this lovely, innocent, light-hearted girl- for in just such terms did his thought describe her to him during that momentous walk- could be burdened with the possession of a secret on which the peace and security of the world might well one day depend; and yet that such actually was the case he was destined to learn before many minutes had passed. A sharp turn in the path brought them suddenly in view of a second truncated cone, about five hundred feet lower than that of Mount Plato, and lying, as nearly as he could guess, some two miles to the eastward of it, separated from it by a valley so deep as to give it the appearance of a distinct mountain.

"I didn't know Utopia boasted two volcanoes," he said, stopping and looking round over the magnificent panorama which now lay at their feet. "What do you call that second one yonder?"

"That," said Dora, glancing half shyly up at him with a quick flush. that seemed in curious contrast with the simplicity of the question he had asked,- that is what I believe they call a secondary crater to Mount Plato, and- well, I'm afraid that's all I am at liberty to tell you about it. If I invent a suitable name for it, and call it, for present purposes, Mount Mystery, you will understand me, won't you?"

"Of course I shall," replied Sir Harry, flushing in his turn, and slightly inclining his head as though in apology; "and I hope that you will understand that I trenched upon the forbidden ground quite unintentionally."

"There can be no question of that," she said, with a smile, that awoke in him an unreasoning, and yet not altogether unnatural, desire to embrace the principles of the Utopians on the spot, if he could only embrace her with them, and abjure home, country, and capitalism thenceforth and for ever, for the sake of the only pair of bright eyes that had ever taught him what the magic and mystery of sex really meant.

They were walking on again now, for somehow Sir Harry had no desire that his sister and Wyndham should overtake them too closely, and by way of shifting the conversation from dangerous ground, he said, after a little interval of silence-

"Do you know, Miss Dora, I am rapidly coming to the belief that you Utopians have really chosen the better part of life, by leaving the world and all its bothers, and coming out to this paradise of yours to live, as I suppose men and women really were intended to live and would have lived, if the curse of Eden had never been laid upon them."

" Of course we have," she replied, in a tone which showed that, to her at least, there could be no question about it. "I believe the curse of Eden, in its modern form, at any rate, is simply the spirit of greediness and vain-glory which makes every man want to have more and be something grander than his neighbour. Of course, Nature did not make all men and women equal. We are not by any means equal here even. Naturally, some of us are cleverer, stronger, or more-more-

"Beautiful, for instance."

There was no mistaking the look that accompanied Sir Harry's completion of her speech, and she didn't pretend to do so. She looked him frankly in the eyes, and only a deepening of the colour on her pretty cheeks told him that she had taken his interruption as literally as he had intended it to be taken.

"Yes, Sir Harry, more beautiful, if you like to put it so. It would be absurd to expect it, and that is why we haven't attempted to bring any of the silly theories of what they call Socialism in England, out here with us. We simply believe it to be possible for people to live healthy, natural lives, and develop themselves physically and mentally as far as their powers go, without troubling their heads about all the foolish complications of society, with its different ranks and degrees of wealth and poverty.

"Still, I must say I am rather surprised at you, finding our life here better than the one at home. I always thought that for a man like yourself, rich, titled, young, and- well, yes- good-looking- there's your compliment back for you - the social life of England made earth as nearly a paradise as possible."

"Not always," r