Literature · Precursors of Science Fiction

A Republic Without a President, and Other Stories 6

Chapter 5

WardEnglish

"Look! For God's sake, look! What is it?"

Swift strained his eyes to the southward, toward the death-bound territory. The malignant cloud that settled over plain and mountain slope was broken on the Gopher lake. As soon as Swift had recovered from the first bound of the balloon he had scanned the dark mist, and by the borders of the lake he had found a rift. This rift indicated the spot where the city of Russell should have been. As he spoke he clutched the arm of his colleague, and pointed over the side of the rising car.

"I--I'm afraid I can't see what you mean," stammered Mr. Statis Ticks, "my glasses are blurred."

The man of figures was really agitated. But Professor Ariel, like many an adventurer, had more than his share of what one may politely call sang-froid, but what is known in common North American as simple "cheek." Besides, in some sections of the country, he might have been called a profane man. With his hands on the safety valve, he looked and then ejaculated:

"By ----. It's gone!"

"I see nothing--nothing but black streaks," said the elder member of the Planet corps hurriedly. "Can't we stop, professor? Perhaps that isn't the site of the unfortunate city!"

The professor, obedient to the suggestion, pulled the safety valve, and the gas rushed out with a wheeze.

"You bet it is! That's the place! Didn't I land there before I struck Empiria? Darned lucky for me they didn't take stock in the High Tariff. I might have been--God knows what, now!"

Even as the three men looked, the cloud closed in upon the land. Strangely enough, it shunned the surface of the water. The travellers cast their eyes upon the sullen bosom of the Gopher lake. This body of water glittered like the scales of a leaden serpent. It looked from that great height poisonous and discontented. Swift gazed upon it intently.

"Why? Wouldn't they have you?" inquired Mr. Ticks, absent-mindedly of the professor. "See! Haven't we struck another current?"

As he spoke the huge High Tariff swayed. A breath of chilly air smote them. Then gently the balloon swung toward the Gopher lake--toward the fateful city.

"Well, you see, the balloon was too old-fashioned for them," answered the professor, still bent upon his grievance. "Now, if it had gone by electricity that 'ud been another thing."

"How so?" asked Mr. Ticks, with polite interest.

"Well! Everything in that gol-darned town went by electricity. They had electric cars, electric lights, electric shampooing, electric cigars, electric sewing machines, electric elevators, electric table service in the hotel; worst was, they had electric cabs. They kept quiet about some of their notions. Folks did say they had their reasons. I didn't hear nothing about all this electric tomfoolery till I struck the city."

"Ah!" interrupted Mr. Ticks, pricking up his ears. "I have heard about those cabs, but I have had no reliable information that they were a success."

"They ain't!" answered the professor, rubbing his right arm with a wince of memory. "Like a darn jack I took one for a spin. They go on three wheels; one in front, two behind. The driver, he sits in front and steers the shebang with the forward wheel. I hadn't gone two blocks when I leaned out of the window and the current struck me in the arm like a shot. You bet I yelled bloody murder and got out of that trap in two shakes of a colt's tail."

"How does all that electrical system work otherwise?" asked Mr. Ticks slowly, after some thought.

"Everybody perfectly wild over it. They won't allow a horse in town, nor even a ton of coal. Electricity is the big thing of the future. They fight electrical duels. Feller that stands the greatest number of alternating volts gets the apology. I saw a dog-fight in the street stopped by the Humane Society. A man would drop a wet sponge on the dog's head, another on his back, and turn on the circuit. They generally both dropped and never knew what struck 'em. Two dead dogs better than one fight. But they kept it all dark enough. These were jest experiments, they said. When they were done that they were going to have an electrical exhibition and invite the hull world. Why, I heard they were fool enough to put in a bill in the Legislature to have the name of Russell changed to Electra. As if Russell wasn't good enough for them!"

Mr. Ticks mused over these facts. Why was it that his acquisitive mind had not roamed over this field before? Perhaps because it was acquisitive, not imaginative. He could only account for the unpardonable omission on the ground that there were so many new competing Western cities, each with its peculiar advantages: and that there were so many strange electrical inventions new each day, that he had overlooked Russell and its progressive hobby. Besides, was he not on the staff of a Democratic paper, which would, perhaps, on the whole, prefer to ignore the new Republican State and its flourishing capital.

"How was all this power produced if coal was excluded?" asked Mr. Ticks.

"Oh, windmills did that. A half a dozen huge windmills, with wings, each as big as the High Tariff, were the first things you saw. They were nearly three hundred feet high----"

"Good Heavens! Look, man! Look down there! Don't you see something in the middle of the lake!" Swift pulled the professor over to his side of the car, and pointed directly below the balloon.

They had now struck a dead calm and the High Tariff floated motionless two thousand feet above the lake. Directly below them was something resting upon the waters. It looked fixed and dead. A log? A wreck? A raft? Slowly the outline took to itself the form of a boat.

"Have you a pair of glasses here?" asked Swift, all of a quiver.

The professor shoved one of Steward's field-glasses in his hand.

"There's a body in that boat!" cried Swift, after a prolonged examination. "No--Great God! It's alive! It moves! It's a woman!"

The professor took a long look.

"I guess you're right. She's a female!"

"But she must be saved," insisted Swift. "We must save her."

"Yes, Professor Ariel," said Mr. Statis Ticks, sententiously and with trembling dignity; "being a woman, she demands our attention, and, besides, as a survivor she can give us the information and suggest the figures we need."

"I'll do my best, gentlemen," said the professor, shaking, his head, "but it's mighty ticklish business. Supposing we drift into the deadly air. I don't know what that vapor means, but it evidently means the 'Sweet By and By.' Even the High Tariff wouldn't save us then!"

"Look here, professor," jerked out Swift, peremptorily, "it's got to be done. Now dry up!"

"All right, it's a go. I can stand it if you can."

So the valve was opened cautiously, and the balloon with majestic slowness, obedient to its master's hand, descended toward the Great Gopher lake, and hovered over the cockle-shell upon its malignant bosom.

As the High Tariff approached the little boat, Mr. Ticks looked at it eagerly.

"She's alive and unmarried," said the oracle, slowly.

"Why unmarried?" asked Swift, with a vague flutter of the heart. He had watched the figure of the woman attentively with the spyglass. It was rounded and supple. Masses of dark-brown hair hid her shoulders and face.

"Because," answered Mr. Ticks, "she is under eighteen. The statistics of this section of the West show that no female over eighteen years of age remains single."

The balloon had now descended to within three hundred feet of the boat. The girl in it did not stir. She lay with her head propped in the bow, so stiffly and so still that to all appearance she was a dead woman. But the three men agreed they had seen her move. Had her rescuers arrived too late?

"Let down the ladder!" cried Swift. "I'll go down and pick her up!" Ignorant how hard it is even for an experienced hand to climb up and down a rope ladder swinging in space, he clambered over the side of the car.

"Hold, young fellow!" Professor Ariel spoke sharply. By this time they were within two hundred feet of the water.

"Hold, I say!" yelled the professor in a rage, letting go the rope to the safety-valve and at the same time, grabbing a sand-bag. "If you stir out of this car I'll pitch ballast out and you'll never see your gal again!"

Swift stopped short. The rope-ladder swayed like a double snake beneath them. Its end was fifty feet above the boat, but, O horrors! It was also nearly fifty feet to one side of the boat--no human power could reach the lady from the ladder. A breath might blow the High Tariff even farther away.

At the same time the girl, doubtless aroused from her stupor by the professor's loud call, opened her eyes slowly. Above her loomed a gigantic monster. Was it a dream? Was this apparition a final terror added to her awful experience, sent to crush out the last remnant of her buoyant life and magnificent courage? She stared at the thing above her; then opened her mouth and gave a scream, such as can only be the result of full Western tracheal development.

"Oh! don't be frightened!" cried Swift quickly, "Don't! We've come to save you!" He could not think of anything more to say; and it occurred to him that he was a donkey to say anything.

But the professor, who had few delicate scruples, waved his hat and shouted:

"What's the matter with the High Tariff? She's all right!"

This yell, so frequently heard on Eastern land and sea, had penetrated even to the Great Gopher lake, and it reassured the girl more than anything else could have done.

She sat up weakly enough in the boat, and, after waving her hand, with feminine instinct tried to coil her hair and otherwise prepare herself as best she could to receive these angels from the clouds.

"Can you catch?" yelled the professor.

"Try me!" came back a voice undaunted, though enfeebled by long suffering.

The professor coiled a stout, light rope on his arm, shot out a few thundering orders about safety-valves and ballast, and cautiously, but with gymnastic quickness, descended the yielding rounds of the long ladder.

To the lady in the boat, to the passengers in the car it seemed hours before the professor reached the last of the two hundred rounds. It might have been forty seconds.

Swift called out to the young lady encouragingly:

"Hold out a little while longer and you'll be safe!"

"I'm all right now, since you have come." The young woman's trembling voice seemed to lay an actual emphasis on "you" that Swift was selfish enough to take to himself.

"How long have you been there?"

"Five days. I am nearly dead!"

"Poor, poor thing!" said Swift to himself. Tears of sympathy came into his eyes. Even Mr. Ticks blinked.

"She's office editor on some Russell daily," said Mr. Ticks after another long look through the field glasses.

"How do you know?" asked Swift in displeasure.

"She's got a stylograph behind her right ear and a yellow pad in her lap; besides, there are some clippings at the bottom of the boat."

By this time Professor Ariel had reached the lower end of his ladder.

"Now, catch!" he cried, hurling the light rope with sure skill. It whistled through the air and the end fell across the boat.

"Make fast to something, quick, now!"

As he spoke he felt a breath of air upon his face. The balloon careened over slightly and righted itself. The High Tariff was slowly settling to the water's surface. As quickly as he could the professor pulled the boat toward him.

"You can't. It's anchored," cried the girl. She tugged at the rope with the last strength of hope, and actually brought it up. The skiff yielded to the professor's clutch. By this time the balloon was so low down that the aeronaut's feet were nearly in the water.

"Throw out sand by the handful!" he ordered. This gentle lighting kept her at the right elevation.

Now the professor touched the boat. He jumped in. "Don't talk!" he cried, "hold out your arms instead!" He knotted the rope underneath her arms and tied the other end firmly to the ladder.

"We've got to hurry. Now, Miss! you keep cool, and we'll save you all right." It was a desperate chance.

"Now let go a couple of sandbags!" the order came up to Swift in the car.

Mr. Statis Ticks, with his hand upon the safety-valve, and hearing the order, became, for the first time in his life, confused. He pulled the safety-valve wide open, and the gas rushed furiously out. Even with the two sandbags overboard and lightened of fifty pounds dead weight, the balloon descended suddenly.

The professor saw the mistake at a glance. He yelled furiously:

"Good God! Close that valve or we're lost!"

But the mischief was already done.

"Heave it all out!" shrieked the professor, climbing up the ladder like a cat. The car of the balloon grazed the side of the boat. Mr. Statis Ticks, in such atonement as he could make for his awful error, reached over his thin arms. The girl arose, tottering to her feet, and, with a mighty effort, the gray, gaunt man lifted the heavy girl into the car. That was the most humane, and, at the same time, the maddest thing he could have done. Under the influence of the added weight the car struck the boat, over-turned it, and then dragged in the water.

"Out with everything!" howled the professor.

The three looked around in despair. The girl had dropped limp upon the floor, and the water was upon her. Above them was a cloud of the darkness of night. Cirrhus clouds scudded here and there in confusion. There was strange atmospheric howling in the distance, approaching nearer and nearer. The water assumed that angry hue it takes to itself before a desperate storm. The monstrous balloon writhed intelligently above them. All the sandbags were now pitched out. The High Tariff shook itself loose from the water. It rose. It fell. It rose again.

"Are we safe?" cried Swift, looking anxiously at the girl.

"Take off your coat and vest and shoes, everything, and chuck 'em over like lightning, and we'll see," answered the professor, solemnly.

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