“It’s blowing tolerably brisk,” St. Ives said, when he and Hasbro had come within a quarter mile of the bivouac and could see the smoke from Madame Leseur’s stove slanting out toward the Thames. They were in among the dunes, now, slowed by soft sand, and could occasionally gauge the breeze – which was out of the southwest – better than when they had been sheltered by trees. The sand wasn’t flying yet, St. Ives noted, which was a positive sign.
“We’d best launch quickly if we launch at all,” Hasbro said.
“Agreed. We’ll ascend at once, to my mind, and not a moment to lose. In London we’ll want the advantage of an aerial view. Hello, who the devil is this now…?”
Someone had appeared atop a distant dune and then disappeared again, certainly heading in their direction.
“I believe it to be Finn Conrad,” Hasbro said.
“I’d say the same, except that the boy surely went into London with Jack, Tubby, and Doyle.”
“That was his intention, certainly – or his orders, perhaps. I’ve often noted, however, that Finn has an independent spirit, which I quite admire.”
“As do I,” St. Ives said, “although I pray the boy survives it.”
Finn appeared again, crossing another hill. When he saw the two of them he waved heartily and broke into a run. A minute later he rounded the edge of a dune and joined them, scarcely out of breath and quite cheerful, which St. Ives ascribed to Eddie’s rescue.
“What a vast surprise it is to see you, Finn,” St. Ives said as they went on their way again. “We rather thought you were bound for London.”
“Yes, sir,” Finn said. “I very nearly was, too. Uncle Gilbert sent me to tell you that he saw a steam launch put out from the far shore three hours back. It was Narbondo, and no doubt about it, seen clearly through the birding glasses. There was a right large crew, he said, and barrels stowed in the stern.”
“Harry Merton’s launch, no doubt,” St. Ives said. “It’ll be in London by now, carried up by the tide as well as by steam. If I had anticipated such a thing we could have had our companions mount a watch on Tower Bridge as soon as they arrived. The launch would have passed beneath, and they might have effected some sort of surprise on the docks.”
“It rarely pays to look back,” Hasbro said. “The only dividend is regret.”
“That’s the solemn truth,” St. Ives said, “except perhaps in the curious case of Finn Conrad’s not going into London.”
“As for that,” Finn said, “I took the liberty of changing the main plan when I learned that Jack was wary of my going into the sewers to thwart the pirates. I was to be stowed with Mrs. Owlesby and the Keebles until the trouble was past. It came into my mind as how there had better be three each of us, above ground and below, so to speak. There would be a sort of balance if I went along with the two of you. So I stepped off the train car before it was clear of the station, shouted my intentions at the open window, and set out along the path. I thought it best not to ask permission beforehand, for I had made up my mind and didn’t want to seem to lack respect in the event that I was denied. That might be a sin. I know that, sir. But Square Davey used to tell me that without sin there can be no forgiveness, which is also a sin, and so it’s much of a muchness, as the man said.”
“I take your meaning,” St. Ives said. “And it’s just as well in any event. I quite agree with Jack. You’re not going into the sewers, Finn. And as for coming along with Mr. Hasbro and I, it is quite impossible. The two of us make up the crew, do you see? The dirigible doesn’t want the weight of a third hand, and there’s certainly more danger in the air than beneath the streets of London.”
“But I can’t miss out on the fun, sir.”
“You’ve saved Eddie’s life, Finn, and I can scarcely repay you for that. But I won’t put you in harm’s way, not for King Solomon’s treasure. If something were to happen to you… No,” St. Ives said, shaking his head with utter finality, “the thing is impossible. If Gilbert Frobisher needs another hand in the bustard search, perhaps you can spend some idle time here – a sort of holiday, although Mrs. St. Ives would welcome you home, as would Cleo and Eddie.”
Finn said nothing to this, and they tramped along in a heavy silence for the few minutes that it took to reach the camp. The dirigible rode at anchor as they had left it, but it shifted with the wind now, moving downward so that the mooring lines went slack, and then rising again on an updraft and straining against its tether like a living thing. From atop the sand hill that hid the ship from the bay, St. Ives saw a heavy line of purple clouds in the far distance – foul weather, without a doubt – and the air seemed to him to be laden with urgency, although it might as easily have been his mind.
Into one of the crates from Gleeson’s Mercantile they loaded beakers of water and sandwiches and other delicacies from Uncle Gilbert’s larder – things that could be eaten out of hand – hauling it straight down to the dirigible, where St. Ives ascended the ladder and climbed aboard. The deck beneath him shifted awkwardly on the billows of air, and he nearly pitched bodily through the open gate when he leaned out to pluck the crate from Hasbro’s shoulder.
“Cast her loose!” St. Ives shouted, and he sat in the pilot’s chair and focused his mind on the wheel and vertical tiller, reviewing the many things he had discovered during their earlier flight. With the wind up as it was, he would have little room for error, or at least that’s how he would play it, and he was happy that they had taken the time to describe the great circle when they were over London this morning. He knew something of the way the airship would sail with the wind in various quarters, and it seemed to him that if they sailed fairly close to the wind they might slant round into London with some success.
Finn, Uncle Gilbert, and Madame Leseur, who were waiting to help with the unmooring, stood at three of the corners, Barlow with his game leg and Mr. Hodgson at the fourth, holding tightly to the various mooring lines, with orders to drop them rather than to be lifted off the ground. Hasbro appeared and disappeared below, releasing the knots from the wooden stakes, which they would leave behind, since the stakes were easily replaceable and would do them precious little good in London. One more stake and Hasbro could leave the rest to Uncle Gilbert’s party and ascend the ladder himself.
The wind gusted now, and the airship fell alarmingly, St. Ives fully expecting the gondola to smash down onto the sward. He saw that Madame Leseur had dropped her line and thrown herself out of the way in order to avoid being hit, and he heard a general shouting break out, although it wasn’t sensible. The nose of the ship ascended sharply now, the gondola swinging on its pendulum. The mooring lines at the bow snapped tight and then jerked loose with an audible twang. The gondola rose skyward, almost certainly unmoored. St. Ives heard incoherent shouting again, and he looked down through the open window beside him, where Madame Leseur sat in the grassy sand, Uncle Gilbert standing beside her, both of them pointing upward in amazement. He couldn’t see Hasbro at all.
The ship was clearly unmoored, the wind blowing it out toward the Thames. St. Ives pushed down on the tiller, trying to land the craft along the shore of the bay, and he managed to turn into the wind enough to see the dunes receding behind him. His friends appeared to be quite small now, the lot of them looking upward, Madame Leseur and Hodgson helping Gilbert to his feet, Hasbro sprinting along in the wake of the ship, but powerless to do anything to stop it. There was no sign of Finn Conrad, and then St. Ives couldn’t see them at all as the airship turned away in a gust of wind. He was helpless before the weather, aloft and alone and damn-all he could do about it.
The craft reacted strangely, dragged down at the stern, it seemed to St. Ives, but there was nothing to be done save to establish control over it. The gate swung closed on its hinge, but failed to latch, and then swung open hard again as the ship listed to port, tearing itself straight off the hinges and disappearing. St. Ives fervently hoped that it wasn’t a sign of things to come, the ship falling apart piecemeal. Launching the airship had been a mistake, perhaps his last mistake. Already the encampment was some distance behind him, and it was clear that there was no going back. He thought of the obvious problem of landing and mooring the craft, wherever he ended up. The airship was pointed northwest now, and was straining against the wheel as St. Ives tried to force it farther around into the west.
He saw the Thames below, the ships and boats plying up and down in the dusk. There were stars visible on the western horizon, and the air was cool, with night coming on. The clouds he had seen from the dune were closer, the wind blowing them toward London, or so it seemed. He looked back toward the port side of the gondola to get a bearing along the shore of Egypt Bay before night hid it from him, but what he saw utterly baffled him. Finn Conrad stood in the open doorway, gripping the stanchions on either side, his hair blown back on his head. He nodded briskly and then turned to haul in the ladder.
“I grabbed hold of the ladder, sir,” he said, catching his breath as he took the seat that Hasbro had occupied on the trip out. “I couldn’t hold her back, though, and in a nonce I was swept aloft and too high to drop. Mr. Hasbro was holding onto one of the lines and dragging along the dunes, but the two of us didn’t make an anchor, and he dropped off.”
“Not from a height?”
“Not much of a one. He got up again, anyway, and for a moment I thought he would try to catch up to us, but it was no go.”
“And you climbed the ladder when the ship was rising?” St. Ives said incredulously.
“No more trouble than standing atop a moving horse, sir. Less so, with my hands to grip. Can we make our way back to camp, then?”
“No, we cannot,” St. Ives said. “Not in this wind.”
“But what of Mr. Hasbro?”
“He must find his own way into London, which should be no great thing. It’s the two of us that will be hard pressed to get there in time to be of use. Take a look through that lens there and try the controls of the telescope, Finn. It’ll move opposite what seems right, but you’ll see the way of it soon enough. We’ll need to know where we are if we’re to find our way. I’m damned glad to see you, I can tell you that.”
Finn smiled at him, looking around the gondola now and nodding his head, as if he were happy with what he saw.
St. Ives realized that he himself meant what he said – heartily so. He had badly wanted a navigator, and now he had one. There was a look of profound joy on Finn’s face, too, as he looked out over the patchwork of fields and meadows north of the river, still visible in the waning light, and it seemed to St. Ives that the boy’s evident joy was worth a stack of ten-pound notes.
The Thames itself was some distance behind them now, a narrow black ribbon dotted with tiny, moving lights, and although they were making some headway, it wasn’t enough. In the west lay the burnished gold remnants of the sunset above the Dover Strait. The sky, intensely purple overhead and deepening to black in the east, was already coming out in stars, the moon up, the evening having passed away in what seemed like minutes. God knows where they’d find themselves if they didn’t soon put down in a cow pasture and abandon the airship – on the moon itself. St. Ives considered the possibility that the winds might diminish, or perhaps blow in some contrary direction at a higher altitude – something that would be useful to discover soon. He drew back on the tiller, and the airship canted upward, still drifting inexorably north. Eddie was safe, he told himself. His own fate, and that of Finn Conrad, must be given over to the eccentricities of moving air.