"Lord above!" breathed Bohannan, chewing at his nails. "We're off!"
Neither the Master nor Captain Alden moved, spoke, manifested any
excitement whatever. Both might have been graven images of coolness.
The Celt, however, got up and leaned at the window-jamb, unable to
keep still. He turned suddenly to Alden.
"Come, man!" he exclaimed, half angrily. "Got no heart in you, eh? No
interest? Come along out of that, now, and see what's what!"
He laid hold on the captain, and drew him to the window as the airship
accelerated her plunge along the rails. The hum of the propellers
had now risen to a kind of throaty roar; the craft was shaking with
strange quivers that no doubt would cease if she but once could launch
herself into the air. Under her, in and in, the shining metal rails
came running swiftly and more swiftly still, gleaming silver-like
under the vivid beam of the searchlight.
Wind began to rise up against the glass of the pilot-house; the wind
of _Nissr's_ own making.
Cool as if in his own easy-chair in the observatory, the Master sat
there, hand on wheel. Then all at once he reached for the rising-plane
control, drew it over, and into the telephone spoke sharply:
"Full speed ahead, now! Give her all she's got!"
A shout, was it? Many shouts, cries, execrations! But where? Over
the roar of the propellers, confused sounds won to the men in the
pilot-house.
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