The Outlaws of the Air | Page 9

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