Death Devil's Bridge (13 page)

Dickson grunted. “I hope you don't think that's funny.”

Lord Bradford stepped forward. “The trick, gentlemen, is to drive generally southwestward, keeping the balloon in sight if you can. If you experience difficulties or find yourself stranded, locate the nearest telegraph office and send a message to Dedham.”

Bateman groaned. “Harwich to Brightlingsea! For God's sake, man, we could be motoring for hours along that deserted coast!”

Dickson smiled archly. “Chin up, Arnold. I'm sure you can find a team of horses to tow you when your battery gives out.”

Bateman looked dark, but Charles knew that Dickson's insult had truth in it. Unfortunately, the limited charge of the batteries gave the electric car a much smaller range and slower speed than either steam- or petrol-powered cars. The Bateman Electric would never finish the chase.

Dickson pushed out his mouth. “Keep the balloon in sight, you say. That might be easier said than done.”

“Perhaps,” Rolls said. “We shall try to maintain an altitude that will make it possible for you to see us easily. If we are too low, you will lose us. But if we are too high, we will outdistance you.”

“Sounds tricky,” Bateman said darkly.

“How long do you suppose your flight will take?” asked Frank Ponsonby.

“We should make ten knots in this wind,” Rolls replied, “so we will reach the coast in a little over an hour.” He frowned. “One other thing. Some of the village constables may not know that Parliament has raised the speed limit to twelve miles an hour. They may impose the old limit.”

“Strictly speaking,” Bateman said, scowling, “they would be right. The new law does not take effect until November.”

“Strictly speaking, that is so,” Rolls conceded, “although constables who are informed of the change will not likely make a case of it. Still, you must beware. And don't forget that some villagers are not enthusiastic proponents of the motorcar.” He smiled disarmingly. “Adds to the excitement, doesn't it?”

Dickson, examining the map, did not smile. “When I agreed to drive in this chase, I had no idea of the conditions. I don't like the looks of these lanes. They meander. They are no doubt narrow and dangerous.”

Ponsonby chuckled mirthlessly. “A pity for you, Arthur. You should have waited for a race on a flat, smooth straightaway. That heavy boiler hardly fits your steamer for rough terrain.”

“My boiler is not so heavy as Bateman's batteries,” Dickson retorted angrily. “And as for speed, you will see. At least I won't be giddy with fatigue at the finish, with my teeth jolted out of my skull.”

“I wonder whether it would not be better,” Bateman said nervously, “to delay a bit. The wind might turn easterly this afternoon. The roads are better in the western part of the county.”

“This discussion,” Bradford said emphatically, “is of absolutely no purpose. We have already agreed to the conditions of the race. What's more, pairs of men have been dispatched to Brightlingsea, Weeley Heath, and Great Oakley, to recover the balloon should it touch down in those vicinities.” He looked at Rolls. “Are we ready for the launch?”

“We are,” Rolls said, and raised his hand peremptorily. “Good luck, gentlemen.”

As the drivers left for their vehicles, Royce, his arms still crossed, leaned toward Charles. “Brash little poppinjay, isn't he?”

Charles grinned. “Rather. But you should become acquainted with him, Royce. He has quite a good mechanical mind, and a great energy. He also seems to have an entrepreneurial spirit. Perhaps the two of you could collaborate on something in the motorcar line.”

“I doubt it,” Royce said with a dry laugh. “Should I undertake any work in that direction, I shall do it alone. I cannot think what contribution an undisciplined boy could make to any serious engineering enterprise.” He frowned. “I am sorry, Sir Charles, to be leaving before you and Rolls are on the ground once again. I had not expected to be summoned back to Manchester this weekend.”

“I hope you find your emergency already resolved when you return to your factory,” Charles said. “Perhaps next time you are here, I will have implemented your suggestions for improvements, and we will have more time to spend with Lady Kathryn's roses.”

He was interrupted by a clamor of loud, hostile voices. Turning, Charles saw a crowd of shouting villagers and farmers some twenty or thirty strong. They had formed ranks four abreast and were marching up the lane, waving sticks and signs that read “No Balloons!” and “No Motor Cars!” Roger Thornton, wearing a caped jacket, a deerstalker on his head, marched at the head of the motley column, flanked on either side by shouting men.

“There they are, damn it,” Bradford said furiously. “That's the trouble I wanted to tell you about, Charles. Some of the local people have organized a protest against the chase, and Thornton has joined them. That man beside him is their ringleader, Whipple. Young Jessup is there too.”

The fete-goers, suddenly subdued, gave way, and made a wide aisle for the noisy marchers. They seemed to be aiming for the croquet lawn, where the balloon, now tended by the ground crew, tugged at its mooring lines.

The vicar came up to Charles. “We had better send for the constable,” he said. “And I shall go and have a talk with the squire. I doubt that he will allow any serious trouble, but—”

Sam Holt rushed up. “There's goin' to be the devil to pay!” he shouted, wild with excitement. “Some of those men are carrying pitchforks. They're after the balloon!”

Rolls grabbed Charles's arm. “There's no time to delay,” he said quietly, speaking under the rising din. “To the balloon, Sir Charles, now!”

Kate had come running out onto the terrace, frightened. “What's happening?” she cried. “Who are those men? Charles, what—”

Regardless of the crowd around them, Charles put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her quickly. “I'm off,” he said. “Ask Bradford. He'll tell you what is going on.”

“Now!” Rolls shouted.

“I'm with you,” Charles said, and dashed for the balloon, with Bradford, Royce, and the vicar at his heels. The drivers had scattered in the direction of their motorcars, which were warmed up and ready to go.

A moment or two later, Charles and Rolls were in the gondola, preparing to launch. But the marchers had worked themselves into a frenzy. Shouting and brandishing rakes and pitchforks, they broke ranks and charged the balloon, as Bradford, Royce, and the ground crew struggled to push them back. Roger Thornton strode forward and laid angry hold of the gondola.

“There's no use your launching!” he shouted in an impassioned voice. “We intend to prevent the motorcars from starting. The chase is off, d'ye hear? The chase is off!”

“The chase is off!” the marchers shouted, and sent up a wildly triumphant cheer. “The chase is off!”

The vicar pushed through the crowd, and put his hand on Thornton's shoulder. “Don't be a fool, Roger,” he pleaded. “This sort of animosity can only—”

“Are you ready, Sir Charles?” Rolls cried, preparing to cast off.

Royce, holding off an angry attacker, shouted over his shoulder, “If you don't go now, you may not go at all!”

“One more minute,” Charles said desperately, reaching for his checklist. “I'm not quite ready.”

There was another wild cry. The vicar was shoved aside as the marchers surged angrily forward, rocking the fragile gondola.

“Cast off!” Rolls cried, and the balloon began to rise.

“Then you have discovered the means of guiding a balloon?”
“Not at all, that is a Utopian idea.”
“Then you will go—”
“Withersoever Providence wills...”

—Five Weeks in a Balloon
JULES VERNE, 1869

 

 

 

T
o Charles, the balloon felt like a live thing. The gondola surged under him, and his stomach lurched as it did when his horse cleared a high stone fence. They were rising—no,
shooting
up, in an ascent that was beyond their control, beyond anyone's control. In two beats of the heart—and Charles's heart was beating fast with excitement—they were twenty feet above the milling crowd. The mooring lines writhed like snakes, just out of reach of the grasping hands of the marchers, who were furious to have been cheated out of their victory.

The vicar pulled off his bright-colored scarf and began to wave it. “Goodbye!” he called, his high, thin voice almost lost in the rough hubbub of shouts and jeers.

“Good luck!” Bradford shouted. “Telegraph as soon as you've set down.”

But through the din, it was Kate's sweeter voice that rang in Charles's ears, calling with love, “Goodbye, Charles, goodbye, my dear!”

For the moment, there was almost no breeze. The balloon was still rising straight up, as rapidly and effortlessly as if it were a bobbin on a string, pulled upward by a giant somewhere above the clouds. Looking down, Charles saw that the melee, rather than being diminished by the balloon's departure, seemed to be growing. Bradford had picked something up from the ground, a tool of some sort, it seemed to be, and was waving it frantically. Whatever it was, the object renewed the crowd's frenzy, and it surged around Bradford until he was all but swallowed up.

“Can you make out that thing in Marsden's hand?” Rolls asked, leaning over the rim of the gondola. “I trust it wasn't a piece of our equipment.”

Charles reached for his field glasses and trained them on the scene below, but the breeze was freshening, wafting them swiftly eastward, and the distance was already too great to make out detail.

“I can't see, I'm afraid,” Charles said. He shifted his glasses to the line of motorcars. “It looks as if the drivers will be able to get underway while the marchers are still scuffling, though. There goes Albrecht in Marsden's Daimler, off in a cloud of dust.” He frowned. “But he's alone.”

“Still
no Dunstable?” Rolls was dismayed. “Something has happened to the man, Sir Charles, I know it! He is convinced that Albrecht will win, of course, and he has been planning to ride with him ever since the chase was thought of. He would not have missed it, if he had to drag himself on his hands and knees.”

“At two hundred feet in the air and rising,” Charles said, “there is little we could do to help him.”

“We shall have enough to do to help ourselves,” Rolls said ruefully, picking up a tangle of lines. “But I'll take the joys and risks of the wild blue over a battle with pitchforks, any day, won't you? I say, though, I could cert'nly wish for a more deliberate departure. That lot rather hurried us off.”

But Charles, looking wonderingly about him, did not reply. Since his schooldays as a Woolwich military cadet, he had been enthralled by maps, fascinated by their wonderful detail, captivated by their precise location of streams and bridges, roads and villages. Now, the landscape was spread out below him just as he had so often spread a map on a table for study, but in even more exquisite detail than any map could represent it.

To the north and west of the Bishop Keep woodlands, he could see the village of Dedham, the square gray tower of St. Mary the Virgin rising commandingly in its center. To one side of the church was the bright green of churchyard cemetery, to the other the red tiled roofs of High Street. Mill Lane led to the iron bridge across the silver ribbon of the River Stour, downstream from the locks that raised and lowered the barges out of the mill pond. Beyond the bridge, the river wound its way down to Flatford, through velvety meadows speckled with black-and-white cattle. A few miles to the east and north, the Stour emptied into the silvery flats of Seafield Bay, where Charles could make out the harbor towns of Manningtree and Lawford, and even Mistley, farther to the east. Farther eastward still, the horizon receded into the flat gray-blue of the North Sea. The sense of distance and range he had honed during his brief career as an officer in the Royal Engineers told him that they were two thousand feet above the ground—almost as high as Rolls aimed to go, apparently, for he began to pull on the red-painted ripcord that opened a valve in the top of the balloon, reducing their rate of ascent They were moving rapidly now, too, as the winds caught the gaily striped balloon and began to sweep it quickly eastward, the gondola swinging beneath like a giant wicker pendulum. With no means of steering, the balloon would go with the wind, and they too, willy-nilly.

Charles recalled himself from the scenic vista. Their departure had been something less than orderly, and he had not been able to go through his prelaunch checklist. His first thought was for his photographic gear—after all, he had joined this expedition in order to take pictures. Moving carefully, for there was no room to spare in the small gondola, he found the canvas bags he had instructed Lawrence to stow, containing two hand cameras (one fitted with a long-focus lens), a box of dark slides, and an exposure meter and its supply of sensitive paper. With the bags was a small packet, and Charles smiled when he opened a corner of it to see sandwiches, biscuits, and an apple. Kate had seen to his lunch.

He took out the camera with the long-focus lens, loaded a changing box, and began to shoot. Having taken a half-dozen photos, he was putting the camera away when his eye fell on a tiny crockery pot, its lid held tight with a wire bail, half-hidden under a canvas bag. Curious, he opened the pot to find a red-colored grease. He worked a small quantity between his thumb and forefinger, then sniffed it and wrinkled his nose. Lard or suet or some such organic lubricant, stirred into a mass of stewed vegetation, colored with something red—blood? Whatever the stuff was, it had a sharp, peculiar odor, quite distinct.