The Outlaws of the Air | Page 9

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 or incredulity, and so he answered laughingly-
"I had no idea that a Utopia existed on earth in these degenerate days, but I am delighted to learn that I am wrong, and I'm also much obliged to you for coming out to us. We've disabled our engines and got our spars badly knocked about. But won't you come on board and let us introduce ourselves?"
"Thank you, if you'll throw me a rope, I will. Never mind the gangway ladder. Here, Tom, take the wheel, and don't let those girls run away with you."
"That's just what he'd like us to do," came in the laughing tones of a girl's voice from under the forward awning as the young fellow caught the rope and swung himself lightly over the Calypso's rail.
"I didn't know you bad ladies on board," said Sir Harry, meeting him at the gangway and holding