Plunged into the abyss of mist and
flame by the attack of the Air Trust épervier,
Gabriel had abandoned himself for lost. Death,
mercifully swift, he had felt could be his only fate;
and with this thought had come no fear, but only a
wild joy that he had shared this glorious battle,
sure to end in victory! This was his only thought this,
and a quick vision of Catherine.
Then, as he hurtled down and over,
whirling drunkenly in the void, all clear perception
left him. Everything became a swift blur, a rushing
confusion of terrible wind, and lurid light, and the
wild roar of myriad explosions.
Came a shock, a sudden checking of
the plunge, a long and rapid glide, as the DeVreeland
stabilizer of the machine, asserting its automatic
action, brought it to a level keel once more.
But now the engine was stopped.
Gabriel, realizing that some chance still existed
to save his life, wrenched madly at his levers.
“If I can volplane down!”
he panted, sick and dizzy, “there may yet be
hope!”
Hope! Yes, but how tenuous!
What chance had he, coasting to earth at that low
level, to avoid the detonating bombs, the aerial shrapnel
being hurled aloft, the poisonous gas, the surface-fire?
Here, there and yonder, terrific explosions
were shattering the echoes, as the Air Trust batteries
swept the fog with their aeroplane-destroying missiles.
Whither should he steer? He knew not. All
sense of direction was lost, nor could the compass
tell him anything. A glance at the barometric
gauge showed him an altitude of but 850 feet, and this
was decreasing with terrible rapidity.
Strive as he might, he could not check the swift descent.
“God send me a soft place to
fall on!” he thought, grimly, still clinging
to his machine and laboring to jockey it under control.
Close by, a thunderous detonation
crashed through the mist. His machine reeled
and swerved, then plunged more swiftly still.
All became vague, to Gabriel a dream a
nightmare!
Crash!
Flung from the seat, he sprawled through
treetops, caught himself, fell to a lower limb, slid
off and landed among thick bushes; and through these
came to earth.
The wrecked ’plane, whirling
away and down, fell crashing into the river that rushed
cascading by, and vanished in the firelit mist.
Stunned, yet half-conscious, Gabriel
presently sat up and pressed his right hand to his
head. His left arm felt numb and useless; and
when he tried to raise it, he found it refused his
will.
“Where am I, now, I’d
like to know?” he muttered. “Not dead,
anyhow not yet!”
A continuous roar of explosions shuddered
the air, mingled with the booming of the mighty Falls.
Shouts and cheers and the rattle of machine-guns assailed
his ear. The glare of the search-lights, through
the mist and steam, was darkened momentarily by thick,
greasy coils of smoke, shot through by violent flashes
of light as explosions took place.
Gabriel struggled to his feet, and peered about him,
“Still alive!” said he.
“And I must get back into the fight! That’s
all that matters, now the fight!”
He knew not, yet, where he was; but
this mattered nothing. His machine had, in fact,
fallen near the river bank, in the eastern section
of Prospect Park, beyond the Goat Island bridge this
region of the Park having been left outside the fortifications,
in the extension of the Air Trust plant.
The trees, here, had saved his life.
Had he smashed to earth a hundred yards further north,
he would have been shattered against high walls and
roofs.
Still giddy, but sensing no pain from
his injured left arm, Gabriel made way toward the
scene of conflict. He knew nothing of how the
tide of battle was going; nothing of his position;
nothing as to what men he would first meet, his comrades
or the enemy.
But for these considerations he had
no thought. His only idea, fixed and grim, was
“The fight!” Dazed though he still was,
he nerved himself for action.
And so, pressing onward through the
livid glare, through the night shattered by stupendous
détonations, he drew his revolver and broke into
a run.
Strange evidences of the battle now
became evident. He saw an unexploded grenade
lying beside a wounded man who grasped at him and moaned
with pain. Over a wrecked motor-car, greasy smoke
was rising, as it burned. Louder shouting drew
him down a path to the left. Masses of moving
figures became dimly visible, through the mist.
And now, stabs of fire pierced the confusion and clamorous
night.
Gabriel jerked up his revolver, as
he ran, the terrible weapon shooting bullets charged
with hydrocyanic-acid gas.
A man rose before him, shouting.
Gabriel levelled the weapon; but a
glimpse of red ribbon in the other’s coat brought
it down again.
“Comrade!” cried he. “Where’s
the attack?”
The other pointed.
“Gabriel! Is that you?” he gasped,
staring.
“Yes! I fell machine smashed come
on!”
“Hurt?”
“No! Arm, maybe. No matter! God!
What’s this?”
Toward them a sudden swirl of men
came sweeping, stumbling, shouting, in pandemonium.
“Our men!” cried Gabriel,
starting forward again. “We’re being
driven! Rally, here! Rally!”
Beyond, a louder crackling sounded.
Here, there, men plunged down. The retreat was
becoming a rout!
Yelling, Gabriel flung himself upon the men.
“Back there!” he vociferated.
“Back, and at the walls! Come on, boys,
now! Come on!”
His voice, well known to nearly all,
thrilled them again with new determination. A
shout rose up; it swelled, deepened, roared to majestic
volume.
Then the tide turned.
Back went the fighting men of the
great Revolution. back at the machine-guns, mounted
in the breached walls.
Gabriel was caught and whirled along
in that living tide. He found himself at its
crest, its foremost wave. Behind him, a roaring,
rushing river of men. Before the Inner Citadel.
Gathering speed and weight as it rolled
up, the wave broke like an ocean surge over a crumbling
dyke.
Down went the Air Trust gunners and
the guns, down, down to annihilation!
Through the breach, foaming and swelling
with irresistible power burst the tides of victory.
Silenced now were the Trust guns.
The steam-jets had none to man them. Far aloft,
a last explosion told the death story of the final
épervier.
Here and there, from windows and corners
of the wrecked and blazing plant, a little intermittent
firing still continued; but now the hearts of these
Air Trust defenders scabs, thugs and scourings
of the slum had turned to water, in face
of the triumphant army of the working class.
They fled, those mercenaries, and
all the ways and inner strongholds such
as still were left now lay open to Gabriel
and his comrades.
Lighted by the blazing buildings and
the vast fire torch of an oxygen-tank off to eastward,
they stormed the final citadel, the steel and concrete
laboratories, heart and soul and center of the hellish
world-conspiracy.
Stormed it, as it began to blaze and
crumble; stormed it, in search of Flint and Waldron,
would-be murderers of the world.
Stormed it, only to see Herzog gnash
his teeth upon the flask, and fall, and die; only
to know that there, within the rock-hewn, steel-lined
tanks, below, their enemies had still outwitted them!
The swift onrush of the fire drove the victors back.
“Out, comrades! Out
of here!” shouted Gabriel, facing the attackers.
None too soon. Hardly had they
beaten a retreat, back into the vast courtyard again,
strewn with the dead, when a second oxygen tank exploded,
overwhelming the laboratory building with tons of flying
steel.
Leaping toward the zenith, a giant
tongue of flame roared heavenward. So intense
the heat had now become, that the solid brick and concrete
walls, exposed to the direct verberation of the flame,
began to crack and crumble.
Gabriel ordered a general retreat
of the attacking army. Victory was won; and to
stay near that gushing tornado of flame, with new explosions
bound to occur as the other oxygen tanks let go, must
mean annihilation.
So the triumphant Army of the Proletaire
fell back and back still further, out into the wrecked
and trampled Park, and all through the city, where
shattered buildings, many of them ablaze, and broken
trees, dead bodies, smashed ordnance and chaos absolute
told something of the story of that brief but terrible
war.
Ringed round the perishing ruins of
the Air Trust they stood, these mute, thrilled thousands.
Silence fell, now, as they watched the roaring, ever-mounting
flames that, whipped by the breeze, crashed upward
in long and cadenced tourbillions of white, of awful
incandescence.
And the river, ever-hurrying, always
foaming on and downward to its titanic plunge, sparkled
with eerie lights in that vast glow. Its voice
of thunder seemed to chant the passing and the requiem
of the Curse of the World, Capitalism.