this conflict of two wills. Silence came, save for the droning purr
of the engines, the buffeting gusts of wind along the fuselage, the
slight trembling of the gigantic fabric as it hurled itself eastward
through the high air of night.

"This is inexcusable," said the Master, crisply. "I give you one last
chance. Either permit treatment, or consider yourself under arrest."

"Before you proceed to such lengths," the captain replied, "I ask one
favor of you."

"What favor?"

"Two minutes alone with you, sir."

"Come with me!"

The Master turned and left the sick-bay. Alden rose, weakly enough,
and followed him. As the door opened and closed again, the engines
hummed louder, then sank again to their dull murmur. Bohannan remained
with the doctor.

"Well, faith, can you beat that?" exclaimed the major. "There's an
Ethiopian in the woodpile, sure enough. Something strange, here, I'm
thinking! Something damned strange here!"

"Is there anything here that _isn't_?" asked Lombardo, with an odd
laugh, as he turned back to the cot where lay the dying New Zealander.

Alone in his cabin with Captain Alden, the Master faced the
insubordinate member of his crew with an expression of hard
implacability. The captain stood there determinedly confronting him.
His right hand held to the table for support. His left sleeve was
sodden with blood; the left arm, thrust into the breast of his coat,
was obviously numbed, paralyzed.

"Well, sir, what have you to say for yourself?" coldly demanded the
Master.

"I repeat that I cannot--and will not--submit myself to any medical
attention from any member of this expedition."

"This is dangerous ground you're treading!" the Master exclaimed. His
voice had deepened, grown ominous. "You understood perfectly well the
conditions of the undertaking--unquestioning obedience to my orders,
with life-and-death powers in my hands, to punish insubordination."

"I understand all that, sir," answered the captain. "I understand it
now. Nevertheless, I repeat my refusal to obey."

"By Allah! There must be some deep cause here!" ejaculated the Master,
his eyes smoldering. "I intend to work my will, but I am a man of
reason. You are entitled to a hearing state your objection, sir. Speak
up!"

The captain's answer was to raise his right hand and to loosen the
cords securing the celluloid mask. As the Master watched, steadying
his nerves against the shock of what he felt must be a nameless horror
underneath, Alden tore away the mask and threw it upon the table.

"Here is my reason, sir," said he very quietly, "for not permitting
Lombardo, or any other man here, to dress my wound."

"Good God!" exclaimed the Master, shaken clean out of his aplomb. The
shock he had expected had come to him, but in far other guise than
he had counted on. With clenched fists and widening eyes he peered at
Alden.

The face he now suddenly beheld, under the clear white light of the
cabin, was not the hideous, mangled wreck of humanity--The Kaiser's
Masterpiece--he had expected to see.

No--far, and very far from that!

It was the face of a woman. One of the most beautiful women his eyes
ever had rested on.




CHAPTER XII


THE WOMAN OF ADVENTURE

A moment's utter silence followed. The woman, with another gesture,
drew off the aviator's cap she had worn; she pulled away the
tight-fitting toupee that had been drawn over her head and that had
masked her hair under its masculine disguise. With deft fingers she
shook out the masses of that hair--fine, dark masses that flowed down
over her shoulders in streams of silken glory.

"Now you see me as I am!" said she, her voice low and just a little
trembling, but wholly brave. "Now, perhaps, you understand!"

"I--but you--" stammered the Master, for the first time in all his
life completely at a loss, dazed, staggered.

"Now you understand why I couldn't--wouldn't--let Dr. Lombardo dress
my wound."

"By the power of Allah! What does all this mean?" The Master's voice
had grown hoarse, unsteady. "A woman--_here_--!"

"Yes, a woman! The woman your expedition needs and must have, if death
and sickness happen, as happen they will The woman you would never
have allowed to come--the woman who determined to come at all hazards,
even death itself. The woman who--"

"But, Lord Almighty! Your papers! Your decorations!"

"Quite genuine," she answered, smiling at him with dark eyes,
unafraid. Through all his dazed astonishment he saw the wonder of
those eyes, the perfect oval of that face, the warm, rich tints of her
skin even though overspread with the pallor of suffering.

"Madam," said he, trying to rally, "this is past all words No
explanation can make amends for such deception. Still, the secret is
yet yours--and mine. Until I decide what to do, it must be respected."

Past her he walked, to the door, and snapped the catch. She, turning,
leaned against the table and smiled. He saw the gleam of perfect
teeth. A strange figure she made, with loose hair cascading over her
coat, with knickers and puttees, with wounded arm slung in the breast
of her jacket.

"Thank you for your consideration," she smiled. "It is on a par with
my conception of your character."

"Pray spare me your comments," he replied, coldly. He returned to his
desk, but did not sit down there. Against it he leaned, crossed his
arms, and with somewhat lowered head studied her. "Your explanation,
madam?"

"My papers are _en règle_," said she. "My decorations are genuine.
Numbers of women went through the great war as men. I am one of them,
that is all. Many were never discovered. Those who were, owed it to
wounds that brought them under observation. Had I not been wounded,
you would never have known. I could have exercised my skill as a
nurse, without the fact of my sex becoming apparent.

"That was what I was hoping for and counting on. I wanted to serve
this expedition both as a flyer and as a nurse. Fate willed otherwise.
A chance bullet intervened. You know the truth. But I feel confident,
already, that my secret is safe with you."

The light on her forehead, still a little ridged and reddened by the
pressure of the edge of the mask, showed it broad, high, intelligent.
Her eyes were deep and eager with a kind of burning determination. The
hand she had rested on the table clenched with the intensity of her
appeal:

"Let me stay! Let me serve you all! I ask no more of life than that!"

The Master, knotting together the loose threads of his emotion, came a
step nearer.

"Your name, madam!" he demanded.

"I cannot tell you. I am Captain Alfred Alden to you, still. Just
that. Nothing more."

"You continue insubordinate? Do you know, madam, that for this I could
order you bound hand and foot, have you laid on the trap in the lower
gallery, and command the trap to be sprung?"

His face grew hard, deep-lined, almost savage as he confronted
her--the only being who now dared stand against his will. She smiled
oddly, as she answered:

"I know all that, perfectly well. And I know the open Atlantic lies a
mile or two below us, in the empty night. Nevertheless, you shall
not learn my name. All I shall tell you is this--that I am really an
aviator. 'Aviatrix' I despise. I served as 'Captain Alden' for eight
months on the Italian front and twenty-one months on the Western. I am
an ace. And--"

"Never mind about all that!" the Master interrupted, raising his
hand. "You are a woman! You are here under false colors. You gained
admission to this Legion by means of false statements--"

"Ah, no, pardon me! Did I ever claim to be a man?"

"The impression you gave was false, and was calculated to be so. This
is mere quibbling. A lie can be acted more effectively than spoken.
All things considered, your life--"

"Is forfeited, of course. I understand that perfectly well. And
that means two things, as direct corollaries. First, that you lose
a trained flyer and a woman with Red Cross training; a woman you may
sorely need before this expedition is done. Second, you deny a human
being who is just as eager as you are for life and the spice of
adventure, just as hungry for excitement as you or any man here--you
deny me all this, everything, just because a stupid accident of birth
made me a woman!"

Her clenched right fist passionately struck the table at her side.

"A man's world! That's what this world is called; that's what it is!
And you--of all men--are living down to that idea! You--_the Master!_"

The man's face changed color. It grew a little pale, with deepening
lines. He passed a hand over his forehead, a hand that for the first
time trembled with indecision. His strong teeth gnawed at his lower
lip. Never before had he lacked words, but now he found none.

The woman exclaimed, her voice incisive, eager, her eyes burning:

"It is because you _are_ a master of men, and of yourself, that I have
taken this chance! It is because I have heard of your absolute sense
of justice and fair play, your appreciation of unswerving loyalty
and of the heart that dares! Now you understand. I have only one more
thing to say."

"And what is that?"

"If you respect my secret and let me go with you on this great
enterprise, no man aboard the Eagle of the Sky will serve you any more
loyally than I. No man will venture more, endure more, suffer more--if
suffering has to be. I give you my word of honor on that, as a fighter
and--a woman!"

"Your word of honor as--"

"A woman! Do you understand?"

Silence again. Their eyes met. The Master's were first to lower.

"Your life is spared," he answered. "That is a concession to your sex,
madam. Had you been a man, I would inevitably have put you to death.
As it is, you shall live. And you shall remain with us--"

"Thank God for that!"

"Till we reach land. There you must leave _Nissr_."

"I shall not leave it alive," the woman declared, her eyes showing
dilated pupils of resentment, of anger. "I haven't come this far to be
thrown aside like a bit of worthless gear!"

"You and your machine will be cast off, over the first land we touch,"
the Master repeated doggedly. "Whatever information you may give,
cannot injure us, and--"

"Stop! Not another word like that, to me!"

Her eyes were blazing now; her right fist quivered in air.

"You accuse me of treason," she cried. "Oh, what injustice, what--"

"I accuse you of nothing, save of having deceived us all, and of being
very much _déplacée_ here. The deception shall continue, as far as the
others are concerned. You came to us, as a man. You shall go as
one. Your secret shall be absolutely respected, by me. But, madam,
understand one thing clearly."

"What is that?" she demanded, still trembling with indignation.

"The fact that you are a woman has no weight with me, so far as your
persuading me to let you remain of the party may be concerned. Women
have never counted in my life. Their wiles, arts, graces, tears, mean
nothing to me. Their entreaties seem futile. Their arguments appear
like trivial puerilities.

"Other men are sometimes influenced by such. I tell you now, madam, I
shall not be. Your entreaties will have no weight. When the time
comes for you to leave _Nissr_, I trust you will go quietly, with no
distressing scene."

A certain grimness showed in the woman's face, making it sternly
heroic as the face of Medea or Zenobia. She answered:

"Do you think me the type that entreats, that sheds tears, that
exercises wiles?"

"We won't discuss your personality, madam! This interview is drawing
to an end. Until we reach land, nothing can be done. Nothing, but to
look out for your injury. Common humanity demands that your wound be
dressed. Is it a serious hurt?"

"Not compared with the hurt you are inflicting, in banishing me from
the Flying Legion!"

"Come, madam, refrain from extravagant speeches! What is your wound?"

"A clean shot through the left arm, I think, a little below the
shoulder."

"I realize, of course, that to have Dr. Lombardo dress it would reveal
your sex. Could you in any way manage the dressing, yourself?"

"If given antiseptics and bandages, yes."

"They shall be furnished, also a stateroom."

"That will excite comment."

"It may," the Master answered, "but there is no other way. I will
manage everything privately, myself. Then I will let it transpire that
there was some injury to the face, as well, and that the mask had to
be removed. I can let the impression get about that you refused to
allow anyone but me see your mutilated face.

"I can also hint that I have helped you with the dressing, and have
ordered you to keep your stateroom for a while. When it comes time to
leave _Nissr_, I will dispatch you as a messenger. Thus your secret
will remain intact. Besides, no one will dare inquire into anything.
No one ventures to discuss or question any decision of mine."

Something of hard arrogance sounded in the Master's voice. The woman
thanked him, her eyes penetrant, keenly intelligent, even a trifle
mocking. One would have said she was weighing this strange man in
the balance of judgment, was finding him of sterling stuff, yet was
perhaps cherishing a hope, not untinged with malice, that some day a
turn of fate might humble him. The Master seemed to sense a little of
this, and took a milder tone.

"I must compliment you on one thing, madam," said he, with just the
wraith of a smile. "Your acting has been perfection itself. And the
fortitude with which you have borne the discomfort of that mask for
more than a week, to achieve your ends, cannot be too highly praised."

"Thank you," she replied. "I would have stood _that_ a year, to be one
of your Legion! But now--tell me! Isn't there any possibility of your
reversing your decision?"

"None, madam."

"Isn't there anything I can say or do to--"

"Remember, you told me just a minute ago you were not the type of
woman who entreats!"




CHAPTER XIII


THE ENMESHING OF THE MASTER

She fell silent, biting her full lip. Something in her eyes shamed the
man. Not for all his inflexible sternness could he feel that he had
come out a winner in this, their first encounter. A woman--one of the
despised, ignored creatures--had deceived him. She had disobeyed his
orders. She had flatly thrown down the gage of battle to him, that
she would never leave _Nissr_ alive. And last, she had forced him
into planning to disseminate falsehoods among his crew--falsehoods the
secret of which only she shared with him.

Unwilling as this man was to have anything in common with her, he
had been obliged to have something in common--to have much. Something
existed; a bond, even if an unpleasant one, had already stretched
itself between these two--the first secret this man ever had shared
with any woman.

"Captain Alden" smiled a little. The honors of war, so far, lay all in
her camp.

The Master, feeling this to the inner marrows, humiliated, shaken,
yet through it all not quite able to suppress a kind of grudging and
unwilling tribute of admiration, sought to conceal his perturbation
with a stern command:

"Now, madam, I will call my orderly and have you escorted to a
stateroom; have you provided with everything needful for your injury.
I trust it is not causing you any severe pain?"

"Pray don't waste any time or thought on any injury of mine, sir!" the
woman returned.

"Very well, madam! Resume your disguise!"

She tried to sweep up her magnificent hair and secure it upon her
head. But with only one hand available this proved impossible. They
both saw there was no way for her to put on the toupee again.

She smiled oddly, with a half-whimsical, wholly feminine bit of
malice. Her eyes seemed dancing.

"I'm afraid I can't obey you, sir," she proffered. "You can see for
yourself, it can't be done."

A dull, angry flush crept over the Master's rather pale face, and lost
itself in the roots of his thick, black hair. Perfectly well he saw
that he was being cornered in an untenable position of half-command,
half-intimacy. Without apparently exercising any wiles, this woman was
none the less involving him in bonds like those the Lilliputians threw
round sleeping Gulliver.

Anger welled up in his proud heart that anyone--much less a
woman--should thus lower his dignity. But still his manhood dictated
courtesy. He came a few steps nearer, and said:

"I must admit this seems rather an embarrassing situation. Frankly, it
does not tend to ameliorate the relation between us. You have placed
yourself--and me--in a peculiarly compromising position. I must try to
meet it.

"Obviously you cannot expect one so unskilled as I, in things
feminine, to help you in the capacity of lady's maid Therefore only
one thing remains to do. Instead of calling my orderly, and having him
show you your stateroom, I must in some way arrange to get you there,
myself."

"That's kind of you, I'm sure," she answered, half in mockery, half in
gratitude.

"There I will supply you with medical supplies. In some manner or
other you can manage to do up your hair and resume your disguise. You
will remain in your stateroom--under arrest--until such time as you
are cast loose, tomorrow, in your plane."

"Tomorrow?"

"I should say, sometime before night of the day that has already
begun. Food and drink will be brought you, of course."

"That's very good of you, sir." Her smile tantalized. The curt
laconicism of her manner, in the masculine role, had changed to the
softer ways of womankind. Despite himself, the Master was constrained
to admire her ability as an actress.

"Of course you realize," she continued, "that to cast me loose in a
plane, with only one serviceable arm, will be equivalent to committing
cold-blooded murder."

"A mere detail!"

"A mere detail--to murder a woman?"

"Pardon me, you misunderstand. I mean, the manner in which you are to
leave Nissr matters little, so long as you leave. I will see that you
are safely landed--that no harm arrives to you.

"But you--shall not remain with us. Now, kindly stay here. Lock the
cabin door after I have gone, and admit no one until I return. I will
signal you with two triple knocks, thus."

He illustrated the knocks, on the table, and, unlocking the door, left
the cabin in a black humor. The sound of the woman locking the door
after him, the knowledge that he had been obliged to make up a little
code for readmission, angered him as he rarely had been angered.

Self-protection, however, demanded these subterfuges. To let the
secret escape, and to be obliged to admit having been deceived by
a woman, would fatally lower his prestige with the Legionaries. How
could he, if known to be the dupe of a woman, command those hard, bold
men?

Humiliated, yet in his heart thankful that no one had yet penetrated
the secret--as Dr. Lombardo easily might have done, had he laid
forcible hands on "Captain Alden"--the Master set about the necessary
task of himself preparing a stateroom and providing the requisite
medical supplies.

Lombardo asked no questions. His eyes, however, had grown quizzical.
No one else seemed to notice what the Master was about. Each was busy
in his own place, at his own task.

Twenty minutes had passed before all was ready and the Master could
return to his cabin. He rapped as agreed, and was admitted, feeling
his cheeks burn at even the analogy between this clandestine entrance
and some vulgar liaison--a thing he scrupulously had avoided all his
life.

"Come!" he directed. She followed him. Silently he ushered her into
her appointed place. No one had seen them. He followed her into the
little stateroom, closed the door, folded his arms and confronted her
with a grim face.

"Before leaving you, madam," said he, "I wish to repeat that only
your sex has saved you from summary execution. You are guilty of high
crimes and misdemeanors, in the code of this expedition--guilty of
falsehood and deception that might have introduced fatal complications
into my most carefully evolved plan.

"Nevertheless, my code as an officer prohibits any punishment
other than this merely nominal arrest. I must offer you temporary
hospitality. Moreover, if you need any assistance in dressing your
wound, I will give it. Common humanity demands that."

"I don't need anything, thank you," she answered. "I don't ask for
anything, but to stay with the Legion."

"That's a point I must positively decline to argue, madam," he
informed her, shaking his head. "And, since there is nothing more to
say, I wish you a very good night!"

Bowing, he left the stateroom. He heard the door-catch snap. Somehow,
in some way as yet inexplicable to him, that sound caused him another
discomfort. For the first time in his life he had been having private
conversation with a woman--conversation that might almost have been
construed as intimate, since it had held secrets. For the first time
he had felt himself outwitted by a woman, beaten, made mock of. Now he
was being shut away from her.

Inwardly raging as he was, hot, confused, unhorsed, still a strange,
fingering insinuation of something agreeable had begun to waken in
him. The Master, not understanding it at all, or being able to analyze
sensations so foreign to all his previous thought and experience, cut
the Gordian knot of puzzlement by roundly cursing himself, by Allah
and the Prophet's beard, as a fool. And with a vastly disturbed mind
he returned along the white, gleaming corridor--that dipped and swayed
with the swift rush of _Nissr_--back to his own cabin.

There he found the buzzer of his little desk-telephone intermittently
calling him.

"Yes, hello?" he answered, receiver at ear, as he sat down in the
swivel-chair of aluminum with its hydrogen cushion.

The voice of the wireless man, Menendez, reached him. In a soft,
Spanish-accented kind of drawl, Menendez said:

"Just picked up two important radios, sir."

"Well? What are they?"

"International Air Board headquarters, in Washington, has been
notified of our getaway. They have sent out calls for all air-stations
in both America and Europe to put up scout-squadrons to watch for us."

"What else?"

"Two squadrons have been started westward across the Atlantic,
already, to capture or destroy us."

"Indeed? Where from?" The Master spoke coldly. This information, far
from seeming important to him as it had to Menendez, appeared the
veriest commonplace. It was nothing but what he had expected and
foreseen. He smiled grimly as he listened to the radio man's answer:

"One squadron has started from Queenstown. The other from the
Azores--from St. Michaels."

"Anything else?"

"Well, sir, now and then I can get a few words they're sending from
plane to plane--or from plane to headquarters. They mean business.
It's capture or kill. They're rating us as pirates."

"Very well. Anything really important?"

"Nothing else, sir."

"Keep me informed, if any real news comes in. But don't disturb me
with trifles!"

The Master hung up the receiver, sat back in his chair and stretched
his long, powerful legs under the desk. He set both elbows on the arms
of the chair, joined his finger-tips and sank his lips upon them.

"I'd better be rigging that vibratory apparatus before long," he
reflected. "But still, there's no immediate hurry. Time enough for all
that. Lots of time."

His thoughts wandered from _Nissr_ and the great adventure, from the
coming attackers, from the vibratory apparatus, yes from the goal of
all this undertaking itself, back to "Captain Alden." The _who_ and
_why_, the _whence_ and _whither_ of this strange woman urgently
intruded on his mind; nor by any effort of the will could he exclude
these thoughts.

For a long time, while _Nissr_ roared away eastward, ever eastward
into the night, he sat there, sunk in a profound revery.

"A woman," he whispered, finally, the words lingering on his lips. "A
woman, eh? Strange--very strange!"

Resolutely he forced himself to consider the plans he had laid out;
his success thus far; the means he meant to take with the attacking
squadrons; the consummation of his whole campaign so vast, so
overpowering in its scope.

But through it all, persisted other thoughts. And these, he found, he
could not put away.

The buzzer of the desk-telephone again recalled him to himself.
"Hello, hello?"

"I have to report that a third squadron has been ordered into the air,
from Monrovia," announced Menendez.

"Very well! Anything else?"

"No, sir."

The Master hung up the receiver, arose, and seemed to shake himself
from the kind of torpor into which his thoughts of the woman had
plunged him.

"Enough of this nonsense!" growled he. "There's work to be
done--_work_!"

With fresh energy he flung himself into the task of planning how to
meet and to repel the three air-fleets now already on the westward
wing to capture or annihilate the Flying Legion.




CHAPTER XIV


STORM BIRDS

The first slow light of day, "under the opening eyelids of the morn,"
found the Master up in the screened observation gallery at the tip of
the port aileron. Here were mounted two of the six machine-guns that
comprised _Nissr's_ heavier armament; and here, too, were hung a dozen
of the wonderful life-preservers--combination anti-gravity turbines
and vacuum-belt, each containing a signal-light, a water-distiller and
condensed foods--that, invented by Brixton Hewes, soon after the close
of the war, had done so much to make air-travel safe.

Major Bohannan was with the Master. Both men, now in uniform,
showed little effect of the sleepless night they had passed. Wine of
excitement and stern duties to perform, joined with powerful bodies,
made sleeplessness and labor trivialities.

For an hour the two had been standing there, wrapped in their long
military overcoats, while _Nissr_ had swooped on her appointed ways,
with hurtling trajectory that had cleft the dark. Somewhat warmed by
piped exhaust-gases though the glass-enclosed gallery had been, still
the cold had been marked; for without, in the stupendous gulf of
emptiness that had been rushing away beneath and all about them, no
doubt the thermometer would have sunk below zero.