*CHAPTER XV.*
*HUNTING THE GREAT MARS EAGLE.*
The time that followed upon their arrival on Mars was a period of greatenjoyment for the two chums. The gloomy feeling which had been causedby their narrow escape upon that first day quickly passed away and wasnow almost forgotten.
Agrando and the Ogre stayed at home in their own country, and the chumssaw and heard nothing of them. Zuanstroom and his son went their ownway, for the most part making friends with the nobles and the chiefcitizens, and seemingly bent only upon the acquisition of usefulknowledge concerning the country they were in and its inhabitants.
Gerald and Jack, on the other hand, became the daily companions of theyoung prince; and the three grew more friendly and intimate as the weekspassed by.
Alondra showed himself a charming host in his behaviour towards hisyoung guests, and did all he could to make their stay pleasant. He tookthem about, showing and explaining such things as were new to them andlikely to excite their interest, and in particular initiating them intothe mysteries of the Martian sports and pastimes. In some of these, ashas been related, the two lads had already made themselves proficientduring the voyage; but those had necessarily been only of such a kind aswere possible in a comparatively confined space.
To attempt to tell of the many strange things the visitors met with, thenovel and surprising sights they saw, and all their curious experiences,would, however, extend this narrative to too great a length. It is onlypossible to relate some of the more noteworthy.
The one great marvel of the place--naturally, the one which had firstattracted their attention, and which was always in evidence--was thefact that everybody went about in the air. No one ever thought oftravelling far in any other manner; no other kind of mechanicallocomotion was to be seen, except as regards the transport of heavygoods. These were still carried to and fro on railways of variouskinds, or on other motor vehicles--'slow, old-fashioned affairs,' asAlondra called them--or still slower 'electric ships.' None of these,Monck explained, could travel at a faster rate than a hundred miles orso an hour--reckoning miles as we do on Earth, and that was far too slowto suit the Martians of to-day.
'Fancy any one travelling at such an absurdly slow speed!' observedAlondra, laughing at the idea. 'Yet, ages ago, in what some here callthe good, old-fashioned days, people, even upon the longest journeys,had to be content with crawling about our world no faster than that! Wecan travel far more quickly now, in our racing air-yachts, and I supposethat on your planet, which we know is bigger than ours, you travel moreswiftly still?'
Gerald thought of some of our old-fashioned, slow-going railways, andblushed. 'I am sorry to have to confess that we do not,' he returned, alittle shamefacedly. He did not like having to admit at every turn howfar his native Earth was 'behind the age,' as things were understood inMars. But it was constantly the case, nevertheless.
They sailed about almost daily in the young prince's yacht--the onewhich had carried them up to the king's palace the first day--and theywere astounded at the speed she attained in the air. No doubt, as Jackremarked, the marvellous _Ivenia_ must have travelled immeasurablyfaster, or they would have been years upon their journey instead ofmonths. But they had scarcely been aware of her real speed, becausethey had passed no object near enough to give any idea of the actualrate at which they were being whirled through space.
It happened that the prince's air-yacht had been named after our Earth.She was called _Lokris_, which, as has been already made known, was thename by which the Martians knew our planet.
'She was built shortly after my father's return from his first visit toyour world,' Alondra explained; 'and I felt so interested in all he hadto tell me about it that I called her by that name.'
At times there were 'air-regattas,' at which races were arranged forvarious classes of airships and flying-machines. The prizes at thesewere valuable and were eagerly competed for, and the _Lokris_ wasfrequently one of the competitors. In these contests the young princeshowed himself a skilful and daring navigator of the air; and sometimes,when the two chums accompanied him, they had some exciting experiences,as the competing yachts whirled along, often neck and neck, at almostincredible speed. At such times it was often the mostventuresome--almost, one might say, the most reckless--who came inwinners.
Alondra was delighted to discover that in his two visitors he had gainedsailing companions after his own heart. He took special pains to teachthem to assist him in the handling of the yacht, and they soon grewexpert. Then the two sailors were instructed, and took the place of theformer crew; and the five became celebrated for their skilful andfearless manoeuvring and for the number of races they won.
Tom Clinch and Bob Reid entered into the spirit of the thing with greatgusto, and soon proved themselves as clever in the air as ever they hadbeen in the handling of sailing-boats on the water at home. And whenthe prizes began to come in--half of which Alondra allotted to them, theother half being distributed in charity--their satisfaction and delightmay well be imagined.
It should be explained that these Earth-born assistants gained aconsiderable advantage from the fact, which has already been noted, thattheir muscles were stronger comparatively than those of the natives.Thus the four on board the _Lokris_ could do the work of nearly doublethe number of Martians--and as in this kind of racing the work was oftenheavy, and required considerable physical exertion, the saving in weighteffected by carrying a smaller crew made an important difference.
But the great sport of the Martians, it presently appeared, waseagle-hunting. A species of eagle, very much larger than any on Earth,had their eyries amongst some mountain peaks in a wild district somedistance away. In regard to size, the visitors found that birds werelarger on the average, while some animals were often smaller, than thosespecies on our earth which correspond to them. Certainly theseeagles--known by the name of krondos--were gigantic birds, swift andvery high flyers, and terribly savage, powerful creatures when attacked.
Doubtless they would have been exterminated long ago but for the factthat they had been expressly preserved for the purposes of sport, justas foxes are in England.
Packs of smaller tame eagles, of a different breed, were trained to huntthem. Assisted by these, a party of Martian nobles would sally forth intheir air-yachts and chase the formidable giant eagles from peak topeak, following them in their circling flights into the upper air ortheir dizzy downward swoops, until some expert hunter-aeronaut contrivedto throw a net over the quarry and capture it alive.
That was, briefly, the general procedure, Monck explained; but, as hefurther remarked, it did not always come off as per programme.Sometimes the krondos assumed the offensive against the hunters; andcases had been even known of their dragging men out of the airships andcarrying them off, or dashing them down upon the rocks below.
'The king has arranged for a grand krondo-hunt to-morrow, in yourhonour!' Alondra one day informed the chums. 'We must be astir early inthe morning. You are to come with me in my yacht. Now you will seesome truly royal sport. Our air-yacht races are but as a children's gamecompared with this!'
It came to pass, accordingly, that at dawn a great procession ofair-craft, headed by the king in his own yacht--known as the_Nelda_--started off in the beams of the rising sun for the districtwhich was the haunt of the great birds.
An hour's run brought them to the hunting-ground, and the chums thoughtthey had never seen a more desolate tract. Great, rocky cliffs andheights, and soaring mountain-peaks above, with dark, gloomy ravines andvalleys below, were its chief features--truly a suitable region for theferocious winged monsters they were in search of.
Alondra was the first to sight one of the creatures; and, following therules of the hunt, turned his yacht quickly and dashed away in pursuit.He was wearing, as it happened, through a fancy of his own, his newflying-dress. Why, exactly, the chums who were with him did not know;though he had hinted mysteriously at so
me new experiment he was desirousof trying.
As the _Lokris_ shot upwards, and then swerved to round a towering peak,something went wrong with one of the revolving spirals; and Gerald, ashe had done before in a similar case, climbed up the mast to try toright it.
In the meantime, the speed was checked, and the craft passed closer tothe rock than had been intended.
Other yachts, which had turned aside to follow, were catching them up;and Alondra, who did not like this, was shouting excited instructions toGerald, when there came a loud rushing of wings as two immense darkforms rose unexpectedly from off the rock and sailed upwards within afew yards of him. One of the giant birds swung round in a narrowcircle, poised, and then swooped down upon the busy worker on the top ofthe mast.
So sudden and unlocked for was the rush, so powerful the clutch whichgripped him, that Gerald was forced from his hold; and a moment laterthe bird, with its prey, was seen either flying or falling headlong downtowards the valley, thousands of feet below.
A great shout of horror and dismay went up from the spectators; but,even as the cries were heard, a glistening, shining figure flashed fromthe side of the yacht.
Alondra had dived through the air after his friend!