The collision crushed our steel bows, and notwithstanding every
effort on our part came near to hurling us from the deck. As it
was we landed in a wildly clutching heap at the very extremity of
the flier, where Xodar and I succeeded in grasping the hand-rail,
but the boy would have plunged overboard had I not fortunately
grasped his ankle as he was already partially over.
Unguided, our vessel careened wildly in its mad flight, rising ever
nearer the rocks above. It took but an instant, however, for me
to regain the levers, and with the roof barely fifty feet above I
turned her nose once more into the horizontal plane and headed her
again for the black mouth of the shaft.
The collision had retarded our progress and now a hundred swift
scouts were close upon us. Xodar had told me that ascending the
shaft by virtue of our repulsive rays alone would give our enemies
their best chance to overtake us, since our propellers would be
idle and in rising we would be outclassed by many of our pursuers.
The swifter craft are seldom equipped with large buoyancy tanks,
since the added bulk of them tends to reduce a vessel's speed.
As many boats were now quite close to us it was inevitable that we
would be quickly overhauled in the shaft, and captured or killed
in short order.
To me there always seems a way to gain the opposite side of
an obstacle.
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