At its eastern end the sea ran back in a narrow arm towards the source. Before long the Sun Bird came within sight of the twelve vast pipes which fed it. For two and a half years now they had been at their work of pouring foaming, man-made cataracts into the desert. Day and night the stupendous pumps, twenty miles away in Qabes, had sucked up their millions of gallons to send them churning and swirling along the pipes. But huge as the conduits were, it remained unbelievable that they alone could be the instruments for submerging all these square miles of land; that it was only water passed by them which was lapping ever higher and farther across the sands. The loss by evaporation alone, Mark considered, must be immense in this region. There was no day during which the sun did not broil down with full intensity to draw up its tons of moisture. From the beginning there had been sceptics who had looked on the plan as a fantasy, and he felt bound to admit that had he seen this place before the start of operations, he would have been one of them. The immensity of the task was stupefying; yet it was succeeding in a way which caused the engineering triumphs of Panama and Suez to dwindle into insignificance. Whether the ultimate results would justify its sponsors remained yet to be seen.
They passed over the gushing outlets, following the twelve-fold pipe-line across higher country, and it was a matter of only a few minutes before Qabes came into view. Both of them were somewhat prepared for the sight by the photographs which had appeared in every illustrated paper, but the scale of operations took them by surprise. It had been necessary not only to build enormous housings for the pumps and gear, but to alter the town itself. It was no longer an Arab town which lay beside the Gulf of Qabes. Smoke, noise, and fuss reeked up to insult the African sky from a city which might have been transported bodily from one of the less pleasant industrial districts of Europe. If ever a place deserved to be called a blot on the fair face of nature, it was the transformed town of Qabes.
But one had to admit that a job was being done, and done well; it was to be hoped that the end would justify all this filth and furor which was the means. Head-cloth had been ousted by cloth cap, tractors and cars had supplanted camel and donkey, the blue sea was polluted with waste oil, the palms bore sooty dates among sooty fronds. And yet the pumps were a triumph, a glory of power.
Mark had a hankering to inspect them. One day, he decided, he would come over here and examine the works at his leisure. For the present... He looked inquiringly at Margaret. She pulled a face of distaste. He knew that she was seeing nothing beyond the dirt and destruction. She did not catch the feeling of strength and triumph over nature which lay behind it all.
'All right, we'll leave it now,' he said. 'We can go back again over the New Sea if you like—or we might keep round by the Mediterranean coast and have a look at Rome's old sparring partner, Carthage.'
Margaret shook her head at the alternative.
'The New Sea, I think. This place has shocked me, and one shock is enough for the day. If they've treated Carthage anything like they've treated Qabes, then delenda est Carthago indeed.'
Mark circled the plane and set off back over the pipelines. He held the same course until the sea was reached, when he altered a few points to the south of their outward journey. They drew clear of the old borders of the Shott el Jerid and found the newly inundated land where numerous islets varying in nature and extent from a few square yards of sand to well-planted groves of trees still survived. They descended until they were scudding a bare hundred feet above the water, able to look down on the strange sight of palms masquerading as marine growths.
'There's another village,' Margaret pointed out. 'But this one's breaking up: all the roofs have gone already, and some of the walls. I'm glad. It would be too eerie to think of fish making their homes where people once lived, swimming along the streets, and in and out of the windows and doors____'
Mark laughed. The notion struck him as delightfully absurd. He had started to reply when a sudden tremendous explosion cut him short.
The Sun Bird careered wildly, flinging both of them out of their seats. For a moment she seemed to stand on her tail; then, slipping and twisting, she plunged towards the water____
CHAPTER II
Mark opened his eyes and shut them again quickly. The glare of a brilliant shaft of sunshine through the window felt like a white hot wire in his head. The pulsing aches inside it magnified themselves a hundred times. After a short pause he wriggled slightly into the shadow and reopened his eyes more cautiously. This time he was successful in keeping them open. Shots of pain tore through his head, but, with the help of agonised facial contortions, it was possible to bear them. For an idle minute he lay regarding the roof of the Sun Bird uncomprehendingly until the memory of events jumped back at him. He shrugged to a sitting position and held his head in his hands. When the throbbing had eased a little he ventured to look round. The Sun Bird was on an even keel; a slight rise and fall told him that she was afloat.
'Margaret!' he called suddenly.
She lay crumpled beside him. The red curls spreading tangled on the floor hid her face. But there was an abandon about her whole pose which acted on him like a physical shock. He turned her over gently to find her face almost as white as the suit she wore. Its only colour was a little streak of blood trickling down her cheek from close by the right eye.
'Margaret!' he said again.
But she was breathing still. Her breast rose gently and evenly as though she slept: the pulse was regular, if not very strong. 'Only a knockout, thank God,' he thought. He struggled to his feet and, with the help of the seat cushions, arranged her more comfortably. Then he crossed to the window and looked out.
A nice sort of mess they were in. Something pretty final must have happened to the bunch of rocket tubes at the tail—and that meant the end of their motive power. There was no patching up to be done with rockets; either the system worked, or it was useless. It was lucky that there had been no pre-ignition—that would have meant nothing to show but a few scattered bits at the bottom of the New Sea. The Sun Bird's hull had of necessity been airtight for stratosphere travel, and it still appeared to be at least watertight—anyhow, there was no sign of leakage yet. Almost certainly one of the mixing chambers for the gases had burst, either through overcharging or on account of a flaw in the casting, and the explosion had carried away the whole group of exhaust tubes, together with both sets of rudders.
They were floating high, with the entrance well clear of the water. He unfastened the door and pushed it open with the intention of climbing out on the wing to survey the damage. But nothing of either wing remained, save a few twisted rods projecting a foot or more from the plane's smooth side. Both must have been torn clean away by the force with which they had met the water. By means of considerable scrambling and with a series of efforts which made the pulses in his brain throb and hammer, he managed to use the fragmentary wing supports as a means of scaling the curved side. At last, perched on the roof, he was able fully to realise the predicament.
The stripped fuselage was rolling gently as it drifted aimlessly upon the rippled surface, no more, now, than a helpless metal hulk looking like a huge, elongated metal eggshell. The sun was already well down in the sky, and with its decline a slight breeze had risen from the north. A number of islands and palm clumps were within sight. Mark silently thanked God that they had fallen clear of them. Directly to the south a palm grove of several acres still survived. It was a bare mile and a half away and the wind was urging him slowly towards it.