Chapter XVII. On to Siberia - Page 2

Ned.

"Bless my gas meter!" gasped the odd man, as he stared at the queerly-printed documents in his hand. "I thought he was going to give me a bomb to throw!"

"I don't blame you," said Ned in a low voice. "They look like desperate men, but probably they have suffered many hardships, and they think their way of righting a wrong is the only way. I suppose you'll read those tracts," he added with a smile.

"Hum! I'm afraid not," answered Mr. Damon. "I might just as well try to translate a Chinese laundry check. But I'll save 'em for souvenirs," and he carefully put them in his pocket, as if he feared they might unexpectedly turn into a bomb and blow up the airship.

The tour of the craft was completed and the Nihilists returned to the comfortable cabin where, much to their surprise, they were served with a little lunch, Mr. Damon bustling proudly about from the table to the galley, and serving tea as nearly like the Russians drink it as possible.

"Well, you certainly have a wonderful craft here-- wonderful," spoke Mr. Androwsky. "If we had some of these in our group now, we could start from here, hover over the palace of the Czar, or one of the Grand Dukes, drop a bomb, utterly destroy it, and come back before any of the hated police would be any the wiser."

"I'm afraid I can't lend it to you," said Tom, and he could scarcely repress a shudder at the terrible ideas of the Nihilists.

"It would never do," agreed Ivan Petrofsky. "The campaign of education is the only way."

There were gutteral objections on the part of the other Russians, and they turned to more cheerful subjects of talk.

"What are your plans?" asked Tom of the exile. "You say you can get no trace here of your brother?"

"No, he seems to have totally disappeared from sight. Usually we enemies of the government can get some news of a prisoner, but poor Peter is either dead, or in some obscure mine, which is hidden away in the forests or mountains."

"Maybe he is in the lost platinum mine," suggested Ned.

"No, that has not been discovered," declared the exile, "or my friends here would have heard of it. That is still to be found."

"And we'll do it, in the air glider," declared Tom. "By the way, Mr. Petrofsky, would it not be a good plan to ask your friends the location of the place where the winds constantly blow with such force. It occurs to me that in some such way we might locate the mine."

"It would be of use if there was only one place of the gales," replied the exile. "But Siberia has many such spots in the mountain fastnesses--places which, by the peculiar formation of the land, have constant eddys of air over them. No, the only way