“They meant to trap us, this way, that’s certain,” added Gabriel.  “There surely will be others of the same breed, here before morning.  They must not find us here!”

“But Gabriel, how shall we escape?” asked Catherine, her face illumined by the leaping flames of the bungalow.

“How!  In their own machine!  The machine that Slade and the Air Trust secret-service gave them, to come here and catch or murder us!”

“By the Almighty!  So we will!” cried Grantham.  “Come on, let’s find it!”

The little party hurried off toward the landing-ground, a cleared and levelled space further up the mountainside.  The light of the burning bungalow helped show them their path; and Craig had also taken an electric flash-lamp from the hangar.  With this he led the way.

“Right!  There it is!” suddenly exclaimed Gabriel, pointing.  Craig painted a brush of electric light over the vague outlines of the Air Trust machine, a steel racer of the latest kind.

“A Floriot biplane,” said he.  “Will hold two and a passenger.  Familiar type.  I guess all of us, here, can operate it.”

They all—­even the women—­could.  For you must understand that after the Great Massacres had foreshown the only possible trend the Movement could take, practically all the leaders in the work had studied aeronautics, also chemistry, as most essential branches of knowledge in the inevitable war.

“Two, and a passenger,” repeated Gabriel, as though echoing Craig’s words.  “Who goes first?”

“You!” said Grantham.  “You and Catherine, with Craig to bring the machine back.  You’re needed, now, at the front—­imperatively needed.  Freda and I,” gesturing at his wife, “will hold the fort, here—­will keep watch over our dead, over poor old Brevard, the first to fall in this great, final battle!”

A spirited argument followed.  Gabriel insisted on being left for the second trip.  A compromise was made by having him get the two women out of danger, at once, leaving Craig and Grantham on the mountain.

“I’ll send Hazen or Keyes back with the ’plane, for you,” said he, as he climbed into the driving seat, after the passengers had been stowed.  “That will be tomorrow night.  Of course, we daren’t fly by day.  And mind,” he added, adjusting his spark and throttle, “mind you meet me with this very same machine, safe and sound, at the Lake Erie refuge!”

“Why this same machine?” inquired Craig.

“Why?  Because I intend to use this, and no other, in the final attack.  Could poetic justice be finer than that the Air Trust works be destroyed with the help of one of their own ’planes?”

No more was said, save brief good-byes.  Those were times when demonstrativeness, whether in life or death, was at a discount.  A hand-clasp and a few last instructions as to the time and place of meeting, sufficed.  Then Gabriel pressed the button of the self-starter and opened the throttle.