A moment later, climbing over the rusted rails on which the mine cars
had run with their loads of salt, they staggered into the open. They
were free--under the silent stars!
"And now, if we can only find the airship," said Tom faintly, "we can--"
"Look there!" whispered Ned, pointing to a patch of deeper blackness
that the surrounding night. "What's that."
"The Falcon!" gasped Tom. He started toward her, for she was but a short
distance from a little clump of trees into which they had emerged from
the opening of the salt mine. There, on the same little plane where they
had landed in her was the airship. She had not been moved.
"Wait!" cautioned Ivan Petrofsky. "She may be guarded."
Hardly had he spoken than there walked into the faint starlight on the
side of the ship nearest them, a Cossack soldier with his rifle over his
shoulder.
"We can't get her!" gasped Ned.
"We've got to get her!" declared Tom. "We'll die if we don't!"
"But the guards! They'll arrest us!" said the exile.
An instant later a second soldier joined the first, and they could be
seen conversing. They then resumed their pacing around the anchored
craft. Evidently they were waiting for the escaped prisoners to come up
when they would give the alarm and apprehend them.
"What can we do?" asked Mr.
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