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
