“Climb up!  Climb up!” yelled Tom, through the megaphone, and he saw, not a man, but a woman, ascending the knotted rope, hand over hand, toward the airship that hovered above her head.

CHAPTER XVI

KOKU’S PRISONER

“Bless my knitting needles!” cried Mr. Damon, as be looked down, and saw, in the glare of the great light, the figure of the woman clinging to the swaying rope.  “Help her, someone!  Tom!  Ned!  She’ll fall!”

The eccentric man started to rush from the motor room, where he had been helping Ned.  But the latter cried: 

“Stay where you are, Mr. Damon.  No one can reach her now without danger to himself and her.  She can climb up, I think.”

Past knot after knot the woman passed, mounting steadily upward, with a strength that seemed remarkable.

“Come on!” cried Tom to the others.  “Don’t wait until she gets up.  There isn’t time.  Come on—­the rope will hold you all!  Climb up!”

The men in the tossing and bobbing motor boat heard, and at once began, one after the other, to clamber up the rope.  There were five of them, as could be seen in the glare of the light, and Tom, as he watched, wondered what they were doing out in the terrific storm at that early hour of the morning, and with a lone woman.

“Stand by to help her, Koku!” called Ned to the giant.

“I help,” was the giant’s simple reply, and as the woman’s head came above the rail, over which the rope ran, Koku, leaning forward, raised her in his powerful arms, and set her carefully on the deck.

“Come into the cabin, please,” Ned called to her.  “Come in out of the wet.”

“Oh, it seems a miracle that we are saved!” the woman gasped, as, rain-drenched and wind-tossed, she staggered toward the door which Tom had opened by means of a lever in the pilot house.  The young inventor had his hands full, manipulating the airship so as to keep it above the motor boat, and not bring too great a strain on the rope.

The woman passed into the cabin, which was between the motor room and the pilot house, and Ned saw her throw herself on her knees, and offer up a fervent prayer of thanksgiving.  Then, springing to her feet, she cried: 

“My husband?  Is he safe?  Can you save him?  Oh, how wonderful that this airship came in answer to our appeals to Providence.  Whose is it?”

Before Ned got a chance to answer her, as she came to the door of the motor room, a man’s voice called: 

“My wife!  Is she safe?”

“Yes, here I am,” replied the woman, and a moment later the two were in each other’s arms.

“The others; are they safe?” gasped the woman, after a pause.

“Yes,” replied the man.  “They are coming up the rope.  Oh, what a wonderful rescue!  And that giant man who lifted us up on deck!  Oh, do you recall in Africa how we were also rescued by airship—­”