Leading out of this was a final cabin fitted with tools of every sort, a rack of automatic rifles and pistols, and several thousand rounds of small-arms ammunition. Here also, with a padded door, was a little compartment for the wireless operator, and I pictured one of the black-hearted scoundrels sitting there and picking up the messages from airships of the trade routes with a grin upon his face. Danjuro came with me and looked about him quickly, but with no change of expression. "So far, so good," I said to him; "but all this is unimportant, really, though it is very complete. What really matters is the pilot's cabin, the engines, controlling gear, petrol supply, and so on. Let's go forward. Do you understand anything about airships?" "A very little, Sir John," he replied, and--so petty are we all at times--I felt a perceptible thrill of pleasure at hearing there was at least something of which this paragon was ignorant. "Never had occasion to study them?" I asked, as we passed again through the main cabin. "I have watched the pilot in Honourable Van Adams' yacht the _May Flower_, but that is all...." I hardly heard him, for I was in the pilot's room at last. I saw at a glance that here were a number of things absolutely new to me, and so to all the aviators of the world. I am not going to be technical. This narrative is written for the general reader, and my expert conclusions have been published elsewhere. I can but indicate some of the wonders of mechanical skill with which I was confronted. For instance, the designer of the ship was the first man to solve the problem of easy control. Up to the present all pilots had controlled their ships--the movements of planes and rudders, etc.--with a certain amount of manual labour. It is true that recent inventions had minimized this; ball-bearings, the rack and pinion, had made the main control levers and wheels much easier to move than they were in the old days of the Great War--when flying first began to come into its own. But there was still a great deal of physical strain, which greatly lessened efficiency upon a long cruise. Moreover, the instant decision necessary to be taken by an aviator--when a fraction of a second may spell safety or ruin--had been always hampered by the comparative mechanical slowness of control. In the Pirate Ship this disability did not exist. Just as the largest ocean-going liner--sea-ship, not airship, I mean--can be steered by a wheel not more than two feet in diameter by the invention of the steam steering gear, so the Pirate Ship was controlled by a series of little wheels and levers, covered with leather, that looked like toys. Electricity had been brought into play, and a touch of the pilot's hand was magnified into power that in an instant would deflect a mighty lifting plane or vast rudder.