CHAPTER XI
THE TERRORS OF THE AIR
SIEGFRIED VON EITELWURMER, the German Secret Service Agent, sat andshivered in the after-gondola of the returning Zeppelin. He was notfeeling at all happy. Apart from the physical discomfort--for inaddition to the effect of the cold he was under the influence ofair-sickness--his mind was harassed by wellfounded thoughts thatsomething might happen to the gigantic but obviously frail gas-bag.
Like most Germans his faith in Count Zeppelin's cowardly anddiabolical invention was unshaken--so long as he could remain onterra-firma. But whereas the stay-at-home Hun satisfied himself byreading of the colossal achievements of the German aerial fleet, vonEitelwurmer knew by actual observation that the raids failed tojustify one-tenth, nay, one-thousandth part of the claims putforward by the authorities at Berlin.
In pre-war days he had seen experimental Zeppelins dashed to piecesin a vain attempt to regain the shed. He had seen others destroyedby fire. He remembered seeing a "leader" in a British newspaper inwhich it was solemnly declared that the sympathies of the civilisedworld will go out to the aged Count in the hour of his grief at thefailure of his life's work.
And now, in addition to the ordinary risks of aviation the returningairship was liable at any moment to the attack of the "hornets" thatwere known to be on the look-out for the raiders. Here he was,carried off against his will, suspended like Mahomet's tomb 'twixtheaven and earth, and faced with the prospect of a swift journey toa place not included in the above category.
Ober-leutnant von Loringhoven left his passenger severely alone. Forone thing the commander's attention was almost entirely taken upwith the work of navigating his cumbersome craft back to theFatherland; for another he mistrusted spies, even when they wereGermans and notwithstanding the fact that he himself had indulged inthat dangerous pastime. But there was this difference. VonLoringhoven was a naval officer while von Eitelwurmer was acivilian. He had heard of German spies renouncing their allegianceand acting for the country in which they were to be working onbehalf of the authorities at Berlin.
The spy had been accommodated with a camp-stool. On either side ofthe narrow compartment was a window fitted with double plate-glasswindows. The for'ard bulkhead was pierced by a door leading to thecat-walk or suspended bridge communicating with both the 'midshipsand for'ard gondolas. Aft was another bulkhead separating a portionof the compartment from that containing the motors actuating the tworearmost propellers. The floor was in a state of continual tremorunder the pulsations of the engines and the rattle of the twoendless chains that transmitted the power to the two outboardpropellers.
The limited space was still further taken up by two machine-gunsmounted on aluminium alloy pedestals and capable of being trainedthrough a fairly broad arc. By these stood four of the crew, readyat the first alarm to lower the glass panes and bring the weaponsinto action. The men were taciturn and obviously nervous. Whenflying over the unprotected towns and dropping their murderouscargoes they could be boisterous enough, but now, knowing that theyhad to run the gauntlet, they were feeling particularly cowed. Thefear of being paid back in their own coin--a possibility that alonemakes the Hun howl--gripped them, and held them in a state ofprolonged mental torture.
Presently at an order communicated by telephone from the foremostgondola, the machine-gunners lowered the sashes of the windows. Thetemperature, already -2 degrees C. fell rapidly to -10 degrees C.Warm air-currents from the motor-room drifted through gaps in thepartition and condensing fell upon the floor in the form of globulesof ice.
Up and up climbed the Zeppelin. She was approaching the East Coast.
Von Eitelwurmer, overcoming his torpor, went to the window. One ofthe men was about to motion him to his seat, when another touchedhim on the shoulder and pointed.
Far below the whole country was in darkness. The spy could not tellwhether it was land or water. Away to the southward a group ofsearchlights swept the sky, the beams impinging upon a bank ofclouds that floated at a height of nearly a mile. Still further awaymore electric rays swayed slowly to and fro. At intervals thesearchlights of the nearmost station crossed those of the one moreremote, while in turn these effected a luminous exchange with raysstill further away. As far as the eye could see there appeared to bea continuous barrage of light through which the returning raidermust pass before gaining her base.
At an order the motors were switched off. Almost absolute silencesucceeded the noisy roar of the seven 240-horse-power engines. Theairship, at the mercy of the winds, began to turn broadside on tothe aerial drift, yet the while, by means of ballast thrownoverboard and the release of more compressed hydrogen from thecylinders into the ballonets, was steadily climbing.
It was von Loringhoven's aim to ascend until the Zeppelin was abovethe clouds. Screened from those dangerous searchlights the airshipwould then drift over the coast-line until such times as it would bedeemed safe to restart the motors.
With the altitude gauge hovering at 4,000 metres the raider foundherself just above the natural screen. The belt of clouds was notmore than three hundred feet in height--sufficient to hide her fromthe earth, yet transparent enough to allow the rays of thesearchlight to penetrate the vapour.
To the spy the outlook resembled the view from a railway carriagewhen dense clouds of steam waft past the windows. So powerful werethe rays of the searchlights that the stratum of the vapour wasflooded with silvery luminosity, while--ominous sign--the beams nolonger swayed to and fro as previously, but hung with sinisterpersistence upon the bank of clouds with which the airship hoped toscreen herself from observation.
Even as von Eitelwurmer looked a huge dark shadow eclipsed theconcentrated beams. It was moving slowly at a rate hardly exceedingthat of the airship. For that reason the object could not be anaeroplane. Perhaps it was some deadly invention that the English hadbrought into action against the Zeppelins--a sort of aerial torpedosteered by wireless electric waves?
The machine-gunners saw it too. The last atom of courage literallyoozed out of their boots, yet almost automatically they gripped thehandle that would liberate shots at the rate of 500 a minute if tothe voidless night.
It was fortunate for them that they did not open fire. The shadowwas that of another Zeppelin that at less than a hundred feet belowwas slowly forging ahead in a southerly direction under the actionof her throttled-down motors, and with her exhausts carefullymuffled.
In five minutes the novel Zeppelin eclipse was over, although at notime was the actual airship to be seen. She had previously beenfired upon by the anti-aircraft guns on the coast and was nowcautiously smelling her way through the clouds in order to find anundefended gap in the defences.
Another half-hour passed in acute suspense, Three times the anxiouscrew heard the terrifying sound of an aerial propeller. Somewhere inthe darkness the British hornets were up and searching for theirlurking foe--so far without success unless the moral effect be takeninto consideration.
Presently the Zeppelin drifted beyond the glare of the fixedsearchlights, but not until another twenty minutes had passed didvon Loringhoven give orders for the engines to be restarted. At thatterrific altitude the noise was considerably diminished in volume.Instead of the explosions of the motors resembling a succession ofrifle-shots the sounds were like those of a whip being cracked, yetas the airship descended steadily to a height of five thousand feetthe noise resumed its normal and distracting violence.
The spy sat down again. His torpor was returning. The sudden changeof altitude had resulted in a steady flow of blood from his nose,while his ear-drums throbbed until they seemed on the point ofbursting. At that moment he felt that he would not have minded hadthe airship been blown to atoms.
But the next instant his lassitude vanished, as the loud pop-pop-popof two of her machine-guns roused him from his stupor. The weapon onthe starboard side was trained as far as possible abaft the beam andwas pumping out nickel into the darkness.
Craning his neck over the shoulders of the men serving the
belt-ammunition von Eitelwurmer saw a sight that caused his agoniesof mind to return with redoubled violence.
Just visible against the loom of the starlit sky was a huge biplanethat, climbing steeply, seemed to be steadily overhauling theairship. Serenely unmindful of the hail of bullets aimed at her theseaplane held on with the obvious intention of getting astride herprey.
Mingled with the detonations of the machine-guns were the clangingof telephone bells, the clank of machinery and the excited voices ofthe crew. Then with a jerk that threw the spy violently against theafter bulkhead the Zeppelin leapt skywards. Simultaneously densevolumes of black smoke eddied in through the open windows.
Sprawling in the intense darkness upon the ice-encrusted floor ofthe gondola the spy vainly strove to shriek, but only a gurgledsound came from his lips. He had not the slightest doubt but thatthe airship was on fire and on the point of crashing to her doom.
Hearing the stifled cry, for again the motors were stopped, one ofthe crew gripped him roughly by the arm, and set him on his feet.
"Silence!" he hissed. "A noise like that may betray us."
A seemingly interminable interval followed. The Zeppelin, floatingmotionless in a dense and opaque bank of clouds, was endeavouring toevade her comparatively small but highly dangerous antagonist, theloud buzzing of whose engine could be distinguished with all tooforcible certainty.
With every light switched off the crew of the unwieldy gas-bagwaited in breathless suspense, knowing that at any moment a bombmight explode with annihilating result in the midst of the vaststore of highly inflammable hydrogen above their heads.
For how long this state of almost unbearable suspense andnerve-racking tension lasted von Eitelwurmer had not the slightestidea. In Cimmerian darkness he sat, shivering with cold and fear,his eyes fixed upon the motionless form of one of themachine-gunners who, leaning out of one of the open apertures, wasstriving to locate the presence of the unseen but audible Britishseaplane.
Every time that the drone of the biplane's engine rose to acrescendo the spy's finger-nails cut into the palms of his benumbedhands. Vaguely he wondered what the end would be: whether theintense cold would give place to violent heat as the Zeppelin, amass of flames, crashed headlong, or whether in the absence of anexplosion the agony would be prolonged until the gondola, pinneddown by the weight of the shattered framework of the gas-bag, wouldplunge beneath the waves and cause him to drown like a rat in atrap. He gave no thought to his companions. It was he that mattered.He was in peril. The rest--well, that was their affair. They hadundertaken the raid and its attendant risk to themselves. It seemedhard that he--an involuntary passenger--should be faced with theimmediate prospect of being burnt to a cinder in mid-air or stifledin the icy waters of the North Sea.
The whirr of the seaplane's propeller increased in volume, more thanat any previous time during the Zeppelin's sojourn in the clouds.
Suddenly the machine-gunner uttered an exclamation and nudged hiscompanion. A succession of blinding flashes and the rapid rattle ofthe automatic weapon dazzled the eyes and dulled the hearing of thedemoralised spy. Yet, impelled by an unseen force, von Eitelwurmerraised himself and peered out of the scuttle.
The sight that met his eye was enough to appal a man of high moraland physical fibre, let alone the nerve-stricken spy; for,apparently heading straight for the Zeppelin and with her planesdistinctly visible in the flashes of the machine-gun, was theavenging British seaplane. With a wild, unearthly shriek vonEitelwurmer threw up his arms and fell unconscious upon the floor ofthe gondola.