5
Following orders communicated through Obrenov, we lay down on the deck and grabbed whatever was solid and anchored in a world soon to become all too fluid and foundationless. The plane dived and we slid forward and then it rose sharply upward and we slid backward and then its nose suddenly lifted up, the roaring of the four engines becoming much more highly pitched, and suddenly we were pressed against the floor. And then the pressure was gone.
Slowly, but far too swiftly for me the deck tilted to the left. This was in accordance with Kentov's plans. He had stalled it with its longitudinal axis, or centre-line, a little to the left of the airship's centre-line. Its weight would thus cause the airship on whose back it rode to roll to the left.
For a second, I did not realize what was happening. To be quite frank, I was scared out of my wits, numb with terror. I would never allow Holmes to see this, and so I overcame my frozen state, though not the stiffness and slowness due to my age and recent hardships. I got up and stumbled out through the door, the parachute banging the upper parts of the back of my thighs and feeling as if it were made of lead, and sprawled out onto the small part of the platform left to me. I grabbed for the lowest end of an upright pipe forming the enclosure about the platform. The hatch had already been opened and Kentov was inside the airship. I could hear the booming of several guns. It was comparatively silent now, since Kentov had cut the engines just before the stalling. Nevertheless, the wind was howling and under it one could hear the creaking of the girders of the ship's structure as it bent under the varying pressures. My ears hurt abominably because the airship was dropping swiftly under the weight of the giant aeroplane. The aeroplane was also making its own unmistakable noises, groaning, as its structure bent, tearing the cotton fabric of the ship's covering as it slipped more and more to the left, then there was a loud ripping, and the ship beneath me rolled swiftly back, relieved of the enormous weight of the aeroplane. At the same time the Zeppelin soared aloft, and the two motions, the rolling and the levitation, almost tore me loose from my hold.
When the dirigible had ceased its major oscillations, the Russians rose and one by one disappeared into the well. Holmes and I worked our way across, passed the pedestals of the two quilt-swathed eight-millimetre Maxim machine guns, and descended the ladder. Just before I was all the way into the hatch, I looked across the back of the great beast that we were invading. I would have been shocked if I had not been so numb. The wheels and the ski undercarriage of the plane had ripped open a great wound along the thin skin of the vessel. Encountering the duralumin girders and rings of the framework, it had torn some apart and then its landing gear had itself been ripped off. The propellors, though no longer turning, had also done extensive damage. I wondered if the framework of the ship, the skeleton of the beast, as it were, might not have suffered so great a blow it would collapse and carryall of us down to our death.
I also had a second's admiration for the skill, no, the genius, of the pilot who had landed us.
And then I descended into the vast complex spider-web of the ship's hull with its rings and girders and bulging hydrogen-filled gas cells and ballast sacks of water. I emerged at the keel of the ship, on the foot-wide catwalk that ran the length of the ship between triangular girders. It had been a nightmare before then; after that it became a nightmare having a nightmare. I remember dodging along, clinging to girders, swinging out and climbing around to avoid the fire of the German sailors in the bow. I remember Lt. Obrenov falling with fatal bullet wounds after sticking two Germans with his sabre (there was no room to swing it and so use the edge as regulations required).
I remember others falling, some managing to retain their grip and so avoiding the fall through the fabric of the cover and into the abyss below. I remember Holmes hiding behind a gas cell and firing away at the Germans who were afraid of firing back and perhaps setting the hydrogen aflame.*
[*There was actually no danger of fire since phosphorus-coated bullets were not being used. Apparently, the grenades, which might have set off the hydrogen, were not used. Editor.]
Most of all I remember the slouch-hatted cloaked form of Kentov leaping about, swinging from girders and brace wires, bouncing from a beam onto a great gas cell and back again, flitting like a phantom of the opera through the maze, firing two huge .45 automatic pistols (not at the same time, of course, otherwise he would have lost his grip). German after German cried out or fled while the maniac cackled with a blood-chilling laugh between the booming of the huge guns. But though he was worth a squadron in himself, his men died one by one. And so the inevitable happened.
Perhaps it was a ricocheting bullet or perhaps he slipped. I do not know. All of a sudden he was falling off a girder, through a web of wires, miraculously missing them, falling backward, now in each hand a thundering flame-spitting .45, killing two sailors as he fell, laughing loudly even as he broke through the cotton fabric and disappeared into the dark rain over Africa.
Since he was wearing a parachute, he may have survived. I never heard of him again, though.
Presently the Germans approached cautiously, having heard Holmes and me call out that we surrendered. (We were out of ammunition and too nerveless even to lift a sabre.) We stood on the catwalk with our hands up, two tired beaten old men. Yet it was our finest hour. Nothing could ever rob us of the pleasure of seeing Von Bork's face when he recognised us. If the shock had been slightly more intense, he would have dropped dead from a heart attack.
6
A few minutes later, we had climbed down the ladder from the hull to the control gondola under the fore part of the airship. Behind us, raving, restrained by a petty officer and the executive officer, Oberleutnant zur See Heinrich Tring, came Von Bork. He had ordered us thrown overboard then and there, but Tring, a decent fellow, had refused to obey his orders. We were introduced to the commander, Kapitänleutnant Victor Reich.* He was also a decent fellow, openly admiring our feat of landing and boarding his ship even though it and his crew had suffered terribly. He rejected Von Bork's suggestion that we should be shot as spies since we were in civilian clothes and on a Russian warcraft. He knew of us, of course, and he would have nothing to do with a summary execution of the great Holmes and his colleague. After hearing our story, he made sure of our comfort. However, he refused to let Holmes smoke, cast his tobacco overboard then and there, in fact, and this made Holmes suffer. He had gone through so much that he desperately needed a pipeful of shag.
[*The records of the Imperial German Navy have been combed without success in a search for identification of the L9 and the crew members mentioned by Watson. Could it be that the ship and crew were secret agents also, that the L9 was a "phantom" ship, that it carried out certain missions which the German concealed from all but the highest? Or were there records, but these are still in closed files or were destroyed for one reason or another? Editor.]
"It is fortunate that the storm is breaking up," Reich said in excellent English. "Otherwise, the ship would soon break up. Three of our motors are not operating. The clutch to the port motor has overheated, the water in the radiator of a motor in the starboard mid-ear has boiled out, and something struck the propellor of the control car and shattered it. We are so far south that even if we could operate at one hundred percent efficiency, we would be out of petrol somewhere over Egypt on the return trip. Moreover, the controls to the elevators have been damaged. All we can do at present is drift with the wind and hope for the best."
The days and nights that followed were full of suffering and anxiety. Seven of the crew had been killed during the fight, leaving only six to man the vessel. This alone was enough to make a voyage back to Turkey or Palestine impossible. Reich told us that he had received a radio message ordering him to get to the German forces in East Africa under Von Lettow-Vorbeck. There he was to burn the Zeppelin and join the forces. This, of course, was not all the message. Surely something must have been said about getting Von Bork back to Germany, since he had the formula for mutating
and culturing the "sauerkraut bacilli."
When we were alone in the port mid-gondola, where we were kept during part of the voyage, Holmes commented on what he called the "SB."
"We must get possession of the formula, Watson," he said. "I did not tell you, but before you arrived at Mycroft's office I was informed that the SB is a two-edged weapon. It can be mutated to eat other foods. Imagine what. would happen to our food supply, not to mention the blow to our morale, if the SB were changed to eat boiled meat? Or cabbage? Or potatoes?"
"Great Scott!" I said, and then in a whisper, "It could be worse, Holmes, far worse. What if the Germans dropped an SB over England which devoured stout and ale? Or think of how the spirits of our valiant Scots would sink if their whisky supply vanished before their eyes?"
Von Bork had been impressed into service but, being as untrained as we, was not of much use. Also, his injured left eye handicapped him as much as our age did us. It was very bloodshot and failed to coordinate with its partner. My professional opinion was that it was totally without sight. The other eye was healthy enough. It glared every time it lighted upon us. Its fires reflected the raging hatred in his heart, the lust to murder us.
However, the airship was in such straits that no one had much time or inclination to think about anything except survival. Some of the motors were still operating, thus enabling some kind of control. As long as we went south, with the wind behind us, we made headway. But due to the jammed elevators, the nose of the ship was downward and the tail was up. The L9 flew at roughly five degrees to the horizontal for some time. Reich put everybody to work, including us, since we had volunteered, at carrying indispensable equipment to the rear to help weigh it down. Anything that was dispensable, and there was not much, went overboard. In addition, much water ballast in the front was discharged.
Below us the sands of Sudan reeled by while the sun flamed in a cloudless blue. Its fiery breath heated the hydrogen in the cells, and great amounts hissed out from the automatic valves. The hot wind blew into the hull through the great hole made by the aeroplane when it had stalled into a landing on its top. The heat, of course, made the hydrogen expand, thus causing the ship to rise despite the loss of gas from the valves. At night, the air cooled very swiftly, and the ship dropped swiftly, too swiftly for the peace of mind of its passengers. During the day the updrafts of heat from the sands made the vessel buck and kick. All of us aboard got sick during these times.
By working like Herculeses despite all handicaps, the crew managed to get all the motors going again. On the fifth day, the elevator controls were fixed. Her hull was still twisted, and this, with the huge gap in the surface covering, made her aerodynamically unstable. At least, that was how Reich explained it to us. He, by the way, was not at all reticent in telling us about the vessel itself though he would not tell us our exact location. Perhaps this was because he wanted to make sure that we would not somehow get to the radio and send a message to the British in East Africa.
The flat desert gave way to rugged mountains. More ballast was dropped, and the L9 just barely avoided scraping some of the peaks. Night came with its cooling effects and the ship dropped. The mountains were lower at this point, fortunately for us.
Two days later, as we lay sweltering on the catwalk that ran along the keel Holmes said "I estimate that we are now somewhere over British East Africa, somewhere in the vicinity of Lake Victoria. It is evident that we will never get to Mahenge or indeed anywhere in German East Africa. The ship has lost too much hydrogen. I have overheard some guarded comments to this effect by Reich and Tring. They think we'll crash sometime tonight. Instead of seeking out the nearest British authorities and surrendering, as anyone with good sense would they are determined to cross our territory to German territory. Do you know how many miles of veldt and jungle and swamp swarming with lions, rhinoceri, vipers, savages, malaria, dengue, and God knows what else we will have to walk? Attempt to walk, rather?"
" Perhaps we can slip away some night?"
And then what will we do?" he said bitterly. "Watson, you and I know the jungles of London well and are quite fitted to conduct our safaris through them. But here . . . no, Watson, any black child of eight is more competent, far more so, to survive in these wilds."
"You don't paint a very good picture," I said grimly.
"Though I am descended from the Vernets, the great French artists," he said, "I myself have little ability at painting pretty pictures."
He chuckled then, and I was heartened by this example of pawky humour, feeble though it was. Holmes would never quit; his indomitable English spirit might be defeated, but it would go down fighting. And I would be at his side. And was it not after all better to die with one's boots on while one still had some vigour than when one was old and crippled and sick and perhaps an idiot drooling and doing all sorts of pitiful, sickening things?
That evening preparations were made to abandon the ship. Ballast water was put in every portable container, the food supply was stored in sacks made from the cotton fabric ripped off the hull, and we waited. Sometime after midnight, the end came. It was fortunately a cloudless night with a moon bright enough for us to see, if not too sharply, the terrain beneath. This was a jungle up in the mountains, which were not at a great elevation. The ship was steered down a winding valley through which a stream ran silvery. Then, abruptly, we had to rise, and we could not do it.
We were in the control car when the hillside loomed before us. Reich gave the order and we threw our supplies out, thus lightening the load and giving us a few more seconds of grace. We two prisoners were courteously allowed to drop out first. Reich did this because the ship would rise as the crew members left, and he wanted us to be closest to the ground. We were old and not so agile, and he thought that we needed all the advantages we could get.
He was right. Even though Holmes and I fell into some bushes which eased our descent, we were still bruised and shaken up. We scrambled out, however, and made our way through the growth toward the supplies. The ship passed over us, sliding its great shadow like a cloak, and then it struck something. The whirring propellors were snapped off, the cars crumpled and came loose with a nerve-scraping sound, the ship lifted again with the weight of the cars gone, and it drifted out of sight. But its career was about over. A few minutes later, it exploded. Reich had left several time-bombs next to some gas cells.
The flames were very bright and very hot, outlining the dark skeleton of its framework. Birds flew up and around it. No doubt they and the beasts of the jungle were making a loud racket, but the roar of the flames drowned them out.
By their light we could see back down the hill, though not very far. We struggled through the heavy vegetation, hoping to get to the supplies before the others. We had agreed to take as much food and water as we could carry and set off by ourselves, if we got the chance. Surely, we reasoned, there must be some native village nearby, and once there we would ask for guidance to the nearest British post.
By pure luck, we came across a pile of food and some bottles of water. Holmes said, "Dame Fortune is with us, Watson!" but his chuckle died the next moment when Von Bork stepped out of the bushes. In his hand was a Luger automatic and in his one eye was the determination to use that before the others arrived. He could claim, of course, that we were fleeing or had attacked him and that he was forced to shoot us.
"Die, you pig-dogs!" he snarled, and he raised the gun. "Before you do, though, know that I have the formula on me and that I will get it to the Fatherland and it will doom you English swine and the French swine and the Italian swine. The bacilli can be adapted to eat Yorkshire pudding and snails and spaghetti, anything that is edible! The beauty of it is that it's specific, and unless it's mutated to eat sauerkraut, it will starve rather than do so!"
We drew ourselves up, prepared to die as British men should. Holmes muttered out of the corner of his mouth, "Jump to one side, Watson, and then we'll rush him! You take his blind side! Perhaps one of us can get to him!"
>
This was a noble plan, though I didn't know what I could do even if I got hold of Von Bork.
After all, he was a young man and had a splendid physique.
At that moment there was a crashing in the bushes, Reich's loud voice commanding Von Bork not to shoot, and the commander, tears streaming from his face, stumbled into the little clearing. Behind him came others. Von Bork said, "I was merely holding them until you got here."
Reich, I must add, was not weeping because of any danger to us. The fate of his airship had dealt him a terrible blow; he loved his vessel and to see it die was to him comparable to seeing his wife die. Perhaps it had even more impact, since, as I later found out, he was on the verge of a divorce.
Though he had saved us, he knew that we were ready to skip out at the first chance. He kept a close eye on us, though it was not as close as Von Bork's. Nevertheless, he allowed us to retreat behind bushes to attend to our comforts. And so, three days later, we strolled on away.
"Well, Watson," Holmes said, as we sat panting under a tree several hours later, "we have given them the slip. But we have no water and no food except these pieces of mouldy biscuit in our pockets. At this moment I would trade them for a handful of shag."
We went to sleep finally and slept like the two old and exhausted men we were. I awoke several times, I think because of insects crawling over my face, but I always went back to sleep quickly. About eight in the morning, the light and the uproar of jungle life awoke us. I was the first to see the cobra slipping through the tall growths toward us. I got quickly, though unsteadily and painfully, to my feet. Holmes saw the reptile then and started to get up. The snake raised its upper part, its hood swelled, and it swayed as it turned its head this way and that.
"Steady, Watson!" Holmes said, though the advice would better have been given to himself. He was much closer to the cobra, within striking range, in fact, and he was shaking more violently than I. He could not be blamed for this, of course. He was in a more shakeable situation.