Up spun 445B, until she seemed to stand almost on her tail. Then tilting until she was in imminent danger of side-slipping, she sought to make good her discovery. Vainly Fuller circled and circled, striving to pierce the vault of inky blackness. The Zeppelin was no longer there. Whether she had thrown out some more ballast or had trusted to her motors to bear her away from the unseen terror he knew not.
He was not a man to admit defeat readily.
"I'll make 'em have cold feet in any case," he decided, as he removed his mist-dimmed goggles and peered into the luminous compass bowl. "Due east till we get out of this cloud, and then I'll wait for the brute."
Unfortunately, as far as he was concerned, Fuller's decision could not be carried out, for from no apparent cause the motors raced at unprecedented speed for a brief instant and then stopped.
The contrast from the noise of the engine to the stillness of the upper regions was the feature that impressed him most. The seaplane, at a height of ten thousand feet, and in the midst of a dense cloud, was beginning to fall. Vainly the pilot strove to avoid the nerve-racking "tail-spin." His sense of direction gone he could only jiggle the joy-stick in the hope that the terrific headlong, erratic downward rush might be checked.
Kirkwood, secured by the broad leather safety strap, also realised the danger. He was conscious of being whirled round and round with his body in a horizontal position. He could feel the rush of air as the seaplane dropped, otherwise silently, towards the sea. Unless the machine could be got under control their fate was sealed. The frail floats would be pulverised and splintered with the terrific impact, and the wreckage, weighted down by the heavy motor, would sink like a stone.
For sixty seconds—it seemed like sixty hours—the uncontrollable plunge continued, then like a flash the tail-spinning machine emerged from the under side of the cloud into the comparatively clear atmosphere. With an almost superhuman effort Fuller readjusted the sorely tried ailerons. The resistance on the planes was tremendous, but the fabric and the tension wires were British made, with a sickening jerk the seaplane described a complete loop. In the nick of time the resourceful pilot caught her on the "swing" and flattened out.
Once the motion was sufficiently retarded he commenced a vol-plane. It was, perhaps, prolonging the agony, since there could be little hope of rescue on a dark night, even if the waves did not overwhelm the frail craft.
"Stand by!" shouted Fuller. "Look down—on your right."
The A.P., well nigh breathless through the pressure of the belt upon his ribs, leant over the side of the chassis. Two thousand feet below, with her drawn-out shape glittering dully in the starlight, was another Zeppelin. The first, silhouetted against the faint light, had presented a black shape; this one showed up clearly in her aluminium garb against the darkness. She was proceeding rapidly at a height of about three thousand feet, and now less than a thousand beneath the vol-planing British craft.
"Our luck's in!" exclaimed the flight-lieutenant, his thoughts only for the immediate present. It would be sufficient to consider the end of that terrific vol-plane when the moment arrived. For the present it was not even a secondary matter—it did not enter into the intrepid airman's calculation.
"Stand by!" roared Fuller again. "For Heaven's sake don't miss."
Down swept the noiseless biplane upon its unsuspecting prey. According to Fuller's plans he would approach the Zeppelin in the same vertical plane but at an acute angle—both aircraft proceeding in the same direction. This would give the bombs a better target than if the seaplane was cutting across the path of the airship.
So swift was the descent that the Zeppelin appeared to be rising in the air to meet her opponent. Her huge, long-drawn-out mass grew bigger and bigger until it seemed as if a miss would be an impossibility.
"Now!" shouted the flight-lieutenant.
With a swift, decided movement Kirkwood thrust over the releasing-gear lever. There was no resistance. Unaccountably the flexible wire operating the release catch had been detached. Without a moment's hesitation the A.P. unbuckled his belt and, bending, groped on the floor of the fuselage for the business-end of the wire. Just then the Zep, opened fire with her machine-gun.
Fuller, leaning over the side waited in eager expectation of the anticipated explosion, quite prepared to find the seaplane capsized under the blast of the terrific detonation. But there was none, and already the vol-planing machine was beyond and on a level with the Zeppelin. Without the aid of the motor it was impossible to return to the attack.
Savagely Fuller swung round with the intention of demanding the reason of his observer's blunder. To his surprise the A.P., was not to be seen.
"Plugged!" ejaculated the pilot. "Well, here goes; another two minutes will decide."
The Zeppelin was now out of his mind. His whole attention was devoted to the impending impact with the surface of the water. Every thing depended upon his skill and judgment, with a fair element of luck thrown in. In the darkness it was impossible to gauge with any degree of certainty the height of the descending machine above the sea. If the pilot "flattened out" too soon the seaplane would fall like a stone; if, on the other hand the vol-plane were maintained the fraction of a minute too long the impact would either result in the shattering of the floats or in the machine describing a somersault—possibly both.
With a double plash the flat-bottomed floats smacked the waves. The "landing" was successfully accomplished, but the unpleasant fact remained that Fuller and Kirkwood were afloat in a frail cockleshell in a fairly "jumpy" sea and on a pitch-dark night. Without water and provisions and with no aid in sight and already sixty miles or more from land they were rapidly drifting out to sea nearer and nearer the hostile shores of Germany.
CHAPTER XI
THE TERRORS OF THE AIR
SIEGFRIED VON EITELWURMER, the German Secret Service Agent, sat and shivered in the after-gondola of the returning Zeppelin. He was not feeling at all happy. Apart from the physical discomfort—for in addition to the effect of the cold he was under the influence of air-sickness—his mind was harassed by wellfounded thoughts that something might happen to the gigantic but obviously frail gas-bag.
Like most Germans his faith in Count Zeppelin's cowardly and diabolical invention was unshaken—so long as he could remain on terra-firma. But whereas the stay-at-home Hun satisfied himself by reading of the colossal achievements of the German aerial fleet, von Eitelwurmer knew by actual observation that the raids failed to justify one-tenth, nay, one-thousandth part of the claims put forward by the authorities at Berlin.
In pre-war days he had seen experimental Zeppelins dashed to pieces in a vain attempt to regain the shed. He had seen others destroyed by fire. He remembered seeing a "leader" in a British newspaper in which it was solemnly declared that the sympathies of the civilised world will go out to the aged Count in the hour of his grief at the failure of his life's work.
And now, in addition to the ordinary risks of aviation the returning airship was liable at any moment to the attack of the "hornets" that were known to be on the look-out for the raiders. Here he was, carried off against his will, suspended like Mahomet's tomb 'twixt heaven and earth, and faced with the prospect of a swift journey to a place not included in the above category.