But the Zeppelin, though it did seem to be somewhat out of line, its frame slightly twisted, held together. Meanwhile, our four-engined colossus, so small compared to the airship, swept around to the vessel’s stern. It was a ragged approach what with the constantly buffeting blasts, but the wonder was that it was accomplished at all.
“What’s the fool doing?” Holmes said, and he spoke again to Ivan. Lightning rolled up the heavens then, and I saw that his face was a ghastly blue-grey.
“This Yank is madder than the other!” he said. “He’s going to try to land on top of the Zeppelin!”
“How could he do that?” I gasped.
“How would I know what techniques he’ll use, you dunce!” he shouted. “Who cares? Whatever he does, the plane will fall off the ship, probably break its wings, and we’ll fall to our deaths!”
“We can jump now!” I shouted.
“What? Desert?” he cried. “Watson, we are British!”
“It was only a suggestion,” I said. “Forgive me. Of course, we will stick it out. No Slav is going to say that we English lack courage.”
Ivan spoke again, and Holmes relayed his intelligence. “He says that the colonel, who is probably the greatest flier in the world, even if he is a Yank, will come up over the stern of the Zeppelin and stall it just above the top machine-gun platform. As soon as the plane stops, we are to open the door and leap out. If we miss our footing or fall down, we can always use the parachutes. Kentov insisted on bringing them along over the protests of the Imperial Russian General Staff — they should live so long. We will go down the ladder from the platform and board the ship. Kentov’s final words, his last orders before we leave the plane are...”
He hesitated, and I said, “Yes, Holmes?”
“Kill! Kill! Kill!”
“Good heavens!” I said. “How barbaric!”
“Yes,” he answered. “But one has to excuse him. He is obviously not sane.”
Five
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 centreline. Its weight would thus cause the airship on whose back it rode to roll to the left.
For a second, I did not realise 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 carry all 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.8
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.
Six
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.9 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.