“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-car 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.