Billy Barcroft, R.N.A.S Part 11

CHAPTER XI

THE TERRORS OF THE AIR

SIEGFRIED VON EITELWURMER, the German Secret Service Agent, sat and s.h.i.+vered 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 hara.s.sed 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 airs.h.i.+p 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.

Ober-leutnant von Loringhoven left his pa.s.senger severely alone. For one thing the commander's attention was almost entirely taken up with the work of navigating his c.u.mbersome craft back to the Fatherland; for another he mistrusted spies, even when they were Germans and notwithstanding the fact that he himself had indulged in that dangerous pastime. But there was this difference. Von Loringhoven was a naval officer while von Eitelwurmer was a civilian. He had heard of German spies renouncing their allegiance and acting for the country in which they were to be working on behalf of the authorities at Berlin.

The spy had been accommodated with a camp-stool. On either side of the narrow compartment was a window fitted with double plate-gla.s.s windows. The for'ard bulkhead was pierced by a door leading to the cat-walk or suspended bridge communicating with both the 'mids.h.i.+ps and for'ard gondolas. Aft was another bulkhead separating a portion of the compartment from that containing the motors actuating the two rearmost propellers. The floor was in a state of continual tremor under the pulsations of the engines and the rattle of the two endless chains that transmitted the power to the two outboard propellers.

The limited s.p.a.ce was still further taken up by two machine-guns mounted on aluminium alloy pedestals and capable of being trained through a fairly broad arc. By these stood four of the crew, ready at the first alarm to lower the gla.s.s panes and bring the weapons into action. The men were taciturn and obviously nervous. When flying over the unprotected towns and dropping their murderous cargoes they could be boisterous enough, but now, knowing that they had to run the gauntlet, they were feeling particularly cowed. The fear of being paid back in their own coin--a possibility that alone makes the Hun howl--gripped them, and held them in a state of prolonged mental torture.

Presently at an order communicated by telephone from the foremost gondola, the machine-gunners lowered the sashes of the windows. The temperature, already -2 degrees C. fell rapidly to -10 degrees C.

Warm air-currents from the motor-room drifted through gaps in the part.i.tion and condensing fell upon the floor in the form of globules of ice.

Up and up climbed the Zeppelin. She was approaching the East Coast.

Von Eitelwurmer, overcoming his torpor, went to the window. One of the men was about to motion him to his seat, when another touched him on the shoulder and pointed.

Far below the whole country was in darkness. The spy could not tell whether it was land or water. Away to the southward a group of searchlights swept the sky, the beams impinging upon a bank of clouds that floated at a height of nearly a mile. Still further away more electric rays swayed slowly to and fro. At intervals the searchlights of the nearmost station crossed those of the one more remote, while in turn these effected a luminous exchange with rays still further away. As far as the eye could see there appeared to be a continuous barrage of light through which the returning raider must pa.s.s before gaining her base.

At an order the motors were switched off. Almost absolute silence succeeded the noisy roar of the seven 240-horse-power engines. The airs.h.i.+p, at the mercy of the winds, began to turn broadside on to the aerial drift, yet the while, by means of ballast thrown overboard and the release of more compressed hydrogen from the cylinders into the ballonets, was steadily climbing.

It was von Loringhoven's aim to ascend until the Zeppelin was above the clouds. Screened from those dangerous searchlights the airs.h.i.+p would then drift over the coast-line until such times as it would be deemed safe to restart the motors.

With the alt.i.tude gauge hovering at 4,000 metres the raider found herself just above the natural screen. The belt of clouds was not more than three hundred feet in height--sufficient to hide her from the earth, yet transparent enough to allow the rays of the searchlight to penetrate the vapour.

To the spy the outlook resembled the view from a railway carriage when dense clouds of steam waft past the windows. So powerful were the rays of the searchlights that the stratum of the vapour was flooded with silvery luminosity, while--ominous sign--the beams no longer swayed to and fro as previously, but hung with sinister persistence upon the bank of clouds with which the airs.h.i.+p hoped to screen herself from observation.

Even as von Eitelwurmer looked a huge dark shadow eclipsed the concentrated beams. It was moving slowly at a rate hardly exceeding that of the airs.h.i.+p. For that reason the object could not be an aeroplane. Perhaps it was some deadly invention that the English had brought into action against the Zeppelins--a sort of aerial torpedo steered by wireless electric waves?

The machine-gunners saw it too. The last atom of courage literally oozed out of their boots, yet almost automatically they gripped the handle that would liberate shots at the rate of 500 a minute if to the voidless night.

It was fortunate for them that they did not open fire. The shadow was that of another Zeppelin that at less than a hundred feet below was slowly forging ahead in a southerly direction under the action of her throttled-down motors, and with her exhausts carefully m.u.f.fled.

In five minutes the novel Zeppelin eclipse was over, although at no time was the actual airs.h.i.+p to be seen. She had previously been fired upon by the anti-aircraft guns on the coast and was now cautiously smelling her way through the clouds in order to find an undefended gap in the defences.

Another half-hour pa.s.sed in acute suspense, Three times the anxious crew heard the terrifying sound of an aerial propeller. Somewhere in the darkness the British hornets were up and searching for their lurking foe--so far without success unless the moral effect be taken into consideration.

Presently the Zeppelin drifted beyond the glare of the fixed searchlights, but not until another twenty minutes had pa.s.sed did von Loringhoven give orders for the engines to be restarted. At that terrific alt.i.tude the noise was considerably diminished in volume.

Instead of the explosions of the motors resembling a succession of rifle-shots the sounds were like those of a whip being cracked, yet as the airs.h.i.+p descended steadily to a height of five thousand feet the noise resumed its normal and distracting violence.

The spy sat down again. His torpor was returning. The sudden change of alt.i.tude had resulted in a steady flow of blood from his nose, while his ear-drums throbbed until they seemed on the point of bursting. At that moment he felt that he would not have minded had the airs.h.i.+p been blown to atoms.

But the next instant his la.s.situde vanished, as the loud pop-pop-pop of two of her machine-guns roused him from his stupor. The weapon on the starboard side was trained as far as possible abaft the beam and was 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 agonies of mind to return with redoubled violence.

Just visible against the loom of the starlit sky was a huge biplane that, climbing steeply, seemed to be steadily overhauling the airs.h.i.+p. Serenely unmindful of the hail of bullets aimed at her the seaplane held on with the obvious intention of getting astride her prey.

Mingled with the detonations of the machine-guns were the clanging of telephone bells, the clank of machinery and the excited voices of the crew. Then with a jerk that threw the spy violently against the after bulkhead the Zeppelin leapt skywards. Simultaneously dense volumes of black smoke eddied in through the open windows.

Sprawling in the intense darkness upon the ice-encrusted floor of the gondola the spy vainly strove to shriek, but only a gurgled sound came from his lips. He had not the slightest doubt but that the airs.h.i.+p was on fire and on the point of cras.h.i.+ng to her doom.

Hearing the stifled cry, for again the motors were stopped, one of the 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, floating motionless in a dense and opaque bank of clouds, was endeavouring to evade her comparatively small but highly dangerous antagonist, the loud buzzing of whose engine could be distinguished with all too forcible certainty.

With every light switched off the crew of the unwieldy gas-bag waited in breathless suspense, knowing that at any moment a bomb might explode with annihilating result in the midst of the vast store of highly inflammable hydrogen above their heads.

For how long this state of almost unbearable suspense and nerve-racking tension lasted von Eitelwurmer had not the slightest idea. In Cimmerian darkness he sat, s.h.i.+vering with cold and fear, his eyes fixed upon the motionless form of one of the machine-gunners who, leaning out of one of the open apertures, was striving to locate the presence of the unseen but audible British seaplane.

Every time that the drone of the biplane's engine rose to a crescendo the spy's finger-nails cut into the palms of his benumbed hands. Vaguely he wondered what the end would be: whether the intense cold would give place to violent heat as the Zeppelin, a ma.s.s of flames, crashed headlong, or whether in the absence of an explosion the agony would be prolonged until the gondola, pinned down by the weight of the shattered framework of the gas-bag, would plunge beneath the waves and cause him to drown like a rat in a trap. He gave no thought to his companions. It was he that mattered.

He was in peril. The rest--well, that was their affair. They had undertaken the raid and its attendant risk to themselves. It seemed hard that he--an involuntary pa.s.senger--should be faced with the immediate prospect of being burnt to a cinder in mid-air or stifled in the icy waters of the North Sea.

The whirr of the seaplane's propeller increased in volume, more than at any previous time during the Zeppelin's sojourn in the clouds.

Suddenly the machine-gunner uttered an exclamation and nudged his companion. A succession of blinding flashes and the rapid rattle of the automatic weapon dazzled the eyes and dulled the hearing of the demoralised spy. Yet, impelled by an unseen force, von Eitelwurmer raised himself and peered out of the scuttle.

The sight that met his eye was enough to appal a man of high moral and physical fibre, let alone the nerve-stricken spy; for, apparently heading straight for the Zeppelin and with her planes distinctly visible in the flashes of the machine-gun, was the avenging British seaplane. With a wild, unearthly shriek von Eitelwurmer threw up his arms and fell unconscious upon the floor of the gondola.

CHAPTER XII

THE RAIDER'S RETURN

SIEGFRIED VON EITELWURMER opened his eyes. His first thoughts were those of curious wonderment. It seemed remarkable, almost disappointing, that he found himself still alive.

More, he was still on board the airs.h.i.+p, but his surroundings were different. The intense darkness had given place to light--not artificial luminosity of electric agency but the welcome light of day. His quarters had been changed. During his period of unconsciousness he had been taken along the narrow cat-walk (perhaps it was well for him that he had no recollection of that perilous pa.s.sage along the V-shaped gangway) and had been placed in the centre gondola.

This move had been made at Ober-leutnant von Loringhoven's orders.

During the nerve-racking journey over the sea-frontier of England the Hun commander had given scant thought to the comfort of his guest, but with immediate prospects of a safe return, he had recalled the advisability of giving the Kaiser's emissary those honours that his position albeit a despised civil one demanded.

"Are you feeling better now?" enquired von Loringhoven.