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.
Ober-leutnant von Loringhoven left his passenger severely alone. For
one thing the commander's attention was almost entirely taken up
with the work of navigating his cumbersome 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-glass
windows. The for'ard bulkhead was pierced by a door leading to the
cat-walk or suspended bridge communicating with both the 'midships
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 space 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 glass 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
partition 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 pass 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
airship, 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 airship
would then drift over the coast-line until such times as it would be
deemed safe to restart the motors.
With the altitude 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 airship 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 airship. 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
muffled.
In five minutes the novel Zeppelin eclipse was over, although at no
time was the actual airship 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 passed 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 passed did
von Loringhoven give orders for the engines to be restarted. At that
terrific altitude 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 airship 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 altitude 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 airship been blown to atoms.
But the next instant his lassitude 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
airship. 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 airship was on fire and on the point of crashing 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, shivering 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
mass 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 passenger--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.