Youth is fain to be reckless, but there was no lack of reasoning behind
Tom Cameron's intention.
He was a prisoner on this airship which was bound on a raid over London.
If the Zeppelin was not brought down and wrecked on English soil, she
would return to her base and Tom would be sent to a German internment
camp for the duration of the war.
Imprisonment by the Hun was not a desirable fate to contemplate. If the
Zeppelin was brought down during the raid over London, he would very
likely be killed in its fall. He might as well risk death now, and
perhaps in doing so deliver a stroke that would make this raid
impossible.
He slipped out of the closet in which he had been confined and closed
the door behind him. He ran quickly to the after door of the long cabin,
which he had previously seen could be fastened upon the inside by a
bolt. He shot this bolt, and then ran forward again and opened the door
to the deck.
The wind almost took his breath. He was obliged to force the door shut
again with his shoulder, and stood panting to recover himself. There was
some considerable risk in facing the gale outside there.
It was impressed upon his mind more clearly now what it would mean if
the Zeppelin could no longer be steered. This gale would sweep the
airship down the English Channel and directly out into the Atlantic!
As this thought smoldered in his mind, others took fire from it. He
faced a desperate venture.
If he carried through his purpose, with the Germans manning this airship
he would be swept to a lingering but almost certain death.
The airship could not keep afloat for many hours. It took a deal of
petrol to drive the huge machine from its base to England and back
again. The store of fuel must be exhausted in a comparatively short
time, and the Zeppelin would slowly settle to the surface of the sea.
Under these conditions he was pretty sure to be drowned, even if the
Germans did not kill him immediately. He thought of his sister Helen--of
his father--of Ruth Fielding. Already, perhaps, the loss of Ralph
Stillinger and the airplane was known behind the French and British
lines. Helen must learn of the catastrophe in time. Ruth might hear of
the wreck of the airplane before she sailed for home.
Thought of the girl of the Red Mill well nigh unmanned Tom Cameron for a
moment. To attempt to carry through the scheme he had plotted in his
mind was, very likely, hastening his own death. Had he a right to do
this?
It was a hard question to decide. Personal fear did not enter into the
matter at all. The question was whether he owed his first duty to his
family and Ruth or to the cause which he and every other right-thinking
American had subscribed to when the United States got into this World
War.
That was the point! Tom Cameron sighed, shrugged his shoulders, and
again opened the door which gave egress to the forward deck of the
German airship.
He pulled the door shut and breasted the cutting wind that rocked the
airship as though she were in a heavy sea. He scrambled somehow along
the deck to the pilot-house. There was a square of the same clouded
glass in the door of this room. Through it he saw the shadow of a man
with a row of instruments before him as well as several levers under his
hand.
Tom had very little idea regarding the exact use of either the levers or
the instruments. But he knew that he could put the Zeppelin out of
commission with a few smashing blows if once he could get this man out
of the way.
This whole forward part of the ship seemed deserted save for the man
inside the room. Of course, the helmsman, or whatever he was called,
must be in communication with all other parts of the great aircraft. If
Tom would put his determination into practice he must overcome this
man--and that quickly.
He opened the door. The man was aware of his presence, for the roar of
the wind and the throbbing of the motors immediately reached the
German's ears more acutely. Tom saw him turn his head to look over his
shoulder.
The young American had gripped his pistol by the barrel. He raised it
and with all his force brought the weapon's butt down on the padded
helmet the man wore. Again and again he struck, while the fellow wheeled
about and tried to grapple with him.
Tom broke the German's goggles and the face before him was at once
bathed in blood. Again and again he struck. The man sunk to his
knees--then supinely to the deck, lying across the threshold of the room.
The American strode over him and looked swiftly about the hut. In a
corner was fastened an iron bar. He seized it, and with repeated blows
smashed the clock-faces and more delicate instruments, as well as
beating the levers into a twisted wreck.
The Zeppelin lurched sideways, rolled, and then righted itself. But it
lost headway and Tom felt sure that it would drift now at the mercy of
the furious gale. He had accomplished his purpose.
But he had the result of his act to face. The other members of the crew
of the Zeppelin would be warned of the catastrophe almost immediately.
They would soon break through the door of the cabin and reach the
forward deck.
He stepped out of the wrecked hut and glanced back. Already the roar of
the motors was subsiding. He surely had put the whole works out of
commission.
Tom scrambled around the pilot-house into the extreme bow of the craft.
Here was a waist-high bin, or storage box, with a hinged cover. He
opened it and looked in. It seemed roomy, and there were only some cans
and boxes in the receptacle. In a flash he jumped in, lowered the cover,
and crouched there in the darkness.
What went on after that he could neither see nor hear. But he could feel
the pitching and rolling of the damaged Zeppelin! He knew, too, by that
peculiar sinking feeling at the pit of the stomach that attends such a
swift passage downward, that the ship was rapidly falling.
This lasted only for a few moments. Then the airship found a steadier
keel. It had not begun to spin as a biplane or a monoplane would have
done. In some way her descent had been stopped and her balance
recovered. But her motors had stopped entirely, and that meant that the
wind was driving her as it pleased.
With the cessation of the motors his ear became tuned to other
sounds--the shrieking of the wind through the stays and the thumping of
its blasts upon the elephant-like envelope. Nor was the passage the
craft made a smooth one.
Now and again it pitched as though about to dive into the sea. This sea
was roaring, too--a monotone of sound that could not be mistaken. The
aircraft was at the mercy of the elements.
He crouched in the box, quite ready to spring up and empty his pistol
into the faces of any of his enemies who lifted the cover. But for some
reason they did not track him here.
It could not be possible that they were long mystified as to who had
done the deed. The figure he had laid upon the bench in the little room
at the end of the closet would not have long led them astray. He had
brought about the disaster and the thought of it delighted him.
No matter what finally became of him, he had stopped this Zeppelin from
ever reaching the English shore! There was one cruel raid over London
halted in the very beginning. He could have shouted aloud in his
delight.
He thrust up the heavy cover of the box and cocked his ear to listen for
near-by sounds. There was considerable hammering and boisterous talk
going on, the sound of which he caught from moment to moment. But it was
mostly smothered in the roar of the waves and the shrieking of the wind.
They were very near the surface of the boisterous sea. He heard the
bursting of a wave below the airship and the spray of it, tossed high in
the air, swept across the structure and showered him as he crouched
under the open box lid. In a minute or two now, the Zeppelin would be a
hopeless wreck.
It came, indeed, more quickly than he had apprehended. There was a
sudden dip, and the craft was swerved half around with a mighty wrench
of parting stays and superstructure. A wave dashed completely over the
platform. He shut the cover of the box to keep out the water.
The next few minutes were indeed disastrous ones. He was in a sorry
situation. He did not know what was happening to the other castaways,
but he felt and heard the frame of the great airship being wrenched to
pieces by the ravenous sea.
The envelope boomed and tore at the frame for freedom. At last it must
have been wrenched free by the wind, and the sound of its booming and
clashing gradually drifted away. The box he was in rocked and pitched
like a small boat in the sea. He ventured to look out again, clearing
his eyes of the salt spray.
It was already evening. There was a lurid light upon the tossing waves.
Near him was a mass of twisted framework and a barge-like hulk that rode
high. Upon it he saw clinging several wind-swept figures.
Then the sea tore the bow of the forward deck of the Zeppelin entirely
free from the rest of the structure. Tom Cameron went drifting off to
leeward in his uncertain refuge.
The tumbling sea separated him from the Germans. Perhaps it was as well.
As his raft rose upon a wave he looked back into the deep trough and saw
the remains of the airship turning slowly, around and around, as though
being drawn down into the vortex of a whirlpool. His lighter craft shot
downward into the next valley, and that was the last glimpse Tom had of
the wrecked Zeppelin and its crew.