Aeroplanes and seaplanes attached to the north-eastern bases had already ascended in the hope of cutting off the returning air-pirates, and in conjunction with these operations the "Hippodrome" was about to send out her airmen to grapple with the enemy in the darkness.
It was indeed a formidable and hazardous undertaking. The returning Zeppelins would certainly take advantage of the stiff westerly breeze. By keeping to a great alt.i.tude and shutting off their engines they drift, silent and unseen, over the East Coast, until it is deemed advisable to restart the motors. Even the disadvantage caused by the immense bulk of the vulnerable envelope would be discounted by its invisibility in the darkness of the night.
The Zeppelins could keep "afloat" by the buoyancy of their hydrogen-charged ballonets; the aeroplanes, being heavier than air, could not, except for a comparatively brief vol-plane, without the aid of their propellers, The roar of the latter would betray their presence to the watchers on the silent airship.
Altogether the seaplane"s task savoured of a wild goose chase, only by a pure fluke might one of the aeroplanes "spot" one of the returning raiders, but on the remote chance of being able to do so the "Hippodrome"s" aerial flotilla set out on its hazardous flight.
For three-quarters of an hour No 445B flew to and fro parallel to the coast. It was bitterly cold. At a minimum height of five thousand feet was a vast bank of clouds that drifted steadily eastwards.
Occasionally Kirkwood took down a wireless report from the parent ship and handed it to the pilot. Hardly a word was spoken. The voice tube was resorted to only once in that forty-five minutes.
"I"m going further out," announced Fuller. "We"ll clear that patch of clouds."
With her motors purring rhythmically and the pistons throbbing in perfect tune the seaplane swung round and settled in an easterly direction, the while climbing steadily. Behind her was the tail end of a nimbus; above, through a vast rift the stars twinkled in the cold sky; beneath, thousands of feet down, was the sea, its vicious, steep waves invisible in the kindly darkness.
Suddenly, from the enshrouding ma.s.ses of cloud, a dark, symmetrically elongated shape shot rapidly into the starlight. It was a Zeppelin in full flight. Columns of smoke were issuing from her exhausts, but the throb of the seaplane"s motors drowned the drone of her powerful engines.
"Good!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Fuller, actuating the rudder bar with his feet and elevating the ailerons. "That"s our bird. If they don"t spot us before they gain that bank of clouds, she"s ours."
Eagerly yet methodically Kirkwood brought the Lewis gun ready for action. It was to be the last resource in attack, to be used only if the seaplane failed to gain the aerial "weathergage"--a superior alt.i.tude to that of her bulky antagonist.
For the present the odds were level as regards speed. The seaplane"s greater rate of flight was counterbalanced by the fact that she had to climb in order to get above her intended prey and drop a bomb upon the immense and fragile bulk of the Zeppelin"s envelope.
And Fuller was achieving his object. Already Seaplane 445B was pa.s.sing diagonally upwards through the raider"s smoking trail, the oil tinged vapour from her exhaust pipes. Every moment tended to bring the protruding stern portion of the Zep, betwixt her crew and the steadily climbing aeroplane, thus diminishing the risk of detection.
Fuller was about to check the upward climb and overhaul his antagonist when the Zeppelin appeared almost to stand on end. The whole of her upper surface was exposed to the British airmen"s view.
Then, almost simultaneously the seaplane seemed to be following.
It was a form of optical delusion. She was still climbing steadily.
The Zeppelin had spotted her small and dangerous foe. Dropping a quant.i.ty of ballast _en bloc_ the airship shot vertically upward to a terrific height. It was this motion that had given Fuller the impression that the seaplane was dropping.
"She"s twigged us!" he shouted through the voice tube. "Let her have it."
The A.P. promptly began to let loose a whole drum of ammunition. The Zeppelin was instantly enveloped in a cloud of smoke. Into the pall of vapour the Lewis gun pumped its nickel missiles, yet no crippled flaming fabric crashed helplessly to the surface of the sea.
The smoke was a "blind." Fuller realised that. Screening herself by the dense vapour the Zeppelin had ascended almost vertically until safe from observation in the dense clouds overhead.
"Missed her, by Jove!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the flight-lieutenant.
"More than she did us," replied Kirkwood coolly, in spite of his keen disappointment, for a small-calibre bullet had ripped the ear-pad of his airman"s helmet. Whether his ear was. .h.i.t he knew not.
The intense cold had numbed all sense of feeling. The shot was evidently from a Maxim and one of many, but in the darkness it was impossible to see whether the seaplane had sustained any damage.
Judging by her behaviour Kirkwood thought not.
Yet Fuller was loath to discontinue the chase. On and on he flew, further and further away from the "Hippodrome" and the sh.o.r.es of Britain, vainly hoping to pick up his quarry when the Zeppelin again emerged from the cloud banks.
"I"ll swear she"s shut off power and is floating somewhere in that cloud," he soliloquised. "Well, I"ll have a shot at it, even if we charge smack into the brute."
With this desperate yet praiseworthy resolution the flight-lieutenant swung his frail command about and began to climb steadily towards the ma.s.s of dark clouds. Ten minutes later the seaplane entered the lower edge of the nimbus. It was like tearing through a dense fog. All sense of direction was lost. Whether the machine was climbing, banking or descending was a matter of conjecture, since the darkness and the moisture made it impossible to consult the aeronautical instrument. Ahead was nothing but an opaque curtain of mist. On either side the tips of the planes merged into invisibility. Only astern were there any light-sparks from the hot exhaust throwing a faint, ruddy glare upon the wisps of trailing vapour that followed, circling and writhing, in the wake of the swiftly-moving machine.
"If the Huns are anywhere in this stuff they"ll get in a rare funk even if we don"t run across them," thought Fuller, Unmindful of the danger of his own seeking he mentally pictured the panic-stricken condition of the raider, as hearing the roar of the seaplane"s motors and unable to locate its position, they were in momentary peril of being rammed by an object tearing at ninety miles an hour through an optically impenetrable darkness.
Kirkwood, too, realised the risk. With nerves a-tingle he awaited developments. Faith in Fuller"s prowess gave him confidence. With one hand resting lightly on the lever operating the bomb-dropping gear he waited, ready at the first signal to release the missiles of annihilation.
Suddenly the m.u.f.fled roar of the exhaust gave place to a series of rapid explosions. Instinctively Kirkwood likened it to a boy rasping a stick along a row of iron palings. At the same time a succession of spurts of flame streaked overhead. The seaplane had only just sc.r.a.ped the underside of her antagonist. The upper planes had missed the Zeppelin"s "midship gondola by inches, and the flashes he had seen were from the airship"s machine-gun as the Huns blazed furiously and erratically at their unseen but unpleasantly audible foe.
Up spun 445B, until she seemed to stand almost on her tail. Then tilting until she was in imminent danger of side-slipping, she sought to make good her discovery. Vainly Fuller circled and circled, striving to pierce the vault of inky blackness. The Zeppelin was no longer there. Whether she had thrown out some more ballast or had trusted to her motors to bear her away from the unseen terror he knew not.
He was not a man to admit defeat readily.
"I"ll make "em have cold feet in any case," he decided, as he removed his mist-dimmed goggles and peered into the luminous compa.s.s bowl. "Due east till we get out of this cloud, and then I"ll wait for the brute."
Unfortunately, as far as he was concerned, Fuller"s decision could not be carried out, for from no apparent cause the motors raced at unprecedented speed for a brief instant and then stopped.
The contrast from the noise of the engine to the stillness of the upper regions was the feature that impressed him most. The seaplane, at a height of ten thousand feet, and in the midst of a dense cloud, was beginning to fall. Vainly the pilot strove to avoid the nerve-racking "tail-spin." His sense of direction gone he could only jiggle the joy-stick in the hope that the terrific headlong, erratic downward rush might be checked.
Kirkwood, secured by the broad leather safety strap, also realised the danger. He was conscious of being whirled round and round with his body in a horizontal position. He could feel the rush of air as the seaplane dropped, otherwise silently, towards the sea. Unless the machine could be got under control their fate was sealed. The frail floats would be pulverised and splintered with the terrific impact, and the wreckage, weighted down by the heavy motor, would sink like a stone.
For sixty seconds--it seemed like sixty hours--the uncontrollable plunge continued, then like a flash the tail-spinning machine emerged from the under side of the cloud into the comparatively clear atmosphere. With an almost superhuman effort Fuller readjusted the sorely tried ailerons. The resistance on the planes was tremendous, but the fabric and the tension wires were British made, with a sickening jerk the seaplane described a complete loop. In the nick of time the resourceful pilot caught her on the "swing" and flattened out.
Once the motion was sufficiently r.e.t.a.r.ded he commenced a vol-plane.
It was, perhaps, prolonging the agony, since there could be little hope of rescue on a dark night, even if the waves did not overwhelm the frail craft.
"Stand by!" shouted Fuller. "Look down--on your right."
The A.P., well nigh breathless through the pressure of the belt upon his ribs, leant over the side of the cha.s.sis. Two thousand feet below, with her drawn-out shape glittering dully in the starlight, was another Zeppelin. The first, silhouetted against the faint light, had presented a black shape; this one showed up clearly in her aluminium garb against the darkness. She was proceeding rapidly at a height of about three thousand feet, and now less than a thousand beneath the vol-planing British craft.
"Our luck"s in!" exclaimed the flight-lieutenant, his thoughts only for the immediate present. It would be sufficient to consider the end of that terrific vol-plane when the moment arrived. For the present it was not even a secondary matter--it did not enter into the intrepid airman"s calculation.
"Stand by!" roared Fuller again. "For Heaven"s sake don"t miss."
Down swept the noiseless biplane upon its unsuspecting prey.
According to Fuller"s plans he would approach the Zeppelin in the same vertical plane but at an acute angle--both aircraft proceeding in the same direction. This would give the bombs a better target than if the seaplane was cutting across the path of the airship.
So swift was the descent that the Zeppelin appeared to be rising in the air to meet her opponent. Her huge, long-drawn-out ma.s.s grew bigger and bigger until it seemed as if a miss would be an impossibility.
"Now!" shouted the flight-lieutenant.
With a swift, decided movement Kirkwood thrust over the releasing-gear lever. There was no resistance. Unaccountably the flexible wire operating the release catch had been detached. Without a moment"s hesitation the A.P. unbuckled his belt and, bending, groped on the floor of the fuselage for the business-end of the wire. Just then the Zep, opened fire with her machine-gun.
Fuller, leaning over the side waited in eager expectation of the antic.i.p.ated explosion, quite prepared to find the seaplane capsized under the blast of the terrific detonation. But there was none, and already the vol-planing machine was beyond and on a level with the Zeppelin. Without the aid of the motor it was impossible to return to the attack.
Savagely Fuller swung round with the intention of demanding the reason of his observer"s blunder. To his surprise the A.P., was not to be seen.
"Plugged!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the pilot. "Well, here goes; another two minutes will decide."
The Zeppelin was now out of his mind. His whole attention was devoted to the impending impact with the surface of the water. Every thing depended upon his skill and judgment, with a fair element of luck thrown in. In the darkness it was impossible to gauge with any degree of certainty the height of the descending machine above the sea. If the pilot "flattened out" too soon the seaplane would fall like a stone; if, on the other hand the vol-plane were maintained the fraction of a minute too long the impact would either result in the shattering of the floats or in the machine describing a somersault--possibly both.
With a double plash the flat-bottomed floats smacked the waves. The "landing" was successfully accomplished, but the unpleasant fact remained that Fuller and Kirkwood were afloat in a frail c.o.c.klesh.e.l.l in a fairly "jumpy" sea and on a pitch-dark night. Without water and provisions and with no aid in sight and already sixty miles or more from land they were rapidly drifting out to sea nearer and nearer the hostile sh.o.r.es of Germany.