The Great Airship.
by F. S. Brereton.
CHAPTER I
The Fame of the Zeppelin
There are exceptions, we suppose, to almost every rule, and this particular Friday towards the end of June was such an exception. It was fine. Not a cloud flecked the sun-lit sky. A glorious blue expanse hung over a sea almost as blue, but criss-crossed in all directions by the curling white tops of tiny wavelets, all that remained to remind one of the atrocious weather which had prevailed. For the North Sea, Europe, Great Britain, everywhere in fact, had been treated to a succession of violent gales, to a continuous deluge of rain, to bitter hail, and squalls of snow in some parts. And here and now, off the mouth of the river Elbe the sun shone, the sky was a delight, a balmy breeze fanned the cheeks of the pa.s.sengers crowding the decks of the Hamburg-Amerika liner.
"What a change! I began to wonder whether there was such a season as summer. Have a cigar?"
Mr. Andrew Provost drew from an inner pocket of his jacket a silver-mounted case, pulled the lid off and offered one of the contents to his nephew.
"Not that one, Joe," he said, as the young man beside him placed his long fingers on one of the weeds. "It"s Dutch. Not that they"re not good smokes; I like "em sometimes. But give me a Havana, and offer one to your friends. There! That one! You"ll like it."
"Thanks! I know "em, Uncle. You always give me your best."
There was a smile on the handsome face of the young man as he obeyed the directions of his Uncle Andrew. It was obvious indeed from their smiles, the manner in which they paced the deck arm in arm, and from the intimacy of their conversation, that the two were on the best of terms.
And why not? They were related, as we have stated. Then they had for long been separated. Mr. Andrew Provost had not always been the comfortable-looking individual he now appeared. For prosperous and comfortable he looked without a doubt. Florid and sunburned, with white hair and moustache which made his complexion seem to be even more ruddy, he was tall, and slight, and gracefully if not robustly built. There was something of a military air about him, and we whisper the truth when we say that he was often enough taken for an old soldier, much to his own secret gratification. Dark grey eyes looked out genially from a smiling face upon the world and his fellows. His forehead was hardly seamed.
Care, in fact, seemed to have failed in its effort to reach him, or, more likely perhaps, his genial, plucky nature had caused it to fall easily from his shoulders. For the rest he was exceedingly well groomed, and looked what he was, a prosperous, healthy gentleman.
"But it wasn"t always like that, Joe," he told his companion, as they paced the deck, basking in the sun. "Your Uncle Andrew wasn"t always the stylish dog he looks now. Not by a long way. I"ve been on my beam ends."
"Ah! Exactly."
"Know what that means?"
"To a certain extent. When you came home last Christmas I was down in the dumps. Absolutely on my beam ends."
Andrew Provost turned to look with some astonishment at his nephew. He inspected him critically from the top of his glossy Homburg hat to the well-polished brown shoes which he wore. And the face finally drew all his attention.
"Impossible!" he declared politely. "Joe on his beam ends! Joe in the dumps--never!"
"True as possible, sir--I was desperate," repeated Joe, his face grave for that moment.
"Well, well, perhaps so. I"m forgetting. I was young like you when I was down. Young fellows make light of such matters. It"s as well, perhaps, or the world wouldn"t go along half so easily. But I"d never have thought it, Joe. You never said a word to me; you look so jolly."
No one would have denied the fact. Joe Gresson looked what he was, a handsome, jovial fellow of twenty-seven. Fair and tall, and broader than his uncle, he had deep-set eyes which gave to his smiling face an air of cleverness. And the young fellow was undoubtedly clever. An engineer by profession, he had graduated at Cambridge, had pa.s.sed through the shops, the drawing office, and other departments of one of the biggest engineering concerns in England, and had finally struck out a line for himself. He had been experimenting for the past four years.
"What"s the good of being miserable because things don"t go right, Uncle?" he said with a smile. "I"ve told you how I took up engineering.
Well, I thought I had a good idea. I left the shops at Barrow and worked on my own. Thanks to the few thousands I possessed I was able to carry out some important experiments."
"Ah, my boy! Well, you succeeded?"
"Yes and no; I went so far with the work that I was sure that success was possible. Then there was an accident. The whole affair was wrecked, and I woke up to find myself without funds and in a terrible condition of despair."
"On your beam ends, in fact--well, like me," said Mr. Andrew. "I"ll tell you about myself; then you"ll give your yarn. I"ll have to hear what this work was. But my tale don"t take long. Let"s step up and down again and I"ll give it to you. Let"s see--yes, I was a fiery, unmanageable young idiot."
"Never!" interjected Joe.
"Like many other young fellows," proceeded Andrew, as if he had not been interrupted. "I bluntly refused the post which my father offered me, and cut away from home. I went to Canada, worked my way out aboard the steamer, a c.o.c.klesh.e.l.l in those days, and half starved for the next few months, for it was in the winter and there was no work to be had. But I learned something. In the six months which followed my landing I acted as a cook"s boy, a porter, a fireman, and a clerk in a grocery store.
That"s where I had my eyes opened. The country was opening up. I had saved a few dollars. I set up a store of my own in one of the nearest settlements, a mere hut knocked together with the help of a hammer and some nails. But it paid. I saved all along. I built a real brick house, and the sales went up like wildfire. Then I chose a manager and opened up a second store away in the nearest settlement. It went on after that almost by itself. I got to own a hundred stores. I bought property right and left. Then I sold out. Now I"m merely an idler, come home to take a long look round. On my beam ends one day, you see; up and prosperous in the years that followed. Now, my boy, let"s hear your yarn. Hallo, what"s the excitement? People are crushing over to the far side of the ship."
The two had been so engaged in conversation that they had not noticed the exodus of the other pa.s.sengers, and now awoke to find themselves the only tenants of that side of the deck. Arm in arm still they hurried round the long deck cabin to join their fellow pa.s.sengers. They found them ma.s.sed together on the starboard side, crushing towards the rails, and for the most part with their eyes cast aloft.
"Wonderful! Marvellous! Extraordinary!" were some of the remarks they overheard, emanating from the English people present. From the many foreigners there came guttural cries of delight and shouts almost of triumph.
"What is it? What"s the fuss?" asked Mr. Andrew eagerly, craning his head and looking aloft. "I can see nothing to cause such excitement."
"Nothing, mein Herr! Is that nothing--no?" asked a stumpy little pa.s.senger against whom Andrew was leaning, twisting his portly frame round with an effort. He shot a short, plump arm above his head, and held a stumpy finger aloft. "Nothing?" he asked indignantly. "You call that nothing at all, mein Herr? It is marvellous! It is magnificent!"
"But--but, what is? I--I--er--beg your pardon," said Andrew politely, "but really I can"t----"
"Look, Uncle," cried Joe sharply, pointing upwards himself. "It"s a little hard to see perhaps. That"s what they aim at, of course. But there"s an airship there--a Zeppelin."
"Ah!" gasped Andrew, while the stumpy little foreigner, who had now contrived to twist himself entirely round, stared angrily at him. Then a broad, beaming smile of pride seamed his face, a fat, good-natured face to be sure, while the light of recognition danced in his eyes.
"Ah! Mr. Andrew Provost," he exclaimed in thick but urbane tones. "We have met again. This is fortunate. But you see now; you see the German triumph. You see the Zeppelin with which they have conquered the air.
Ah, it is magnificent!"
Andrew had scarcely time to shake his hand and recognize this plump little person. He was vastly impressed at the sight some four thousand feet above him, and away to the left. He could have shouted with delight himself. The object, in fact, claimed his whole attention.
"A Zeppelin!" he cried. "A real Zeppelin! One of Germany"s air dreadnoughts--magnificent!"
It was magnificent. Seldom yet have Englishmen had the opportunity of seeing one of those leviathans of the air. At a period when balloons have become common objects in the sky, when the whole world almost has become accustomed to aeroplanes scooping through the air, the people of most countries are still strangers to the sight of a mighty airship swimming in s.p.a.ce. And there was one, a long, sinuous hull of neutral colour, so that even in broad daylight it was not too easily visible, floating horizontally in the sky, like some gigantic cigar, while fore and aft, immediately beneath the hull, were two boat-shaped objects, a little darker than the ma.s.s above supporting them. There was the dull hum of machinery too.
"Moving along slowly," gasped Andrew, still wonderstruck at such a sight. "What"s she doing?"
"Finishing a continuous run of twenty-four hours and more," declared the little stranger, whom we will now introduce as Mr. Carl Reitberg. "Just showing us how fresh she is, and how easy the task has been," he cried in tones of the utmost pride. "See! She has more to show us. She has taken in fuel from the steamer yonder, and could sail again for another twenty-four hours. But she wishes to experiment with her bombs. Look, mein Herr! There is a float down below her. She will pulverize it. She will smash it. She will drop a bomb plumb into it, and, piff! it is gone. That, mein Herr, is the work of the latest Zeppelin."
Perhaps a thousand pa.s.sengers crowded the rails and watched the monster of the air, and it was as Mr. Reitberg had so proudly announced. The Zeppelin was manoeuvring away from the Hamburg-Amerika liner. Ahead of her, some five miles to the east, was a dot upon the ocean. Andrew swung his gla.s.ses to his eyes and fixed them upon that object.
"A float of some sort--yes," he said. "She is motoring towards it. Then she will stop above it."
"No--not at all," declared Mr. Reitberg. "She will continue at her fastest pace. Yet she will strike it. Watch. See--ah! Did I not say so?
It is marvellous! There!"
Was it imagination? Andrew fancied he saw a small, dark object fall from one of the boat-shaped cars beneath the long Zeppelin. In a twinkling he swung his gla.s.ses down upon the float half-immersed in the sea below.
Then a loud detonation reached his ears, while the float disappeared miraculously, the sea being churned up and splashed all about it. Nor was that all. There came from the ship above a succession of sharp reports, while bullets of large size struck the sea immediately over the spot where the float had been. Then another object dropped from the airship. It burst into flames within two hundred feet of leaving the hand which had projected it, and almost at once sent out a vast, spreading ma.s.s of dense smoke, that spread and spread and spread till the sky was obscured, till the airship was utterly hidden.
Mr. Carl Reitberg chuckled aloud, and danced with delight.
"Magnificent! Cunning! The latest thing!" he declared. "You see the reason, Mr. Provost? No; then I will tell you. The ship, the air dreadnought, you understand, discovers an enemy"s ship, or shall we say the enemy"s war harbour, or a.r.s.enal, or magazine, or what you will? She sails above it. She drops a bomb. Then, piff! the thing is done. The ship is destroyed; the harbour is wrecked; the magazine explodes. Men rush to and fro in panic--those who are left. For some are poisoned.
Yes, some die not from the effects of the explosion, but because the airship has dropped also chemical bombs which burst and spread poisonous fumes everywhere. But men are left, we will allow. There are gunners there. They rush to the aerial guns. They load them; they attempt to take aim. But--where is the ship? Gone? No--but where? The sky is all smoke. There is no sign of her. She is invisible. _Nicht wahr?_ It is too late; all the damage is done. The Zeppelin escapes to wreck more ships, more harbours, more magazines."
He puffed out his stout little chest, gazed aloft at the dense and spreading cloud of smoke, and waved his hands excitedly.