Chapter XXVII Survivors
As the motor-car, with its flaring headlight, went out of sight beyond the projection of the window from which they had watched it, Mark and Vera Redisham ran farther up the staircase and along the passage to Rodney’s room, on the north side of the house.
Mark crossed to the large door-window and flung it open. It led out to a roofed balcony overlooking the garden. Rodney had used this balcony as a study, from which he could watch the ships, pretending that it was an admiral’s gallery at the stern of a line-of-battle ship. On summer nights he had had a hammock slung across from side to side and had slept in the open air.
Mark caught at the balcony rail now, and bent forward, looking up into the night sky, searching for the Zeppelin by the purring of its machinery.
“There it is! There it is!” he cried. And taking hold of Vera’s arm he drew her to him and pointed.
Even though it was very high, the airship looked large. It was not travelling quickly; it seemed for a time to be hovering like a hawk. Against the blue darkness of the sky the two cars could be distinguished beneath the cigar-shaped structure. The rattling noise of the engines and the hum of the propellers could be clearly heard.
“It’s queer to think that there are Germans in it,” said Vera, “and that they’re there with the intention of killing people! I suppose they’re going to Buremouth now, after dropping their horrid fire-bombs on Haddisport.”
“Look!” exclaimed Mark. “There’s that motor-car again! I’m almost certain it’s acting as a pilot. See how the headlight is turned upward into the sky, so that the airmen can see it! I ought to go downstairs and telephone to the Buremouth police. Hullo!”
He had seen and heard a second motor-car, dashing along the nearer Alderwick road, followed by a couple of motor-bicycles. Presently there was an upward spurt of fire from the car and the crackle of a machine-gun.
“They’re firing up at the Zeppelin!” cried Vera. “Oh, I hope they’ll hit it!”
A thin streak of brilliant light flashed downward from the airship. Something seemed to fall with a thud, a dull explosion, and immediately there was a blaze of fire in the midst of the withered gorse and brambles about a mile in front of the armoured motor-car.
“They’ve dropped an incendiary bomb,” Mark explained, “but nowhere near the road. The car can get past.”
The firing from the anti-aircraft gun continued; but soon the Zeppelin steered round and went westward over the land, and the armoured car dropped out of range. More bombs were launched; but they fell harmlessly in ploughed fields where there were no houses. The pilot car by this time had disappeared.
The military car was returning, led by the motor cyclists. Just as the latter emerged from the woodland on the near side of Alderwick village, the Zeppelin again turned towards the sea and sailed outward immediately above the machine-gun, which again opened fire with a prolonged stream of bullets.
“I believe our men have hit it!” Mark declared. “Look at that long jet of smoke! And the whole thing is wobbling like a winged pheasant.”
Whether the airship was struck or not, neither Mark nor the men in the armoured car could tell with certainty. They watched the ponderous vessel flying out to sea until it faded from sight, mingling with the blackness of a heavy cloud in the far east. Going downstairs again, Mark telephoned to the naval base and got into communication with Mr. Bilverstone, from whom he learnt that the worst material damage done by the bombs was at a timberyard near the harbour. Some big stacks of timber had been set on fire, and a company of Territorials were helping the seamen of H.M.S. Kingfisher in the work of subduing the flames.
So far as Mr. Bilverstone had yet heard, no one had been seriously injured. Two horses had been killed at the railway goods station, and a great many window-panes had been smashed.
News had been received, however, that there had been a second Zeppelin. The pair of them had come across the North Sea in company until land had been sighted, when they had separated, one coming to Haddisport, the other making a much wider circuit, dropping both explosive and incendiary bombs on three coast towns in succession.
Late on the following afternoon, Mark Redisham and Darby Catchpole were at the naval base, waiting for instructions, when a flotilla of mine-sweepers came into the harbour. One of them was the Mignonette. As she came alongside the quay, Mark and Darby saw two very bedraggled young men in shabby naval uniform standing with the skipper abaft the wheel-house.
“They look like German prisoners,” Mark said below his breath.
“They’ve been in the water,” added Darby, “picked up from a sinking submarine, I dare say. There’s Ned Quester. Let’s ask him about them.”
Ned was climbing along the port bulwark, dragging the end of a heavy mooring-rope. Having secured it round a bollard, he turned and saw the two Sea Scouts.
“See those two chaps down there?” he began. “They’re Deutschers. They look rather sad, don’t they? We rescued them early this morning, this side of the Dogger. Just before dawn, we saw two rockets go up—a red and a blue. We made for the place, thinking it was a vessel in distress. So it was, but not the sort of vessel we expected. It looked like an immense dead whale, seen in the dim light. When we got nearer we were still puzzled by the shape of it, and could only guess that it was a wrecked airship.”
“What?” cried Mark Redisham, “a Zeppelin?—the Zeppelin that was over Haddisport last night, dropping bombs? Then the anti-aircraft gun must have hit it, after all!”
“That’s right,” nodded Ned. “Major Proudfynski—that’s the older of the two, who speaks English, of a sort—told us that they had done heaps of damage, and killed he didn’t know how many people, and that a whole battery of artillery had fired up at them. Of course, we knew he was exaggerating. However, when we got out the boat and pulled alongside the thing, we knew it could only be a Zep that had come to grief. One of the propellers was above water. We could see some of the bent and tangled framework, supported by a section of the still inflated gas-bag. Afterwards we fired a shot into it, letting the gas escape, and then the wreckage went down. But before that, we’d seen these two chaps clinging to the framework, and we got them off and took them aboard the Mignonette. They were so exhausted by the exposure that they couldn’t speak, and the younger one had to be worked at for a long time before he came to his senses.”
“But there must have been a whole crowd of others,” said Mark. “Those Zeps have a crew of thirty or forty at least.”
“Yes, I know,” returned Ned. “The rest were all drowned under the wreckage. These two had the sense to jump out when she was falling and get clear of the stays. They could swim. What puzzled our skipper was how they managed to send up the two rockets. But it seems the airship fell by the bow with her stern sticking up above water for a time, and the major got into one of the gondolas, where there was a box of rockets and things—matches, as well, I suppose.”
Officers from the naval station had come to the edge of the wharf. One of them spoke to the Germans, asking them to come ashore.
“What are you going to do with us?” questioned the elder of the two.
“Oh, you’ll be all right!” he was told. “You are prisoners; but that doesn’t mean that you will be ill-treated.”
“Prisoners?”
“Yes. You don’t imagine that we are going to let you go back to Germany, do you? Not after what you did last night. You came across to England to pay us a visit; why should you hurry away? We’ll show you what it’s like to live in a civilised country.”
An escort of armed bluejackets had been drawn up on the quay. The two prisoners were conducted to the base, where they were questioned briefly before being given the honours of war and taken to the hotel. After they had had a good dinner they were sent, still under escort, by a special train, to a destination far removed from the unfriendly sea.