An hour passed, then another. The Zeppelin’s speed was not increased, nor did he see the commander in all the time.
He believed the airship must have drifted out over the sea.
Although the cabin arrangements on the Zeppelin made the place where Tom Cameron was confined almost soundproof, the jar and rumble of the ship’s powerful motors were audible. Now there grew upon his hearing another sound. It was a note deeper than that of the motors, and of an organ-like timber. A continuous current of noise, rather pleasant than otherwise, was this new sound. He could not at first understand what it meant.
The fog was still thick about the airship. He believed they had descended several thousand feet. It was now close to mid-forenoon, and as a usual thing the fog would have disappeared by this hour over the land.
It must be that the Zeppelin had reached the sea. Whatever material injury she had suffered, the commander had by no means given up his intention of following out his orders to reach the English coast.
It was at this point in his ruminations that Tom suddenly became possessed of a new idea—an explanation of the organ-like sound he heard. It was the surf on the coast! The ship must be drifting over the French coastline, and the sound of the surf breaking on the rocks was the sound he heard.
Tom possessed a good memory, and he had not been studying maps of the Western Front daily for nothing. He knew, very well indeed, the country over which he had flown with poor Ralph Stillinger.
He had located to a nicety the spot where they mounted into the fog-cloud to escape the German pursuit-planes. Then had come the discovery of the Zeppelin beneath, and the catastrophe that had followed.
The Zeppelin had been sailing seaward, and was near the coast at the time Tom had so thrillingly boarded it; and he was sure that if it had changed its course, this change had been to the southwestward. It was following the French coast, rather than drifting over Belgium.
These ruminations were scarcely to the point, however; Tom desired to do something, not to remain inactive.