Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound; Or, A Red Cross Worker's Ocean Perils

by Alice B. Emerson

He knew the tail of the airplane had been splintered and that the machine was bound to fall. But as it poised on its wings for a few moments, he poured in the shot—indeed, he finished the clip of cartridges.

The man at the Zeppelin shell-thrower fell back and rolled into the scuppers. Another—plainly an officer from his dress—crashed to the deck. He saw the other members of the crew running to try to escape the hail of bullets. Ah, if he could only have accomplished this before the airplane was wrecked!

And that it was wrecked, he could see. He glanced over his shoulder. Stillinger was no longer in his seat. Indeed, the seat itself was not there! The entire rear part of the airplane was torn away, and his friend and college-mate had fallen.

Those next few seconds were to be the most thrilling of all Tom Cameron’s life.

The airplane was plunging downward, seemingly right on top of the Zeppelin. Then intuitively he realized that it would just about clear the German airship.

He held no more guarantee for his life if he clung to the airplane than poor Stillinger had in falling free. It was a swift spin and a crash to the earth—death beyond peradventure!

The spread wings of the airplane still held the wrecked machine poised. But in a moment it would slip forward, nose down, and “take the spin.” Tom scrambled over the gun and over the armored nose of the airplane. He swung himself through the stays. The airplane plunged—and so did he!

But he flung himself free of the stays. Like a frog diving from the bank of a pool, the American cast himself from the airplane, full thirty feet, to the deck of the German airship!

A taut stay of the Zeppelin broke his fall. He landed on all fours. Before he could rise two of the Germans leaped upon him and he was crushed, face-downward, on the deck.

The fellows who had seized him seemed of a mind to cast him over the rail. They dragged him to his feet, forcing him that way. He expected the next minute to be spinning in the track of the airplane toward the earth, five thousand feet or more below.