“Huh!” growled the other, “gold is good, I grant you.”
CHAPTER XIX—TOM CAMERON TAKES A HAND
Aside from the two men he had seen shot down upon the after deck of the Zeppelin, Tom Cameron soon made out that the airplane attack upon the larger airship must have done other damage. He was glad if this was so. The regrettable fact that he had killed two men would be offset, in his mind, if the bullets of the machine gun had made difficult the sailing of the Zeppelin to London.
He had seen the chipped and dented rail and deck across which the hail of machine-gun bullets had swept. He hoped that there had been done some injury of greater moment than these marks betrayed. And he believed that there was such injury.
If not, why was the Zeppelin limping along the airways so slowly through the fog? The commander of the great machine had been called to the forward deck, and that not merely for the conning of the ship on its course, Tom was sure. Suppose he had been the means, after all, of crippling the Zeppelin?
The thought filled the young American’s heart with delight. Much as he was depressed by the death of Ralph Stillinger, the American ace, Tom could not fail to be overjoyed at the thought of setting the Zeppelin back in this attempt to reach England.
The Germans might have to return to their base for repairs. Of course, Tom was a prisoner, and there was not a chance of his getting away; still, he could feel delight because of this possibility that roweled his mind.
He tried to peer through the thick glass of the window in the forward closet of the Zeppelin cabin. Mistily he saw the hairy-coated Germans moving about on the forward deck. He could not recognize the ober-leutnant who seemed to be in command of the ship; but he saw that several of the men were at work repairing some of the wire stays that had been broken.
As the fog partially cleared for a moment, he was enabled to make out a box of a house far forward on this first deck. It was probably where the steering gear was located. Just where the motors and engines were boxed he did not know. A fellow in that pilot-house—if such it was—might do something of moment, he told himself. If he could once get there, Tom Cameron thought, he would make it impossible for the Zeppelin ever to reach England, unless it drifted there by accident.
It was a rather dispiriting situation, however, to be locked in this narrow closet. He had already tried the door and found that it was secure. Besides, anybody on the deck, by coming close to the window, could look in and see if he was still imprisoned.