Two officers of the Royal Naval Air Service, with a P.O., carrying a powerful Morse signalling lamp, jumped from the car and scrambled down the wooden piles on to the deck of the M.L.
A nod from the commanding officer and the mooring ropes were cast off as the telegraph was jammed over to "half ahead." Instantly the powerful engines responded to the order and the little ship began rapidly to gather way. When the harbour bar had been crossed the order for full speed was given and the engines settled down to a low staccato roar as they drove the M.L. over the heaving swell.
No word had yet been spoken between the officers of the sea and air. A brief telephone message to the little hut on the quayside from the adjacent naval base to the effect that M.L.A6 was to be ready to embark two officers from the air station and was to proceed in search of an airship which was foundering about twenty miles seawards was all that had been told, and yet not a single second of time was lost in getting under way. All recognised that it was a race to save the lives of men.
The little ship cleft the seas, smothering herself with foam, and bluish fumes poured out of the engine-room ventilators. The first half-hour seemed interminably long, and the horizon was continually searched with the aid of powerful glasses for a sign of the wrecked airship. At last a faint speck became visible away to the south-west, and as the distance slowly lessened—terribly slowly, notwithstanding the speed of nearly half-a-mile a minute—the crumpled envelope settling on the water could be distinguished.
It was a question of minutes. Again the order was shouted down the speaking-tube for more speed, but this time there was no reply. The C.O. rang the telegraph viciously, but without result. The coxswain at the wheel looked up quickly and then shouted an order to a deck hand, who lowered himself down the tiny man-hole in the deck leading to the engine-room. A few seconds later the second engineer appeared at the top of the fo'c'sle hatch and, ducking to avoid a heavy shower of spray, scrambled aft and peered down the man-hole, from which blue fumes, somewhat thicker and more pungent than usual, were rising. The next instant he too disappeared below.
The air officers were trying to get into communication with the rapidly sinking airship by means of the powerful Morse lamp, but without result, and one of them put his head into the wheel-house and asked anxiously if more speed was possible.
Just then the second engineer and one of the crew crawled out of the man-hole, pulling a limp figure behind them. The C.O. turned to ascertain what had happened, and the men, very white and shaky, explained in a few gasps that they had found the chief engineer senseless at the bottom of the iron ladder leading up to the deck, and had themselves been nearly gassed by the petrol fumes.
Glancing at the blue vapour now pouring up the hatchway and out of the ventilators, the C.O. realised the risk of fire and explosion he ran by carrying on at such high speed, but he also knew that men were drowning in the sea some eight miles ahead, and that the few extra knots might make the difference between life and death for them.
That the risk must be taken was a foregone conclusion, but how to keep the engines running at that high speed without attention—for it was evident that no man could live for many minutes in the poisonous fumes—was a more difficult problem. This was solved, however, by the second engineer volunteering to go below with a life-line attached, so that he could be hauled up to the deck when giddiness came on. More than once this gallant petty officer had to be pulled up choking and exhausted. He risked instant death from the explosion of the gas from the leaking and overheated pipes and engines, as well as suffocation from the fumes, but he stuck to his post, returning again and again into the poisonous atmosphere.
Darkness was gradually settling over the sea, and the flickering light of the Morse lamp—still asking for a reply—made yellow streaks on the wet fore-deck. Presently a faint speck of light blinked amid the dark mass of the airship, but almost instantly went out, and for some time nothing further was seen.