Barely three miles of heaving sea separated the two ships when the bright glare of a Very's light, fired from a pistol, soared into the air. A cheer broke from the dark figures on the deck of the M.L., and a message of hope was eagerly flashed back.
The last knot seemed a voyage in itself, but eventually the great dark mass of the still floating envelope loomed up ahead, and almost instantly the clang of the engine-room telegraph, shutting off the leaky engine, gave relief to the plucky second engineer, who had retained consciousness and control through that dreadful twenty minutes by frequently filling his aching lungs above the hatchway.
The sea around was a mass of tangled wires, in which the mast and rigging of the M.L. was the first to become entangled. Near approach was impossible, so orders were given to lower away the boat. The sturdy little steel-built life-boat splashed into the sea alongside, one minute rising on a wave high above the deck-line and the next disappearing into the dark void below. Figures slid down the miniature falls to man her and the next minute were pulling through the tangled wreckage to where the beam of the M.L.'s searchlight showed six airmen clinging to a floating but upturned cupola.
Numbed with the cold, they fell rather than jumped into the boat as it was pulled alongside. One was insensible and the others were too far gone to utter a word. Nothing but the wonderful vitality necessary to the airman as to the sailor had enabled them to hold on in that bitter cold for over two hours after eight hours in the air.
The task of extricating the M.L. from the tangle of wire stays and other wreckage was a difficult one. A propeller had entwined itself and become useless (afterwards freed by going astern), the little signal topmast and yard had been broken off by a loop of wire from the gigantic envelope and the ensign staff carried away. After about twenty minutes cutting and man[oe]uvring, however, she floated free, and a question was raised as to the possibility of salving the airship.
By this time another M.L., sent out to assist in the work of rescue, had arrived on the scene, and a conference between the air and sea officers on the senior ship resulted in the attempt at salving being made. Wires that were hanging from the nose of the airship were made fast to the stern of the M.L.'s, and all wreckage was, where possible, cut adrift. This, to the uninitiated, may sound a comparatively quick and simple operation, but when it is performed in the darkness, with the doubtful aid of two small searchlights, on a sea rising and falling under the influence of a heavy ground swell, it is anything but an easy or rapid operation, and occupied half the night.
The huge mass of the modern airship towered above the little patrol boats like some leviathan of the deep. To attempt its towage over twenty miles of sea seemed almost ludicrous for such small craft, and yet so light and easy of passage was this aerial monster that progress at the rate of three knots an hour was made when once the wreckage had been cut adrift, the weights released and the envelope had risen off the surface of the water.
Armed trawlers that passed in the night wondered if it was a captive zeppelin and winked out inquiries from their Morse lamps. A destroyer came out of the darkness to offer assistance. The cause of much anxiety had been the likelihood of hostile submarines being attracted to the scene by the helplessness of the airship, which had been visible, before darkness closed over, for many miles as she slowly settled down into the sea. This danger, however, passed away with the arrival of the destroyer and the armed trawlers, but another arose which threatened to wreck the whole venture.
About 5 a.m. the wind began to freshen from the north-west and the M.L.'s towing the huge bag were immediately dragged to leeward. The combined power of their engines failed to head the airship into the wind and urgent signals for assistance were made to the destroyer and trawlers, who had, fortunately, constituted themselves a rear-guard.
A trawler came quickly to the rescue and got hold of an additional wire hanging down from the envelope. The destroyer, in the masterful way of these craft, proceeded to take charge of the operations. Her 9000-horse-power engines soon turned the airship into the path of safety, and with this big addition to the towing power it was less than half-an-hour later when the great envelope was safely landed on the quayside, much to the amazement of the townspeople.