“You would like, if possible, to stay here?”
“Yes.” If the experience had to be undergone, there was no reason why I should not brave it out thoroughly. Better the deck than a back seat in the conning-tower.
“Well, so let it be. But you must be lashed securely. Where shall it be? Why not to the railing over the bow? You could not have a finer coigne of vantage.”
I assented at once, and, a couple of the crew being hailed, I was speedily made fast in a sitting posture by the waist and liberally invested with wraps. My position was excellent. I could see down the sloping bow to the conning-tower, and would be fairly sheltered from the worst of the wind. All the preparations being complete, the captain and the crew retired, leaving the deck altogether deserted. No light, save that of the moon, fell on its cold surface, and that only where the umbrella-like aëroplane did not bar off the sheets of slanting silver.
The Attila rode grandly over the gloomy wool-packs below, and, thrilling with excitement and some fear, I waited for the coming plunge. The suspense was short. Suddenly the electric eye of the aëronef glowed forth from the crest of the conning-tower, behind and above which I was lashed to the railing. Then the bow dipped and the speed began to increase. Again and again it dipped with a series of little jolts, and then cut obliquely into the tenuous rim of the cloud-belt, through which it began to plough with an energy almost distressing.
Those who have stood on an express engine running sixty miles an hour will know what it is to breathe in the teeth of a rushing blast; let them then conceive my experience when 120 and probably more miles an hour were being done in a hurricane. Drenching clouds swept over me, the wind and thunder roared round me, as I was borne into that angry stratum below. Burying my mouth within my neckcloth, and sheltering my eyes with my hands, I looked straight ahead at the glow which cleft the darkness before us. In a very brief time we had shot through the belt, and were rushing wildly down to the wind-lashed desolation below. The pitching and rolling of the aëronef now became terrible, and once more awoke my fears. What if the guns were to break adrift or the props of the aëroplane to yield! As it was I could see that the squalls caused a startling irregularity of course, the Attila swerving furiously from right to left, now dropping like a stone, now being checked in her descent and hurtled upwards. Surely Hartmann would not run too close to the waves on such a fearful night!
Looking downwards, I now saw that the glow had reached the face of the waters, everywhere in violent turmoil with huge waves at least twenty-five feet high from trough to crest, spanned by clouds of wind-drift. And sight still more enthralling was a large dismasted steamer labouring heavily as she lay hove-to under the strokes of a thousand hammers. With boats smashed, bridge carried away, bulwarks in many places shattered, and decks continually swept, she was a spectacle fit to move even a Hartmann. Assistance, however, was out of the question. Every art of the captain must be required to guide the course of the Attila, and our tremendous speed could not safely be relaxed for a moment. It would have been, indeed, easy to “hover” in the teeth of a furious blast, but what if the blast were to drop and leave us momentarily stationary, while a side roll or pitch were to succeed?
SIGHTING A DOOMED VESSEL.
Screws and sand levers notwithstanding, it was better to risk nothing. But what an experience was this! The Attila with flaming electric eye circled round the doomed vessel, lighting up a deck crowded with panic-stricken passengers, groups of whom every larger wave washed pell-mell through the broken bulwarks. Cry or shriek, none could be heard, the roar of the elements was too frightful, but the gestures of the wretches were too piteous to misinterpret. Shutting my eyes, I refused for some minutes to look on the dreadful holocaust, but once more I had to yield to the fascination. By that time the drama was over. The Attila was still circling, but in the place of the luckless vessel leapt the white-maned savage billows.