"A float of some sort—yes," he said. "She is motoring towards it. Then she will stop above it."
"No—not at all," declared Mr. Reitberg. "She will continue at her fastest pace. Yet she will strike it. Watch. See—ah! Did I not say so? It is marvellous! There!"
Was it imagination? Andrew fancied he saw a small, dark object fall from one of the boat-shaped cars beneath the long Zeppelin. In a twinkling he swung his glasses down upon the float half-immersed in the sea below. Then a loud detonation reached his ears, while the float disappeared miraculously, the sea being churned up and splashed all about it. Nor was that all. There came from the ship above a succession of sharp reports, while bullets of large size struck the sea immediately over the spot where the float had been. Then another object dropped from the airship. It burst into flames within two hundred feet of leaving the hand which had projected it, and almost at once sent out a vast, spreading mass of dense smoke, that spread and spread and spread till the sky was obscured, till the airship was utterly hidden.
Mr. Carl Reitberg chuckled aloud, and danced with delight.
"Magnificent! Cunning! The latest thing!" he declared. "You see the reason, Mr. Provost? No; then I will tell you. The ship, the air dreadnought, you understand, discovers an enemy's ship, or shall we say the enemy's war harbour, or arsenal, or magazine, or what you will? She sails above it. She drops a bomb. Then, piff! the thing is done. The ship is destroyed; the harbour is wrecked; the magazine explodes. Men rush to and fro in panic—those who are left. For some are poisoned. Yes, some die not from the effects of the explosion, but because the airship has dropped also chemical bombs which burst and spread poisonous fumes everywhere. But men are left, we will allow. There are gunners there. They rush to the aerial guns. They load them; they attempt to take aim. But—where is the ship? Gone? No—but where? The sky is all smoke. There is no sign of her. She is invisible. Nicht wahr? It is too late; all the damage is done. The Zeppelin escapes to wreck more ships, more harbours, more magazines."
He puffed out his stout little chest, gazed aloft at the dense and spreading cloud of smoke, and waved his hands excitedly.
"It is magnificent!" he repeated for perhaps the tenth time. "It is a triumph! None can approach it. Many have watched and scorned the idea. Count Zeppelin has persevered. Germany has backed his efforts, and now, voila!—there is the result. Triumph! The conquest of the air. Mastery of the upper element; with none to gainsay us."
"But—but there are limits to the power of these ships," suggested Andrew, his words almost faltering. "There are limits to their range of travel."
Mr. Carl Reitberg put one fat finger artfully to the side of his nose. It was perhaps a little peculiarity he had picked up in England, for we hasten to explain that he was cosmopolitan. Carl Reitberg had spent many of his fifty-three years in South Africa. There he had enjoyed the protection of the Union Jack. He had a house in London now, and one also at Brighton. It may be said that he had made his fortune, thanks to his own astuteness and the opportunities given him by our British colonies. But he was not English. He was not entirely German. He belonged to the world. One day he was resident in Berlin, a second found him in London or in Brighton, while as likely as not the following weeks saw him parading the Champs Élysées in Paris, the Boulevards of Buenos Ayres, the streets of Mexico, or Broadway, New York. In fact, and in short, he was cosmopolitan.