“Sh! Go ahead,” murmured Belding. “It’s a good idea. I couldn’t get at my own knife and do it, with him hanging on to me so tightly.”
“Take care, Al,” advised Whistler. “And you other fellows stand aside. Be ready to run when George is free.”
His advice was good. The giant seaman still snored, but it would not take much to rouse him.
The five boys were now so much interested in the attempt to get Belding free that they took no heed of anything else. So they were all shocked when a chorus of steam whistles and sirens suddenly broke forth from the port below them. A gun boomed on the admiral’s ship. Pandemonium was let loose without warning.
“Oh, my aunt!” groaned George Belding, “what is that?”
“Willum Johnson” awoke with a start and a grunt, and, sitting up on the bank, demanded of everybody in general, “’Oo’s shootin’ hof the bloomin’ gun?”
But Whistler and Torry had whirled to look out to sea. They had heard a similar alarm before. Out of the blue-gray fogbank over the sea, and high, high up toward the hazy sky, whirled a black object, no bigger at first than a bird. But how rapidly it approached the port, and how quickly its outline became perfectly clear!
“A Zep, boys!” cried Al Torrance. “There’s a raid on! That’s a German machine, sure’s you are a foot high!”
“Are you sure?” murmured Belding, who had been dragged quickly to his feet by the giant.
“Hit’s the bloomin’ ’Uns—no fear it ain’t!” ejaculated the big British seaman. “Ah! There goes the a-he-rial guns.”