The sharp hull of the three hundred foot destroyer cut through rather than rode the waves. She was seaworthy enough, but in a cross sea like this, she rolled and dipped tremendously, as well as bucking right through the combers after the fashion of a pilot fish. One had to be well seasoned to her habit to stand such a tumbling about as the Colodia gave her crew.
If George Belding felt any qualms, he was able to repress them. He was a good sailor anyway, and having just come from a stiff cruise in the Bay of Biscay in his father’s transformed yacht, he proved himself to be a tolerable seaman.
Belding was a manly fellow without being as rough as many of the sailors. Like the four Navy Boys, he was greatly interested by the view they all acquired very soon of the floating débris that had first been spied from the mast. The distance being so great, they could not immediately be sure whether the wreck was that of a boat or an airship. It was at first merely a blotch of darker color on the tumbling grey sea.
“Looks more like a dead whale with a framework of scantling about it than anything else,” Ensign MacMasters told the boys.
“It might be a whale at that,” commented Al Torrance eagerly. “They say that many a whale has been killed by depth bombs.”
“Hi!” ejaculated Frenchy Donahue. “There’s a flag flying from a staff. I can see it.”
“No dead whale would be likely to fly a flag,” Whistler said, smiling.
“Commander Lang had better have a care,” grumbled George Belding. “This may be a trap, after all.”
The Colodia steamed on at undiminished speed. The outlines of the wreckage grew clearer despite the raging rainstorms that swept now and then across the gray waves.
The vast hulk of a collapsed bag of silk cloth—it was never canvas—could have belonged to nothing but one of the German airships.