Planning their first movement abroad, the boys that night decided to make for Dover after landing. It was a most convenient point from which to proceed to the French coast, and there they expected to find two tried and true friends, airmen, too, Captain Leonidas Johnson and Josiah Freeman, formerly employed as experts in the factory at home, and both of whom owed much to Billy’s uncle in the way of personal as well as business favors.
What happened at Dover has already been told, and now to return to them, stranded in the water off the Belgian coast.
CHAPTER IV.
DRAGGED BY A ZEPPELIN.
For hours Billy had been stationed as lookout on the stranded hydroplane. He was taking cat-naps, for it had been quite a while since he last enjoyed a bed. While an expected round-shot from the shore did not come to disturb the tired airmen, something else happened just about as startling. In a waking moment Billy happened to look up, and there he saw a great dirigible circling above the harbor. The boy’s eyes were wide open now.
“Henri,” he loudly whispered, prodding his sleeping chum with a ready foot. “Look alive, boy! They’re coming after us from the top side!”
Henri, alive in a jiffy, passed a friendly kick to Captain Johnson, and he in turn bestowed a rib jab upon Freeman. Then all eyes were glued on the hovering Zeppelin.
A mile seaward, from the armored side of a gunboat, burst a red flash wreathed by smoke; then a dull boom. The Zeppelin majestically swerved to southwest course, all the time signaling to masked batteries along the shore.
“There is bigger game around here than us,” said Captain Johnson. “If only those tanks were chockfull of petrol again we’d show them all a clean pair of heels.”