“If we don’t move somehow and soon,” gloomily put in Freeman, “we’ll be dead wood between two fires.”
The Zeppelin was now pushing skyward, buzzing like a million bees. Just then a Taube aëroplane, armored, swooped toward the gunboat, evidently British, which had endeavored to pot the Zeppelin. The scout-ship below turned its anti-aircraft cannon and rifles against the latest invader, cutting its wings so close that the Taube hunted a higher and safer level. The Zeppelin had again lowered its huge hulk for the evident purpose of dropping on the gunboat some of the bombs stored in its special armored compartment.
Another sputtering jet of flame from the gunboat and one of the forward propellers of the airship collapsed and a second shot planted a gash in her side. Sagging and wabbling, the dirigible headed for the Belgian coast. When the black mass loomed directly above the stranded sea-plane, Freeman gave a warning shout:
“Down with you! She’s trailing her anchor!”
By quick thought, in that thrilling, fleeting moment, Billy grabbed the swinging anchor as it was dragged along near to him and deftly hooked one of its prongs under the gun carriage at the sea-plane’s bow.
With jerks that made every strut and wire crackle under the strain, the hydroplane, on its polished floats, skipped over the waves, pulled this way and that, now with elevated nose, now half under water, but holding firmly to the trailing cable.
Henri, with head over the wind-screen, keenly watched the shore for a likely landing-place. The men in the cars of the disabled Zeppelin did not seem to notice the extra weight on the anchor—they had troubles of their own in getting the damaged dirigible to safe landing.
Billy crouched in the bow-seat, his eyes fixed on the straining cable. In his right hand he clutched a keen-edged hatchet, passed forward by Freeman. Half drowned by the spray tossed in his face he awaited the word from Henri.
“Say when, old pard,” he cried, slightly turning his head.
“If she pulls straight up and down,” remarked Captain Johnson in Freeman’s ear, “it’s good night.”