"You are going to be mighty useful, my flying friends," he said, "and you'd better be." There was grim emphasis in these last words.
At noon the next day the boys were again tramping around after Roque in Cuxhaven. The character of "Dr. Blitz" was no longer in the play. Roque was trimly set up as an aviation lieutenant, and it was really wonderful how easily he merged into each part he assumed. "Students" no longer, Billy and Henri were happy in resuming their flying clothes.
"Best becomes our style of beauty," as Billy would have it.
There seemed to be some unforeseen reason for delay, as the aërial expedition did not start forthwith, as intended. Indeed, it did not start from Cuxhaven at all. It might have been that Ardelle's theft of the guide records had put a spoke in the German wheel, but as to that the boys could only hazard a guess.
It was on the twentieth day after the adventure in the house of Spitznagle that the young aviators again had the opportunity of operating a seaplane with Roque as directing passenger, and the uninterrupted flight brought them to the island of Amesland, for though Cuxhaven was counted as the airship base, it evidently was the intent to project the return attack on the English coast from the out-to-sea point before named.
What an array of the warcraft of the "upper deep"—the great dirigibles, seaplanes, destroyer, artillery spotter and scout aëroplanes. The boys were in their element. Even Roque had a smile for their enthusiasm. It was not the war spirit that animated Billy and Henri—they reveled in the show as airmen delighted with the life.
In this camp were none but the suicidally brave type of fighters, and it was only that kind fit to essay the trackless line of three hundred miles over the sea. From what the boys, or, rather one of them, Henri, could learn from the camp talk, a pair of the latest Zeppelin dirigibles were to participate, but the main movers of this attack were evidently to be airships of the small, non-rigid Parseval build, for bomb work. The truth of the matter was, the young aviators, at the order of Roque, were so taken up with the tuning of a seaplane just before the fleet went aloft that they could not have listed the starters with any degree of accuracy.
They only knew positively that they were going aloft, and their own machine would require their individual attention. About 8:30 that night the glare of a powerful searchlight from one of the German airships directed its rays over the heart of the English city of Yarmouth. Two bombs dropped almost simultaneously.
The boys saw the city below suddenly plunged into darkness. Five more bombs were hurled from the sky. The fleet then swiftly moved northeast, and more bombs crashed into the town of Kings Lynn. Roque had assumed no active part as a leader in the deadly maneuvers—his was a thinking assignment. It was midnight when the fleet turned eastward and fled back across the North Sea.
"It might have been London," muttered the secret agent, "if the game could have been played without a break."