"What is it," demanded the captain.
"Looks like a big bird," was the response.
Slinging his binoculars round his neck by their strap, Captain Barrington himself clambered into the main shrouds. When he had climbed above the cross-trees he drew out his glasses and gazed in the direction the lookout indicated. The next minute he gave a shout of triumph.
"There's your dirigible, boys," he exclaimed, and even Billy overcame his dislike to clambering into the rigging for a chance to get a look at the airship they hoped to save.
Viewed even through the glasses she seemed a speck, no larger than a shoe button, drifting aimlessly toward the south, but as the Southern Cross drew nearer to her she stood out in more detail. The watchers could then see that she was a large air craft for her type and carried two men, who were running back and forth in apparent panic on her suspended deck. Suddenly one of them swung himself into the rigging and began climbing up the distended sides of the big cigar-shaped gas bag.
"What can he be going to do?" asked Captain Hazzard.
"I think I know," said Frank. "The valve must be stuck and they have decided now that as we are so near they will take a chance and open it and risk a drop into the sea rather than have the over-distended bag blow up."
"Of course. I never thought of that," rejoined the captain, "that's just what they are doing."
"That man is taking a desperate chance," put in Professor Simeon Sandburr, who had climbed up and joined the party and looked with his long legs and big round glasses, like some queer sort of a bird perched in the rigging. "Hydrogen gas is deadly and if he should inhale any of it he would die like a bug in a camphor bottle."
Interest on board the Southern Cross was now intense in the fate of the dirigible. Even the old chief engineer had left his engines and wiping his hands with a bit of waste, stood gazing at the distressed cloud clipper.