CHAPTER XIX.
HOW ZEEBRUGGE WAS BOMBARDED.
On their way up the coast there had been several occasions when, for a brief space of time, as a cloud was encountered, the onrushing fleet of seaplanes was swathed in a flurry of blinding snow. That was why Frank expressed the wish nothing of the kind might occur while the bombardment of the Belgian town on the edge of the Channel was in progress.
Zeebrugge is at the terminus of a canal, and had no sooner fallen into the hands of the Kaiser’s forces than they realized it would make an admirable place from which to start their submarine vessels against the shipping accustomed to using the English Channel.
The submarines were sent there in sections and assembled in shipyards arranged for that purpose. In fact, as the war progressed, Zeebrugge was rapidly becoming a very important center of military and naval industry.
As Frank well knew, Antwerp might have served the purposes of the Germans much better, but to reach the sea, vessels would have to cross a section of Holland, and the pugnacious little Dutch country had declared she would resist such invasion of her rights to the last man and vessel. As the Hollanders have always been good fighters, with an army of half a million men to back them, Germany had wisely chosen to make use of Zeebrugge.
Billy reported that the same excitement existed as at Ostend. Everywhere there were men seen running, and pointing upward toward the flock of aërial war craft.
“And I don’t blame them a bit for being scared,” he went on to say. “Two or three aëroplanes at a time are bad enough, but thirty in a bunch—holy smoke! it would frighten any American community half out of their wits, I’m thinking.”
“There goes the first shot at us!” announced Pudge, and it was strange how he, unconsciously perhaps, seemed to include the Sea Eagle in the list of invading aircraft, though they did not mean to lift a hand against the defenders of Zeebrugge.
“It fell far short,” observed Billy. “They’re so worked up they hardly know what they are doing. This time I reckon the seaplanes mean to keep above the reach of the shrapnel.”