But the unpleasant fact was apparent that Tressidar had run his ship ashore—a far more serious case in the eyes of My Lords than if the monitor had been lost in action.
With dawn the mist dispersed. By observations the sub. discovered that the "Anzac" had bumped on the Galloper Shoal. He had not made sufficient allowance for the cross set of the tide, and instead of passing between the Outer Gabbard and the Galloper, the monitor had "smelt out" the latter, with ignominious if not serious results.
No other vessel was in sight. With her boats destroyed, the "Anzac" had no means of laying out an anchor astern. Even if she had, the steam capstans were useless, having suffered with the rest of the deck gear during the bombardment. The monitor would have to get off under her own steam.
Tressidar was still searching the horizon with his telescope when one of the seamen raised a warning shout:
"Zepp. dead ahead, sir."
There was no mistaking the form of the immense rigid airship. Flying at a height of two thousand feet, she was heading in a direction that would bring her almost immediately above the stranded monitor. The belated night-raider, returning from a visit to the Midlands, had allowed dawn to overtake her before she was more than a few miles from the Suffolk coast.
There was little time to be lost, for the hostile airship was moving through the air at a rate of nearly fifty miles an hour. Without doubt she would do her best to destroy by means of bombs or aerial torpedoes the stranded British monitor.
At the word of command the gun's crew manned the sole workable weapon—the 14-inch turret-gun. Up from the magazine by means of the hydraulic loading-tray a huge shell was hoisted. It was one of the remaining three—a new type of gigantic shrapnel, similar to those fired with disastrous results on the Turks by the super-Dreadnought "Queen Elizabeth." For once, at least, a 14-inch gun was to be used as an anti-aircraft weapon.
Under the sighting hood the captain of the turret directed the training of the huge but docile piece of ordnance. The target was an easy one as regards bulk, for the gun-layer could plank shell after shell with unerring accuracy into an invisible target fifteen miles away; but, on the other hand, there was the speed and great elevation of the Zeppelin to be taken into consideration.
Anxiously Tressidar watched the chase of the sixty odd tons of metal, as the muzzle of the weapon, moving as smoothly as a billiard cue, reared itself into the air. For an instant it seemed to hesitate, then with a flash and a deafening roar the gun spoke. A mushroom of black smoke, 'twixt which the course of the projectile could be followed, leapt from the recoiling weapon.