"Those twenty thousand marks, hein?" enquired the president, and the rest of the assembly laughed uproariously at the director's jest.
CHAPTER XIII
EXIT SEAPLANE No. 445B
"WHY did I leave my comfortable bunk and try my hand at fishing at night upon the wild North Sea?" enquired Lieutenant Fuller as he withdrew his benumbed hands from his airman's gauntlets and fumbled ineffectually for his electric torch. "Dash it all, man! What are you fiddling about with?"
"Only that releasing lever," replied Kirkwood from the depths of the fuselage. "That confounded Zep! If only the blessed thing hadn't jibbed I'd have strafed her, sure as fate."
"Chuck it!" ordered Fuller. "Let the beastly thing alone, or you may drop a plum. This child doesn't want to be hoist with his own petard. Well, thank goodness we're afloat. That's some consolation. Where the hooligan Harry is that confounded torch?"
"Take mine," said the A.P. passing for'ard the desired article. "Say, old man, we appear to be rolling more to starboard than to t'other side. Hope the float isn't leaking."
Fuller leant over the side. It was too dark to discern anything. Prudence forbade him to flash the torch upon the invisible support—a support so light and frail that the wonder of it all was that it hadn't given way under the force of the impact with the waves.
The crippled seaplane was tossing and rolling under the combined action of the short crested waves and the stiff breeze. It wanted about two hours to daylight. Meanwhile every minute saw the amphibious craft drifting further and further from shore.
There were no signs of the "Hippodrome." Possibly the seaplane carrier had resumed her voyage, in the supposition that the missing hornet had made one of the fishing harbours on the Yorkshire coast. The absence of any wireless call rather knocked that theory on the head. On the other hand the "Hippodrome" could not, without great risk of being submarined, since she was unaccompanied by destroyers or patrol-boats, steam seaward on an apparent wild-goose chase for her errant child.