During the meal Whittinghame, who attended to his guests' wants with the utmost politeness, related the salient facts of the dispute between the two countries and the events leading up to the chase of Señor Reno Durango.
"Nom de Chien!" ejaculated de la Fosse excitedly, bringing his hand down violently upon the edge of his plate, and sending the contents into his lap. "Reno Durango! Is it possible?"
"A friend of yours, monsieur?" asked Whittinghame.
"He is no friend to me," retorted the indignant Frenchman. "I remember well his master, the pirate Karl von Harburg, who captured 'La Touraine' and stole fifty thousand francs from me. Again, Señor Durango—que le diable l'importe—did his best to kill me at Zandovar a little more than a year ago. Peste! I have no love for Señor Durango. Voyons, let me rejoice over the debris of his airship."
Accordingly Whittinghame, Dacres, and the doctor accompanied the Frenchman and his two sons to the scene of the disaster. De la Fosse, with a Frenchman's typical sagacity, took the greatest interest in all he saw, and asked innumerable questions, while his two sons joined vivaciously in the conversation.
Suddenly a sharp report, unlike that of a rifle, came from the direction of the "Meteor." The three officers exchanged glances.
"Something gone this time!" exclaimed Whittinghame.
Something had gone. One of the ballonettes in No. 3 section had burst under the pressure of the compressed air introduced for the purpose of testing its non-porosity. The explosion resulted in the partial wreckage of the wireless room. Until the damage could be made good the "Meteor" was practically cut off from intercourse with the outside world. Before the days of wireless, isolation counted for little, but once having enlisted the aid of the Italian wizard, Marconi, the exigencies of civilization could ill bear being deprived of this means of communication.
"Anyone hurt?" asked Whittinghame anxiously, as he and his companions arrived on the scene of the accident.
"No one, sir," replied Callaghan saluting.