CHAPTER X
THE BLIMP TO THE RESCUE
"YOU'RE wanted on the 'phone, sir. Senior Officer Trecurnow Base is speaking."
Flight-Lieutenant Barcroft, V.C., was coming away from the airship sheds when a petty officer brought the urgent message that Sir George Maynebrace wanted him on the telephone.
The lieutenant was acting-commander of a "wing" of coastal airships stationed at Toldrundra Cove, within ten miles of Trecurnow Base. During the last few days "business" had been slack. Regularly the Blimps flew over their allotted patrolling districts without sighting a single one of the Kaiser's underwater boats. It looked as if the German submarine had given up the chops of the Channel as a bad job.
It was a great blow to Billy Barcroft when, consequent upon injuries received in a seaplane raid, the Medical Board refused to allow him to fly again in a machine heavier than air. As a partial compensation he was appointed to the airship branch, which, although lacking the opportunities of raiding, was not devoid of excitement and danger.
144A, the Blimp in which Barcroft had just completed the morning flight, consisted of a cigar-shaped envelope one hundred and twenty feet in length, and with an extreme girth of ninety feet. Suspended from the envelope by a ramification of light but enormously strong wire cables was a four-seated fuselage, similar to, but on a slightly larger scale than, the bodies of the battle-seaplanes. Fore and aft was mounted a machine-gun, while projecting through the floor of the fuselage was a complicated arrangement that at first sight looked like three drain-pipes with mushroom heads and a small crowd of "gadgets" thrown in. This was the aerial torpedo projector, a highly perfected apparatus capable of hurling its sinister missiles with uncanny accuracy. The 'midship section of the fuselage was taken up by the propelling machinery—a petrol motor coupled direct to the shafting of a huge aerial propeller.
Aft was the wireless installation, the petty officer occupying the dual rôle of machine-gunner and telegraphist. Underneath the chassis were the emergency water ballast tanks, but for normal alterations of altitude the Blimp depended upon her elevating rudders and also upon the reduction or addition of gas in the envelope—the reserve of hydrogen being kept under pressure in strong metal cylinders.
Hastening to the air-station office Barcroft entered the telephone cabinet and picked up the receiver.