"Say, old man," he exclaimed. "The destroyers have nearly twenty miles' start of us. I can spot them."
"The 'Antipas' is out," remarked Barcroft with a chuckle. "Won't old Tressidar be in a tear if we beat her! We'll try it, anyway."
Anderson and Bell, although ignorant of the precise nature of No. 144A's mission, were keenly on the alert. No doubt, in that mysterious way that supposedly secret information spreads with incomprehensible rapidity, the news of the torpedoing of the "Tantalus" was common property in and around Trecurnow; but beyond giving Kirkwood a brief account of what had occurred, Barcroft had refrained from mentioning the matter to any one at the airship station.
Twenty minutes after leaving terra firma the Blimp had left Land's End on her starboard quarter. Just within the western horizon could be discerned the cluster of small islands and rocks comprising the Scillies. North and south wisps of smoke gave evidence that, U-boats notwithstanding, the British mercantile marine was still unperturbed, for liners and tramps were to be seen either making for or leaving the Bristol Channel and English Channel ports.
"Are we gaining, do you think?" inquired Barcroft.
"Don't know, Billy, my festive," replied his second-in-command. "We seem to be overhauling the four older destroyers, but the 'Antipas' is a slipper. It's this head wind that's doing us in the eye."
The Blimp had struck a "rough patch." Tricky air currents, requiring all Barcroft's skill to counteract, made her plunge and yaw in a most erratic manner. At one moment the fuselage would be shooting ahead in practically a straight line, while overhead the gas envelope would be swaying from side to side like an ungainly pendulum; at another, the suspended car would be rearing and plunging like a dinghy rowed against short, steep seas; the while the breeze was whistling through the network of tensioned wires, the shrieking of the wind being audible even above the bass hum of the propeller and the noisy pulsations of the open exhaust.
Five hundred feet below the sea looked as calm as a mill-pond. Away to the west'ard patches of fog rendered observation a spasmodic business. Occasionally the horizon would be clearly visible, while a few minutes later a bank of thin vapour would form and blot out everything beneath it.
"There's the 'Tantalus'—a couple of points on our port bow!" exclaimed Kirkwood. "She's still afloat, then.... By Jove! She has a list."
Barcroft gave the Blimp the necessary amount of helm to bring her nose pointing directly for the painfully crawling cruiser.