At the Mercy of the Winds
It would ill describe the state of mind of the deputy commandant of the fortress of Heligoland to say that he was thunderstruck at the latest disaster that had overtaken one of the German air fleet. It was he who had given the order for the gunners to bring down the derelict. Their failure to do so only increased his consternation. He was almost in a state of stupefaction. At one moment he raved at the indiscretion of the commander of the Zeppelin in attempting to come to earth in a gale of wind; at another he sat with his hands clasped tightly across his eyes, as if trying to shut out the inglorious sight of the hitherto peerless airship drifting helplessly at the mercy of the elements.
Then came the disconcerting news that one of the spies had escaped. The ruins of his cell had been hastily examined without any trace being found of his body, and it was owing solely to the statement of one of the men, who said he believed he saw the Englishman clinging to the wreckage, that the authorities came to the hasty, but none the less accurate, decision that such indeed was the case. This stirred the second commandant to action. He ordered the whole of the second flotilla of torpedo-boat destroyers to proceed at once to sea, in the hope that they might overhaul the errant Zeppelin should the gale moderate.
In less than ten minutes from the time of receiving the order the first of the destroyers left South Haven, followed with commendable celerity by her consorts. Regardless of the high-crested seas they steamed under forced draught. Dense clouds of black smoke, tinged with dull-red flame, belched from their squat funnels, which speedily became white with salt. Swept fore and aft, even at the risk of carrying away most of the deck gear the frail vessels rushed through the blackness of the night, spreading fanwise between north-west and south-west in order to cover the possible limits of the object of the search.
Meanwhile a wireless message in code was dispatched to the German Admiralty. It was useless to conceal the magnitude of the disaster, but one point was omitted. No reference was made to the supposed presence of the English spy upon the derelict. That information was sent only to General Heinrich von Wittelsbach, who was on the point of returning to resume his command.
The fates seemed to be working against Von Wittelsbach. Almost on the top of his carefully-worded denial to his emperor came the disquieting report that Hamerton was on board the fugitive Zeppelin. The commandant's sole hope lay in the destroyers which had been dispatched in search of the truant. Should they fail, it was more than likely that the airship would either be driven across to Great Britain or else fall into the sea. Her huge bulk could hardly pass unnoticed by the scores of British trawlers at work on the Dogger, since from the direction of the wind the Zeppelin would be blown directly over that great fishing ground. In either case Hamerton stood a fighting chance of being saved, and then the truth would out.
Early on the following morning Von Wittelsbach embarked on a light cruiser that had orders to await him at Cuxhaven. Twenty minutes later the vessel anchored in South Haven. The destroyers were even now returning from their fruitless search; their wireless messages told the same tale with monotonous and depressing regularity; and to add to the irony of the situation the short summer's gale had blown itself out, and the sun shone brilliantly from a cloudless sky. The sea had subsided, and only a long oily swell served to remind the fisher folk of the Frisians and the shores of Schleswig-Holstein of the storm that had wrought havoc on their coasts.
For the rest of the day General von Wittelsbach remained shut up in the Government House, waiting and waiting, hoping against hope that the threatened exposure of his duplicity might yet pass away.
Throughout the short summer's night Hamerton clung to his frail support. He gloried in his position. Nothing seemed to trouble him. Here he was floating in hundreds of feet in the air, and being rapidly borne westward by the partially crippled Zeppelin.
The aircraft, being entirely out of control, was nothing more than a non-dirigible balloon. For the most part she drifted broadside on to the wind, occasionally describing a pendulum-like motion in a horizontal plane. Otherwise she was fairly steady, with hardly any tendency to dip her bow or stern. The air was warm, the threatened rain had not fallen, the airship seemed far above the surface of the sea, and showed no inclination of descending. By occasional bearings from certain well-known stars, the Sub derived the consolation that the westward drift was still maintained.