All this took but a few seconds, for with a rush like that of an express train emerging from a dark tunnel, the battleplane, still tilted on her side, shot into the pure sunlit air. Then, gradually recovering her normal trim, she allowed herself to come once more under the control of her designer, builder and pilot.
Shaken and well-nigh breathless, for the atmosphere through which the machine had plunged was highly charged with poisonous fumes, it was some minutes before Athol and Dick fully realised that they were still alive. Almost their first thoughts were concerning the Zeppelin. In vain they looked over the side of the chassis in the hope of seeing a tangible proof of their victory. The airship was no longer in existence. An explosion, either the result of an accidental ignition of the escaping hydrogen or of a deliberate act on the part of the crew, had literally pulverised the huge and frail structure. The battleplane, almost immediately above the source of detonation, had narrowly escaped destruction, having been enveloped in the terrific up-blast of the fiery gases. The sliver of metal that had only just missed Athol's legs was a piece of aluminium sheeting from the dismembered Zeppelin, for it was afterwards found bent round one of the girders of the landing-wheel framework.
"I'd like to wait till the submarine reappears," remarked Blake, "but it's getting too late to-day. We are, I should imagine, less than a hundred miles from Riga, and it wants but an hour and a half to sunset. By the by, has any one seen anything of Private Smith?"
No one had. When last heard of the ex-prisoner had been sleeping soundly in one of the bunks.
"See where he is, sergeant."
O'Rafferty descended from his perch and entered the interior of the fuselage. The bunk was empty. A couple of blankets hitched up upon some hooks in the ceiling trailed forlornly to the floor.
"You there, Smith?" shouted the sergeant.
"Here, sergeant," replied a drowsy voice from the very after end of the tapering body. "Have they finished strafing us yet?"
Wedged in so as to be incapable of moving hand or foot was the imperturbable Private Thomas Smith. When the battleplane had commenced her almost vertical leap in her encounter with the Zepp, the Tommy had been shot from his bunk. Alighting on the floor he had slid aft to the position in which O'Rafferty had discovered him. There, throughout the erratic and violent motions of the battleplane following the explosion of the airship, he had lain, too sleepy to realise what was taking place, and when roused by the Sergeant's voice he was still under the impression that he was in a dug-out somewhere in France during a heavy bombardment by hostile guns.
The sun had dipped behind the waters of the Baltic as the battleplane flew serenely across the broad waters of the Gulf of Riga. A thousand feet beneath the airmen lay a powerful Russian squadron, including dreadnoughts, armoured cruisers and destroyers.