Now he knew his frail winged craft beset by cunning, treacherous enemies; the invisible air that cradled and supported her, only waiting to destroy. Other elemental forces, Gale, Lightning, Hail, Waterspout—in collusion to bring about her swift and speedy ruin. The Sea, no less than these, was an implacable adversary, reaching up innumerable greedy hands to drag her down and drown. The hawk-hoverer would have been a help at this juncture if one had had some previous experience in the use of it. As things were, it was wiser to leave the Englishman's invention alone. A labouring beat admonished the man's quick ear of impending engine-trouble. Ah, if the motor, that was the living heart in the aëroplane, should break down at this juncture, or the human intelligence perched behind the roaring tractor falter, the game was up. Kaput for von Herrnung, he very well knew.
As though the very fear had brought on the catastrophe, the revolutions dropped. Below 1000, said the indicator's trembling finger, and there was a miss. The bang!—bang! of a back-fire followed. If one had believed in God, now, this would have been the time to pray to Him.
But now the aviator's keen eye, peering downwards through Sherbrand's binoculars, picked up something that had emerged with a sudden yeasty swirl among the white-crested waves. No handsomer nor bigger than an under-sized steam-trawler, the casual observer might as such have accepted her. But a moment more, and fore and aft of the stocky little pseudo-steamer, stretched the long snaky, whitey-brown hull of a submarine.
U-18, on observation-service off Spurn Head, or a Britisher? An Evans signalling-pistol, loaded, and with a supply of spare rockets, was fixed in a cleat beside the instrument-board, within reach of the pilot's hand. The altimeter, illuminated by the electric bulb, gave an altitude of six hundred, as von Herrnung snatched the pistol, and fired, aiming towards the sky.
The shot was followed by a second detonation, and a brilliant crimson light illuminated the grey welter, throwing up orange balls of fire as it ascended, to burst in showers of incandescent sparks. Switching off, von Herrnung strained both ears and eyes for an answer to his signal. With the cessation of the motor the diapason of the North Sea rolled upwards through the twilight with a threatening of storm. As the weather-cone had presaged, a gale was coming. It blew strongly from the north-west. The engine back-fired again, and von Herrnung swore at it, trying to make out the nationality of the submarine running on the surface six hundred feet below. There were half-a-dozen tallish figures on the narrow man-railed catwalk running along her hull forward, and one upon the screened-in platform of her humpy conning-tower.
Then the blue-white ray of a searchlight leaped forth illuminating her bows and forward torpedo-tubes—revealing the long neutral-coloured hull with the Wireless mast raised for use and soapy seas hissing off the armour-plate. A backwash of brilliance picked out the black-white-and-red Jack of Germany, fluttering from a short pole-mast sternwards. Signal-lights of white and two colours broke out upon another slender mast aft of her conning-tower, and winked and jabbered. U-18 was in touch with her man.
It was quite time, for the Bird's engine hiccupped more and more disastrously, and her pilot's frozen hands could only guess the steering-wheel. He grunted relief. Sapperlot! One's star had not deserted one. Once more the Prussian Field-Flying Service would, with reason, quote von Herrnung's hellish good-luck.
Meanwhile the submarine's three lights chattered volubly in German Navy Code. Do Not Attempt Make Harbour. Heavy Weather Coming. Original Orders Cancelled. Heave To. Will Stand By To Take You Aboard. To which von Herrnung, keeping pace with U-18, replied with long and short flashes of an electric signalling-torch. Understood! What Is the Sea Like? Keep Off and On. Am Coming Down!
And he came forthwith. The Commander of U-18, standing on the little platform over which furious seas were slashing, watched him critically through a pair of Zeiss binoculars. You, too, are asked to see him; pulling round the Bird's head into the teeth of the nor'wester; shutting off her hiccupping engine, implacably thrusting her nose seawards, and diving with a splendid swoop into the widening paths of spirals that ended amidst the angry surges below.
Hitting the North Sea with so shattering a slap that the Bird's landing-carriage crumpled and buckled, and the frail spars of her wings crunched like the bones of a small bird in the jaws of a hungry cat.