Instantly the night was illuminated with the beams of searchlights, which, like huge phosphorescent feelers, swept the sky, until at last they were focussed on the waterplane. Then came a cracking sound from beneath, and shot after shot whizzed upwards from the anti-aircraft guns of the Mars, striking the car, smashing and splintering the slender wooden spars which supported the planes, and occasionally snapping a steel guy.
By a miracle Lawless had managed to retain his hold of the wire, though it cut through his flesh, and he knew that he must drop before many seconds elapsed, even if he was not struck by one of the shots from below. He was on the point of letting go through sheer pain and exhaustion, when the machine suddenly tilted, turned right over, and then swooped downwards with a velocity that made his brain reel.
The terrible sensation of falling from a tremendous height terminated abruptly, and next moment the Lieutenant felt the water close above his head, and he was sinking down, down, fathoms deep, it seemed to him, into the sea. Then came a feeling of agonising suffocation, a terrible pressure on his chest, a sensation as though his lungs were about to burst, and he rose to the surface, to find himself near some floating remnants of the wrecked waterplane.
Catching hold of one of the floats, Lawless endeavoured to draw himself up, but fell back in the water as a numbing pain shot through his left arm. He rose to the surface again in a semi-dazed condition, and made another feeble attempt to get on the floats; but his strength was exhausted, and he was suffering agonies from the injured arm. At this moment there came the sound of men's voices and the click of oars as they swung in the rowlocks; strong arms lifted him out of the water, and then he lost consciousness.
When Lawless came to himself, he was lying in his bunk on board the Knat, and the absence of any movement told him that she must be at anchor in harbour. In a dreamy fashion he fell to wondering why he was lying there, with the sunlight streaming through the port-holes; he even made an effort to rise, but fell back as a pain shot from his left elbow to his shoulder.
That set him thinking, and gradually the events of the previous night—he supposed it was the previous night—came back to him. Recollections of the mysterious steamer, the fight in mid-air, his fall into the sea—all passed through his brain in a fragmentary, disjointed manner, like the confused memories of a dream. Then, as he was trying to sort them out, the cabin door opened, and Sub-Lieutenant Trent entered.
"Hallo! So you've come to at last!" he exclaimed. "How do you feel?"
"As if I'd had a beastly nightmare," answered Lawless. "Where are we?"
"In Portsmouth Harbour," replied Trent, as he seated himself on a locker beside the bunk and started to fill his pipe.
"I'm beginning to remember things a bit more clearly now," said the Lieutenant. "Tell me what happened after I left the Knat."