Even the gunners on the top were practically useless, for the terrors of the past night and the impending death now awaiting them had shattered their nerves, and they were firing wildly, so that the daring aviators had them at their mercy, for the hornets were about to attack.
Dastral gave one more look round at his flight, and saw them coming boldly on behind him. Then he shouted to Jock:
"All ready there?"
"Aye, ready," came the response.
"Then in mercy's name fire!" A short, sharp nose-dive of two hundred feet, and they were within a hundred feet of the leviathan, and immediately above her. So near were they that they could see the affrighted machine-gunners on the top of the gas-bag leave their posts and try to escape down the escalier, but they had left it too long. They were now about to pay the price for the toll they had wantonly taken of innocent lives during the long dark hours of the past night. And, like all cowards who wreak their vengeance upon helpless folk, they feared the dread spectre when it came close to themselves.
"Whis-s-sh! Boom-m-m!" went the first bomb; a time fuse fixed for two seconds. The explosion rent the envelope, and allowed vast quantities of gas to escape from two of the ballonets, so that the huge mass crumpled in at the head, and began to sink slowly at the nose.
Another bomb was dropped, and the second and third machines coming up, dropped petrol and phosphorus bombs, which blazed away, igniting the escaping gas.
She was well alight now, and in the fore part she was burning fiercely, but as yet she did not explode. Dastral saw that she was done for, however, and knowing that the enemy craft could not be far away after all this time, made off and signalled his men to follow.
Down, down went the blazing mass for a couple of thousand feet, then rolling over, it literally fell asunder into several parts, and each part, still burning, carried its helpless inmates down to destruction.
Once more Dastral looked round, and as he did so, he gasped out the words: