Chapter X: That Rhine Tour

"Dear sir," wrote Captain Kettle.

"Have managed to get hold of Zeppelin, the Germans who manned her objecting. Am at present at that place where you said you shot a right and left of woodcock, and didn't, the second bird being mine, though I said nothing at the time. I mention the spot that way in case this letter falls into wrong hands. Please join at once, and bring with you (as quiet as possible) things as per enclosed list.

"The grub we can do without if needful, and if you can't arrange the plant for making gas, we can help ourselves to that from a gasworks somewhere. But as much petrol as your two big cars can stagger under is an absolute necessity. And without the dynamite, or something like it, we shall be a damp squib.

"You must be here on the job before daybreak, which will be at 6.30 at latest, or I must sail without you, and trust to picking up supplies and a shipmate elsewhere.

"Yours truly,
"O. KETTLE (Master)."

"P.S.--She is going to be a beast to navigate."

"Um," said Mr. Martin Carnforth, M.P. "Who brought this?"

"Young person on a motor-cycle, sir." The butler's wooden features relaxed into a moment's smile, and then froze again. "Said the name was Brown, sir."

"Well, take the man to the kitchen and give him a drink."

"Beg pardon, sir, the young person insisted on the name of Doctor Brown, and was a--er--young person, sir, not a man."

"I wish to heaven you would speak English, Booker. Do you mean the messenger is a woman?"

"I suppose she is, sir, though her clothes, especially the lower----"

"Well, put her in the drawing-room, and give her some tea, and--er---buns, and chocolates, and things. And light a fire. And if she looks that sort give her some cigarettes. Egyptians they usually like."

"Yes, sir. Certainly, sir. I did take the liberty of offering her a whisky-and-soda, sir, when she arrived."

"With the result, I suppose, that she snapped your head off for your impudence."

"No, sir. Seemed flattered, sir, although she didn't want one just then," said the butler as he made his exit.

"I shall surprise Booker by kicking him one of these days," Carnforth said to himself as he watched the door shut behind his ancient retainer. "And now for our small mariner's list of sea stores. Gee-Wilikins! He must think I'm Harrod and the Army and Navy Stores rolled into one Siamese twin. Well, the telephone and a reliable secretary are sound things."

Mr. Martin Carnforth, M.P., was a man of decision. He knew what he wanted, where to get it, and how to get it quickly, and (being shrewd and businesslike) acted on this knowledge with small delay. Then at the call of a gong he dressed, and dined thoughtfully and well. He had been out with Captain Kettle on the warpath before, and knew that small sailorman would dine comfortably if dinner was before him, and if it was not, would, apparently with equal pleasure, fast for forty hours on end. Mr. Carnforth, though tough and wiry, was a man of full habit, and liked to meet his meals at their usual fixed intervals.

Half-way through dinner he remembered Dr. Brown. "Has that messenger gone yet, Booker?"

"No, sir. In the drawing-room."

"H'm, well, it's rather dull dining alone. No, don't you go, Booker. I'll go and see what she's like myself." And a half-minute later he was saying, "I'm amazingly sorry I didn't know you were still here. Please come in to dinner at once. Booker! Bring back the soup."

Now I think it was Dr. Mary Brown's voluminous black leather breeches and neat boots and gaiters which got her that very prompt invitation in the first instance, and it was a handy way she had with her eye that warmed up early acquaintance into a pretty warm flirtation before the end of dinner. Carnforth was once pithily described as "a bit of a warrior." Dr. Brown had of late decided that the way to get the most out of life was not to be too prim. I am not going to give away her age, but she had a tidy handful of experience behind her. She had tried philanthropy, dancing, religion, and medicine, and found them all very well as hobbies, but had tired of each in turn. Now she was seeing life as a Lady Motor Scout, and a swashbuckling air was necessary for local colour.

"Have another walnut," said Carnforth, as they sat over their dessert. "I shall call you 'cork' directly."

"'Cork,' why?"

"Because you are stopping the bottle. No, my good girl, help yourself first. Well, if you won't, I'll do my best. It's '70, and we aren't going to leave the bottle with one of Kettle's little games to go through on ahead. Ahead of me that is. I shall have to clear out in half an hour, I'm sorry to say, my dear. My housekeeper will bed you down here for the night, and see you have shaving tackle and all that."

"Oh, but I'm coming too."

"I bet a trifle Kettle didn't ask you. Cuddlesome little way with him, hasn't he, when he doesn't want anybody?"

"Don't be horrid. He's rather a dear, though, isn't he?"

"Now, you're trying to make me jealous. Have some cognac with your coffee if you won't drink any more port, and no--Booker, I particularly told you Dr. Brown always smokes Egyptian cigarettes. Apologize, my dear, for my bachelor ways, but I hate the beastly things myself. And I don't smoke cigars with '70 port. Heigh-ho, _Ge-wine_, _ge-women_, and _ge-song_, as they say in Lord What's-his-name's spiritual home, are great things, my dear, aren't they, and I always think when I go off cruising with Kettle that my bright young career will be cut off short with suddenness. That's why I am dining decently before starting out to-night. It's a pity to leave a bottle more of the '70 than's necessary to my young fool of a nephew."

"You will smuggle me on board, won't you?" said Dr. Brown, moving her chair up closer.

"I'm a bit deaf. What was that? Here, come and sit on my knee, and then you needn't bawl at me."

"Oh, I can make you hear all right. You'll manage to get me on board, won't you, old thing? If it hadn't been for me you would never have heard of the affair at all."

"By Jove, you have ripping eyes, m'dear, when you look at a man like that. You'd better keep out of Lady Kettle's way, or she'll be reading the riot act."

"Then you promise?"

"Oh, Lord, I'll promise anything. Look out. Here's Booker."

It was a slightly embarrassed Martin Carnforth that walked up, motor head-lamp in hand, to Captain Kettle's rendezvous. The huge dark airship, swinging to her rock moorings, twittered to the breeze overhead, and the little sailor, with cigar cocked to an acute angle, lay smoking on a bank of heather. He dandled a 12-bore handily across his knees. And the cock of his red torpedo beard was full of truculent satisfaction.

"Well, did you shoot the whole of the crew of your Zep?"

"No, sir, only a brace of them. The rest concluded they would do as they were told, so I put them in gaol before they could change their minds. It doesn't do to trust Germans an inch these days, Mr. Carnforth."

"It never did. But where did you find a gaol up here on the moor?"

"There's an old adit close by, sir, for some of the lead workings, though it's too dark for you to see it now. I drove them into that, and then blew down the entrance. They'd some handy little bombs for killing babies with in their after car, and I used one of those. I had to set the fuse by guess, but it went off all right, and nobody was hurt. At least I wasn't."

"H'm. And so I suppose they starve or suffocate to death."

"Oh there's a vertical shaft half a mile further in that leads up to the moor. We'll leave word, if you like, that they are there, and anybody that hankers after them can wind them up through that shaft. But what anyone can want Germans for these days is beyond me."

"Collectors fancy all sorts of bric-à-brac, even live Germans. There's quite a cult in some political circles for collecting live Germans and pampering them. How did you catch the Zep, by the way? Had she come down to poach your rabbits? She's rather out of her latitude up here in the middle of Yorkshire. There are precious few babes and women to kill amongst these moors."

"There was a sudden cold snap in the early morning, sir. My minimum thermometer on the garden wall showed eighteen degrees of frost, though when I went to look at it after breakfast to take the reading, the sun was shining and the air temperature had gone up to 45 degrees."

"And they wanted to come down to thaw?"

"No, sir, there was a heavy snow-storm up aloft there, and the weight of snow forced them down. This craft here, Mr. Carnforth, is 500 feet long and 40 feet beam, and if you work out what half an inch of rain-water--turned into snow--means over that surface, you'll find it figures out at a lot more weight than she could carry. So they gave up their job of being frightful over Bradford and Leeds, and slanted down to earth up here in the dales, where it is quieter. They were just starting to scrape off the snow (and making a very poor job of it) when I came to the top of the scaur there to look at a weasel trap."

"And the weasel was forgotten, I suppose?"

"Mr. Carnforth, with me business comes first, and pleasure afterwards. I took the weasel--a fine young dog---to hang up for my keeper's larder, and re-set the trap, and then I gave two Dutchmen who'd forgotten their manners a barrel of number five apiece at thirty yards. Afterwards I told the rest to put up their hands."

"And they kindly did it? Tame of them."

"I'm afraid, sir," said Captain Kettle dryly, "they believed I'd part of the British Army at my back. It was very foggy, and they didn't seem accustomed to our moorland."

"Bang goes another ideal! I always looked upon you as another George Washington."

"Well, sir," said Kettle with a flush, "I try to be truthful, and if necessary, I would have taken on the whole thirteen. But I'd got an idea I might make use of this Zeppelin, and I knew that if we started scrapping they'd destroy her before I could get them all comfortably killed off. Anyway, I didn't tell any lies, if that's what you're meaning. No, by James! I just sang out in the fog to 'keep back there out of shot' and hailed down to the Dutchmen that if they didn't march into that adit, one-time, I'd mow down the lot of them. I expect the cold and this moorland country nipped them. They ran to cover like a push of the old-style Dutch deck-hands with a brace of mates after them. Well then, as I say, sir, I fastened them up and went back to breakfast. Lady Kettle never likes me to be late."

"I admire your taste in messengers," said Carnforth with a grin. "You seem to have made a great impression on the damsel in the leather breeks some time during your shady past."

"My Great James! Has she been talking?"

"Good heavens, man, don't jump down my throat--or hers--like that. I assure you she's been most discreet. I wish I'd had your chances though. With you ahead of me, I don't get a look in."

"I don't know what you're driving at, sir," Kettle snapped at him acidly. "I did nothing to the lady I--er--couldn't help."

"Oh, that will be quite enough for Lady Kettle I'm sure when we laugh over the yarn with her--All right. I'll climb down, Colonel. Don't shoot."

"Our views about ladies are very different, sir," said Kettle with much stiffness.

"Thank the Lord, yes. I'm out for fun. You've Lady Kettle. Now then, business: There's a five-ton motor lorry load of hydrogen cylinders, and a quarter of a mile of piping in case we can't get alongside. There's a ton and a half of petrol on another lorry. There's a third lorry with a special line in T.N.T. bombs fitted with the Carnforth patent vane. I've never contrived to get our fool air-craft officials to take them up, and now's the chance to advertise them. That's the only reason I came. Now what's the scheme? Are you going to take your Zep down to Hendon and make a present of her to the British Army? As you haven't invited the authorities here, I should say that is the correct procedure."

Captain Kettle pulled thoughtfully at his red torpedo beard and stared at Carnforth.

Mr. Carnforth pursed his lips and scratched his chin and stared at Captain Kettle.

Then Carnforth sniggered, and that seemed to break the spell. "I thought, sir," said Kettle with some embarrassment, "we might do something on our own. You see neither Navy nor Army has any use for us. They say I've a wooden leg, and they say you're too--er----"

"Tum-tummy."

"Well, I believe the brutes would even say that. So I thought we might put in a little trip without consulting them. You see, sir, I know very little of Europe, having spent, as you know, most of my life at sea. We'd a Preacher who came to our chapel two Sundays ago and he'd done what he called 'the Rhine tour.' I didn't think much of it myself, but he kept dragging his experiences into his sermon, and the congregation liked it. It's rather a slur on me, sir, but I may tell you in confidence that the collection was thirteen and two-pence up on my own average. I've got to get level with that somehow, or the Wharfedale Particular Methodists will want to know why I am sticking on at their head. One of our mottoes is, 'By their deeds ye shall know them.'"

"It's the devil of a position," Carnforth agreed. "I'm no preacher myself, but as a politician I agree with you. But I don't quite catch the point."

"Why I was thinking, sir, we might do the Rhine Tour (just as the tripper people advertise it) in our own Zep, and empty our ballast on anything in the shell-manufacturing line as we went along. Those commercial towns are not mentioned in the Tourist Guide, but I guess we can spot them. Our preacher was great on the medieval castles, and I should scorn to drop bombs on them, because they will always be of interest to photographers when Germany's opened up to white men, after the war. And there's one other thing."

"Well?"

"I know, sir, you laugh at poetry, but our preacher said the Rhine reeked of it. I tell you, sir, when he occupied my pulpit, he let off poetry about the Rhine till I fairly writhed. It was other people's too, and the swine never owned up. But let me go there, and pump out some verse of my own on the spot, and I'll give my crowd the squirms or know the reason why. Yes, by James! They'll understand whose congregation they are by the time I've finished shooting off those Rhine verses at them, the mutinous dogs."

"Hullo!"

"Yes, Mr. Carnforth, with shame I own it, but I've been having trouble. Lady Kettle, as you know, has been filling our pulpit on several occasions during my absence, and I want to clear her ticket at once. She dropped the collection, but she's kept the popularity going strong. It's me that two of our blighters have got their knife into. One's a chemist from down the dale (not rightly in our circle at all) and one's a sheep farmer from above Arncliffe. They complain I preach too hot a kind of hell for their complete enjoyment, feeling, I suppose, they're in for it as residents later. Well, Mr. Carnforth, let me get that Rhine poetry straight from the soil, so to speak, to fire out at them, and they'll swallow any brand of hot place they're offered. I know the beggars. And now, if you please, we'll just run through the Zep's engines and her rising gear. The rest of the gadgetts can wait till we're under way. But I tell you beforehand, she's a regular bag of tricks."

Dr. Mary Brown was not discovered till they had left the gloom of England behind them, and were heading across a great saucer of the North Sea. It was Kettle who found her in the after gondola, plugging her ears against the noise of the engine exhausts, and Carnforth, when called into consultation, rather basely disclaimed all knowledge of her intention to stow away.

"Well, Miss," said the little sailor acidly, "you have forced your way in where you were not invited, and you'll have to do as you're told, lady or no lady."

"Call me Doctor, please."

"To start with, I'll not have my ship disgraced with you in those breeches. Can you make yourself a skirt, if I give you the material?"

"I can't, and I won't try. You're horrid."

"Very well, then, Miss, I will be your dressmaker. In the meanwhile you'll stay in there with the lock turned till I'm ready."

But Captain Kettle was not able to commence dressmaking just then. From somewhere on the well-watched water below, a seaplane soared and buzzed towards the huge airship with vicious intent. She was travelling three miles to the airship's two, and was ascending rapidly.

The sailor picked up the loud-speaking telephone and tried to get hold of Carnforth in the engine gondola, but without result. The roar of the exhausts hung round them like the noise of a battle. So he steadied his helm and ran aft down the central alley-way.

"Give her more speed," he bawled in Carnforth's ear. "There's an English seaplane after us, and we'll be bombed if we don't look out, by our own men. There's no chance of letting him know who we are with all this row going on, and he's as noisy as we are."

"You've all the speed I can get," Carnforth shouted back. "These infernal engines have got a chill on the gizzard. What does the fool of a 'plane want to interfere for? Can't he see we're going towards Germany?"

"There's only one kind of good Zep from his point of view, sir, and that's a dead Zep. If we can't run, we must rise."

"I've got the horizontal rudders full on, and she doesn't answer. Not enough speed."

"Then we must turn the exhaust into the envelope and warm up the whole outfit. That will make her rise fast enough."

"It's about ten to one we set her on fire in the process if we try that. I say, Captain, there's a damn sight more in Zep-driving than the ordinary amateur guesses at. Here, that's the cut-out to this set of engines. You stand by it, and shut when I wave. I'll shut the cut-out of the port engines. As soon as you think we're high enough, open them again, and don't you go on a second longer than's dead necessary. We're squirting white hot air on to hydrogen ballonettes, and it's about as safe as having a firework party in a powder factory. Now then, hup!"

The din of the exhausts was dulled, and the huge airship quivered. Then she swelled visibly, straining at her covering till all wrinkles were lost in chubbiness. The soaring seaplane seemed to be dropping like a stone beneath them. The ring of sea, with its ships and its tiny fret of waves appeared to be falling away through the bottom of space. And then they swooped up into a veil of cloud, dank and icy to the feel, and shutting them away from all human sight, and spangling them with instant dewdrops.

"Keep her at that level, sir, for half an hour," Kettle bawled at his friend's ear, "and I will change course a dozen points. We'll soon shake off our navy customer down below if only this cloud doesn't thin out before we've run our distance."

The little sailor went forward again, and his engineer, with a minute's rest ahead of him, straightened his back and interviewed the prisoner through a port hole.

"I told you you'd catch it," he chuckled.

"Captain Kettle was most insulting."

"He struck me as being icily polite. I knew he'd never stand those bags."

"I mean he was insulting in persisting in calling me, Miss, when he knows quite well I'm Doctor."

"So you are, m'dear. I'll lace into him sometime when we get home, if you like. Of course you're a doctor. Any one could tell that at once by your learned frown. Look here, do you mind tying up my knuckles where I've grazed them?"

"Oh, are you hurt?"

"Horribly. F-s-s! Go gently, m'dear. Ah, that's nicer. There, if I squeeze on to your hand like that, it doesn't ache so much. That bandage properly sterilized? Here, hold on to it a minute. My blessed port engine is going on strike again. Who wouldn't sell a farm and go Zep-driving?"

Now, Captain Sir Owen Kettle, K.C.B., was beginning to find his navigation in a tangle. At sea, come fair, come gale, come night, come fog, he could find his way from port to port with any expert who did business on the great waters. The sextant and the log were his cousins; the compass, with its most erratic variations, was his familiar friend.

But up here in the navigating position of the Zeppelin he was faced with a score of new problems. Height, angle of ascension, angle of descent, wind drift, speed by engine evolution, retardation due to increase in envelope size, varying air friction, leeway, were all indicated on dials and recorders in front of him. He took these as accurate, to start with, but soon convinced himself that many of them were recording fiction.

For a while, too, he pinned his faith, mariner-fashion, on the reliability of the elaborate Thompson compass. But when, during a passage between two electricity-discharging clouds this instrument emulated a windmill in full working activity, he felt that one of the props had been taken from his universe. Even his cigar in that rare air burned abnormally.

Occasionally, very occasionally, he got a glimpse at the sun, and, comparing this with his watch, was able to get an approximate bearing. But for the most part the Zeppelin travelled through a bank of cloud, though even this, most unfairly (he felt) was not enough to conceal her.

Those envious dogs, the officers of the British Navy, who sailed the North Sea below in forty assorted craft, kept spotting her outline.

They merrily wirelessed to one another, "Mark Zep over!" and at intervals, as she blundered down their sentry line, snapped off shrapnel at her. It was a poor solace to Captain Kettle's feelings that their shooting was extremely bad. The hardest trial of all was not being able to bawl back at them exactly what he thought.

There are, of course, ninety and nine close shaves for one actual shipwreck, and about these it is one of the primary rules of shipmasters (as it is of railway companies and others) to keep the most profound secrecy. Captain Owen Kettle is, as has been recorded many times, one of the few really truthful men now alive, but even he, when Mr. Carnforth bawled in his ear "Finding your way all right?" snarled back "Think I don't know my job?"

"You're making for the Texel, aren't you?"

"As it happens, I am."

"Of course, my dear chap, I don't question your navigation for one moment, but when the clouds pulled away for a moment just now, I spotted one of my own ships heading along the same course as ourselves."

"Well?"

"Oh, she's off to Norway, that's all."

"By James, sir, are you trying to teach me to navigate?"

"Not a bit, not a bit. Why should I?"

"Because you know nothing about it. And I may tell you, sir, that I don't either up here. I can get neither sights nor soundings, and my compass is like a tee-to-tum. You might think, Mr. Carnforth, it is an easy thing to take a departure from Flamborough Head and hit Europe. Yesterday I would have said a child could have done it. But just now I'm free to own there are difficulties. These auxiliary sky-wind jammers take a bit more thinking out than the ordinary seafaring man has any idea of. But don't you get uneasy, sir. You can carry in mind I've got to do that Rhine Tour, or the Wharfedale Particular Methodists will take more handling than I care to talk about."

A minute later Carnforth was telling Dr. Mary Brown that he had "pulled his Eminence's leg all right."

"Nasty little wasp," said the lady.

"Not a bit of it. He's the best chap in the Eastern Hemisphere. But I bet you a bottle of eau de Cologne, my dear, you can't guess what he's doing just now."

"Oh, writing poetry, I suppose."

"Not he. He's sewing at a skirt for you. It will be made of canvas. He cut it out with his pocket-knife on the deckplanks. It's not one of those nasty skimpy ones, either. There will be tons of room in it to cover all of you decently."

"You're both of you horrors," said Dr. Mary Brown. "Oh, there, they're shooting at us again! Mr. Carnforth, I forbid you to laugh. Do something! Get it stopped."

Now, ever since the start from that lonely Yorkshire moorland, the port engine of the Zeppelin had been giving trouble, and naturally Carnforth had given it most of his attention. The automatic adjustment of its carburettors for varying air-pressures was faulty, its magnetos shorted at every jolt, its plugs sooted almost as soon as they were replaced. Its driver was burned, stifled, deafened by its imbecilities, but nursed it through every ailment triumphantly. It was the starboard engine that let them down. Lubrication failed at one of fifty points; there was a smell of heated steel and scorching oil; and before Carnforth, frantically searching, could find the sore, a gear-box bearing seized, and the whole of the starboard machine stopped with a squeal and a jar. Incidentally one huge propeller blade flicked off into space.

"Good afternoon," said Mr. Martin Carnforth, M.P., as he watched its whirring flight. "I wonder if the old bus has a big enough helm to keep her straight against the port engine alone. Hullo, what's that? Yes. Oh, chasing her tail, is she? If I slow down more than a few revolutions she'll stop altogether. Aye aye, sir; stop port engine it is."

Dusk was falling, and the huge gas-bag drifted as a helpless derelict at the same pace as the cloud which surrounded her. "It's beginning to look a bit sick for your Rhine Tour," Carnforth admitted, as he rejoined his friend. "I'm a rotten Zep-driver, and that's a fact."

"You're one engineer, sir, and not six. I'm the man that's to blame. Here am I, a failure at my own trade. I aimed at the Texel, and a minute ago, through a hole in the clouds, I sighted Heligoland, four points starboard and about ten miles ahead. By James! Mr. Carnforth, if we could have kept way on her half an hour more, and those patent bombs of yours are what you claim, we could have blown Heligoland into fine spray."

"Shall we miss it now?"

"I make it we've a lee-drift of some twenty-eight to thirty miles an hour, sir. There's a stiffish breeze blowing up here, though you can't feel now, because, of course, we're drifting with it."

"Where will that take us?"

Captain Kettle picked up a parallel ruler and laid it on the German chart of the North Sea pinned to the table in front of him. "Here's where we are now"--he drew a line with a pencil and stepped back, pointing. "And that's the course of our present drift."

"Phew, slap across the Kiel Canal!"

"If the wind doesn't shift, sir. And as that's a thing over which we have no control, and the starboard engine's beyond repair, I'll ask you to excuse me, sir, for the next hour. I've a little writing to do. I've my head full of some really stirring verse, and I want to get it on paper before it escapes me."

"Feel you've got your argumentative chemist and the Littondale sheep farmer fixed, eh?"

"I can see the tears hopping down their whiskers, sir. If only we'd an accordion on board here, I could set to music some new poetry that I believe would surprise even you."

The short wintry day faded out, and, after a long twilight, night fell, black, and chill, and starless. Even the high air was not at peace in this time of universal war. Searchlight beams slashed it with swift cuts, and the rumbling growl of guns drifted to it from all quarters and reverberated amongst the clouds. Dewdrops from the vast gas-bag overhead dripped on to the roofs of the gondolas with a noise like falling shot. Twice a rattle like machine guns from a neighbouring cloud told that unseeing aeroplanes were doing sentry-go. In the after gondola Mr. Martin Carnforth watched Dr. Mary Brown brew tea on an electric heater, and flirted with her industriously. In the control station Captain Owen Kettle made poetry which he felt would shake Upper Wharfedale down to the very limestone from which it was gouged.

Then land slid into view beneath them, the German land of Schleswig-Holstein--which is the basic cause of the present war--and Mr. Martin Carnforth, M.P., lost his temper and flung a teacup and its steaming contents at the silent starboard engine of the Zeppelin. Captain Kettle made no demonstration. He had an older acquaintance with Fate and the Winds of Heaven, and knew that he could change neither of them. He went steadily on with his literary work. In his mind's eye he saw the bearded chemist from down the dale writhing under his next sermon.

"You will let me drop the first bomb on the Canal, won't you?" Dr. Brown pleaded. "I'm sorry you spilt your tea. Here's another cup. I'm a suffragette, you know, and it would be a splendid thing for me if I could say the Kiel Canal and the ships in it were blown up by a woman."

Carnforth's laugh was rather startling. But his words were suave enough, as usual. "You can drop the whole caboodle as far as I am concerned, my dear, and if you smash the canal, or a ship that counts, I'll endow your excellent society with enough to keep it in chocolates for the next ten years. But if you watch the ground below there, you'll see the wind's shifted, and we're drifting north."

"The horrid Zep's twiddling round so much I don't know which is north and which is south-east."

"Then don't worry to look, my dear, or you'll strain your eyes. By Jove, you have pretty eyes, too, as I believe I've told you before. You'll get married one of these days, sharp and quick, before you know what's happened, if you look at people like that. There, my dear, you sit down in that corner out of the draught and swig your tea, and I'll go and have a word with the Admiral."

"The wind," said Captain Kettle, when his friend joined him, "seems far more flawy up here than one finds it down on the sea. It's blowing as fresh as ever, but it changes direction from minute to minute, as you can see for yourself, sir. I believe we shall hit that canal yet, though at present we can't see----"

At that precise moment two sections of cloud below them slid apart and rolled up with the quickness of a conjuring trick, and there below them Schleswig-Holstein lay spread out like a map. It was striped with railways and glittering with a great canal. Those lights astern would be Büsum that the Danes fought so bitterly to hold; there were Heide's electrics immediately below; and that great glow ahead on the other side of the canal must be Neümunster, where they make the cloth and the beer and the dyewares.

But it was the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal that held the eye. It was lit like a street with sizzling arcs. it was busy with a thousand activities. It was not a mere waterway between towns. It was the main artery of one colossal city. Launches and passenger boats did traffic on its surface; the abounding industries of war hummed on its banks; and in the sidings, moored fore and aft to the great bollards on the banks, lay the tragic items of the Second Largest Fleet in all the World. There were Dreadnought and super-Dreadnought battleships, huge Dreadnought cruisers, and swarming torpedo craft moored there in inglorious safety--all the kinds of vessels, in fact, that go to make a navy's complement, except submarines--and, given engine power, the hovering Zeppelin could have destroyed one after another as though they had been ships of straw, so long as her supply of bombs held out.

"Whilst as it is," said Carnforth bitterly, "we are just as helpless and harmless as a Cabinet Minister with a mouthful of words. We're running parallel to the canal at as accurate a half-mile distance as if we were geared to a rail. A man's cursed Creation for less."

"Yes, sir," agreed Captain Kettle. "It's annoying. I've been looking forward to that Rhine Tour more than I've told you, and I am beginning to fear the chances for it are fading out." The Zeppelin gave a sudden jump upwards. "By James! who's throwing out my ballast? By James! sir, that infernal Miss Brown has let go one of your bombs!"

"And it's falling beautifully. Look there! Straight as a die, now those vanes have got their grip. Kettle, if I'd the British air-craft bomb-buyer here, that would be worth a quarter of a million to me."

"Well," said Kettle dryly, "no one can say I ever dodged trouble. The band will begin to play if that bomb hits anything solid and bursts. I hope Miss will like the results."

"It's dropping on that patch of green that looks like marsh. Damn that girl! Why couldn't she use brains and loose off over something solid? Glory Alleluia! How's that for a tickle fuse?"

The bomb touched earth, and a volcano spouted. The eye saw it first as a splendid pyrotechnic picture. Later came the din of the explosion and an air-wave that set the Zeppelin a'rock like a cork in a flooded gutter. And almost as soon searchlights spat out from all the countryside, exploring the zenith, and from that down and round. The first quivered on to the airship and settled there in twelve seconds from its start, and ten others promptly followed suit.

The great Zeppelin hung there in the wind, lit like a stage, with a hundred gun-muzzles swinging on to her, helpless as Montgolfier's first balloon.

"By James!" said Kettle, "this beats me! Why don't they fire? Haven't they anti-aircraft guns?"

"I should say the place was stiff with them. But apparently the private night signal of the home-coming Hun is 'Drop one bomb, and then sit tight and do nothing,' and it's acted. They think we're their own pals suffering from engine trouble, and that very nice bomb was dropped by accident, which happens to be the strict truth. Great Scott! I wonder how many candle-power of light they're buzzing at us from that canal?"

"And you believe they're taking us for Germans?''

"I'm dead sure of it."

"By James, sir, I don't like that! I don't know whether you, sir," the little sailor added pointedly, "feel the degradation of it, too?"

"I do--oh, I do! But I'm going to stick it for the time being all the same. Looking down the muzzles of all those infernal guns has swamped all my better feelings. At this rate of drift we shall be out of range in another ten minutes, and then I'll be my old brave, bonny self again. Damn that girl! There! she's dropped another bomb! Little fool must be as fond of stirring up a wasp's nest as you are."

In the after-gondola Dr. Mary Brown cowered on a sofa and tickled delicate machinery with a neat but shuddering toe. "Oh, why didn't you come when I called?" she demanded when Carnforth opened the door.

"Because I didn't hear you, my dear, for one thing. Have you been calling me? Glad you've been enjoying yourself, but felt the thing was not complete without me. What are you playing at now?"

"Trying to prevent more of these beastly things from slipping down through that hole. Didn't you hear what a noise the other ones made?"

"I believe I did. Quite a little bang. If it tickles you to know, I dare say the noise has reached Berlin by now. There, take away your foot; I have set the trigger again. What was your nice little idea in pulling over the release lever?"

"I thought it was the switch for the water-heater thing we used for the tea."

Mr. Martin Carnforth gulped--and then sniggered. "Well, you've jangled Wilhelm's nerves all right, and with one of his own dear Zeps, too. The suffragette papers ought to give you an awfully fine par about it."

"Do you think they really will?" asked Dr. Mary Brown hopefully.

"Sure of it, if we get home to report same. But if you're particularly anxious for newspaper glory, I shouldn't try any more little games. You see, they are so apt to irritate the Bosches, who've really got no sense of humour. They are not like us; they still take their Zeps pretty seriously."

A voice that announced, "Wind's shifting to the s'uthard," made them both start and move apart.

"Good Lord!" said Carnforth. "I thought that was my chaperon come to take me home. This telephone is one of the loud-speaking sort, intended to be heard above the din of the motor-exhausts. Now they're stopped, it's a bit startling."

"Conscience!" said Dr. Mary Brown archly.

In the meanwhile the huge, helpless airship sidled and whirled at the sport of the air-currents across towards the Baltic. But with the edge of that sea beginning to gleam beneath her through the night, she got into another valley of the winds, and fled away north, down Schleswig-Holstein.

Captain Kettle by this time had grown thoroughly disgusted with air-travel over which he had so little control. Moreover, he had found a very efficient substitute for the actual Rhine Tour of his ambition, and, as further damage to Germany seemed out of the question for the moment, he wanted to get back to Upper Wharfedale for the earliest possible delivery of his epoch-making sermon. So, as the airship's latest course seemed to be due north, he made up his mind to bring her to ground before she could change her mind and take to the seas again, but if possible he proposed that she should carry him and his crew across the Danish border, so as to avoid further complications with the German Army. Even Captain Sir Owen Kettle has had to admit that in these latter days Germans in bulk are likely to be too well organized to be tackled without adequate resources.

The exit valves for the hydrogen in the many ballonettes all converged to the control position, and Captain Kettle experimented with them judiciously, and noted results on the barometer and the other altitude meters.

The night was inkily dark, and in the grazing country of Schleswig-Holstein (which was once Denmark) there are few salient features except for houses and farm villages. These were tucked away in bed, and showed no lights; and, indeed, up there, in the quiet night, it was hard to remember that nine-tenths of Europe was flaming with war. The stillness bred in Kettle's poetic brain the germ of another idea. He turned again to pencil and paper, and worked it out. Morning was beginning to thin the night when it was borne in on him that the Zeppelin was falling.

It was the dawn chill, of course, that did it. With engines running, he could have turned the hot exhausts into the envelope, and expanded the hydrogen in the ballonettes, and gained height with ease. Now he was falling steadily--in fact, rather quickly. Well, that was all right. The Danish border was close ahead, and he had designed to come to earth in Denmark. He picked up the telephone and warned the pair in the after gondola to stand-by for going ashore--and, incidentally, forgetting the power of that loud-sounding instrument, caused them to jump.

* * * * *

As far as Mr. Martin Carnforth's personal record goes, that was about the end of the tale. He was conscious of a heavy blow--it seemed like several heavy blows all rolled into one, and when he next awoke to life it was in a bare, clean room that smelt vaguely of cows and cheese. He was lying on a wooden bed that was too short for him, and sitting by his side was Dr. Mary Brown. Dr. Brown was wearing a voluminous skirt made of whitey-brown canvas, and was looking sulky. There was a smell of pungent cigar-smoke in the room, and tracing this up, Carnforth's eye lit upon the small, neat form of Captain Kettle, writing busily at the window ledge.

His eyes worked back again to the skirt which covered Dr. Brown's voluminous black leather breeches, and this set his thoughts going again. He chuckled pleasantly at them.

"Hullo, sir," said the little sailor, turning round. "Glad to see you're getting all right again. You had a bit of a bump."

"It seemed to me several bumps."

"My fault, sir, entirely. I brought her alongside in a way that ought to cost me my airman's ticket. I told you all along she was a beast to navigate, but I am not going to excuse myself behind that. You put your shoulder out in getting ashore."

"And you put it in, my dear?"

"I tried," said Dr. Brown sulkily. "I did my best."

"But you had to call in a second opinion, eh?"

"Well, sir, you see, Miss hasn't had the experience in setting limbs and putting them into joint that I have. But I think you'll find we did the job all right between us."

"And where's the Zep?"

"I'm afraid that's a total loss. You see, sir, if the Danes had got it, being neutrals, they'd probably have traded it back to the Germans. So I just put a match to the petrol tank before I left. We were only just across the border, and a whole regiment of German soldiers skipped over to put out the blaze."

"And didn't they? Quick, man. Don't say they managed it."

"It looked as if some of your bombs got over-heated, sir. She made one of the finest blow-ups I ever heard, and the great, big quarry-hole that was left was beginning to fill with water when we set off for the house. The farmer here seems rather pleased. He says the great difficulty on this farm has been enough water for milk-cooling."

"Eh, well, we seem to have made some good Germans after all. And our little girl with the nice eyes here has had the time of her life, haven't you, my dear? You appear to be the person that's been mainly scored off, Captain. You'll have trouble with that chapel if the Rhine Tour was essential."

"Don't you make any mistake there, sir. I've got that crowd in hand, and a bit to spare, if Rhine poetry will do it."

"What, you've written the things?"

"I have, sir. It seems to me I generally can write poetry best about places I haven't seen. Seeing them generally spoils my flow. If I don't give that chemist Lorely enough to choke him, I'll eat my hat. These new Rhine Tour poems of mine beat the real thing hands down. They'll just make the sweat drip off him when I give them from our pulpit."