who had now contrived to twist himself entirely round, stared angrily at him. Then a broad, beaming smile of pride seamed his face, a fat, good-natured face to be sure, while the light of recognition danced in his eyes.
"Ah! Mr. Andrew Provost," he exclaimed in thick but urbane tones. "We have met again. This is fortunate. But you see now; you see the German triumph. You see the Zeppelin with which they have conquered the air. Ah, it is magnificent!"
Andrew had scarcely time to shake his hand and recognize this plump little person. He was vastly impressed at the sight some four thousand feet above him, and away to the left. He could have shouted with delight himself. The object, in fact, claimed his whole attention.
"A Zeppelin!" he cried. "A real Zeppelin! One of Germany's air dreadnoughts – magnificent!"
It was magnificent. Seldom yet have Englishmen had the opportunity of seeing one of those leviathans of the air. At a period when balloons have become common objects in the sky, when the whole world almost has become accustomed to aeroplanes scooping through the air, the people of most countries are still strangers to the sight of a mighty airship swimming in space. And there was one, a long, sinuous hull of neutral colour, so that even in broad daylight it was not too easily visible, floating horizontally in the sky, like some gigantic cigar, while fore and aft, immediately beneath the hull, were two boat-shaped objects, a little darker than the mass above supporting them. There was the dull hum of machinery too.
"Moving along slowly," gasped Andrew, still wonderstruck at such a sight. "What's she doing?"
"Finishing a continuous run of twenty-four hours and more," declared the little stranger, whom we will now introduce as Mr. Carl Reitberg. "Just showing us how fresh she is, and how easy the task has been," he cried in tones of the utmost pride. "See! She has more to show us. She has taken in fuel from the steamer yonder, and could sail again for another twenty-four hours. But she wishes to experiment with her bombs. Look, mein Herr! There is a float down below her. She will pulverize it. She will smash it. She will drop a bomb plumb into it, and, piff! it is gone. That, mein Herr, is the work of the latest Zeppelin."
Perhaps a thousand passengers crowded the rails and watched the monster of the air, and it was as Mr. Reitberg had so proudly announced. The Zeppelin was manœuvring away from the Hamburg-Amerika liner. Ahead of her, some five miles to the east, was a dot upon the ocean. Andrew swung his glasses to his eyes and fixed them upon that object.
"A float of some sort – yes," he said. "She is motoring towards it. Then she will stop above it."
"No – not at all," declared Mr. Reitberg. "She will continue at her fastest pace. Yet she will strike it. Watch. See – ah! Did I not say so? It is marvellous! There!"
Was it imagination? Andrew fancied he saw a small, dark object fall from one of the boat-shaped cars beneath the long Zeppelin. In a twinkling he swung his glasses down upon the float half-immersed in the sea below. Then a loud detonation reached his ears, while the float disappeared miraculously, the sea being churned up and splashed all about it. Nor was that all. There came from the ship above a succession of sharp reports, while bullets of large size struck the sea immediately over the spot where the float had been. Then another object dropped from the airship. It burst into flames within two hundred feet of leaving the hand which had projected it, and almost at once sent out a vast, spreading mass of dense smoke, that spread and spread and spread till the sky was obscured, till the airship was utterly hidden.
Mr. Carl Reitberg chuckled aloud, and danced with delight.
"Magnificent! Cunning! The latest thing!" he declared. "You see the reason, Mr. Provost? No; then I will tell you. The ship, the air dreadnought, you understand, discovers an enemy's ship, or shall we say the enemy's war harbour, or arsenal, or magazine, or what you will? She sails above it. She drops a bomb. Then, piff! the thing is done. The ship is destroyed; the harbour is wrecked; the magazine explodes. Men rush to and fro in panic – those who are left. For some are poisoned. Yes, some die not from the effects of the explosion, but because the airship has dropped also chemical bombs which burst and spread poisonous fumes everywhere. But men are left, we will allow. There are gunners there. They rush to the aerial guns. They load them; they attempt to take aim. But – where is the ship? Gone? No – but where? The sky is all smoke. There is no sign of her. She is invisible. Nicht wahr? It is too late; all the damage is done. The Zeppelin escapes to wreck more ships, more harbours, more magazines."
He puffed out his stout little chest, gazed aloft at the dense and spreading cloud of smoke, and waved his hands excitedly.
"It is magnificent!" he repeated for perhaps the tenth time. "It is a triumph! None can approach it. Many have watched and scorned the idea. Count Zeppelin has persevered. Germany has backed his efforts, and now, voila! – there is the result. Triumph! The conquest of the air. Mastery of the upper element; with none to gainsay us."
"But – but there are limits to the power of these ships," suggested Andrew, his words almost faltering. "There are limits to their range of travel."
Mr. Carl Reitberg put one fat finger artfully to the side of his nose. It was perhaps a little peculiarity he had picked up in England, for we hasten to explain that he was cosmopolitan. Carl Reitberg had spent many of his fifty-three years in South Africa. There he had enjoyed the protection of the Union Jack. He had a house in London now, and one also at Brighton. It may be said that he had made his fortune, thanks to his own astuteness and the opportunities given him by our British colonies. But he was not English. He was not entirely German. He belonged to the world. One day he was resident in Berlin, a second found him in London or in Brighton, while as likely as not the following weeks saw him parading the Champs Élysées in Paris, the Boulevards of Buenos Ayres, the streets of Mexico, or Broadway, New York. In fact, and in short, he was cosmopolitan.
"Limits, mein Herr!" he cried, still in those tones of pride, still dancing on his toes. "None! That ship can sail continuously over a thousand miles. Her wireless telegraph will reach within a hundred miles of that distance. She can manœuvre easily over a ship at sea and take in further supplies. She is, in short, a cruiser. Do you wish to sail in luxury to St. Petersburg? Hire, then, a Zeppelin. Do you desire to escape mal de mer? Call for one of these huge airships and sail for London. Do you fancy the conquest of some island kingdom? Mr. Provost, you are rich; buy one of the air dreadnoughts and blow your enemies sky high."
Andrew took his eyes from the spreading cloud of smoke overhead and glanced at the excited orbs of the little fellow. Then he looked at his nephew. And we tell but the truth when we say that his own eyes were troubled.
"It is magnificent, but it is terrible," he said slowly. "Terrible for those who have no aerial dreadnoughts. Yes, terrible. Their danger is greater than I could ever have imagined. And you say that these Zeppelins stand alone. There are no others?"
"None. But wait. Yes, there are others, also German. There are the Parseval, the semi-rigid ships of the air," said Mr. Reitberg with a truculent smile. "There are also the Gross ships; but the Zeppelins are infinitely superior. Elsewhere there are none. France, what are her ships? Russia, poof! we will not waste breath in discussing them. England – mein Herr, she has the Alpha, the Beta, and the Gamma, mere toy airships. They do not count."
There was a wide smile on his face now. Andrew winced at his words; there were even beads of perspiration on his forehead, while lines had knit themselves across his brow.
"You say that England has no such ships. Then she can build them, must build them," he said.
"Must – yes! But can she? Impossible!" Mr. Carl Reitberg looked his pity. "Impossible!" he repeated, while Andrew wiped his perspiring brow.
"I think not – hardly impossible, mein Herr," came in quiet tones from Joe, a silent witness of all that had been
