I having pronounced it good, he begged me to let him try it, and a few moments later he was in the pilots seat. Then after Theed had spun the propeller, our friend rose quickly, and went out to meet my well-beloved on her return.
Roseye, seeing my bus, thought I was flying it, but as she circled gracefully down she realised at last that it was Eastwell, and both machines, after making several fine circuits of the aerodrome, came to earth almost at the same moment.
I had been watching Roseye. For a woman, she was certainly a most intrepid flyer. Crossing to her, I glanced at her self-registering altimeter and saw that she had been up over eight thousand feet.
Ive been across to Dorking, she laughed gaily, as she sprang out of her seat, raised her goggles and pulled off her heavy leather gloves. I followed the railway from Dorking along to Guildford and met two men up from Farnborough. At Guildford I kept over the South Western line to Surbiton, and then steered back by compass.
She also inquired how my stabiliser had worked, and I told her that Lionel had been trying it.
Later, Eastwell was full of most glowing praise of the new invention, after which I put my machine back into the hangar and, taking Roseye with me in my two-seater, deposited her at home in Cadogan Gardens in time for lunch.
Then, as was my habit, I went on to the Royal Automobile Club in Pall Mall, and, after my meal, sat in the window of the big smoking-room chatting with three of the boys airmen all of them.
George Selwyn, a well-known expert on aircraft and editor of an aircraft journal, had been discussing an article in that mornings paper on the future of the airship.
I contend, he said firmly, that big airships are quite as necessary to us as they are to Germany. We should have ships of the Zeppelin and Schutte-Lanz class. The value of big airships as weapons of defence cannot be under-estimated. If we had big airships it is certain that Zeppelin raids more of which are expected, it seems would not be unopposed, and, further, we should be able to retaliate. Weve got the men, but we havent got the airships worse luck! The Invisible Hand of Germany has deceived us finely!
Thats so, I chimed in. The Germans can always soothe their own people by saying that, however dear food is and all that, yet they cant be strafed from above as we unfortunately are.
I quite agree, declared Charlie Digby, a well-known pilot, and holder of a height-record. A tall, clean-shaven, clean-limbed fellow he was lying back in the deep leather armchair with his coffee at his side. But is it not equally true that, if we had aeroplanes of the right construction and enough of them, we could give the night-raiders in Zeppelins a very uncomfortable time?
Quite so. Im all in favour of suitable aeroplanes, Selwyn admitted. We must upset this Zeppelin menace by some means or other. Here we are the greatest and most powerful nation the world has ever seen, worried three times a month by the threat of these German gas-bags! It is quite possible to obtain such aeroplanes as would enable us to fight the Zepps. As somebody wrote in the paper the other day regarding the future range of the naval big guns, it is useless to send up half-trained quirks on soggy seaplanes accompanied by still less trained spotting officers equipped with short-range wireless which cannot receive. The gun-spotter in a Fleet action should be a fully trained and experienced gunnery-Jack, seated in a comfortable observation-car where charts and navigating instruments can be used with accuracy. Therefore, if we cant get the proper aeroplanes, we must have airships for the purpose, as they are at present the only apparent vehicle for scientific gunnery in a Fleet action.
With this we all agreed.
Another point, I said, was advanced by a clever writer in the Aeroplane the other day. It was pointed out that in the matter of fighting Zeppelins, however good aeroplane patrols may be, they must depend on their eyes to find enemy airships. One may silence engines, but one cannot silence air, and, though one may shut off and glide slowly, yet there will always be enough whistling of wind round wires and struts to wash out any noise of airship engines, gears, and propellers, unless they are very close indeed. An airship, on the other hand, can shut off and float. There may be some creaking of the girders, and stays, but there will be no continuous whistling. Therefore an airship makes a perfect listening-post for enemy aircraft of all kinds.
Im quite sure of that, declared Charlie Digby from the depths of his chair. If we are to win the war we must fight the Zeppelin. We want a real good man at the head of affairs and we should allow him a free hand, and put a stop to the endless committees and conferences and confabulations which have been the curse of this country in every department since war began and before. Let that man have the advice of all the specialists he may require, and let him encourage people with ideas to offer their advice, instead of turning them down, as is the custom of most people in commanding positions.
Those same sentiments I had read in one of the papers that very day.
I said nothing more. It was time for me to be off, so I rose and left, having an appointment with Teddy Ashton.
As I passed through the big hall of the club I reflected how true were Digbys words. If we were to win the war we must fight the Zeppelins effectively.
But how?
That same question had occupied the minds of both Teddy and myself for many months, long indeed before the first Zeppelin had crossed the North Sea. Both of us had realised the deadly peril of those huge murder-machines against which we would be utterly powerless.
During the first year of war the public had laughed at the idea of Zeppelins coming over to drop bombs on undefended towns, or making an air raid upon London. The popular reply to anyone who ventured to express fear of such a thing as had been openly threatened in the German Press was: Bah! they havent come yet!
But at last they had come, and they had dropped bombs upon inoffensive citizens. There were some writers already crying, Never mind the Zeppelins! In the sluggish apathy which refused to worry as to the state of our air-defences they discovered a sort of heroism! Surely, they exclaimed, civilians, including women and children, ought to be really glad and proud to share the risks of their sons or brothers in the trenches.
A poor argument surely! The unarmed people of London and the provinces, when summoned to confront the hail of fire and death, had showed an imperturbable coolness worthy to compare with the valour of the soldiers in the field. On that point, testimony was unanimous. The people had been splendid. But they expected something more than passive heroism. It was so very easy to shut ones eyes to the ghastly record of suffering a hundred miles off, easy, as somebody had said, to doze under the hillside with Simple, Sloth and Presumption.
Long ago I had agreed with Teddy that some means must be found to fight effectively the German airships now that anti-aircraft guns had proved unreliable for inflicting much damage, except in a haphazard way. In conjunction, therefore, we had been actively conducting certain secret experiments in order to devise some plan which might successfully combat the terror of the night.
Zeppelins had flown over the coast towns and hurled bombs upon its defenceless inhabitants. Each raid had been more and more audacious in its range, and in its general scheme. London and the cities of the Midlands had been, more than once in sight of the enemys airships. Yet a certain section of the Press were still pooh-poohing the real significance of the attempt to demoralise us at home.
Zeppelins had flown over the coast towns and hurled bombs upon its defenceless inhabitants. Each raid had been more and more audacious in its range, and in its general scheme. London and the cities of the Midlands had been, more than once in sight of the enemys airships. Yet a certain section of the Press were still pooh-poohing the real significance of the attempt to demoralise us at home.
Out in St. Jamess Square on the cab-rank which the Club had taken for its own I jumped into my car and drove away down to Gunnersbury, beyond Chiswick, where, in a market-garden, I rented a long shed of corrugated iron, a place wherein, with Teddy, I conducted the experiments which we were making into the scientific and only way by which Zeppelins could be destroyed.
While the world had been wondering, we had worked, and in our work Roseye constantly assisted us. It was hard and secret work, entailing long and patient study, many experiments, and sometimes flights necessitating much personal risk.
Failures? Oh! yes, we had many! Our failures were, indeed, of daily occurrence. More than once, when we thought ourselves within an ace of success, we found that we were faced with the usual failure.
Many, alas! were the disappointments. Yet we all three had one goal in view, keeping it ever before us the fighting of the Zeppelin.
Little did we dream of the strange, dramatic events which were to result from our secret scientific investigations, undertaken in all our enthusiasm.
Could we but have foreseen what the future held for us or the power put forth against us by the Invisible Hand!
Chapter Three
The Brown Deal Box
Six days had gone by.
The weather having continued bright and fine, with a high and steady barometer, all of us at Hendon, quirks and pilots alike, had been up on many occasions.
In secret, I had placed upon my machine a Breguet monoplane with a 200 horse-power Salmson another new invention which, with Teddys aid, I had devised, and was testing. We were keeping the affair a profound secret. Nobody knew of the contrivance evolved out of my knowledge of wireless, save we two, Roseye and my mechanic Harry Theed.
Carefully concealed from the eye it was carried in a large locked box, while, as further precaution, after testing it each time, I put it on my car and took it away to my chambers with me, for we were not at all anxious for any of the mixed crowd at the aerodrome to pry into what we were doing, or to ascertain the true direction of our constant experiments.
One afternoon down at Gunnersbury Teddy, in mechanics brown overalls, was busily engaged repairing a portion of the apparatus which I had broken that morning owing to an unfortunately bad landing.
To the uninitiated the long shed with its two lathes, its tangle of electric wires across the floor, the great induction coils some of them capable of giving a fourteen-inch spark the small dynamo with its petrol engine, and other electrical appliances, would no doubt have been puzzling.
Upon the benches stood some strange-looking wireless condensers, radiometers, detectors and other objects which we had constructed. Also dressed in overalls, as was my chum and fellow-experimenter, I was engaged in assisting him to adjust a small vacuum tube within that heavy, mysterious-looking wooden box which I daily carried aloft with me in the fuselage of my aeroplane.
We smoked gaspers and chatted merrily, as we worked on, until at last we had completed the job.
Now lets put a test on it again eh, Claude? my friend suggested.
Right ho! I acquiesced.
It was already dusk, for the repair had taken us nearly four hours, and during the past half-hour we had worked beneath the electric light.
The shed was on one side of the large market-garden, at a considerable distance from any house. Indeed, as one stood at the door there spread northward several flat market-gardens and orchards, almost as far as the eye could reach.
Presently, when we had adjusted the many heavily-insulated wires, I started the dynamo, and on turning on the current a bright blue blinding flash shot, with a sharp fierce crackling, across the place.
Gad! thats bad! gasped Teddy, pale in alarm. Somethings wrong!
Yes, and confoundedly dangerous to ourselves and to the petrol eh? I cried, shutting off the dynamo instantly.
Phew! It was a real narrow shave! remarked Teddy. One of the narrowest weve ever had!
Yes, my dear fellow, but it tells us something, I said. Weve made an accidental discovery that spark shows that we can increase our power a thousandfold, when we like.
It has, no doubt, given the wireless operators at the Admiralty, at Marconi House, and elsewhere a very nasty jar, laughed Teddy. Theyll wonder whats up, wont they?
Well, we cant help their troubles. I laughed.
I expect weve jammed them badly, Teddy said. Look the aerial is connected up!
By Jove! so it is? I said.
I saw what I had not noticed before, that the network of phosphor-bronze aerial wires strung beneath the roof of the shed had remained connected up with the coils from an experiment we had conducted on the previous afternoon.
Ill pump Treeton about it to-morrow. Hell be certain to have heard if there has been any unusual signals at Marconi House, I said. Theyll no doubt believe that spark to be signals from some new Zeppelin!
No doubt. But we may thank our stars that were safe. Both of us could very easily have been either struck down, or blown up by the petrol-tank. Well have to exercise far more caution in the future, declared Teddy.
Caution! Why, Teddy had risked his life in the air a hundred times in the past four months, flying by day and also by night, and experimenting with that apparatus of ours by which we hoped to defy the Zeppelin.
Those were no days for personal caution. The long dark shadow of the Zeppelin had been over London. Women and babes in arms had been blown to pieces in East Anglia, on the north-east coast, and every one knew, from the threats of the Huns, that worse was intended to follow.
Our searchlights and aerial guns had been proved of little use. London, the greatest capital of the civilised history, the hub of the whole world, seemed to lie at the mercy of the bespectacled night-pirate who came and went as he pleased.
As is usual, the public were saying things but were not acting. Both Teddy and I had foreseen this long ago, for both of us had realised to the full the deadly nature of the Zeppelin menace. It was all very well for a Cabinet Minister to assure us on March 17, 1915, that Any hostile aircraft, airships, or aeroplanes which reached our coast during the coming year would be promptly attacked in superior force by a swarm of very formidable hornets.
Events had shown that the British authorities at that time did not allow sufficiently for the great height at which Zeppelins could travel, or for the fact that, while the airship could operate successfully at night-time, darkness was the least suitable time for aeroplanes in the stage of development which they had reached, on account of the difficulties of starting and of landing in the dark, as well as of seeing or hearing the airship from a machine flying aloft.
The German Government and the German people had thrown their fullest energies into the development of aircraft for war. Unfortunately we had not, and it is not too much to say that, during the first few months of the war, the responsible authorities in this country did not take the aerial menace seriously.
We, as practical airmen, had taken it up seriously very seriously, and, as result, had devoted all our time and all our limited private means for my governor was not too generous in the matter of an allowance towards combating the rapidly increasing peril of air attack.