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قراءة كتاب The Zeppelin Destroyer: Being some Chapters of Secret History
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The Zeppelin Destroyer: Being some Chapters of Secret History
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 one’s 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 enemy’s 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. James’s 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 Teddy’s 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 mechanic’s 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 let’s 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! that’s bad!” gasped Teddy, pale in alarm. “Something’s 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 we’ve ever had!”
“Yes, my dear fellow, but it tells us something,” I said. “We’ve 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. “They’ll wonder what’s up, won’t they?”
“Well, we can’t help their troubles.” I laughed.
“I expect we’ve 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.
“I’ll pump Treeton about it to-morrow. He’ll be certain to have heard if there has been any unusual signals at Marconi House,” I said. “They’ll no doubt believe that spark to be signals from some new Zeppelin!”
“No doubt. But we may thank our stars that we’re safe. Both of us could very easily have been either struck down, or blown up by the petrol-tank. We’ll 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