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A young member of the latter, Lieutenant William Robinson, who had been responsible for the Zeppelin's destruction, received later the Victoria Cross as well as a number of monetary rewards and civic honors. The site at Cuffley, which had been the scene of the airship's destruction, was presented to the English nation by its owner.
Silence fell, save for the whistling of the sudden wind of the airship's own motion, and for the steadily mounting drone of the huge propellers. "Made it all right, by God!" exclaimed Bohannan, excitedly. "No damage, either. If the floats had smashed when they hit the gate, there'd have been a devil of an explosion vacuum collapsing, you know. Close call, but we made it! Now, if "
They had curiously curved, flexible side wings, more like BENT butterfly's wings than anything else, and made of a substance like celluloid and of brightly painted silk, and they had a long humming-bird tail. At the forward corner of the wings were hooks, rather like the claws of a bat, by which the machine could catch and hang and tear at the walls of an airship's gas-chamber.
Instead of being carried on to fall on the Seine embankment, I now found myself hanging in my wicker basket high up in the courtyard of the Trocadero hotels, supported by my airship's keel, that stood braced at an angle of about forty-five degrees between the courtyard wall above and the roof of a lower construction farther down.
Above the distant roar of the blaze sounded the throb of the airship's motor. The Englishmen heard it, and looked up. Then, suddenly, they motioned to Tom to descend. "That's what I'm going to do," he said aloud, but of course they could not hear him. "They're waiting for us!" cried Ned. "I wonder why?" for the rascals had come to a halt, setting down the packs they carried on the trail.
The detonation of the latter would fire the hydrogen within the gas-bag or bags, in which event the airship would fall to earth a tangled wreck. Even if the airship were inflated with a non-inflammable gas the Germans claim that their Zeppelins now are so inflated the damage wrought by the bomb would be so severe as to destroy the airship's buoyancy, and it would be forced to the ground.
Silence fell on both sides, for a few minutes. The Arabs, for the most part, remained staring at Nissr, to them no doubt the greatest miracle imaginable. Still, minds trained to believe in the magic carpet of Sulayman and quite virgin of any knowledge of machinery, could easily account for the airship's flying by means of jinnee concealed in its entrails.
The man had worked off his bonds and escaped while his captors were in the airship's cabin. Soon there was a queer hissing noise from the engine room of the Monarch. The gas bag began to distend. "She's fillin', Perfessor!" cried Washington. "We must tie her down," muttered the old man. "Otherwise she will rise and take the shed with her. I say, Washington!" "Yes, Perfessor."
Advices from Rotterdam stated that during this raid a Zeppelin fell into the Gierlesche Woods, Belgium, two men being hurt. The cause of the airship's plight was unknown, but the damage made it necessary that the frame be taken apart and sent to Germany for repairs. One of the oddest combats of the war was staged on this day May 17, 1915.
The storm was increasing in violence, and the hailstones seemed to double in number. Then, too, being forced upward as she was, the airship's bag was pelted all the harder, for the speed of the craft, added to the velocity of the falling chunks of hail, made them strike on the surface of the ship with greater violence. Tom was anxiously watching the barograph, to note their height.
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